|
|
|
|
|
The cast
Playing the Ghost Rider
While audiences would never see Cage's face when playing the Ghost Rider in the finished film, the actor nonetheless arrived on set in makeup of his own design that created a skull-like look and incorporated contact lenses that blacked out the entirety of his eyes.
But why create such an elaborate make-up, when Cage's head was set to be replaced by CG a flaming skull? For Cage, the reason is simple: to find the character and to assist his fellow actors in their reactions to him. "Ghost Rider, to me, is a fallen angel," continues the actor. "Since he's not anything you can relate to it was important to me that there be some distance and some fear present when playing that part. When you work from the outside in, it sometimes helps you channel or believe or commit to a character that hopefully not only stimulates my imagination but my fellow actors as well - they know that there's something else in the room now and it's not John Blaze, it's a whole other being."
Violante Placido (The American) says that all of the actors are adept and practiced at using their imaginations to picture what the computer will put on the screen… but nothing takes the place of the real thing. "It made a real difference when Nick put on his makeup and wore these dark contact lenses," she says. "The makeup made him so different, like an insect or like a snake with its black impenetrable eyes. Two black holes which hypnotize, horrify you at the same time."
"At the end of the film," says Ciarán Hinds, "he roars up on his bike and I'm trying to crawl as much as I can in any direction. When I turned and saw this extraordinary makeup that he's done, his face just came straight into mine and became otherworldly - he'd gone somewhere with this powerful, powerful energy."
Idris Elba leads a group of European actors and rising stars opposite Cage. Elba plays Moreau, "a religious man who has gone on his own path -a Lone Ranger type character," he says. "When you meet him, he's in the midst of a journey, searching for Nadya and Danny, and has been for a while. He's traveled around the world, lived in many different places. When I met Mark and Brian, we discussed that the character has to have a feeling of 'been there, done that.' Even though he's a monk, he likes a little bit of a drink. And he has a motorcycle and cool threads - he goes for it."
Director Mark Neveldine predicts, "Idris has a tremendous physical presence and physical skills matching the great action stars of the past 20 years. I love his take on Moreau, his energy and charisma. He has a never-say-never attitude, loves doing his own stunts and he's one of the best-looking guys in the business. A true tough guy who has the talent of twelve actors, and by the way, so much fun to work with."
"First of all, I like him as a person - he's somebody I enjoy talking with and, as an actor, he's brave," says Cage. "Idris is not afraid to be big, to give his character Moreau size. There's a kind of enchanting madness in his eyes and this wonderful kind of crazy laugh he does every now and then. "
As he did for his memorable role in Thor, Elba chose to wear special contact lenses that would lighten his eye color. "The character was described as a man who has a light in his eyes - which I interpreted as a light coming from his eyes," he describes. "So I said to Mark and Brian, 'Hey, why don't we change his eye color? Why don't we make it a little bit more ambiguous as to what's going on with those eyes, you know?" He's not a superhero, he's not mystical - he's real - but I wanted him to look like he might be other-worldly here and there. And they loved the idea."
"The moment he put those on, it was the icing on the cake for Moreau," says Neveldine. "It was this spiritual power, beaming through those eyeballs. We needed that - he's not just a drunk monk, he's a drunk monk with a powerful stare, and he'll need that when he's up against the Ghost Rider."
Playing the Devil
Ciarán Hinds plays a character named Roarke, but let's not kid ourselves. "There's no way you can mince words, Roarke is the Devil," says Ciarán Hinds, "and he's not looking for redemption. He's inhabited the body of a human being; unfortunately, human beings, being what they are, are weak and fallible, so the body's starting to disintegrate. Since he has spawned a Devil child, a young boy, he has a back-up plan, but it becomes a race against time, because not only does he have to secure the boy by a certain moment, as he progresses on his journey he starts to disintegrate. After a while, it looks like his whole face is just sliding off him."
Strangely enough, this is not Hinds' first time playing the Devil. "A few years ago, Connor McPherson, a well-known Irish theatre writer-director, asked me to be in a play ["The Seafarer"] that he'd written and was directing on Broadway. The character was called Mr. Lockhart - and he turned out to be The Devil. I'm not sure what it is about my choices as an actor that leads to me being cast as the Devil, but it's fun to be evil."
"Ciarán Hinds is the nicest guy in the world - a very gentle soul - but I'm sure the Devil is the nicest guy in the world, too," says Cage. "He's worked all that charm into his portrayal. There's a great sense of fun with him, as well."
Director Mark Neveldine calls Hinds "a total pro. He's fascinating to watch and he brings so much life to the character with so much ease. We were always excited when he stepped on set. He is a tireless actor who never ever complains and can do a perfect take 20 times in a row. Like Nic, he is one of the great actors of our time."
Describing his character's look, Hinds jokes that "contrary to popular opinion, the Devil doesn't wear Prada. The Devil wears Brioni. Bojana was very good about delicately sizing up the character - a man carrying himself with what he believes is old school dignity and pride. He is trying to keep it all together, but he's falling apart. He looks impeccable, but meanwhile the body's disintegrating."
Costume Designer Bojana Nikitovic continues, "Brian and Mark gave the right instructions to not make the typical version of devil, so we knew that he needed to be a really immaculately dressed, elegant guy. And Ciarán Hinds absolutely helped by how he wears the costume and the way he carries that character."
And it's not only the wardrobe that makes the man--to play Roarke, Hinds also wore makeup and prosthetics. "It's truly creative, fantastic work," the actor marvels. "You need a little Zen and a lot of patience because it's a two-hour job - hair, makeup, lenses. Most of it is prosthetics work that is blended and sealed into the skin on the side of the face and along the nose. I watch how it progresses bit by bit and, at the end, half my face is not what it was when I sat down on the chair."
Nadia
Violante Placido takes on the role of Nadya, who forms a bond with Johnny when a secret sect of the church recruits him for to help her son. "She has led a tough life, on the streets, and that has made her tough," says Placido. "I imagine her like a stray cat. She knows how to use guns and knives - she's ready to kill if necessary. Her biggest sin is her son, Danny; it's a paradox, because he's also her only reason to live. Her mission in this movie is to protect her son and maybe redeem herself, start a new life."
"Nadya is crazy - she's cheated, stolen, probably killed. But at the end of the day she wants to be a mom; she wants to take care of her son," says Neveldine. "Violante puts that front-and-center; you feel that she is putting the role of being a mother first, and she makes the character redeemable."'Cage observes, "There's a tragic mystery to Violante's performance as Nadya that's right for the role. She is a gypsy vagabond who fell in with the wrong crowds and now feels really heartbroken for this child - she's concerned for his future and feels guilty. And that all comes out in her eyes. Violante's one of those actors who is so mysterious because you don't know what she's thinking; it's all very fluid and effortless."
Nadya has a mysterious, unconventional beauty. "I really like the look that she ended up having - and there was a lot of Brian in the procedure," notes Placido. "We decided for a dark, punk rock look. She has these dark eyes. It's like a protection that she uses - a makeup that she can make herself. It's not really glamorous and it accomplishes two things - it makes her appear melancholy, even desperate, and, at the same time, tough. It's a kind of cat look."
"It is unclear whether she's a Gypsy, but she's living her life that kind of way," observes Costume Designer Bojana Nikitovic. "When you dress a beautiful woman, it's good to see the curves and a little bit of skin, so the search for the right costume was not helped by the fact that the story takes place in wintertime. To protect Violante from the cold, we found a jacket that we liked, then we played with colors. We definitely wanted color on her because other characters are almost monochrome, like black, gray. After trying a number of possibilities we found this red that we loved very much."
The malevolent ex
Johnny Whitworth takes on the role of Carrigan - Nadya's ex-boyfriend and a character who transforms into the malevolent Blackout. "He's a sociopath - definitely a bad guy," Whitworth explains. "Roarke hires him to track down Nadya, because he wants the child. But the Ghost Rider has been hired by the good guys to do the same thing. An ordinary guy can't go up against the Ghost Rider, so when he almost bites the dust, he finds himself turned into Blackout - and now, he's on the same supernatural level as the Ghost Rider, this other Devil creation."
Whitworth had worked with Neveldine/Taylor before, in their film Gamer as well as Pathology, which Neveldine/Taylor wrote. "They have such different voices, but they complement each other," he says. "Sometimes they'll give you different direction, but when that happens you realize that they are giving you two avenues to the same destination."
"Johnny is the type of actor that we'd have for one or two scenes and he'd steal the show," says Taylor. "So we figured this was the time to give him a chance to really blow it up. He's an unpredictable actor, playing a really good bad guy, a dark soul of a man. For the comic book fans out there, I think they're going to find that he's true to the spirit of Blackout, and for the people who aren't, they'll find he's just really cool."
To make the character that cool required extensive makeup and prosthetic work. "The standard was really high on the makeup, because we had to make sure that Blackout and the Ghost Rider, which would obviously be CG, felt like they existed in the same world," says Taylor. "I think the end result was that our people just knocked it out of the park."
For Whitworth, completing the transition from handsome actor to devil creation took four hours. "It was a painstaking process, but definitely worth it," says the actor.
The leader of the sophisticated if monastic sect
Christopher Lambert plays the pivotal character Methodius, the leader of the sophisticated if monastic sect to whom Moreau struggles to bring Danny, Nadya and Blaze for what they all believe will be the boy's safe keeping.
"It's great to have someone like Christopher - with a legacy like his - in this film," observes Idris Elba.
But Methodius' conception of what will make the world safe in terms of Danny's fate is shockingly different from the boy's friends and mother's. "It's impossible to say if he's a good guy or a bad guy. He's just a guy with a conviction and he's going to go forward with this conviction," notes Lambert.
But playing a man of faith who is quite prepared to execute a young boy was not the actor's greatest challenge - that involved coming to terms with how the directors envisioned that would Methodius look. "When Mark and Brian asked me if I wouldn't mind shaving my head and having my face covered in tattoos, I was really scared. I didn't know how I'd look with my head shaven - I tried unsuccessfully to convince them to let me do it with a bald cap. Ultimately, I shaved it gradually. I didn't have long hair, but I had enough that I wanted to go step by step. I started to cut it really short, then shorter, then shorter and, to my amazement, I really liked it. I'm going to grow it back a little, but I'm going to keep it very short because first of all, it's very practical and, secondly, I feel good about its pleasant feel. I was going to say 'the wind in your hair,' but the wind on your skull is pretty nice."
The tattooing process designed by special effects makeup artist Jason Robert Hamer was, as described by Lambert, "pretty simple. Fortunately, the tattoos stay on; I can sleep with the makeup. The day before shooting, we do half my face and my skull and then, the morning of the shoot, we do the rest. All together, it's about a two-and-a-half-hour process, and it takes more time to take off than to put on. "
The son of the Devil
The then-thirteen-year-old actor Fergus Riordan rounds out the principal cast in the pivotal role of Danny. "Unfortunately, he's the son of the Devil," says Riordan. "His mom made a pact with the Devil to host his child. So he runs away from good guys and the bad guys; in fact, he's not really sure who is good and who is bad. Ultimately, he has to decide between good and evil."
"We were very lucky to find Fergus," agrees Executive Producer E. Bennett Walsh. "We were getting ready to do this complete European search for ten-year-old boys. We had already cast the major parts and we thought we were going to have to do this huge search to find the kid. Our casting directors in London sent Fergus' tape and we flew him in on a weekend; he read the lines and Mark and Brian cast him right there."
Cage found Riordan to be "one of the most professional actors I've ever worked with and he wasn't even fourteen yet. He is the model of how you want someone to behave on the set--he's always on time, always prepared and he's really, really good. He's just got a presence about him, timing and confidence. He was out there in these remote locations, working very hard in the cold, outside, and he never once complained. Plus, he's adorable."
Back
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Visual Effects and 3D
Though the directors' focus for Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance was to capture as much of the action in camera as possible, it was clear from the beginning that the film would have to employ CG effects as well. After all, the title character has a flaming skull.
Overseeing the VFX is Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Durst, who says, like all of the departments, the new Ghost Rider film would have a very different look from its predecessor. "Mark and Brian really wanted a new look for Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. It's a darker film, so we created a look that integrated with that. The look of the character isn't stylized at all - it is as if Ghost Rider really existed, really had a flaming head. The skull is dark and charred - just as it would be if you really had a skull that was on fire. Another touch like that is the shoulders of the jacket - they would be bubbling up from the heat inside the body."
The primary challenge in creating the VFX, says Durst, is that the character is "interactive. The light that comes off the flames on his head - it interacts with his shoulders and anything else nearby. But interactive light is very difficult to recreate in the computer. It's so subtle, and it interacts in different ways with different fabrics and objects. So to achieve that, we took a hood with LED lights on it that flickered on and off. That had two great benefits for us: first, the LED lights served as tracking markers in the computer, so when Nick moved his head from left to right, we could make the skull match those movements. But the LEDs also cast a light on anything that was in proximity, so it would give us the light that would occur if the flame really was on his head."
Durst also notes that since the release of the first Ghost Rider film, there have been tremendous advances in CG animation. "The foundation of getting flames in CG is fluid dynamics, and so much has happened technologically in just the last five or six years," he says. "For the original film, Sony Pictures Imageworks created their own code and worked within the software systems that existed at the time. It was very labor intensive. For the new film, with six years' worth of development of the technology in the field, we had a big head start. You can make things look stunningly real now."
The effects were completed by Iloura, a Australian company. "We canvassed the world to see who had the best fire," says Durst. "Their first test had everything - the right, dark look for the skull, the flames, the right vibe. Everyone fell in love with it right there, and Iloura did a great job on the movie."
The film also brings the Ghost Rider in 3D. "The movie for us was always going to be in 3D, from the very beginning - we love making the movie a more immersive experience. It seemed like a really cool idea, especially with our style of shooting," says Taylor. "We tried to push the envelope with the technology. The first thing they told us was all the things we couldn't do - no handheld camera, no quick cuts, no lens flares, no soft foreground, no super-long lenses, no super-wide lenses… and we asked, well, why?"
"There are rules, and Mark and Brian wanted to break those rules, so it was my job to break them," says stereographer Craig Mumma. "We wanted to take their style and adapt it to the screen and make 3D an enjoyable experience. The way Mark and Brian shoot, the camera work is an integral part of the movie, almost like another character. There's no changing the way they shoot, so we had to come up with tools to adapt."
Shooting in Romania and Turkey
Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance was filmed on location in Romania and Turkey. "Romania has an established film community," says E. Bennett Walsh, executive producer of the film. "They have been brought up on lower-budget Hollywood films - they've done thirty or forty films in the five-to-ten-million-dollar range, plus Cold Mountain, but that was the exception. They understood the systems of how we make our films. The difference between Cold Mountain and our film is that for Cold Mountain they brought in two hundred people from outside Romania. We brought in approximately 25 people and the rest were Romanians."
About the country and its film crew, Cage found that "Romania has an energy, it has a buzz to it and ours was a hardworking crew that did a really good job. These people care; they value their work."
The production of Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance was based in the Bucharest area, shooting a number of scenes on the sound stages and back lot of Castel Studios in Snagov. The crew also spent more than a month traveling and filming throughout scenic and historic central Romania (including parts of Transylvania).
"Shooting in Transylvania, we got those mountain roads, the majestic castle, and the grit we wanted for the Eastern European setting. Romania was perfect," says director Mark Neveldine.
The roads on which Moreau rides in the opening scene of the film and, later, Carrigan pursues Nadya and Danny after they escape from the monastery were shot on the hairpin turns of the Transfăgărăşan Highway, the most dramatic paved road in the country traversing the crest of the Fagaras Mountains. As winter and snowfalls approached soon after filming, the highway was closed to traffic until June. (Although it is not seen in the film, the ruins of Cetatea Poienari, the 15th century castle of Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) are perched along the highway, a 1400-step climb from the production's base camp.)
One key scene was shot in a square in picturesque Sibiu, the largest and wealthiest of seven walled citadels built in the 12th century by German settlers (the Transylvanian Saxons). The beautiful city was designated a European Capital of Culture for 2007. A recently surfaced highway outside Sibiu that was not yet open to traffic is the location for another scene in which Blaze wins over Danny on the bed of Nadya's stolen truck.
Moreau's destination at the beginning of the film, where he will meet Nadya and Danny in the heavily-fortified monastery, was filmed at the Corvin Castle (also known as the Hunyadi Castle) in the city of Hunedoera (also located in Transylvania). The beautifully restored and maintained 14th-centrury Gothic fortress (complete with giant moat) is one of the most spectacular castles in the world.
Carrigan's near fatal encounter with the Ghost Rider was shot in a giant quarry outside of the city of Targu Jiu in southwestern Romania. Parts of the quarry sequence, including Carrigan's resurrection at the hands of Roarke, were shot on a set re-created on the backlot at Castel Studio outside of Bucharest.
From Romania, the production moved to Turkey. "I was there six years ago scouting on another film and thought, 'These locations are fantastic, I have to come back,'" says Walsh. "Mark and Brian wanted something entirely different for the third act to contrast the European locations where it was quintessentially lush. In Cappadocia and Pamukkale, color was drained from the earth and it felt ancient. This isn't a $500,000 set design with CGI augmentation - these fantastic locations are real."
"I was very excited about the palette of the movie," notes Production Designer Kevin Phipps. "It starts quite green and lush in Romania and as the journey proceeds on the road and down into Turkey there's a great kind of bleed-out of color."
Cappadocia hosted the shooting of the final encounters between the Ghost Rider and Carrigan/Blackout and Roarke. Cage was very impressed with the country. "It was a completely new landscape for me - the rock formations of Cappadocia, where we filmed, are these spires of rocks containing rectangular windows without glass where people have lived for thousands of years. And within the Greek and Roman ruins there were thousands of these marble pieces atop one another, mountains of them, and we're working like it's a day at the office. Extraordinary! It is impossible to not be completely mystified and in awe."
The scenes in the Sanctuary, the lair of Methodius and his monks to which Moreau leads Blaze, Nadya and Danny were also filmed in the Zelve Open-Air Museum in Cappadocia, an ancient almost impossibly fantasy-like village that is honeycombed with cave dwellings, religious and secular chambers. Christians and Muslims lived here for hundreds of years (into the 20th Century).
Moving to Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey, the production shot the grand ceremony when Roarke intends to transfer his powers into Danny's body. The location was the ruins of Hierapolis, the ancient Greek, later Roman, then Christian city, built atop a system of hot springs. (Pamukkale means "cotton terraces," named for white travertine terraces created by the springs.) The specific site of the satanic ceremony is the well-preserved Roman amphitheatre dating from the 2nd Century AD.
Ciarán Hinds, who as Julius Caesar commanded Roman attention in the HBO series Rome, was impressed with the setting. "You stand in the center of this semi-circle arena and can be heard by everybody--you imagine a full house listening to the great ancient plays. Because I come from the theatre as well, it was a thrill to just stand there and absorb the atmosphere. It was beautiful, and beautifully taken care of--and here we are having some kind of weird Devil ceremony in it. That was quite fun."
Back
|
|
|
|
|
|
