We’ve already wrapped up our five-part series detailing our visit to the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie set, but today we’re sharing ten bonus facts about the set visit!
1. In the PREVIS conference room, all four walls were plastered with the film’s storyboard. we noticed that there were 143 scenes on this storyboard. This number will probably change as the film completes post-production.
2. Caleb Thaggard dyed his blonde hair red for his role as Stilson.
3. In the lunch area, we spotted a picture on door of an ‘Ender’s Game’ paintball team that some of the crew put together.
4. There are equal numbers of men and women in the film’s version of battle school. All of the girls wore their hair in buns, but Petra Arkanian actress, Hailee Steinfeld, was the only actress we noticed who wore a braided bun.
5. We mentioned this on our podcast, but Orson Scott Card’s co-author in the First Formic War Trilogy, Aaron Johnston, has a small part as an officer in the movie. He’s also an associate producer.
6. Surprisingly, we met another person with a small walk-on role as an officer, Larry Kramer (J.D.). At the time, Kramer was a Dean of Stanford Law. Apparently, “Kramer cajoled an entertainment-lawyer alumnus to get him an invitation.”
7. Battle school students are not allowed to bring any personal items to the station so that they are not reminded of home. In the film, students roll up socks and play ball with them.
8. While on set, we saw two scenes being filmed, neither of which were from the book. One scene involved Ender and Petra, and the other involved Sergeant Dap on “graduation day.” Sorry, no spoilers!
9. While we interviewed set designers, Ben Procter and Sean Haworth, they passed around a smartphone with a virtual battle school. When the the phone was pointed up you saw the battle school’s ceiling, when the phone was pointed left you went down a hallway etc. It was very cool.
10. Sadly, there is no prop to represent an ansible. However, we did notice a background display in Colonel Graff’s viewing room with the term “ansible” and a bunch of neat graphics.
Don’t forget to check out the rest of our set reports:
Today we have three final interview to share with you from our visit to the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie set last May. The first interview is from Sir Ben Kingsley. While we waited for Sir Ben to finish up a scene we his in a small, dark, cave-like nook on the Eros set. We had to stand quietly during filming for a decent amount of time and we jokingly called it our ‘Time out room’. Read our interview with Sir Ben Kingsley below.
Q: Your tattoo must have hurt really bad.
Sir Ben Kingsley: That’s right! Yeah, agony!
Q: How long does it take to put it on?
Kingsley: It takes an hour and a half. I sit very still.
Q: What was it about this story and the role that really attracted you to the part?
Kingsley: I was completely ignorant of the novels and the stories, so I came to it very fresh which is probably a good thing. I had no preconceptions of what it was going to be about and whom I was to portray. I like the combination of the warrior from the past and the warrior of the future. This is very ancient markings, thousands of years old, and set it’s projected in the future. So I like that continuity.
Q: Do you feel more of an affinity for science fiction directors now that you’ve portrayed the original one?
Kingsley: Which science fiction director was that? Georges Méliès? Well spotted, sir! Yes I do, yes. It take a tremendously uncluttered, inventive mind to see through the present and into the future. Very often, bad science fiction is completely locked into the present. They have no perception, who could, of the future. It takes a great imagination to transcend the limits of what we know. We tend to think within the limits of what we know. I think Gavin, the wonderful writer, has transcended our narrow limits. We have no idea what the future holds for us! We’re guessing, but it’s good to be curious and it’s good to speculate on what might happen.
Q: What has it been like working with Asa again?
Kingsley: We have a very good working relationship, very good. He’s pure and simple. He’s uncluttered. He’s highly intelligent. There’s no wasted time on the set with Asa. It’s a great relationship.
Q: Do you think he’s changed as an actor since ‘Hugo’? Has he grown?
Kingsley: Yes, he’s six inches taller, but the essentials are exactly the same and they probably will be for life.
Q: Have you given him any advice?
Kingsley: That’s by osmosis. We never give each other advice. The wonder thing about a film is that it’s collaborative and if you’re alert to what is around you, you will learn and you will probably teach, but it’s not a conscious process.
Q: What about this production has impressed you the most?
Kingsley: Collaboration. There are so many people out there getting one perfect shot and sequence- different departments, different heads of departments, and to see it all being coordinated is a great sight.
Q: It’s fun to see you shift directly from promoting ‘The Dictator’, straight into this role. Do you purposefully choose these kinds of roles to kind of switch it up?
Kingsley: Change is one of the most exciting things of our life. Every day is different. Every role is different. Every director is different. Every script is different. So, if you’re blessed it’s going to be a bonus in the palm of your life. I’m not just tempted to play the same role over and over again, and I’m very good at it, but I’ve been very fortunate.
Q: In the book, there’s a fight scene between Ender and Mazer. Is there a similar scene in the movie, and if so what was it like having little Asa beat you up?
Kingsley: I beat him up!
The second interview we have to share with you are from the production designers, Sean Haworth and Ben Procter. This was our favorite favorite part of the set visit, because for the half hour it took to complete this interview, we got to lounge in those launchie bunks you see in the picture to the left. We were also fortunate enough to visit several other sets. At battle school, we visited an infirmary which held Bonzo’s brain scan, and walked down a silver battle school corridor and across a floor that curved up. We also toured Ender’s room at Command School. It was a very tiny room with only and bed and table with books, aviators, and sink. Our favorite set was the staging area for the final command scene. We climbed up a narrow staircase to reach Colonel Graff’s view above Ender’s simulator. This was the only set with a lot of green screen, but the vastness of this set was pretty amazing. Read our interview with the set designers below for more information.
Q: What’s your relationship to ‘Ender’s Game’, the book? Did you read it when you were a kid?
Ben Procter: I did read it when I was a kid. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but I feel like I read the short story version of it when I was twelve and maybe [read] the book when I was fourteen. Something like that. I loved it. Lynn [Hendee] has been trying to get this movie made since a long time ago.
Lynn Hendee: I couldn’t until you came aboard!
Procter: I’ve always been wanting to do this movie since I was a kid and I’ve been tracking this project, various phases of it. I emailed Orson- actually, I don’t think I’ve ever told this story…
Hendee: No!
Procter: I tried to cold email Orson once, six years ago or something like that. ‘Can I work on this?’
Hendee: Did he answer you?
Procter: No! It was probably some nympho emailing the company or God-knows-what. I’ve been trying to get on this a long time and I finally succeeded. Here we are. Continue reading →
Today Lionsgate launched an online battle room training game via IF-battleschool.com to promote the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie. In the game, you have to act as a battle school student and shoot practice targets in the battle room. Click here to play!
The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will be released in U.S. theaters on November 1, 2013.
Today we’re sharing one of the funnier hours of our visit to the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie set last May. In a round table interview with Asa Butterfield (Ender Wiggin), Hailee Steinfeld (Petra Arkanian), Nonso Anoznie (Sergeant Dap), Aramis Knight (Bean), Khylin Rhambo (Dink), Suraj Partha (Alai), Conor Caroll (Barnard), and Caleb Thaggard (Stilson), laughed more than we spoke! Read below the interview below to learn about the cast’s arduous training process, what the formics look like, costume hell, and plenty of shenanigans from the ‘Ender’s Game’ film set. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow, when we’ll share set descriptions, interviews from the set designers, and an interview with Sir Ben Kingsley.
Q: What was your familiarity with the book when you found out about this project and what kind of drew you in once you knew what you were up for?
Hailee Steinfeld: I wasn’t very familiar before I had booked the part, but afterwards I read the script and kind of breezed through the book a bit and the first thing that kind of drew me in was the fact that it had to do with a lot of kids. This was the first time working with kids my age and it’s been so much fun, more fun than I imagined, but aside from the character itself just the whole story really drew me in.
Q: What about your specific character? What do you think are the similarities between what’s in the book and what’s on the page?
Steinfeld: It’s very similar. The movie is as close to the book as a two hour movie can get. But for my character I love that Petra is a very strong independent girl and I love that. […] When I first read a character if it’s a strong female role that’s kind of a perk for me.
Asa Butterfield: I’m Asa by the way. [Joke.]
Steinfeld:I’m Hailee nice to meet you. [Joke.]
Butterfield: Nice to meet you. [They shake hands.]
Q: What was the boot camp style training like that they had you go through, both of you?
Butterfield: Before we started filming we went to space camp which was fun. We did loads there. It was sort of our first time spending time with all the other guys so it was really good breaking the ice and getting to know each other and that’s when we really formed a tight relationship with everyone and we learned a lot about astronauts, team-building exercises and something called Aviation Challenge which we all went in these fighter jets and we were all practicing for the simulation room. Then we formed missions, which we would have to communicate with each other and fight off other planes or blow up a nuclear facility or something. So yeah, it was a great time there.
Q: In terms of actual military drills was there stuff like that too?
Butterfield: Yeah we did the military training- all the cadences and it was tough. They weren’t friendly, if we did something wrong ten push-ups straight away and then if we did it wrong again another twenty and it was grueling but it really helped us get into the character.
Q: What was the casting process like for both of you? How did you guys initially get involved with the project?
Steinfeld: I don’t even remember, my goodness. How was it, Mom? I don’t remember, I think it was […] a phone call away. Yeah so I just kind of found out about it and I don’t know. That’s pretty much it.
Roberto Orci: We begged you guys.
Butterfield: For me, I sent off a lot of audition tapes. The harder part of it was, of course, getting into the accent so I had a lot of dialect training and once I sent off a few tapes I ended up meeting Gavin in LA where I spoke to him and I performed in front of him. I can’t remember how long after that it was. It was during the press tour for Hugo and my mom told me that I got the part.
Q: How did you react to that when you heard the news?
Butterfield: Well actually it was just before our flight out to New York to start everything and my mom came into my bedroom and this is pretty much word for word. She was like, “Ok, take a deep breath.” And as soon as she said that I knew what had happened. I literally screamed. I was flipping out. It was amazing.
Q: Had you read the book before?
Butterfield: I read it as soon as I had got the part.
Visiting the costumes department and the props department were two of our favorite parts of our visit to the ‘Ender’s Game’ film set last May. In the props department, we were allowed to touch and hold most of the props. Many of the props we saw were on display at the ‘Ender’s Game’ Fan Experience at Comic-Con 2013 or available in other film images.
The Monitor:
Zero-Gravity Barf Bag:
Graff’s Hook:
Flash Gun: In the film, it takes a couple of seconds for these guns to charge, then they light up when shot. The flash gun breaks down between into ten pieces. In a filler scene, Bonzo has his army race to disassemble and assemble their flash guns. The young actors actually got really good at this!
We’ve had the privilege of interviewing ‘Ender’s Game’ writer and director, Gavin Hood, three times. If there is anything we’ve learned in those three meetings, it is that Hood is a huge ‘Ender’s Game’ fans. It’s obvious in the way that he talks about his work, that he’s passionate about bringing fans a great adaption. What other director would shave his head in solidarity with this his cast? Enjoy our interview with Gavin Hood on the ‘Ender’s Game’ film set in New Orleans last May and be sure to come back tomorrow morning where we’re giving details about costumes, props, and stunts.
Q: When you’re doing scenes like the final simulation and the mind game you’re obviously looking at things that aren’t there on set. How specificly do they tell you what you’re looking at or how much do you have to imagine completely out of full cloth?
Gavin Hood: What we did is we PREVIS [previsualize] it so we have the sequence played out in rough animated form and we show Asa so they have a sense of what it is. And there are certain movements that he makes to change things. We have him working with an amazing movement coach. He’s working on those movements based on movements we’ve designed that are good for the kinds of rotations and pullbacks and changes of positions. He works on those movements and then we’ll let him do a scene. He knows what’s happening in the scene as it unfolds. If he reaches here and pulls something here or he reaches slightly off there, it’s fine. Because we’re putting in those graphics in relation to what we see on him after. It doesn’t really matter. It’s quite tricky to explain, but I think you get the gist. It’s not like ‘Oh my God, you have to point at exactly that, because that’s where that graphic is!’ Well the graphic isn’t there yet. The graphic will be there, but if I said it’s there or it’s there or it’s there, we will build it around. So it’s kind of organic. It’s ‘Here’s what we want,’ which we show him and then ‘Don’t feel confined, study the movements.’ Then we work the movements and then it’s back and forth and eventually you hone it down to the exact visual.
Q: What are some of your favorite science fiction films or space films?
Hood: I’m a little older so it’s ‘2001 Space Odyssey’ by Kubrick.
Q: It seems like there’s a lot of references it seems, like within the build of it too.
Hood: Yeah, I just think he had an amazing visual sense and an amazing ability to combine an adventure with thought-provoking material and give you a sense of an epic journey and an awe-inspiring journey as well as an emotional story. I’ve always been a really big fan of Kubrick. On some level that’s what attracted me to this movie. You have these amazing visual opportunities that are big and epic and beautiful and you’re in space. It’s awe-inspiring if you spend a lot of time watching footage that’s been shot on the Hubble telescope and all those fantastic big visuals. And of course there in the battle room they do all this wonderful stuff. In the battle school they do all this zero-gravity stuff and all that at the same time […] yes and we all really like ‘Star Trek’!
Hood: [In reference to the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie] It’s this thing from big visuals to very intimate performances, and that’s really the key. You have these awe-inspiring epic moments, but then you have these very intimate close up, detailed emotional moments that go on between the characters which is what I think is so amazing about ‘Ender’s Game’. It’s really a fantastic set of character studies. Obviously, a singular wonderful character study of Ender, but [we’re] also surrounded by amazing characters such as Bean, and Dink, and Alai, and Bernard, and obviously Petra and Sergeant Dap. I just think it’s rich in character and every one of these kid brings something special and unique and different in terms of a way of being, and an energy, and a personality. […] In some sense it’s like ‘Lord of the Flies’ in space. You’ve got all these marvelous, strong, well-defined characters engaged in really human stories and yet it’s set in this wonderful, epic space. […] What we wanted to do was create a space where the actors feel the world and obviously there are certain worlds, like when you really are out in space, that have to be fully visually created by us. Certainly when you’re in the space tunnels and the dormitories, moving down those corridors inside the command center on Eros. I think the people who deserve an enormous amount of credit are our production designers. They’ve done an amazing job, Sean Haworth and Ben Proctor. People like Jamie, who’s a sculptor who just sculpts this stuff…. Concept artists like David Levy. I don’t know if anyone always realizes just how much work has gone into pre-filming. You don’t just arrive and say ‘Oh hey, what does the set look like?’ All of that stuff has been designed and worked out- figure where the cameras can go and can’t go- for many, many, many, many, months in order to make it easier for these guys to come in and really sense that world. I think the design team really did an amazing job.
Q: Thematically, as a director you show a real affinity for lead characters who are born or destined to be weapons, who then try to fight against that inherit nature. Is that a theme you’re consciously drawn towards?
Hood: I think any writer or director or artist finds themselves often drawn to certain themes based perhaps on- I was in the military. I was drafted when I was seventeen-years-old and it had a profound effect on me. When I read ‘Ender’s Game’ many of those feelings… feeling that you’re a number in an organization with strong authority figures that you were not supposed to question, and yet feeling that you wanted to rebel against it. I connected with this book in many ways based on feelings and experiences that I have had. I also really think that the ideas and themes of leadership in the book, and hopefully in the movie, are timeless and classic. What is good leadership? What is bad leadership? What is responsible leadership? What I love about the book is that it is both an epic adventure. It’s a fantastic coming-of-age story, not just for the lead character, but in many ways for all the characters, but especially obviously for Ender. If you like defining moments in a character’s life where they choose a path or are compelled to reflect on the path they’ve chosen and change it. Those are fascinating moments to me, those defining moments of encountering something where you are truly confronted with yourself and aspects of yourself that you may not necessarily like and you have to face those aspects and then figure it out. There’s that, and then of course it’s set in this fantastical universe in space where it’s visually exciting. The idea of many young people who have read this book, the way they talk about it passionately… So often there are films that we go to and they are fantastic, and they are fun, and they are wonderful, but it’s like, ‘Well that was great. Now I wanna get pizza,’ as opposed to a story like ‘Ender’s Game’ where kids really talk about it. ‘What do you think about the way Ender made that decision and is that right? Was he too violent or wasn’t he?’ These are important conversations for young people to engage in an exciting way. If you can deliver that kind of debate and conversation in an exciting, visually-powerful way then I think that you’re getting a little bit more than just spectacle. We can combine spectacle with a good old-fashioned argument afterward and that’s kind of fun.
Q: If the Locke and Demosthenes stuff is taken, you’ve taken away some of the chance to reveal some of Peter’s redeeming qualities. What are some of the ways you’re choosing to reveal those redeeming qualities if you’re not including Locke and Demosthenes?
Hood: Well, it’s a very powerful question. Let’s back it up even further. In any adaptation of a book to a film format of two hours, you face the terrible reality of something’s got to go. So what goes? And what are the core themes that really resonate? We have to be honest and say that in order to create a film of two, two and a quarter hours, you’re not going to do what might be a thirteen episode experience. That’s the first challenge. The second challenge is that in the book the kid ranges from, I think, age six to thirteen. Well that’s another challenge. Do you cast a six-year-old, and then an eight-year-old, and then a ten-year-old, and then a twelve-year-old…? A film experience is very different from reading a book. It is a contained two hour experience in which you have a beginning, a middle, and an end and you leave before your bladder busts. These are the facts, right? So the medium is different. One of the things that I think we have to own up to is that saying, ‘Is the movie like the book?’ … Wait a minute; the book is the book. It exists; it can never be taken away. It is a different experience to sit and read over a period of weeks or days, chapter by chapter, put it down, reflect, pick it up. That is why movies are based on books. They can’t be the book. You’re into a very, very important and challenging question for all adaptations and I am going to get into the Locke and Demosthenes, but I think it’s important. If I said to you, here is a young Suraj, I want you to take his photograph, and I want you to sculpt him, and I want you to paint him in oil. These three pieces of art are presented to the class. Would the class say, ‘Hold on. This oil painting looks nothing like the sculpture!’ You would go, ‘No, of course it doesn’t. It’s an oil painting and that’s a sculpture. You’re not making any sense.’ It’s a wonderful debate. The question becomes, does the oil painting capture the spirit of this boy in some unique way? Does the pencil sketch capture his spirit in a way that moves you? Does the sculpture capture his spirit and move you? And that for me is the way it is for books. I did it for ‘Tsotsi’, because it was an adaptation of which I made many changes. Athol was very pleased with it, he said so, because you stayed true to the spirit of the character. So I try to think of my characters when I’m adapting as existing outside of the material. I’m not adapting the book. It sounds like sacrilege. I am not adapting a book. I am collaborating with an extraordinary artist who wrote that book who described the character in his medium, but now has to be translated into another medium where the overriding author’s voice doesn’t exist, where he can’t tell me what he’s thinking. We have to create scenes where you generate what that character feels from another way. Hopefully at the end of this you go, ‘My God, that was an amazing representation of Ender Wiggin and those characters in a totally different medium. If we fail at that, we’ve failed. But if we look at the film and say, ‘The book had this and it’s not in there,’ then the movie is going to fail. It just is, unless the author read voiceover all the way through the film. It is a very internal book. He describes what Ender is thinking all the time. ‘What do you do?’ is your first challenge. Do you have voiceover describing that? Or do you find scenes and dialogue interactions that hopefully generate that same feeling in the audience of what Orson said he was thinking? Now, the same thing applies for Locke and Demosthenes. Give me your question again.
Q: How are you going to reveal Peter’s character duality? In the beginning you see him as a menace, but as the story goes on you realize that he has some qualities that aren’t terrible.
Hood: I think that’s beautifully put. Now in the book, there’s Demosthenes, and you’re told, and it’s reflected, and the author explains as an author voice how Peter is undergoing change. I’ve tried to do it without giving it away, and had to do it in a matter of about three very economical scenes. We meet Peter at the beginning of a movie and he has everything I think that the book has of that aggression, and bully, and nastiness. But to your point, if you were to interview Peter and say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ he would say ‘Because he has to toughen up or he’s not going to make it.’ He’s engaged in what he would justify as tough love. At some point in the film, somewhere in the third act, you will find a scene in which that idea presents itself. It may or may not satisfy the question that you raised, which I think is completely valid. But it has to be addressed in a more A) economical way than the book does, because it’s ‘Ender’s Game’ and I’ve got two hours, and B) without an author’s voice explaining it. I’ve tried to do it in a very subtle scene between him and Valentine, which is not a scene from the book. […] It is both an exciting thing as a person adapting and a terrifying thing. Absolutely terrifying! How do I do exactly what you’ve asked, generate these feelings about Valentine and Peter? I can’t just do it all of a sudden, it would take me seven hours.
Q: Was there a particular part of the adaption that you had an especially difficult time working on?
Hood: It’s particularly difficult in general to translate. ‘Tsotsi’ was a very similar book to ‘Ender’s Game’. It’s particularly difficult to translate books that are very much about what characters are thinking into films. […] Where characters are deeply reflective, you have to find scenes and moments, not just lines and dialogue, it is kind of the most cumbersome way of doing it. You have to find the moments that float underneath the lines, and between the lines, and the way these two characters both react. There’s a wonderful moment in the movie, which is also in the book, but in the movie where this young man and Ender are together and Ender is playing that Mind Game and he gauges the giant’s eye out. Now you read that and Alai says, ‘Why’d you do that?’ In the movie that’s a pretty visceral experience. He’s playing a game and his little mouse gauges into that giant’s eye. How far can you take that given PG-13? And what is his reaction? Does he give him as many speeches and words? Or does he simply look at him and say, ‘Why’d you do that?’ Now I’m on him. I’m on Asa, ‘Asa, all I want is that discomfort moment.’ What’s the body language, which is what acting is all about, that reveals the internal thought process as opposed to ‘What’s the description and the verbalization of the thought process?’ That’s what great acting is, it’s that moment when that awkwardness from that little actor tells you volumes in an unspoken way. He says, ‘That’s what they want from us here. Choose violence. You win. I’m just like my brother Peter.’ If he says that line wrong, […] that’s an entirely different meaning. Hopefully in that scene, we have done what Orson wanted us to do and explained what was going on inside Ender’s mind. We have generated a sensation that Ender totally regrets that moment and feels uncomfortable being asked the question by Alai. That’s the beauty of working with these amazing, young actors. They’re really amazing and mature about getting to grips with our scenes. I’m very proud of them, very proud.
The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will be released in U.S. theaters on November 1, 2013.
Long time fans of ‘Ender’s Game’ know that it’s been a tough road to production. Our visit to the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie set last May shed light on why it took so long to bring this unique story to the big screen, and what kinds of work went into the film’s pre-production. We were allowed to pour over the film’s production art, which you can see throughout this article.
“Enough people in the world who read the book at a certain age in their lives had to grow up and find their way into Hollywood and achieve a certain amount of power to actually get it made,” says ‘Ender’s Game’ producer Linda McDonough. Lynn Hendee had been protecting the ‘Ender’s Game’ film with Orson Scott Card for fifteen years when she met OddLot’s Gigi Pritzker and Linda McDonough, and then the Kurtzman-Orci team. “It was cautiously that we all approached each other. It was that kind of sniff test. Do we all have the same agenda? Which was that nobody wanted to make this movie at the cost of [losing] some to the integrity of the story that would disappoint- I want to say the fans, but Bob, Gigi, Lynn, are the fans- so disappoint ourselves,” says McDonough. It’s true that almost everyone who’s had a helping hand in the making of this film read and loved the book at a very young age, including producer Bob Orci who was just twelve-years-old when he first read ‘Ender’s Game’.
With the help of Digital Domain, this team of fans created a forty-five second teaser featuring combative dialogue between Colonel Graff and Major Anderson.
Anderson (female voice): He’s not ready.
Graff: You’re never ready. You go when you’re ready or not.
Anderson: He’s too young.
Graff: He’s a genius. He’ll figure it out.
Anderson: He’s exhausted.
Graff: He’s decisive.
Anderson: You’re changing the rules!
Graff: In the battle with the Formics there will be no rules.
Anderson: Erase the game.
Graff: He’s the one.
They shopped this teaser around the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and sold the foreign rights to the film, earning what became the cornerstone piece of financing for the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie. Cash in hand, the team searched for a writer and director who could say, “I respect this piece of material enough that I’m not just going to turn it into an easy, black and white, good guys versus bad guys ending, which had been a struggle in development of the material for a long time,” says McDonough.
“I was in many studio meetings over the years,” shares Hendee. “Some with Scott and some without, where high level studio executives who shall not be named- many of the different studios [had] ideas such as ‘We’ll make this movie if it’s clear cut that the Formics are evil, we are good, Ender is physically in a fighter at the end of the battle, he knows it’s real… We’ll finance those things today, these are the conditions.’ This was over many years, and so it was ‘no thank you’, ‘no thank you’, ‘no thank you.'”“Maybe it’s ok that it took this long,” admits McDonough.
With Gavin Hood signed on as script writer and director, the team set out to cast the movie. They auditioned a wide range of children to play the role of Ender, but ultimately decided to age up Ender Wiggin’s age from five-years-old, to around ten-years-old at the beginning of the film. “Ultimately the only thing that mattered was who would we believe could be Ender and who would we believe could be the leader of his peers by the end of the film in a believable way,” says McDonough. “He [Asa Butterfield] has that deep, wise, soulfulness in his performance. It’s so great that he’s a taller kid, but he’s so willowy. All the things that you get in the book are [that] people judge him at first blush as an underdog. We still have that in Asa’s interpretation of the character.” The producers feel that very young actors who auditioned for the role of Ender Wiggin had too high of a voice and too much trouble with pronunciation to be a believable commander.
Asa Butterfield grew a whopping two and half inches over the seventy day filming. “He starts the movie seeming like a much smaller kid and by the end of it, as he becomes a leader, he’s actually grown into it. I think it’s going to have a weird subtle psychological effect when you’re watch the movie actually,” says Orci.
Fans should not slight the ‘Ender’s Game’ producers for this deviation from the book. Fans were informed at the start of this project that this film is a live-action adaption of a novel, not a verbatim script. “It’s haiku compared to a book,” says McDonough. Fans should rest assured that the most important aspects of the ‘Ender’s Game’ story have remained intact. “We want to and have always been mindful, not doing anything sacrilegious and on top of that making sure to include the things that were super important. In the terms of Ender’s journey you have to set the stage with Stilson, he has to go to Battle School, he has to have the altercation with Bonzo, and the result of it is that he has to go to veteran’s retreat.”
What elements of the ‘Ender’s Game’ story are staying and elements didn’t make the cut?
Bean, Petra, Alai and Dink all remain Ender’s close companions. Peter and Valentine will continue to influence Ender on his journey through battle school and command school, although their appearances in this film may be more limited than most fans would like. The Locke and Demosthenes story line has been cut. Bob Orci says that the politic interwoven in that story line might date the movie in a negative way. The “lake scene” is included in the movie.
Interestingly, despite initial reports, Gavin Hood has elected to keep the Mind Game in the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie as several short scenes scattered throughout the film using motion-capture technology. “At the beginning, of course, the avatar is the mouse, but at the end it’s more the dream than the game version of Ender. It’s not animated, but it’s not photorealistic,” describes McDonough.
The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will try to capture and reflect the high level of violence in the novel, although the producers are aiming for a PG-13 rating. Producer Linda McDonough describes her excitement over the successfully-marketed ‘Hunger Games’ film, which also showcases a heightened level of violence in children. “Historically [violence] has been one of the big challenges, reasons, why this film hasn’t gotten made. The marketing mind set at a studio [is] not being sure if an audience could be delivered for a film that had a budget this big and dealt with those themes.”
Fans will be happy to note that the famous “shower scene” will be included in the film. We even saw a still of Ender surrounded in the shower, and Petra standing in the doorway. A few of the producers had jokes ready for questions about the shower scene!
Q: What about the scenes like the shower fight where there’s a lot of nudity in the book? How do you creatively get around that?
Orci: DVD extras!
McDonough: The director’s cut!
Q: Are they wearing clothes in it or just carefully shot scenes?
McDonough: Ender is in the shower without clothes on, but we’re not doing nudity in the film.
One of the biggest book to film changes is the battle room. The nine, cubic, and opaque battle rooms design by Steve Sywak have been exchanged for a single, spherical, transparent battle room. “You can figure the stars anyway you want. So Graff can do that from his desk,” says Bob Orci. “Every time we go in there, [it] will be a different cinematic feeling to it,” says McDonough. “There’s one environment where it’s opaque so you can’t see anything outside, which is more similar to the way it always is in the book.”
How did they simulate zero-gravity?
Not CGI. The battle school students trained for weeks on wires on achieve the effect of weightlessness. Lynn Hendee says Orson Scott Card was very pleased with the final results. She says, “When Scott did his set visit, he said to me, I’m happy we didn’t get the movie made until now. And that was a direct result of meeting Garrett, the stunt coordinator. Scott was always worried about battle room and traditional wires. He was obsessed in a good way. He really wanted to simulate zero-g. It was very important to him, and even though there is wire-work as you saw a little in that piece, the rigs that Garrett designed […] there is all kinds of technology that is making the battle room and the flying really simulate zero-g instead of looking like wire-work. We had all kinds of zero-g consultants, astronauts… it was taken very seriously how we can make it.” Astronauts weren’t the only consultants on the set of ‘Ender’s Game’. Other consultants on and off set included Elon Musk, Bill Gates and his son, a Navy Seal, NASA engineers and more.
The producers hope that all of these consultants will be a recipe for a very relatable ‘Ender’s Game’ adaption that fans will enjoy. If the film does well, there may be an opportunity for sequels. “We’re adapting something precious and so we don’t want to have the arrogance at this stage, [saying] that we know exactly where we’re going to go with it,” says Bob Orci. The film can be a standalone piece if it needs to, “by making sure that it is emotionally over in a way. It is a chapter. The emotional chapter is ‘I now know the truth and I won’t standby and let that stand. I must make this right and I will make it right.’ That is him coming into his own. It’s all about what you feel at the end. […] The idea is to make it feel like he is making a promise to do right.”
“You have to accept or know the right things to do,” says McDonough. “We think we’ll end up with a PG-13, but we have to be willing to do it, which means it’s not a film for three and four-year-old kids. It’s not! It’s a four quadrant film, but it’s not a family film in the way that an animated movie is. If we tried to do that, which some people have argued has better box office, we betray fundamentally the themes of the movie.” These producers, who are true fans of the book, have worked very hard to adapt ‘Ender’s Game’ into a believable film. Come back tomorrow, when we’ll share our interview with another ‘Ender’s Game’ fan, writer and director Gavin Hood!
‘The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will be released in U.S. theaters on November 1, 2013.
Make room on your bookshelves ‘Ender’s Game’ fans! Insight Editions is publishing a book detailing the making of the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie. ‘Ender’s Game: Inside the WOrld of an Epic Adventure’ is written by Jed Alger with a foreword by ‘Ender’s Game’ film writer and director, Gavin Hood. Read the official description below.
Based on the best-selling novel, Ender’s Game tells the thrilling story of the fight to save the world from a devastating future. Now, in this official companion volume, the behind-the-scenes world of the film is brought into stunning focus.
Following an attack by an alien race known as the Formics—narrowly countered thanks only to the efforts of legendary war hero Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley)—Earth has been preparing itself for the next wave in the conflict. The fate of humanity lies in finding the next Mazer from a crop of the brightest young minds on the planet. Under the watchful eye of the International Fleet, the venerated Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) has been tasked with overseeing their training. Before long, a standout emerges among them: Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), a shy but prodigiously talented misfit. His potential discovered, Ender is promoted to Command School, where he will soon find the war with the Formics to be more complex than he could have ever imagined.
Packed with in-depth interviews, removable posters and army badges, stunning concept art, unparalleled access to the visual effects archives at Digital Domain, and countless full-color images, this insightful insider’s view of the making of Ender’s Game will bring fans closer into the world of the movie, following cast and crew as it is brought to dazzling life.
Also featuring Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as Petra Arkanian, Viola Davis (The Help) as Major Gwen Anderson, and Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) as Ender’s brilliant older sister, Valentine.
Jed Alger is the author of The Art and Making of ParaNorman. An advertising writer and creative director with more than twenty years of experience, he has worked on some of the biggest, most challenging brands in the world—Google, Twitter, IBM, Microsoft, Starbucks, Target, Electronic Arts, and Hewlett-Packard among them. Jed graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in philosophy and received his MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Gavin Hood is a South African filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, and actor, best known for writing and directing the Academy Award–winning foreign language film Tsotsi. He is also the director of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, among several other films.
There is not yet a release date for this book.
The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will be released in U.S. theaters on November 1, 2013.
A Jalopnik article reveals that Audi has designed a car to serve as ‘fleet shuttle’ in the Ender’s Game film. The fact that they describe it as their first ‘virtual car’ means that it will probably have heavy CGI.
“Designing the AUDI fleet shuttle quattro was similar to customizing a tailor-made suit,” said Frank Rimili, chief designer for the film project, in an io9 article. “We adapted it to the requirements of the world in Ender’s Game and at the same time had to take care to preserve our brand values.”
Thank you Steve Sywak and Thomas Dickerson for the tips.
The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will be released on November 1st, 2013.
Today, we have new detail about the ‘Ender’s Game’ board game being released by Cryptozoic Entertainment in conjugation with the ‘Ender’s Game’ movie. Although there is not a hard release date yet, Cryptozoic hopes to have this board game on shelves by the hit the ‘Ender’s Game’ film hits theaters on November 1, 2013. Read the game’s description below.
Ender’s Game: Battle School is a two-player game set in the zero-gravity arena of the International Fleet’s Battle School. Players take the role of either Ender Wiggin and the Dragon Team or Bonzo Madrid and the Salamander Team, and then use Commander cards with special abilities (some for the whole team, some that only help the commander) to attempt to capture the other team’s gates or freeze opposing team players with laser-light guns. The player who completes either of the goals first (capturing all the gates or freezing the opposing commander) wins.
The suggested retail price is $25.00 and has a suggested user age of 13 and older. Via.
The ‘Ender’s Game’ film will be released in U.S. theaters on November 1, 2013.
EXCLUSIVE
