Director GARETH EDWARDS is excited about his May 16 Godzilla release. He tells you how Godzilla’s roar was a freaky sound effect brought to life by his quirky recordist. Excerpts from the interview
When you’re making a movie on an icon like Godzilla, how do you shape his characterIJ
As we went along, we realized that Godzilla was going to tell us who he was, just like actors who have their own take on their characters. We couldn’t dictate what it would be, it was more about trying various permutations and picking the strongest.
One of the conversations you get into with animators quite often is, ‘if this was a real human, a real character, who would he beIJ’ We decided he would be someone like the last Samurai — a lone, ancient warrior who prefers to be left alone till world events force him to resurface.
As for his look, humans have a set of instinctive reactions to animals which have evolved over millions of years. We tried all of them till we got the right emotion. I wanted to get something noble. So we tried things like bear faces and dogs but zeroed in on an eagle look. Eagles have eyebrows close to their nose, so we made his snout high up, just near his brow line.
I thought it would be an easy journey because Godzilla had been in so many Japanese films. But, it took us a year to get the design right and figure out his behaviour. Is he an animalIJ Does he fight just like an animal or has he got human nobility tooIJ There was always a fine line between making him too animalistic or too human.
Explain the process of finding his iconic roarIJ
Sound designer Erik Aadahl has all the secrets about the roar. He hasn’t told me how he achieved the sound effect but says he will once the film is out. like in the original Japanese Godzilla role, there’s been some sort of fluke where they had a double bass instrument and they scraped a leather glove down it to get this unique animal roar which was used in every Godzilla movie.
But that was recorded in the fifties and we’re doing this in Dolby, so we couldn’t use that sound. In the sound department, there is a double bass and a leather glove and they tried many experiments.
Is it true that you wanted to play the roar on set for the actorsIJ
Not initially. But we had a lot of scenes where a giant monster was over our main characters and they had to react to it. We had already animated this stuff with pre-visualisation and we could show the actors what they would be doing, where Godzilla would be and what the shots were for.
But when we got down to filming, everyone had different ideas about the timing. To synchronise the timing, we would be shouting the directions through a mic: ‘Okay, he’s coming! Okay, he’s starting to appear! Back off, back off!’ This did not work.
Can you talk about your approach to revealing Godzilla in the context of a human storyIJ
For me, such movies are exciting but not as powerful or effective if the characters don’t get shaped. So, it was important to us to create characters we could relate to. The heart of our story is a family who experienced this tragedy 15 years ago. As for revealing Godzilla, obviously you can create a story and then just lay Godzilla over it. For some, this would work fine. But the real trick was trying to come up with characters hit by events in such a way that their story became part of this movie.
Can you talk about Ford Brody played by Aaron Taylor-JohnsonIJ
Aaron is a very organic actor. He gives you the entire spectrum of performance to look at. I’m similar to him in that. It was important that Aaron played ‘everyman’ in the film. He plays this military guy, but I didn’t want this movie to be about the military. Aaron, as an actor, did it very soulfully.
What about the rest of the castIJ
When I was casting Godzilla, I was nervous about approaching all these actors because it was a monster movie and there are preconceptions about a movie like this. Bryan has experience and is good at what he does. I couldn’t picture anybody else playing Joe Brody. He can go from naught to a hundred miles-an-hour in one second. We’d be on the set and he’d be doing a scene and have us all tearing up and crying around the monitor. And then, the second we finished, he’d crack a joke. He is phenomenal.
Ken plays the Japanese scientist and he has to do a lot with very little because of the language barrier in the film. But he’s a man of a million looks. We used to joke when we were filming that no one’s got more different looks than Ken.
Elizabeth Olsen is also in the film as Elle...
It’s no secret that Elizabeth’s going to have an amazing career. She is impressive and grounded. She’s incredibly believable.
What was it like working with Alexandre Desplat on musicIJ
When you work on a film like this, the most inspiring thing has to be music. The first thing I ever do is create a playlist on my phone with the soundtracks that I’ve loved and which have the right tone and quality for this film. There is a lot of haunting emotion to the movie. And Alexandre definitely got a high score on my playlist from his previous scores.
