Video:Scott Stewart Interview - Priest and Mortal Instruments

Transcript:Scott Stewart Interview - Priest and Mortal Instruments

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies on Screen Gems' 2011 WonderCon 'Priest' Press Line.

Priest Director Scott Stewart

I was on the set but it was the Western set where Bonanza was filmed and I didn't get to see any of that in the footage last night.

Scott Stewart: "You actually did see it, it's just that it was transformed. While we were shooting - it's the Deadwood ranch, right? - so we changed that pretty dramatically in the movie to make it kind of an industrial Western town."

Talk about the conversion process to 3D.

Scott Stewart: "Well, the whole film gets converted and some of the work gets, if it's a 100% digital shot, it actually gets re-rendered in 3D. Visual effects, vampires, and those kind of things, depending on what they are most of them are re-rendered in 3D as well and the background plates, the photograph plates, are converted. We designed the movie for depth and that was a lot of the part of the process. We had talked about it a lot. As soon as we wrapped the film, we started putting it together and showed footage to the studio and they were like, 'Okay, yes, we want to make this movie 3D. We think it's really well suited for it.' And that was also a vote of confidence because it's a long and slow and expensive process, and they also were confident enough in the movie to put us out in May which is a pretty big date."

So talk about working with Paul Bettany again.

Scott Stewart: "What's not to love. We had such a good time on the first movie. That was sort of an ensemble and this was a chance to kind of do something much more involved, much bigger, where the whole movie was focused on his character. He's the character who takes us on the journey through the story, and it was really fun. We thought a lot about who could be the character in this movie, and we think about the kind of heroes that we like that are archetypal for this kind of story. You think of Clint Eastwood, you think of John Wayne, you think of Steve McQueen, and some of these people who have this incredible 1000 yard stare, the silent hero that has a kind of rage within him and Paul's really able to embody that. It was kind of a no-brainer."

This really isn't a vampire movie, right?

Scott Stewart: "Right. It's really...we have them in there and more of a different species. It's a thing that we war against. They are not a metaphor for sublimated sexual desire, right? They're not sparkly; it's not a romance about vampires."

They're not GQ models.

Scott Stewart: "Yes, exactly. They're the sort of other that we fight against and have fought against for centuries to the point where even people are...they don't even know why we're fighting anymore. And that became kind of really interesting. That became a different kind of metaphor. So we actually try to make it really physical. I did a lot of research on nocturnal creatures and animals that lived in caves. They lose their pigment in their skin and they become albino. They lose the function of their eyes. In some cases, they lose their eyes. We tried to make those biological ideas kind of what the vampires are in the movie."

And I've got to know what's happening with Mortal Instruments. I actually read the books and I love that series, and done right it is going to blow people away.

Scott Stewart: "Yeah, we hope so. We're busy working on the script and designing all the world. We've cast Lily [Collins] as Clary Fray and we're really excited about that. Right now we're looking to see who our Jace Wayland is going to be. That's a big question."

I can't wait to see who you are going to pick. Are any of the rumors online close to being the truth...Alex Pettyfer?

Scott Stewart: "Right now it's really wide open. We're really looking at everyone anywhere in the world because what's most important to us - and we know fans of the book - is that it be the right person, and that it's more about the right person as opposed to popular person of the moment or most famous person or any of that. And if you look at, as comparisons to say other big movie series', Twilight or the Harry Potter movies, people really didn't know Robert Pattinson at the time. And it kind of gave fans of that series the chance to kind of own that character and that actor's persona, and so we're trying to do the same thing."

Is it going to stick really close to the book? Is it going to be a faithful adaptation?

Scott Stewart: "We're all committed to that as close as we can possibly keep it. We've spoken to the author about it and I think fans are really fair, they understand a 500 page book is different than a two hour movie. We have to make those considerations but, yeah, our intention is to stick close to it."

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