Breaking Dawn Director Bill Condon Interview (Video)

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Updated 02/15/12 11:19 PM · Posted 11/17/11 9:59 AM by Lindsay Miller · 0 comments

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Director Bill Condon knew he was taking on a major challenge when he signed on for both Part 1 and Part 2 of Breaking Dawn. We caught up with the man behind the upcoming fourth installment in the Twilight saga at the movie's press day in Beverly Hills recently, where we talked about how he struck the story's balance of horror and romance. He also revealed the thinking behind the way he eventually chose to film the book's gory birth scene and what it was like to create the intimate honeymoon scenes in Brazil with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

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Oh my god. It was so much fun because it was just the two of them obviously. How they live, how they eat. How they don't sleep. How they have vampire sex. I would think that Breaking Dawn is probably the hardest of the Twilight Saga books to adapt for the screen. So, what was the biggest challenge when you set out to make this movie for you? Well, there are a few of them. You just kind of make a list when you read and say oh, my god. Okay. So we have walls that kind of communicate and talk, you know. We have imprinting. We have child birth that gets very kind of intense. How did you work to kind of strike the balance between the horror elements that are in this book Yeah. And the more romantic melodramatic things. Right. I think you put it well. That's what this movie is a combination of things . I think the real line is how much you feel for Bella, you know. Bella, even in the stuff that gets intense towards the end, I think it's mostly you're thinking "My God, what a hero she is. And you really care, because you're afraid for what's gonna happen to her. Now speaking of Bella, what surprised you about Kristen and Rob and Taylor when you started working with them? That's a big question. You know, I would just say in general, because we spent a long time before we started shooting just walking through the script and talking through it. It's just like how dedicated they are to getting this right, how serious and how they never stopped working at it. How much did you determine about what you were going to show when it came to the birthing scene with Melissa and Stephanie? There were some very graphic things that had been in the book that we left out. It was described--it wasn't so much with them as I started to work with the production team, and really landing on this one idea that let's only see what Bella can see. Because that lets you show a lot, but you see a lot in between the lines, you know? And then things fall off and you hear things. I think there are things that if you know the book, you'll know exactly what's happening. And if you don't, you won't. Now what are more excited for the fans to see in the second installment of Breaking Dawn? What it's like to be a vampire because this story is Bella's story. And we get to experience a hunt, you know, how they live, how they eat, how they don't sleep, how they have vampire sex. It's all in that stuff. Tell me a little bit, too, about the experience of shooting in Brazil. It looked gorgeous in the film. Oh my God, it was so much fun. It was a really great way 'cause it was just the two of them obviously. So, it was a very small movie we were making at the beginning. And just to be in that incredible location, great crew, four hours north of Rio. You take a boat to get to the island to shoot this house. It was magical.