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Ripped & Corrected By mstoll
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Jean-Pierre Morneau died on impact.
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Sorry, guys,
but he's not doing any talking.
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It is essentially, at its heart,
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a case-of-the-week show
and a procedural.
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I'm gone, Brian! Don't follow me down!
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It's also sort of the anti-procedural.
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I'm sor... I'm not doing this.
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There's virtually no formula
that gets duplicated from week to week.
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I'm sorry. Where were we?
I lost my train of thought a little bit.
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We began to take stylistic risks
as early as the pilot
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because we felt like
that was the hallmark of the movie.
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But then we really began to take
stylistic risks in the second episode.
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That episode had characters
breaking the fourth wall.
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People really responded to that, so we
leaned into that as the season went on.
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I was excited with the prospect
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of it being something
even just slightly askew,
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and it's so different
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that I don't even know what to expect
script by script at this point.
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Cool subconscious.
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I've been having fun down here
for the past decade and a half.
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You're trying to capture
the internal life of a character
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and translate that into cinema,
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so that gives you an enormous license.
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It's a very technically savvy show.
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We do a lot of effects
and a lot of different effects.
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All the camera movements,
the way that the light gets warmer
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when Brian's on NZT
versus when he's off NZT,
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these push-in moves.
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You're working,
you have the discovery and look up.
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Marc Webb called them
Brian's ah-ha moments.
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Brian's capable of lip reading.
The speech bubbles are really cool.
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And it also makes it look
a little bit like a comic book,
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which I think is a good allusion
for our show.
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Craig, as the show's gone on,
and the writers,
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have really taken advantage of
the possibilities of the world on NZT.
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When we're looking for locations,
I'll have conversations with the DPs
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about how we wanna do it
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and it becomes a color temperature,
or things become warmer or cooler.
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So we're pretty conscious of the scenes,
whether he's on NZT or off of NZT,
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and that affects, you know,
my design and my choices.
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For the FBI set,
the most interesting part
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was how to convey
the confinement of Brian
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and his constantly changing mental state
based on NZT and off NZT.
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Brian's safe house, you know,
that was his home and his refuge,
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so I really wanted that to be
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something that took him
out of the confinement of the FBI
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and the transparency
that was part of the FBI,
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so I wanted to have the tones warm
and I wanted it to feel inviting.
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They had a lot of segments
with time lapse,
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so I wanted to be able to provide Brian
with things in the safe house
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that he could just pick up
and play with.
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And a lot of my research
had this kind of half-dome window
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and I was sort of inspired by it,
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so I knew to help the DPs, cos they
always want some light on their sets,
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that I could do the back of the set
with this great window
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that they can light from but you don't
have to provide any backdrop.
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So she sent the emergency signal
to someone else.
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Is it wrong
that I feel less special now?
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We've worked on stuff where
it's sad guys that are in a sad place,
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and that's not always fun to write
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and it's not always fun to go home
after writing that.
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But Brian's in a good mood.
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So? Day one. So epic. Where we going?
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Jake is a naturally very funny actor
and just engaging in that way.
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All right. Thanks, guys.
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We were able, as a staff,
to write a lot of great jokes
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and write a lot of really funny stuff
that wouldn't fly on other shows.
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Whoo!
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We in television
seem to have broken things up.
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Either it's a comedy or it's a drama.
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And I think that things have the ability
to be both.
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How in the hell was Kenny Sumida
supposed to control your arm
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if he couldn't see what he was doing?
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Boom! Boyle for the win!
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There are serious themes
woven into the DNA of the show,
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so even though we'll occasionally do
quite light-hearted episodes,
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they need to be balanced.
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The seal is broken. It's empty.
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Radiological dispersion device.
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Looks like Sam Garper's building
a dirty bomb.
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We had a pretty heavy case
about home-grown terrorism,
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but we were able to counterbalance it
with claymation.
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And if you look very closely
at the weapons of mass disruption spoof,
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there's a little zombie footage
we threw in there for fun.
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You don't play baccarat with Uno cards.
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Just shut up, OK?
This is my fantasy. It's not yours.
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Through his voiceover
and his narration in the show,
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we see things from his perspective
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and his kind of quirky sensibilities
all the time,
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but to see Boyle and Rebecca
and even Naz, and even Sands...
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"You know what, man? Cram it!"
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And he'll have to say,
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"I will, Brian. I will cram it."
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He was mimicking me.
He was imitating me.
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And Naz will be like,
"What do you mean, he's gone, yeah?"
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"He's not allowed to just go."
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He kept saying "Yeah?" I was like,
"Who says that? Yeah? Who says yeah?"
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And he said, "You do."
I said, "Do I really?"
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"Whatever on the sweaters, yeah?
Just find him."
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Episode 14, in the evidence locker...
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That's the guy.
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...she slaps him in the face.
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Then Sands comes in
and shoots 'em both.
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That was one of the funnest days
of shooting,
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cos Jennifer and Hill got to be
as ridiculous as Brian gets to be.
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That's the guy.
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I have to play what Brian Finch's
perception of me is,
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which is great, because I can say,
well, he thinks that I'm stuck-up.
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"I knew
something like this would happen."
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"Brian's a flake.
He wears dumb sweaters."
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And so I can play it more stuck-up.
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When you're on NZT,
do you ever see things?
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Second Brian and third Brian
and sweater Brian and bad-ass Brian
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and all the various manifestations
of Brian Finch's subconscious on NZT,
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they're really a way to explore feelings
that Brian can't express to anybody else
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because he has so many secrets
in the series.
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Has anything good ever come
from listening to that guy?
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I don't have to hear you to know what
you're saying. We're the same person.
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All right! Would you both just shut up?
I'm thinking.
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Brian Finch's Black Op
serves as our episode-long tribute
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to the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
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We'll tell the office you're sick.
Look, if you need anything, call.
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- OK?
- Ringy-dingy.
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The premise of the episode
is quite serious.
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Brian is essentially abducted
by the CIA.
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Oh, that's not how it goes!
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That felt like
a cool and exciting story,
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but at some point
Taylor Elmore, the writer, and I,
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looked at each other and went, "This
needs a little something, something."
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Craig looked over at me and said,
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"What if we did
Ferris Bueller's Day Off instead?"
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Life goes by really fast.
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If you don't stop to look around
sometimes, you could miss it.
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And so we decided to go for it.
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We were thinking there was
no way this could possibly work.
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But as we dug more and more into it,
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we realized it was actually
getting better as it goes along
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and is actually funny.
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My stomach feels strange.
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Gummy bear?
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And that's an example of how we tried
to vary tones not just week to week
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but even within the body
of a given episode on the show.
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I have to be honest,
I wish you didn't dress me like this.
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But you get to be Sloane.
Sloane's the best.
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Someone raped her, stabbed her 40 times
and then strangled her with her own...
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This isn't very fun, is it?
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Episode 113, Stop Me Before I Hug Again,
was a real experiment with the form.
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How about, just for this one,
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every time someone
is going to use a scary word,
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we come up with a word that's better?
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I had a glossary in my office
on note cards
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that Craig and I had sort of talked
through of what our translations were,
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so that we could keep track of it.
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Well, the soda-pop spatter indicates
that she was still playing air guitar
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before she was sent
to an awesome farm in the country.
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At first read,
you just sort of go, "What?"
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And then you do the first take
and you're like, "This sounds so absurd."
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You think Hannan's doctor
committed those huggings?
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And then by the fifth take, it's normal.
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You think I'm a serial hugger?
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Andre Hannan lacked the strength
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to cuddle those victims
with his bare hands.
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As an actor playing it,
it was so much fun,
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because you could remember
what the meaning of the term is
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and you just play that meaning.
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It's very Shakespearean in a way.
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Someone played Cowboys and Indians
with her.
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Tickled her 40 times and then
cuddled her with her own unicorn.
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It's our most experimental episode,
I would say.
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Why do bad guys get cool nicknames?
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Shouldn't they get stupid nicknames?
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It was a real love it or hate it
sort of response to that gag.
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That wasn't the reaction I expected.
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We hadn't really seen Brian
romantically engaged
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up to that point before,
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and we sort of had set up the notion
that Lucy is a bit much to handle
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on every possible level.
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So we wanted to try and find a way
to convey the sense that this experience
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had been transformative for him
in some way,
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and so I threw in a Bollywood scene.
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I think it was maybe this long
on the page,
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"A Bollywood sequence with Mike and Ike
and whatever."
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And then we wound up shooting it
for two days.
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It was awesome. We built
the whole legitimate Bollywood set here.
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We had great choreographers.
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What was? I forgot his name.
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John Carrafa.
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He was fantastic.
Mike and Ike still had their ties on.
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And James Tech had his glasses on.
Stavros had a broom.
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It was a lot of fun.
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First of all, you lot rescued me
from the FBI. Cheers.
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We really enjoyed working
with Colin Salmon as Sands
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and said what if he formed
a consortium of people
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who he could allocate NZT to
and make a literal supervillain group?
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We decided
that it would be better filtered,
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as usual,
through Brian's point of view.
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Once Craig came up with the notion
of the Legion of Whom
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and Brian sort of imagining them
in superhero costumes,
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we got to sort of have our cake
and eat it too as Limitless,
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which is we could convey that they were
an evil consortium of supervillains,
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but at the same time
they could be fun and funny
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and we could goof around with them
and have Brian's point of view.
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Our costume department, our wardrobe
department, Sarah Mae and Dan Lawson,
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those guys just nailed it
every step of the way,
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so that was fun to watch.
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Being part of anything original is rare.
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You know, I'm Ferris. Everything's
supposed to work out for me.
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No. You have to make it work.
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It's just a variety show, in a way.
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It's sort of like you sit down
to the same table every week,
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but there's a different menu.
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You're welcome.
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Ripped & Corrected By mstoll