Bill Condon discusses Breaking Dawn and mentions Kristen

Q: Actors are often asked about scenes that are emotionally draining. Do you feel that there were certain scenes as a director that you get emotionally drawn into? What scenes in particular in Breaking Dawn that it wasn’t easy to let go of those emotions?
  

Bill: Well you have to because you’re on to the next one either an hour  later,  or the next day, but man,  absolutely, there were all these things along the way that you just have an adrenaline rush when you finally get there and get through it because so many things could go wrong. Like the childbirth, I keep going back to it, but that was unbelievably intense. Taylor, his heart is pouring out of him, but Rob, you see this where he’s trying to bring her back to life and the anguish of it and the panic of it all, and then Kristen just giving it all. In the way that you’ll see,  all the effort of giving birth but she is the best dead person I’ve ever seen (everyone laughs) and that’s not easy because there were takes that were a minute long and she never blinked, she never seemed to breathe, I don’t know how she did it but that cold area was very intense. And at the end of the shoot in Louisiana we’d been shooting for four months already, kind of tired and everyone is worn down, all of our defenses were down and it was also one of those things where you get there and  you do it, and it lifted everybody up for the rest of the shoot because it just felt like something real had happened. That’s the thing that is great on a set, when you know something real has happened, it’s when the crew is suddenly incredibly quiet and everyone is paying attention, is sort of like you know it’s happening right in front of you and everyone’s aware of it, you know.

Q: You are obviously  a very experienced director, and the cast goes from everyone like first timers, to people like Kristen and Michael Shen that have been in dozens of films. Is there anything that any of the actors specifically taught you and that you came away with thinking that you didn’t have that information or that knowledge before?

Bill: Oh, God yes, totally. And you know  I’m experienced but still, I’ve been on one half of the sets that Kristen’s been on, or maybe a third, you know what I mean? And don’t even think about Michael  Sheen so yeah,  I mean you’re always learning on movies, absolutely. But specifically here obviously these actors all know their characters so well, but you take somebody like Kristen, she’s going to be directing movies before long.  She just knows everything about the process – everything.  And she just knows “Oh my God, I should lift my eyes up just a quarter of an inch next time” and things like that.  She’s an amazing collaborator where it’s like, and if you explain “Ok this feels a little unnatural but it’s worth it to do” I get it. But we would do a lot of sitting around talking about the script for weeks. And she would get ideas, I’m not saying only her,  but she would a lot, and “Oh, that’s a great idea”. So yeah, all the time.

Source: Bill's interview was posted at @Twilightish Via @FierceBitchStew