Making Eclipse

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse already has set records in its first week, taking in more than $30 million for midnight screenings and $68.5 million in its June 30 opening. Those are large numbers, but Eclipse, the third novel in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, is a large book, with more than 600 pages. And translating those words onto the big screen took a great deal of work by director David Slade, producer Wyck Godfrey and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to bring it together.

“It’s the most mature book, and I think we went for the most mature film. Certainly there’s a great deal of romance in the film, but there’s also other themes. Vengeance is a very big theme in the film. Our action sequences all are built out of character, so they’re not just effects. They’re actually built out of a need to get to a place. I think it’s a film for everyone, this one,” Slade said at a press conference for the film.

Of course, Slade had a ready-made cast with Kristen Stewart as Bella, Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen and Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black in the lead. In an effort to respect what had been established by the actors in previous movies, Slade met with each of them individually several times to discuss their thoughts on their characters, the script for Eclipse and then his ideas for the movie. Then, the actors came together for ensemble rehearsals. With the characterizations established through the individual meetings, Slade said when they came together for group rehearsals, they were able to focus on content.

“That was, I think, the most respectful way, and that’s how I chose to go about it,” he said.

As far as that content is concerned, Rosenberg says it was the most challenging of the books, so far, to translate into a screenplay.

“It took me by surprise; I actually thought this would be the easiest because there’s so much conflict in it and you have this huge battle that you’re building toward. But once I got into it and actually breaking the story, I realized all that happened in the third act. So, then it was looking at what’s going on in the first two acts … what I found was that a lot of the threat that is in the third act, that’s building the conflict, pulling that forward,” she said. “It ended up being … fun to write in the end, after I got over the incredible disappointment that it wasn’t going to be easy. As if anything ever is!”

Despite having a different director for each of the first three films, Slade said that continuity among the movies was important.

“I was given a great deal of freedom in terms of the aesthetics,” he said. “I was given freedom only just to respect what had come before, really. There were no mandates.”

Godfrey added, “One of the chief reasons we hired David was for his visual style and that it was different from the first two films. Something we’ve always wanted is each director to bring his own visual style to the film.”

Those elements the cast and crew filmed that didn’t make it into the final cut of the film might have a second life on the DVD.

“I think, with any film, you go through the process of kind of editing it down to its fighting weight and ultimately you’re going to end up with some scenes that didn’t end up in the movie,” Godfrey said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of the kind of classic, behind-the-scenes stuff. You’ll get to see how we did most of the action and the stunts in the movie and a lot of the CG process. All of that stuff I think will flesh out the experience for audiences that do like to go behind the camera and see how it’s all done.”