–Mako and Raleigh need to fall in love in a way that is believable. Their time together is short. Their mutual gazes need to be intense right from the start. Mako is stunned by Raleigh’s apparent carelessness and he is attracted to her apparent orderliness. Together they form the perfect Ying Yang
“Elegant Scavenger”
Del Toro drew on Renaissance dress codes and historic whaling gear to keep the Kaiju scavengers in the film low-tech. Concepts of the scavenger by Kate Hawley closely followed del Toro’s direction.
GDT: I wanted them to be like seventeenth-century whalers. Their tools of the trade are blades and wicker baskets. Everything about them is a little funky—like steam-powered or clunky. So they are really, really low-tech. Even the robots and the control mechanisms in Pacific Rim have an analog component, which for me is very important.
MSZ: And the Kaiju here?
GDT: I wanted to evoke a whale. It was going to open and have another head inside. But it ended up looking like a crocodile—Francisco Ruiz Velasco took it in a completely different direction.
MSZ: And what about the note, “Kaiju cutie?” You’ve discussed the idea of giving monsters personalities, making them somehow sympathetic.
GDT: I just thought he looked cute, you know? But I love all the Kaiju in Pacific Rim. My favorite is Leatherback, the gorilla-like one. I voiced three Kaijus in the movie, and Leatherback is the one I voiced most. Every time he moves, I’m complaining about weight. Like, I was actually saying the words, but then we distorted the sounds. I was going, “Oh, I’ve got to lose weight. Oh, I’m so heavy. I shouldn’t have eaten that last pilot.” I don’t know how much of that is in the final mix, but when I was doing the sounds, I was complaining actively and thinking, This guy really hates being out of the water, because that happens to me when I get out of a pool. I go, “Shit, I’m heavy!”
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 3
“KAIJU CUTIE”—
–Walls are built out of fear. They not only protect but also shut in. The leopard looks at the man from outside
–The color palette of the costumes and sets (except HK) should be very lightly saturated with grays, faded blues and shadowy blacks and ochres to respond to a pattern of VERY saturated lighting that can give the film epic stature and the feel of an adventure movie with super-saturated colors
“sensei in white suit.”
–color transition between the two “suiting” rooms in the film.
RED/WHITE
–héng-
–The scavengers are the whalers of the twenty-first century—
“scavenger”
GDT: Well the elegant scavenger is sort of like the head of the scavengers. In the Renaissance, you indicated your status by how much fabric you wore. The more fabric you wasted, the higher your status. So if you look at Tudor clothes, there’s layer upon layer upon layer. And I like the idea of the elegant scavenger having four or five layers to his mask and his clothing using a lot of fabric.
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 8
Sept. 9, 2011 A TERRIBLE DAY due to movement in the foot of the p.
–“Is there anyone else here with us…” she asks after having seen the prince in the palace garden in the moonlight. Eventually she finds the abandoned pelt.
–“You may wish for whatever you want, and it will be yours.” There is no limit to Beauty’s desires, the Beast has only one
–“Love him who loves you” the prince advises
–Soldiers who are RETURNING from war or GOING to war
–She finds the painting of the prince as a human.
–The Beast carves puppets and automatons. He puts on a show for her.
–Birds and monkeys—
–Gargoyles and chimney—
–The furniture moves.
–Discuss the Beast’s pelt.
–He gives her two magic rings.
–He gives her the entire key chain and warns her never to open the door to one room in particular which is locked every night and in which he leaves his abandoned pelt before going to the garden to speak with the fairy which cast a spell on him
–The specter of War needs to hover in the evil atmosphere of Beauty’s village
–The castle exists in the center of a labyrinth of trees
Del Toro wanted to invent motivational propaganda for the film’s war against alien invaders. Keith Thompson’s poster design, infused with Russian Futurist motifs, followed del Toro’s original direction but was eventually abandoned in favor of a different approach.
GDT: I like Soviet and Eastern European propaganda that is very graphic. And for Pacific Rim, we decided to explore a lot of World War II references since we wanted to convey the nobility of the wartime effort in the film. So we designed bomber nose art, uniforms, and propaganda posters, although we didn’t use this one [above] in the end.
UNFINISHED PROJECTS
NOTEBOOK 3, PAGES 28A and 28B
BLUE NOTEBOOK, PAGE 14
* To… go OUTSIDE, WAIT IN WOULD… BE SUICIDE. Exactly…
* Who is X… Why do you need to know? Bring us something for him… Ah, l am… BANG.
* Cell phones cause cancer.
* Massacre at the drive-in.
* Gynecologist who has no nose (an accident at work).
* Who’s on first with foam rubber shit.
* Constant fire and smoke in the wind.
* Suicide on a conveyor belt.
* One of the child prisoners: Let me out, I won’t say anything.
* A little girl wanders alone in a daze…
* Ernie does “weightlifting” with a hunk of meat.
* Ernie hides.
MEAT MARKET
