Music, Style & Culture

Martin Scorsese & The Cast Of Hugo Talk 3D

Sir Ben Kingsley, Chloe Moretz and Asa Butterfield talk about early cinema and the magic of 3D.

With Martin Scorsese's first 3D film Hugo hitting cinemas on 2nd December, we bring you a report from the fascinating press conference with the legendary director and his cast.

Scorsese turns out to be a genuinely enthusiastic advocate of 3D, and luckily his beautiful family film makes rich use of the format. Based on Brian Selznick's illustrated book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it stars Asa Butterfield as the orphan Hugo, who lives in the walls of a Paris train station in the 1930s. After the death of his clockmaker father (Jude Law), Hugo becomes the secret caretaker of the station's many clocks, spying on the curious characters that work there. Young Hugo continues work on his father's most ambitious project - an abandoned automaton, a mechanical man who can write. Forever on the wrong side of the toy shop owner Papa George (Sir Ben Kingsley), Hugo befriends his goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Moretz) turns out to literally have the key to the most remarkable and moving adventure.

Hugo takes the most unexpected turn, becoming a clever and touching love letter to the origins of cinema, namely the work of pioneer Georges Méliès. While in London this week, Scorsese, Kingsley, Moretz and Butterfield spoke about their experiences of film, and working in 3D.

Do you remember the first time you were inspired by films?
Ben Kingsley: I can indeed, and it's wonderful to be sitting next to the man [Scorsese] who gave me the DVD years later! It was a film that we both saw when we were both young, called Never Take No For An Answer. It was indeed about an orphan who survived Allied bombing, whose sole pal, job, business, family, everything, was his donkey. He was basically the eight-year-old mayor of the village, and everyone loved him and his donkey, and the donkey would be the taxi to take the drunk home, or bring the firewood in - he was the haulage contractor. I was so taken by this film, and I looked very much like this little boy. I decided that's me, and I'm him, and we bonded on the screen. After the screening of this movie, in Salford, the cinema owner spotted me in the audience and thought I was the star of the film! He said to the audience "It's little Peppino!" and lifted me up! I loved it all, and thought I could get used to this! Years later I told our beloved Martin the story and within 24 hours gave me the DVD. So that was my first, massive impression of cinema.
Martin Scorsese: Films were a refuge for me. Because of my asthma I was not allowed to do sports, or go near anything green, or near animals, so I was taken to the movie theatre very often. I become an advocate of the western genre, because of what I couldn't go near, there it was. I started making my own little drawings. The film that I think created the biggest impression on me, saying maybe you could do this yourself, at least you can get the pictures to move, was The Magic Box, in 1952 when I was about nine or ten years old. The thing with that film, the element there wasn't the moving image but the obsession and the passion of the people at that time in creating it - William Friese-Greene, played by Robert Donat and the sweetness. It came at pre-WWI time when the world was changing, with the Wright Brothers and mechanics. It has that wonderful scene in it too, of the train coming into the station, by the Lumiere Brothers. It's a film filled with cameos, and Richard Attenborough's playing a man who takes his friends to the Carnival, showing this new thing called cinema. He knows it's of a train, and there's a wonderful image of everyone screaming and running as the train comes towards them, but he just smiles and sits there. That was the first time. I went home and starting drawing more pictures, pictures that moved, but something about the beauty of his obsession with the potential of the mechanism itself and the creation of the celluloid - which is all different now of course in digital, but it's still telling stories, still stories with a moving image.
Chloe Moretz: My mom's always been pretty obsessed with Audrey Hepbern, as am I, and so one of the first films I saw that really inspired me to be an actor and kind of be someone else, would probably be Breakfast at Tiffany's. Because I saw Audrey Hepburn and I saw how she just lit up the screen and she makes you smile when you see her and her little face, she just lights up the screen and when I saw that I just realised that that's what I would like to do. To make people smile - I like to make people dream, I like to make people imagine that they're in that time and that feeling and I guess that's one of the things that really inspired me to be an actress.
Asa Butterfield: Well it wasn't so much watching a film that inspired me, it was during the filming of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and a switch sort of flipped in my head. Only because before that I didn't really take it that seriously - it was sort of a pass time, extracurricular if you would, but during about half-way through the filming I sort of realised that this is something that I really wanna do. It's a passion of mine and ever since I've just tried really hard to be the best I can be and just enjoy it. I just love to be someone who you wouldn't be able to be in real life and to do things which are impossible and it's magical.



To Asa and Chloe, what did you think of the films of Georges Méliès that you saw?
Butterfield: I loved them, I mean Marty did give us a lot of homework! To watch old films, things by Georges and things that inspired him as a film director. One of the first things I saw, that he showed me, was The Magic Box.
Scorsese: That's right, we screened that just to get a sense of the time and the respect and the love for the medium... the respect of the art form.
Moretz: Yeah, same thing basically. We went to that screening at the BFI and it was just one of the most magical experiences. Marty's there and everyone and I was just like, this is just this surreal moment. You know, when you're not only doing a movie with Marty in your whole life but as a young actor you know, as a thirteen, fourteen year-old.
Butterfield: The first Méliès film I saw, Marty flew us out to New York and we're jetlagged and me and my mum woke up about 3 o'clock in the morning and so we were bored. There was nothing to do, it was still dark outside, they didn't have room service, so we got on the laptop, got on the internet and we watched some old Georges Méliès films on YouTube! We watch Safety Last as well.

How important is it to you that today's generation recognises where movies came from and how important is it that film, as an entity is preserved?
Scorsese: Well I think that the problem isn't really the new generation, it's a problem of every generation, which is the obligation of the ones before inform and to expose the new generation to the great art of the past. It's exciting to do that with children and the younger generation - you never know how young people perceive what they see. I don't know what the cinema screen is gonna become, I do know - I think if things run its course it will be something that's not gonna stay on a wall, it's gonna be moved out to the audience in many different ways and that could be a very low budget independent film or it could be a film that costs a good deal of money. But I do think it's important to make younger people aware of what came before in every aspect of every art form. And it's exciting to, and as you do that very often if you're working with young people and working with students. I do get a kind of regeneration. It's part of being alive.

With The Artist coming out, do you think there's a resurgence of interest in silent cinema?
Scorsese: I had no idea about The Artist. I understand it's a silent black and white film. A lot of it has to do with just timing - we don't plan. I don't know what's going on in California! I live in Manhattan and every now and again my manager calls me! There's one thing about silent cinema - when movies started, everyone wanted sound immediately. Sound, colour and depth. The Lumiere Brothers were trying to film in 3D. [Sergei] Eisenstein was working on 3D when he had his heart attack. Imagine that! Imagine a mind like Orson Welles working in 3D. If you really see silent film in its restored version, it's another language completely. In some case extremely modern in the acting too. I remember seeing scratched up silent films when I was a kid and I couldn't see what the attraction was. Maybe the films being released at the same time is an appreciation of the roots of cinema.



Is it a different experience making a 3D film?
Butterfield: Well, it's quite different. Most actors forget the camera - it's more for a DoP, Marty and the special effects teams, it's more for them to look at. But occasionally there was the '3D moment' as they call it, where you reach for the camera. They did that mainly for Sacha [Baron Cohen]. It wasn't that much of a change other than the fact that it made everything take a lot longer, as we know from experience.
Kingsley: I think that Chloe and Asa are so young that they're pure, in that their performance is not filtered through anything. It was a great addition to the 3D discipline on the set, to be working with Chloe and Asa who work from the heart and not from the head, because if you work from the head in 3D, it'll spot it. You have to be utterly genuine, you have to be accurate and you have to be modest in front of the camera. It is far more scrutinising than any close-up lens I've ever experienced in my life. For me it pulled out a stillness and a modesty that I loved going into. I would always try to minimise. The joy of the 3D and Marty behind the camera is that however you minimise, nothing is lost, nothing is wasted and everything is seen. You have combined 3D with Marty's all-seeing, all-loving eye as a director - no single tiny gesture that we offer the camera is lost, wasted, or ignored. It's amazing to have everything captured that you offer. It's beautiful.
Moretz: Just as Sir Ben said, acting is reacting and with this you can't overact, you can only react because it picks up everything - it picks up the lint in the air, the fibre in your eyes. It's really a window into your soul as an actor because what you see is the character: you see Isabelle, you see Hugo, you see Papa Georges, you see Mama Jeanne - you don't see Sir Ben, Chloe, Asa, you see these people. It's like a black hole, it sucks you in and it makes you cry with them, and it makes you be a part of it, you know, especially with the steam and everything. You can feel like the heat and the smell of the smoke and the feeling of the 1930s Parisian train station.

Working in 3D, did you adjust any of your work ethic or is it something you'd like to take into your future films?
Scorsese: Yes, it is something I'd like to take into my future films. I just happen to be a great admirer of it, because when I first saw those viewmasters and the stereoscopic images, I was taken into another space as a child. I like tapping into that imagination of a child, which is the same thing that I depend on and look for whenever we make a film. But it has to be there every day, that thrill of the imagination, and somehow seeing those first 3D , stereoscopic images has that and I'm making my last connection to childhood imagination. It's that feeling, and so I've been fascinating with 3D all my life. I don't see any reason if it's used appropriately for the story, why not? I've always pointed out, for a long period of time colour was something very special. First, everyone complained about it until 1935, when they got it right with Technicolour. Then by 1970 it was announced that every film would be made in colour and we were all appalled because black and white is extraordinary, with all the films that were coming out from England in the 1960s and 1970s. So this is what we were aspiring to, but somehow colour became, through the demand of the audience and a generation that grew up not on black and white films, it just became natural. The colour is part of the story, it's part of who you are in life and the story you're telling. But we're forgetting one other thing - there's also space! I think that yes, I would like to deal with 3D as an element in the future there's no doubt. The equipment is getting much more flexible, and they're working on ideas about losing the glasses. So why not!

Later that night Filmbeat caught up with Sir Ben and Asa on the red carpet at the Royal Gala premiere, and also spoke to co-stars Helen McCrory, Michael Stuhlbarg and writer John Logan. Watch their report below.