Snowpiercer Bong Joon-ho

Development

When I first came across Transperceneige, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the unique cinematic space of a train. Hundreds of metal pieces moving like a snake carrying people squirming inside gripped my heart. And the people were fighting against each other. They were not equal in this Noah's ark that held the last survivors as they were divided into cars.

—Bong Joon-ho, speaking on what captivated him to the story[80]

In the winter of 2005, Bong found Jean-Marc Rochette's French graphic novel series Le Transperceneige at a comic book shop near Hongik University and finished reading the entire series while standing in front of the bookshelf where he found it.[81][82] He was fascinated by ideas of people struggling on the train for survival, and how every section is classified in social stratification. Bong showed the series to his friends, fellow director Park Chan-wook and producer Lee Tae-hun, who loved it as well.[83] Although Bong praised the original graphic novel, he soon realized that a film like Snowpiercer needed an original take. Bong stated, "... I had to come up with a completely new story and new characters in order to create a new, dynamic Snowpiercer that was packed with cinematic exhilaration."[84]

In the following year, Park's production company Moho Film acquired the copyrights to the original story of Snowpiercer for Bong, and in 2007 the copyrights to the story extended. The first draft of the screenplay for Snowpiercer was completed on 15 September 2010, and in December, the second draft of screenplay was completed and modified.[85] On 4 October 2010, Bong, whilst at the Vancouver International Film Festival, had initially entertained the idea of shooting the film in Canada due to it having "... a great infrastructure for filmmaking, and Korean expatriates are involved in the film industry a lot."[85] Bong wanted a film studio with a 75- to 100-meter-long space to fill with four train cars connected together. The production team travelled to Europe for studio scouting and ended up with two studio choices: Barrandov Studios in Czech Republic and Korda Studios in Hungary. In August 2011, a Czech producer hired by the production team began negotiations with two film studios for availability; Barrandov Studios was eventually chosen as the film studio and production service provider of Snowpiercer.[86][87]

On 18 January 2012, Kelly Masterson was hired to rewrite the script before it went into production due to Bong seeing his screenplay work on Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and being impressed with the tonality of darkness and acuity in the story.[88][89] Bong and Masterson had originally envisioned a romantic story for the protagonist; however they jettisoned that idea in subsequent drafts of the screenplay.[90] On 8 October 2013, at the Busan International Film Festival, Bong acknowledged the challenges in adapting such a story to fit the apparent constraints of cinema, to which had to omit certain scenes from the graphic novel, "... I had to capture that long story in a two-hour film, so rather than cut out some scenes from the comic, I just rewrote the whole story to fit this time frame."[91][92]

On 13 January 2012, Chris Evans began negotiations to star in the film adaptation, and was later confirmed as the film's male lead.[93] On 17 January 2012, Tilda Swinton and Jamie Bell were confirmed to be in talks to join the project.[94] Swinton first met Bong at the Cannes Film Festival, where she was of the mind that she did not want to make any other films, a decision she takes after each film: "And that one (and only) condition in which I will make another film is that I will have some fun.[95] So we started to play with the idea of what would amuse us about this." Bong and Swinton experimented with voices, mannerisms and the general appearance of the character of Mason.[96] On 18 January 2012, John Hurt was confirmed to have been cast, with Hurt stating, "All the film crew refer to [Bong], with great reverence, as 'Director Bong'. I love the fact that I am working for Director Bong."[97] On 2 February 2012, Octavia Spencer had joined the cast of Bong's project in the role of a "passenger on the train who joins the revolt in order to save her son."[98] Ed Harris spoke of his love of Bong Joon-ho's films and wanted to work with him, "I want to do this. I don't care what he's asking me to do because he's a really great filmmaker."[99] On 27 February 2012, Ewen Bremner had joined the cast of Bong's film.[100][101][102] On 3 April 2012, Luke Pasqualino was confirmed to have joined the cast.[103][104]

Bong states that it took four years to develop the project, with an additional three to produce with Park.[19] Stating, "Today, I feel I have overcome a terrible disease, like cancer cells had occupied my body during that time," as well as expressing an interest in making smaller films in the future.[105]

Filming

In August 2011, the studio was determined as the shooting location, and in October 2011, Bong and his production team moved to the Czech Republic.[106][107][108] During the period of November 2011 to April 2012, the key members of the crew were secured and confirmed, those being: Ondřej Nekvasil, Eric Durst, Julian Spencer and Marco Beltrami. The preparatory production began in Tyrol, Austria during mid-March for one day to shoot some snowy scenery on the Hintertux Glacier, which made for excellent conditions and perfect weather.[109][110] On 3 April 2012, principal photography had officially begun in Prague, Czech Republic, at the Barrandov Studios on gimbals on its interconnected sound-stages after preparatory filming in the production occurred at the end of March, with a said budget near to $42 million, which was the largest film budget of all time for any film with Korean investors.[111]

Bong filmed Snowpiercer with 35mm film in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio.[112][113] Roughly ninety percent of the film was shot on set. Bong's original wish was to shoot the film entirely in Korea, but a studio large enough to accommodate a set of such scale was difficult to find, thus Barrandov Studio was used instead, requiring the construction of a 100-meter replica of the title train.[111][114] In choosing Barrandov Studio, Bong explained, "All the artwork, huge train sets and the gimbal were greatly completed and fully operational. Shooting at Barrandov Studios will never stop with a perpetual engine."[115] Bong's usage of the studio allowed him and his team to carry out meticulous experiments to contrive perpetual movement by staging the film on a giant gyroscopic gimbal, which can roll from side to side or bend realistically, to give three-dimensional feel to the train.[116] Nearly all the shots within the train are filmed so that the tail sections are left of the characters on-screen, and the engine to the right; this was a "discipline" that Bong wanted to "maintain that energy, and give the audience a sense that whichever way the shot is moving, that's where the characters are going".[117]

Flash SFX, the team involved in the construction of the gimbal stated, "The main challenge of physical effects work was that of inventing and developing a system that would perfectly simulate movements of train in motion. We managed to create a massive gimbal system supporting train cars with a total weight close to 100 tons. It was capable of simulating all sideway motions and vibrations of the train, including perfect make-believe curves of railroad tracks."[118]

On 14 July 2012, principal photography officially wrapped in the Barrandov Studios after a 72-day shoot,[119][120] with post-production carried out in South Korea, and Bong started editing the film for its release.[120]

Visual effects

The visual effects company Scanline VFX worked on Snowpiercer.[121] The company worked primarily on the exterior shots of the film: the frozen city, the Yekaterina Bridge, the Frozen Harbour landscape in the sushi lounge, the "Frozen Seven" sequence, the industrial park in the shoot-out sequence, and the avalanche and post crash environment at the end of the film.[122] Already having multiple designs, storyboards and basic concepts of the train cars, it set in motion the development of over 60 different versions of the various wagons for the train Snowpiercer. Thus, visual effects supervisor Michel Mielke said "... we [had] a good idea of the vision of director Bong, we saw what he liked, and what did not work for the movie."[122]

Visual effects designer Eric Durst spoke of the Aquarium Car being an intriguing challenge of lighting, with the differentiation of a water-based environment on one side and a frozen-based landscape at the other. Durst and his team, including director of photography Alex Hong, had light "travel through water trays on top of the aquarium structure."[121] Durst added that "These refracted the light spilling on the actors, replicating the way light would react in an actual aquarium environment." In the task of creating that world, Mark Breakspear and his team in Vancouver spent a great amount of time at the Vancouver Aquarium to study "the fish, the lighting environments, the way the light refracted through the water and glass, along with how it distorted the fish as they passed."[121]

Among the most challenging effects on the train was the length of the train and the number of cars that needed to be handled. Mielke had a "very complex rig" created and built to provide the animators involved in the creating process with enough capability as was possible. He stated, "The rig managed that the train automatically followed the rails, that the motion of the wagons where simulated depending on the rails, that the wagons could be changed easily and so on."[122]

Parallel to principal photography in Prague, the first designs of visuals spanned from May 2012 up until the final shots of early March 2013, with a team of over 70 artists developing over 186 VFX-shots with almost 50 being full of computer-generated imagery.[122]

Design

Costume design

Costume designer Catherine George explained that Mason was initially inspired by a Smithsonian photograph that production designer Ondřej Nekvasil had found of an older lady amongst a room full of dead birds at the Museum of Natural History, who was a real person from Swinton's childhood.[123] In designing Mason's costume, George found images of women from their late sixties and early seventies, adding that, "... a certain type that I remembered growing up who would wear their fur to go into town and scoff at people who were less better off, a bit of a Margaret Thatcher type, really."[124] George also designed Minister Mason's suit to look "a typical conservative politician shape and style" with the purple adding a royal quality to the attire.[124] She had "collected pictures of dictators wearing elaborate uniforms and crazy hand-made medals" to experiment with the designs of such a character.[125] George later admitted to the similarities to Ayn Rand, although not intentional.[125] George and Bong travelled to Swinton's home in Scotland with "a couple of suitcases of clothes, wigs, glasses and teeth" and played with costuming ideas for Swinton's Minster Mason character.[123]

On creating individuality for the passengers in the tail section, George had the designs come from random materials they would use to fashion practical clothing, "The tail section clothing was pieced together from different garments and repairs were made on top of that. They had to improvise with any materials that were left on the train."[124] For the design of Curtis, Bong and George wanted him to be anonymous but at the same time recognizable. The design was difficult as George had to conceal Evans's muscular physique and muscle mass thus, "We had to cut out the sleeves of his under layers to help him look leaner."[126]

George personally designed the costumes for Nam and Yona, who wear the "darker-coloured intense black".[125] Taking inspiration from photographs of train engineers from an early industrial period and vintage French railway jackets, it was designed while she looked at utilitarian clothes due to Nam previously being a train engineer before his imprisonment. George also designed many of the tail section costumes, including Nam's, using Japanese Boro fabric.[124]

In creating Claude's yellow coat and dress, George was mindful of the fact it was the first colour of brightness in the tail section scene, as well as the property of yellow being the most luminous colour in the spectrum.[124] She expressed, "It's the colour that captures our attention more than any other and in colour psychology yellow is non-emotional and lacking compassion." Camera testing occurred before deciding the final colours as well as observing how they'd interact, with the back drop of darker costume colours.[124]

Production design

Bong and his illustrators created various pieces of concept art for the train cars of Snowpiercer, led by Czech production designer Ondřej Nekvasil, who was brought onto the production team to help realize those visions.[84][127] Nekvasil approached the atmosphere of the tail section it as if it were a "dark, monochromatic ... life", emphasising poor living arrangements, to which he found inspiration from poor areas of Hong Kong and elsewhere to put in the set designs. In order to make the colours appear "used" and "dirty", Nekvasil and company started with colourful props that were subsequently washed out and forcibly aged to create a feeling of "really used property and space", while creating a back story to justify the appearance.[127]

When designing the train, Nekvasil and Bong hit upon the idea of the train not being designed by one man in one specific moment; the idea that "these various train cars were built in different periods of Wilford's life".[128][129] Another idea was the logical scale of the train itself, though Bong entertained the notion of it being beyond a logical scale, Nekvasil stated, " ... if it's 20 feet wide, it'll no longer seem like a train."[129] Dimensions and sizes were discussed, and the design sized finalised was "slightly bigger than a typical train", though enough to allow space for camera movement inside the train. The design was difficult due to distance limitations, as Nekvasil said, "... the biggest stage we had, which was about 300 feet long, was not big enough to fit everything."[129]

Instead of overly relying on CGI, Nekvasil's production design team constructed twenty-six individual train cars and used a giant gyroscopic gimbal in Prague's Barrandov Studios to simulate the movement of an actual train when shooting.[130][131] Bong stated that the gimbal was used on the third day of shooting, explaining, "Sometimes we felt carsick on set," due to the realistic effects of the gimbal.[130]

Sound design

Sound engineers Anna Behlmer, Terry Porter and Mark Holding mixed the sound for Snowpiercer, supervised by sound editor Taeyoung Choi.[132]

Music and soundtrack

In May 2012, Marco Beltrami was hired to compose the incidental music for Snowpiercer.[133] In January 2013, a song titled Yona Lights was released on the film's official website in South Korea.[134] In July 2013, during the 007 Fimucité at Tenerife International Film Music Festival in the Canary Islands, a few pieces of the three films composed by Beltrami (Snowpiercer, Soul Surfer and The Wolverine) were selected for the performance.[135]

The film's official soundtrack was released in August 2013 in South Korea and the international release date was on 9 September 2013.[136]