Chris Weitz on New Moon’s change of film color tones

While filming New Moon in Italy, MTV was able to interview director Chris Weitz where he talked about scouting the location around the Italian countryside and changing the color tones of the film. He also talked about casting veteran actors Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning.

“Wow, am I glad we were able to shoot there,” Weitz said with a laugh in a recent phone interview with MTV News. “We went to about 12 different hilltop towns in Tuscany, which was both delightful and exhausting, because it had to be done relatively quickly. Montepulciano had the most symmetrical main square that I could find, so that was the winner for that reason.”

The change of the film’s color tones…

“We took out a lot of the cold, blue tones of the first movie to begin with. But the golden quality and the red, which we had sort of purposely saved in terms of our production design and our costume design, came out in Italy,” Weitz said. “We actually planned it so there were very few occurrences of the color red. It’s very rare in the beginning of the film. And then, suddenly, you’re sort of punched in the eye with this burst of red when Kristen [Stewart]‘s character arrives in the main square.”

“Bella runs and gets Edward, but no sooner have they done that then the big, bad guys show up,” Weitz explained. “And then they’re in the dark again, taken through these subterranean tunnels, and then you go to the — for want of a better expression — bad-guy headquarters, but instead of it being a dark, kind of Dracula’s-castle place, it’s actually surprisingly light and crisp. We just sort of wanted to play interesting games with color and light.”

on Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning…

“He is one of those extraordinary British actors who is adaptable to any circumstance and who has not a millimeter of ego,” Weitz said. “Michael kind of approached this role — not as a gag but thought, ‘Well, what would a 2,000-year-old vampire be like?’ “

For Fanning, it was the chance to be the bad girl for once.

“She’s never really gotten to play a bad person before, probably because she is a very good person. She is really a lovely young person. But I think she had some fun playing, really, the most evil of all the bad guys,” Weitz said. “[Jane]‘s bad news. Very bad.”

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