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Production Design
"We tried to do everything for real in this picture," says Woolley. "When the script says New Orleans, it's New Orleans, and when it's Paris, it's really Paris. And you can't fake the Golden Gate Bridge. "
"I think it's very much a horror film, and very much a fantasy movie," says David Geffen. "It creates its own fantastic world through design, through the look of the picture, through costumes, through make-up. We've created beings that don't exist either in other films or in other literature except in the context of this movie. "
"Interview With The Vampire" takes place in three cities on two continents and spans five time periods over 200 years. Production designer Dante Ferretti, who trained as an architect, built 65 sets on seven sound stages at Pinewood Studios outside London, and refitted almost two dozen practical locations in New Orleans, San Francisco, London and Paris. A huge outdoor waterfront city was also constructed on the Orleans Parish levee at Jackson Barracks, the New Orleans headquarters of the Louisiana National Guard.
Jordan says, "We tried to stay true to each period, but we also had to convey a specific and different visual world for the picture. So, we created an overripe kind of atmosphere. Everything is slightly too rich, slightly too decorated, slightly too baroque, and that is very particular to this book. "
Principal photography began in New Orleans at the elegant Oak Alley Plantation, located near Vacherie, Louisiana, which serves as the Pointe du Lac family home. The plantation was first constructed in 1812 and rebuilt in the 1840s after an extensive fire. After further refurbishment in 1871, it sat in disrepair for approximately 50 years, until expert renovators restored it and opened it for tours.
The filmmakers were constrained by the limitations of shooting in and around the plantation, since it has been designated an historic monument. For instance, as Louis, bearing a torch, enters the house from a veranda, the flame was immediately doused inside.
The interiors of the scene were later shot on one of the sets constructed at Pinewood Studios in England, giving the illusion of continuity while leaving the landmarked plantation unharmed.
Other plantations in the area used as locations include the original slave cabins at Laurel Valley near Thibodaux, and the gardens at the stately Destrehan, the oldest documented plantation house left intact in the Lower Mississippi Valley. The outdoor tavern where Louis and Lestat watch a presentation of the Comedia del'Arte was built at the unrestored Home Place in Hahnville, Louisiana. In addition to the stately homes along the Mississippi, more than dozen ships of various shapes and sizes were used on the river, among them the graceful Tall Ships Gazela of Philadelphia and the Alexandria, out of Alexandria, Virginia.
One of the most elaborately staged sequences in the picture is the burning of New Orleans, much of which was shot from a boat in the middle of the Mississippi River. The effects crew placed enormous propane burners and fired them off in sequence behind the sets. The orange haze on the night sky was enhanced with computer imagery so that it appears as though the entire city of New Orleans is ablaze.
Computer-aided effects were utilized throughout "Interview With The Vampire" to help the filmmakers re-create what doesn't currently exist. "With computer technology, the special effects are seamless," Jordan explains. "It's really the biggest advancement in film since color. We used it to build landscapes, vistas and towns that existed in other time periods that you couldn't possibly photograph today. "
From the rural plantations, the production moved into New Orleans' famed French Quarter, where Royal Street was transformed from a tourist thoroughfare to a dirt road, and the usually tumultuous Jackson Square was converted to a barren expanse, deserted except for a few horses, a carriage and a young vampire waiting for her first kill of the night. The company also filmed in the infamous Pere Antoine Alley, reputed by local police to be the site of more violence than any other street in New Orleans.
Ferretti scouted New Orleans for atmosphere and found no locations that would fit perfectly into the 1791 portion of the film without appointments recalling the period. "What you find there now," says Ferretti, "is about 100 years old, and not nearly old enough for us. But this is a night movie, almost a nightmare, and you can invent something with a different kind of vision. So I invented my own kind of reality.
That reality, New Orleans about to be turned back from the Spanish to the French prior to the territory's sale to the United States, was strongly influenced by the Caribbean culture of the West Indies and the African slave trade.
Present-day New Orleans, with its streets full of tourists reveling throughout the night, proved to be a challenging choice of locations for the filmmakers. Since they wanted to keep the special make-up effects secretive, scrupulous attention was paid to shielding the production from naturally curious passersby, particularly in the French Quarter, where streets are populated around the clock.
Unique on-set demands were commonplace with the production. Appropriately, being a movie about vampires, almost all of the exterior shooting took place at night, with crews reporting at 4:00 in the afternoon and working until after sunrise the following day.
From New Orleans, the production went to San Francisco, where a location on Market Street, a section of unused freeway and the Golden Gate Bridge served as locations. Shooting then moved to Pinewood Studios near London, where interiors were shot on several large stages, including a re-creation of the elaborate Theatre des Vampires.
The film's final locations were shot in Paris and included the Rue St. Jacques, Rue Hirondelle, the banks of the Seine under the Pont Neuf, the Palais Royal, Pere Lachaise Cemetery and Charles Garnier's magnificent Paris Opera, which began construction in 1861 and opened for the first time in 1875. The Opera's gallery served as the cafe where Louis and Claudia waltz, while the rotunda underneath the auditorium doubled as their Paris hotel lobby.
Ferretti conceived of Paris at the end of the 19th century as "an enormous tomb," with its sets of catacombs, graveyards and the Theatre des Vampires. "The atmosphere is gloomy, creepy and heavy, yet opulent," says Ferretti, who abandoned his strong Caribbean colors of post-Revolutionary Louisiana for the shiny black, gold and silver of Napoleon III's Second Empire.
One of the most demanding
scenes shot in Europe occurs as Louis attempts to destroy all of the vampires
in the Paris crypts. The choreography of the scene required three "stunt
vampires" to be set on fire and fly across the massive chamber while suspended
on wires above a crypt floor full of other burning vampires scurrying madly
about. Stunt coordinator GREG POWELL ensured that the cinematic vision
of flaming, flying vampires combined live action and fire effects into
a cohesive and safe whole.
This
section last modified 11-11-99
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