[intriguing music playing] 

[Brad] Hi, I’m Brad Peyton, the director of ‘Atlas.’ I’ll be running through some things you might have missed in the movie.

[music ends]

[Smith] If you require further assistance, my name is Smith.

[Brad] We were trying to find someone to voice Smith on the set with Jen. I got a bunch of tapes. One of them actually sounded like how I pictured Smith, which was this guy named Greg Cohan. 

[Clip: Atlas] You’re a computer program.

[Clip: Smith] No, I’m not. I am a computer program named Smith.

[Brad] So I was like, “I gotta give this guy an on-camera role.” So Greg actually has three roles in this movie. Greg is the pilot of the Dhiib, the ship that Sterling’s character, Banks, is on. First, it started as just a hologram in one scene. Battleship Dhiib is under attack.

[Brad] And then, in the additional photography that we did, I actually got to shoot the inside of the cockpit, so he really has, like, a little scene. He also appears as the voice of a soldier in the opening of the movie. 

[Clip: Soldier] Casca, don't –– 

[Brad] He was so great. He was easy. We could call him in anytime and just, “Can you do this one line here?” He would just be around me all the time.

[whirring] 

[Harlan] I wish there was a way to do this painlessly, but … you have something I need. 

[Brad] We have this scene where Simu’s character, Harlan, tortures Colonel Banks, and we had to clamp open his eye. Every time people see it, they react to it. It feels real. It looks real. Because it is real. Sterling was like, “Yes, you can do it, but, like, can we make it for a really short amount of time?” So I set up all my cameras, we did it for 90 seconds, got what we needed, moved on. The extra interesting thing about this is the producer’s dad is an eye doctor. He’s the one who put the clamp on his eye. So we got to hire the producer’s dad for a day of work. Another interesting thing is that a lot of the people in Val’s lab on the screens are actually friends of mine. One of my friends, Konrad, named his character Science Guy and then built a backstory around Science Guy and how Science Guy is, like, the leading scientist in the world, and that’s why he’s on the screen.

[Clip: Scientist Guy] Science. Science. Hi.

[drone whirring] Oh ****!

[Brad] He also claims that it’s why the movie is so good. 

[Clip: Scientist Guy] Yeah? That’s good? OK.

[Brad] So I’ve worked with Andrew Lockington, my composer, on all my movies. And we’re always looking for, like, how can we develop something new? We discovered that there was a tube station that’s been abandoned in London. It’s five stories underground. And my composer somehow talked everyone into bringing generators down there, took the instruments, and then recorded different parts of the score in the subway and the echo effects you get from them.

[flutes playing]

[Brad] They would record everything from a single pluck that they could use. And they do, like, the whole range of all the notes so that then we could use it in the score and manipulate it digitally. You know, we’re just a bunch of nerdy kids, basically, and we’re just trying to entertain ourselves and make stuff you haven’t heard and seen before.

[Clip: Harlan] I’ve been expecting you. 

[Brad] I couldn’t not be influenced by James Cameron if I tried to not be influenced by James Cameron. I grew up in a place called Newfoundland in Canada. As, like, a kid growing up, it kinda, like, rocked my world that a Canadian could be in Hollywood making these gigantic movies. It was such a big impact on me, personally, as a young person. In this movie, in particular, Harlan’s compound very much vibes like ‘Aliens.’ It’s the smoke, the water, it has this kind of tangible grit and lived-in feel. And when you look at ‘Aliens,’ though a lot of it was shot on a stage, they were taking, like, hulls of airplanes and repurposing them as sets. It just had this kind of down and dirty feel. This is the first time I worked with John Schwartzman, my DP. He was like, “Okay, now I know exactly what you want.” And I was like, “Yeah, I want ‘Aliens.’ ” If all my movies looked that good, I’d be very happy.

[Harlan] This is the only way.

[static crackles] 

[Brad] Thanks for watching. To learn more about ‘Atlas,’ go to tudum.com.