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Adapted from the dramatic podcast byMicah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz,HomecomingisMr.
Robotcreator Sam Esmails ultimate film-history playground.
Spoilers abound, so you probably shouldnt dive into this unless youve watched the entire show.
These are more thrillers based on characters and relationships, and the secrets that they keep from one another.
And the other great thing aboutHomecomingis that it wasnttryingto do that; it justwasthat.
It still had this modern-day relevance to it, and I loved that it was inadvertently a throwback thriller.
That doesnt make any sense to me.
But I wanted to listen to the podcast anyway, purely because Id heard good things about it.
And when I binged it the first time, it was purely as a fan.
I was so taken by it that I binged it again with my wife in one sitting.
But that story gets told by Walter to Heidi, and hes chuckling because he already knows the ending.
And thats where I thought we could turn this into something different, something visual.
I did not want to just remake the podcast.
I wanted it to be this stand-alone story that is its own creature.
You could listen to the podcast, enjoy the TV show, and theyd be two separate experiences.
I want to ask some questions about the filmmaking.
ThroughoutHomecoming, you do a lot of long takes with few or no cuts.
but I often dream in long takes.
Dreams dont have cuts for me.
I feel like a cut breaks the tone.
To me, a cut should say something and be impactful.
When it is this sort of long take, it brings me into more of a dream state.
Thats also one of the reasons why we do the ending credits the way we do.
Theres a lingering effect.
Thats what I felt when I listened to the podcast.
Theres something more menacing about that.
Every episode ends with, I guess youd say, a meditative moment.
The action proper has concluded, but youre letting people continue to exist in the space.
In some cases, its after the important characters have left.
Its dreamlike to me.
Theres something about it that feels unsettling, but not overtly so, and it stays with you.
Everyones inclination is to hit next as soon as the credits start rolling.
I didnt want that for this show.
I wondered if there was a tactical reason for doing that.
Like, Were not going to be in a rush here.
I just felt it worked for this story because of the way the story is constructed.
That was the reason we wanted to embrace this dreamlike, meditative state.
I also wanted to ask you about the scenes where Carrasco is basically being a detective.
Whats your thinking there?
This is Carrascos world.
If you put him in a regular office basement with files, it wouldnt seem as challenging to him.
Hed devour those papers within minutes to find the information very quickly.
I never minded that because it felt real through Carrascos point of view.
And, yes, its Kafkaesque.RaidersandThe Trialare good references.
Carrasco is in a job where he feels like its going nowhere.
Its this primitive, surreal nightmare to him, and hes trying to wake up from it.
Youve got this one moment in the second episode, starting on a wide shot of the office.
To get that effect, we had to boost up his chair.
Ordinarily, you wouldnt be able to see their faces.
Yes, its a little surreal.
But the idea is that he is this cog in this monstrous, bureaucratic, red-tape nightmare.
The shot doesnt work if you cant see that his eyes are just slightly above water there.
I always suspend logic for emotion.
Im not a documentarian.
Were not trying to shoot things for naturalism.
Were trying to shoot things for a feeling, for a vibe, and that was Carrascos world.
Hes in a sea of red tape, and hes just barely floating above the water line.
I really wanted to lay down the foundation that these two are actually looking for the same thing.
Will Carrasco win out?
Whats he going to find that Heidi doesnt want him to find?
Where do those come from?
How do they fit into the mix here?Sheas so diligent and such a hard worker.
Ive never seen a guy so committed to expressing something genuine at every moment.
We wanted to be very intentional about every little choice that we make.
Its the same thing with the pen clicks.
We wanted to be as specific with the gestures as possible.
As you did onMr.
Robot, you often directly quote the movies that youre inspired by.
Why did you decide to do that?
I know certain directors, like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, do it.
Where do you stand on that issue?Well, heres what happened.
There was something about it that just felt wrong to me.
It felt like the best version of that would just feel incredibly derivative.
I didnt want it to feel like this half-measure of trying to sound like a soundalike.
So I said, Why not use the real thing?
You seem to be thinking,How can I use lighting?
Its like youre dealing in metaphors here, almost.
Thats what it is, isnt it?
Isnt that what a film is?
Isnt it a metaphor filled with symbolism?
The images tell the story on their own.
Obviously, there are many other components to it, but thats the birth of it, right?
When were in the lobby of the Homecoming building, is that a set?
Are some things sets and others are real locations?
Break that down for me.
Obviously, the facility is a set.
Its a two-story set that my production designer, Anastasia White, who did an amazing job onMr.
All two stories, every room.
Then we mixed that in with real-life locations.
That was a real place, but we treated it basically like a set.
And, yeah, those overhead shots were really important to me.
Thats something I brought up to my cinematographer, Tod Campbell, right away.
I wanted it to feel like we, or somebody, were a third-party observer in all of this.
I think thats part of the reason why the great masters do those shots.
In the drone shots I guess theyre drone shots?
where youre following a vehicle, theres something about the camera movement that feels very weird to me.
I just dont know how you did that shot.
What is that?It is attached to the car.
It was underlining, once again, this observational third eye that I wanted to suggest to the audience.
I wanted the same effect in all the driving shots.
The car moves left; it moves left.
Its almost like a body cam for the car.
And Im asking myself as a viewer,Who is looking at these people?
I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach seeing it.
It made me wonder if Colins guys were watching them.
What are you thinking when you do that kind of thing?
What are you trying to make us feel when you shoot moments that way?
I wanted it to feel as if something sick was about to go on.
I wanted it to really be very deep in that subliminal, meditative state.
Here, youre only directing.
How does it feel to just be directing?It feels awful.
Ill say this: Eli and Micah were a dream to work with.
It has nothing to do with them.
They are amazing writers, and Id even venture to say that theyre way better writers than I am.
Im so glad the scripts turned out beautifully.
I know that some directors dont care.
But Im not like that.
I had too much respect for Eli and Micah to steamroll them.
That part of it was a painful thing for me.
I think especially in the first season ofMr.
Robot, the controlling aspect was there because there was this weird lack of trust.
I didnt have my team of people that I had worked with for years.
Now, I completely trust my costume designer, Catherine Marie Thomas, whos brilliant.
I guess thats another thing I will have to evolve on.
