Ben Stiller & Adam Scott Break Down 'Severance' Season 2 Opening Scene

I always knew when someone would come up to me and say,

What was your favorite color of Gatorade again?

And I would just know,

like, We're doing some more running tomorrow.

Hi, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott.

And this is Notes on a Scene for Severance: Season 2.

[suspenseful music]

This is the first scene of season two picking up Innie Mark

the second after he said, She's alive,

and when he comes back to consciousness

and he's in the elevator at Lumon with this new information.

[suspenseful music]

[elevator bell dings]

[groovy jazz music]

I remember asking you like,

What do you think your first instinct would be?

Yeah, and I just thought I would just run

and try to find Ms. Casey,

who is Gemma in the outside world,

tell her this information, see if she knows anything.

I don't even think consciously has a plan of any sort.

He just needs to find her.

That was sort of the impetus for the idea of the shot.

And then, it immediately made me think,

Well, we could do sort of an homage

to our first innie shot with Mark in season one

where we meet him on the inside

and he walks through all the hallways to get to MDR.

So we thought, Why don't we do like a souped up,

you know, version of this running as fast as he can

through all the crazy hallways of Lumon's?

So basically this is like our zolly move

that we used to show the transition

from innie to outie or outie to innie.

If it's outie to innie,

the camera's zooming out on Adam while it's pushing in

to end up with a wider lens image of Adam.

If it's going from innie to outie,

it's starting in on a wider lens

and going out and zooming in.

So the camera's pushing back,

but the lens is getting tighter.

This is a not something that we invented.

Alfred Hitchcock used it in Vertigo.

Steven Spielberg, one of the greatest shots in film history.

Jaws. In Jaws.

And then, what Adam does with his eyes.

How do you do that with your eyes?

I just roll 'em back. Right.

That was actually your idea.

We did a lot of trial and error

trying to figure out how exactly to portray

this transition from outie to innie or vice versa.

You had the idea of the eyes maybe rolling back,

and that seemed to work, and we just eventually found it.

And your change in your sort of physicality

from the innie to the outie or the outie to the innie.

The difference I guess between Innie and Outie Mark

is where we started was Innie Mark is like 2 1/2 years old.

Outie Mark has kind of the weight of the world

on his shoulders and is just in this period of his life

where he's sort of more kind of weighed down and-

Like me. Doesn't have great posture.

I'm more like outie. Like me, too.

I have terrible posture.

And then, Innie Mark is kind of brand new to the world

and believes in this company, and, you know,

just is sort of everything's forward thinking

and I'd feel it. And every time you would do

the transition from Outie Mark to Innie Mark,

I'd always kind of, like, do it myself.

You would? Yeah, because I realized

I have such bad posture. Yeah.

[upbeat jazz music]

There was this piece of equipment called the Bolt arm

that we had actually experimented with in season one

to do the sever transition,

and decided it was too big and kind of cumbersome.

And it's a motion-control robotic arm

that can really do these precise moves with the camera.

And it's a very big piece of equipment, but has a long arm.

And so basically this opening shot on Adam,

if I was the base of the Bolt arm, I'm here,

and it has an arm like this,

and it kind of goes around behind Adam

as he walks out and pushes behind him.

It's huge. Yeah.

And it's scary, because once it's programmed,

you can't really stop it. Right.

So there are a lot of safety checks you do beforehand.

Yeah, we had to rehearse it many, many times

so I knew exactly where to be at any given moment,

'cause this thing would just go right through you.

Yeah, we don't like to use visual effects

too much in the show

in terms of creating backgrounds and environments,

but we needed to for this shot

because of the Bolt arm taking up all the space.

So really like everything you see here behind Adam,

this is all computer generated.

And really when he comes out,

that's all green screen behind him.

And then, the Bolt arm's going around Adam's head here,

and then pushing behind him.

This is all real.

But then here, all of this is all computer generated

behind Adam also, because-

And you did that because you needed that room?

Because the Bolt arm is over here

and there's, like, a big piece of equipment

the camera's on.

So this all had to be recreated.

[upbeat jazz music]

Now, right there is about where the transition happens

to the next piece of the shot.

So now we're on this sort of pogo stick gimbal

that we had a great camera operator,

who was strong and tall, and was running,

chasing you down the hallway. Yeah.

Why did you choose that rather than Steadicam?

It's just too hard to run this fast with a Steadicam,

'cause a Steadicam's, you know,

connected to the waist of the operator on a whole,

you know, gyroscope arm.

It's very cumbersome.

So to run full speed,

it's easier for a cameraman to hold a camera,

a lightweight camera on a kind of a stick

that he can just literally

be running full speed chasing you.

And if it was the opposite,

when he's running away from you,

then he has to be holding it behind him.

Yeah, and he was going really fast.

Yeah.

[upbeat jazz music]

That's what Geoff Richman, our editor, called the Superman,

where Mark opens up that...

And we realized we had to pick a moment, right?

At some point, I had to unbutton the jacket.

Yeah, yeah. And you were like,

Just do it on that first straight hallway.

We'll get it over with, 'cause it's gonna be a long run.

Yeah.

[upbeat jazz music]

The 10 or so different pieces of this shot

were done across four or five months,

depending on when in the schedule

we could fit it in with our specific setup

of the hallway sets,

because we usually keep all the hallways completely intact.

It's almost like you're in a real maze of hallways.

Our set is very claustrophobic and weird that way.

You often get lost on your way to set.

When we figured out what the run was gonna be,

we mapped it out on the sets that we have,

sat down with Jessica Lee Gagne, our cinematographer,

and Jeremy Hindle, our production designer,

and started to think about how we could devise a shot

that would take Mark through all these different hallways,

this maize of hallways.

So we've never seen really the route to Wellness.

And Jessica and I did overheads

of what the different pieces of the run would be.

Then, we did what we call a previs, which is sort of,

you know, like a rudimentary animation of the shot.

The visual effects team, and us,

and our cinematographer, everybody, we all break the shot up

into as many pieces as we need to to complete it.

We figure out, Okay, for this part of the shot,

there's no way we're gonna be able to use a real set.

We're gonna have to pull out, you know, all those walls.

So we know we can't do that part

until we have time to do that.

So we'll do that, you know, in February.

And this part we can do next week,

because we already have the set.

I always knew something was coming

when someone would come up to me and say,

Wait, what was your favorite color of Gatorade again?

And I would just know like,

Okay, I guess we're doing some more running tomorrow.

[upbeat jazz music]

And now we're in POV and he swings around,

again, on the pogo stick, pulling him.

Right about here, it's gonna transition to this shot.

So, like, this shot and this shot are different.

But you can't tell because our VFX people made sure

to, you know, fill it in in between, but also not blur it,

so you're not noticing that it's a different shot.

[upbeat jazz music]

This is all real here.

And then, the second we come to right here, basically here,

now this is all completely CG. That's right.

Adam's running on a treadmill on a green-screen stage

with no set whatsoever

so the camera can actually get in front of him,

but he's in place running on the treadmill.

And I actually had a harness

so I could be running as fast as possible-

To match what you were doing in real life.

Yeah, and also just to not make it look like

you're on a treadmill,

because on a treadmill you start running at a set pace.

But when you're running, even as fast as you can,

your pace is constantly changing.

And it's a little, weird,

little uncanny valley thing that a viewer,

something would feel off and artificial about it

if we hadn't kind of corrected for that.

[upbeat jazz music] [gentle suspenseful music]

Now, we're back on our Bolt arm

and the camera's gonna do a crazy spin move around,

while Adam is countering going the other way,

to create this sense of just like,

you know, Where are we?

Now, that Bolt arm,

before, when I stop and kind of look around,

then look the other way as the Bolt arm's kind of,

that took a while, I remember,

to really perfect. Yeah.

And also it really helps

just to do it over and over again,

because what I wanted to try and do

and what I think we achieved was,

with that kind of whip around and looking,

and then when I finally kind of whip around

and try to launch off and actually start running,

it felt like we really wanted some momentum

to start happening,

and to have me and the camera kind of both be in sync

to try and launch off together.

And the speed that this machine on the track had to have,

'cause it's all motion-control,

which means the computer controls it,

to really ramp up to your speed of running,

that getting that timing right,

takes a number of takes. Took a while, yeah.

[upbeat jazz music]

[upbeat jazz music] [suspenseful music]

[upbeat jazz music ends] [suspenseful music ends]

[Ben] Breaking the shot up into different sections

was really important,

because once we had conceived of what it was gonna be,

it was really all about the logistics

of getting the shot done. It was a lot to shoot.

It's like, Well, why can't he just be running down,

you know, a couple halls and turn around,

and then he's there?

And we always felt that we really wanted

to kick off the season in a way

that would be exciting, and fun,

and kind of give an indication

of where we were going for season two.

It almost felt like a side project to work on

as we're making the season.

It was all the more rewarding when we finished it.

And we kind of had our own

little wrap party for- Yes.

Because it was just, like, a group of people

broken off from the main crew to come work on this thing.

Yeah. So when we finally

kind of wrapped it up,

it was really fun. Yeah.

[gentle suspenseful music]

[gentle music]

[gentle music continues]

[tense music]

There's a guy back there.

[Ben and Adam laughing]

Who looks kind of like you, but not really.

I can't see his face.

[tense music]

[tense music fades]

The basis of this whole story is Mark's emotional life

and his, you know, trying to figure out

how to become a whole person.

And I think that's,

you know, ultimately the goal of the show

is to, you know, complete that journey with Mark.

Yeah, and, you know, season two

really kind of widens the scope of the show

and widens the scope of the characters, as well.

Every character kind of goes through something new

and we learn more about each one of them.

Yeah, and that's why I thought the shot was important

to kick off the season, 'cause it felt like,

All right, we're gonna indicate to the audience

that this is some new stuff happening.

Yeah.