This was an interesting project because I think at first we were pushing it very dark, and Brian liked that, and everyone on the team did, I think, in principle… when they started trying it in the edit, I think it had lost some of the sense of fun. We know they’ve all died, so it was sort of like because we were going so dark with music, it was overdoing that point. We then had some time to go back and keep a lot of what I’d done, but then also try some more playful elements, which is where I brought in some of the Aztec instruments, like the ocarina and shakers, and played with it a little bit more and having more fun with it.
We shot it in New York and not another place to capture New York, and we wanted it to feel very much like a New York show. Being grounded in New York, the way New York is now… the old Hell’s Kitchen is no longer now. It’s regentrified and revitalized itself, so we wanted to capture that. That feeling like, ‘There are a few spots that retain the same old Hell’s Kitchen feel, but New York has changed, and it’s a different place”… We shot on the streets all the time, but we also had to build many sets.
The really interesting thing is we’ve got a little over 1,500 shots in this movie, and the movie’s two hours and twenty minutes long. We did only, like, 38 shots in addition to that that had no visual effects. So almost every shot in the movie is a visual effects shot. The fact that there are only 1,500 of them, when you think about a typical tentpole superhero movie or big action blockbuster, a lot of those films are in the 2,500, 3,000 shot range these days.