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    Home » Film » ‘Real Steel’ Director Sean Levy Explains How He Gets His Actors Crying
    Film

    ‘Real Steel’ Director Sean Levy Explains How He Gets His Actors Crying

    Chris McKittrickBy Chris McKittrickOctober 10, 2011Updated:September 16, 2018No Comments2 Mins Read
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    Crying on cue for a movie can be hard enough for an adult actor, and is often next to impossible for a child actor.  But Shawn Levy, director of Real Steel, has a secret to getting the waterworks going: music. 

    “I play music on set when I’m shooting,” Levy explained during a discussion about his robot film, “The more intellectual the actor, the more I find music is a great way to direct, because you bypass the cerebral intellect with music.” 

    Levy goes into more detail about how he chooses his music, revealing, “For every sequence of the movie, I make a play list months before I make the movie.  So I had fight songs, I had pre-fight songs, I had the opening — and my opening playlist was Nick Drake, Josh Rayden, Alexi Murdoch, Ben Harper, a little Jon Mayer…that kind of stuff.”  Huh… I can’t see how Nick Drake, Ben Harper, or Jon Mayer music would be appropriate pump-up music for a robot boxing film, but that’s why Levy is paid the big bucks.   For the challenge of making eleven year-old Dakota Goyo cry, Levy picked the song “First Breath After Coma” by Explosions in the Sky.  His directions to Goyo were succinct: Levy reveals, “The last thing I said is, I need you to cry.  I did not say anything.  I said, I’m gonna play some music, feel what you feel.  We’re gonna roll slow motion.  Let’s see what happens…And so I played this piece of music, and he started…first it was the nostril, and that’s what you see in the movie — the nostril, then the chin, and that one frickin’ tear!”

    Levy’s directing helped make Real Steel the #1 movie at the box office last weekend… and I’m sure he’s not crying about that!

    Via About.com

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