Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Lily Collins Talks With MSN: 'How The Mortal Instruments is Important to Her'

MSN interview Lily Collins at WonderCon 2013. Lily explains how The Mortal Instruments is important to her and the beautifully detailed sets for the movie.
MSN Movies: I understand that doing "The Mortal Instruments" has been a very personal project for you.
Lily Collins: It is. It's really personal for me. I was a huge fan of the books before I was cast. I looked up to Clary as a fellow reader, and I associate a lot of similar qualities with her because I'm really super close with my mom. And Clary goes on this whole journey to get her mom back, and it's a personal quest for her as she's growing up in search of finding her mom. I completely would act the same way that Clary does if I were in that situation. So I felt very close to the project.
Two-part question: What sets this apart from the other young adult adaptations that have been coming out, and how do you get people beyond that core readership into the film? What does it have for them?
What's different, I think, is that our story involves reality and a fantasy world married together. And it's not just this is happening when it's fantasy and there's magic involved and then this is when she's at school. It's like there are two worlds intertwined throughout the entire movie. And the way that we've filmed it, you forget which world you're in because it just seems so normal. Like the magic stuff just feels obvious to you during the film, so it's not like you're taken out of a reality at any point.

I think what we've done in this film is not only hopefully really pleased the fans but invited people in that don't know the story, whether you're a young child or you're a parent. We have made this film that could have been so CGI-heavy into a film about character and emotion. And the icing on top is the CGI and the special effects. It's really a story about growing up and finding yourself and what you do when you're thrown into these situations -- which, I think, older people might be able to remember going through when they were a kid. And then kids can go, "Oh, that's me." It's not something that's, I think, alienating to a certain age group.
So the mythology is that the Shadowhunters are half human, half angel and they hunt demons, but they sort of hidden beneath the surface of everyday life.
Yes, it's basically this thing called a glamour, which is if you were to look at like an old decrepit building, someone who has the sight can see through that glamour and see that it's actually a beautiful cathedral. So it's the idea that you have these powers -- like Clary. The reason that Clary can see Jace, Isabelle and Alec in the club when they murder this demon is because she has the sight and she can see them. Whereas, nobody else in the club even knows they're there. So it's these worlds happening at the same time but only certain people have the sight to see it.
You mentioned that this was less reliant on CG. So was a lot of it done practically?
All of the sets were there for us, which I think is amazing. The art department deserves all the credit for these sets because they were so intricate. In the big library scene, there were hand-painted books that you will never see on camera, but the attention to detail was so specific and it felt so rich in quality and atmosphere because it genuinely was there for us. Of course, there are magical elements like the demons that are going to be done in post-production. I remember in "Mirror, Mirror," the dragon at the end was like a guy in a green suit holding a ball, you know, and we had to be afraid of that. Whereas in this one they genuinely had big epic scenes and things that were made for us to react off of, which was really special and quite rare for a big-budget film.
Read the full interview over at MSN

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