CITY OF BONES Set Visits from Comingsoon, Collider, Moviefone, Hitfix, Teen, Hollywood.com and more

'MORTAL INSTRUMENTS': LILY COLLINS ON WORKING WITH HER REAL LIFE BEAU AND A DIFFERENT KIND OF YA HEROINE

Of course, it probably didn't hurt that the very things that got a fan like Collins excited for the big screen adaptation (the actress said she "got emotional" when she saw the movie's replica of The Institute, a major hub in the story, and that it was "literally is exactly how I pictured it in my head....as a fan, I think the world is encapsulated really, really well") got the approval from Clare, who was on set for filming and worked as something of a consultant. "It's been really great to have her here, see her reaction to stuff and to have her input on the way we are changing up certain scenes for film. Just really hearing her laugh and her enthusiasm on set is really awesome."

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TATTOOS, LEATHER, AND HIDDEN SYMBOLS: WHAT WE FOUND ON THE 'MORTAL INSTRUMENTS' SET

Trying to replicate the massive scale of New York City is no small task, so to speak. Even more challenging can be making a realistic NYC apartment. The team behind building the sets for TMI engineered a beautiful — and reasonably sized — living space for Clary and her mother Jocelyn (Lena Headey), right up the stairs from Madame Dorethea's (CCH Pounder) place in their Brooklyn walk-up. Clary's walls were lined with sketches that looked not unlike something you'd see in TMI fan art and the kitchen was spacious, even by fake NYC apartment standards, but a major fight unfolds in that room. Which is why, as production designer François Séguin explained, the kitchen's counters were padded.The set of the library was a veritable what's what in the TMI world: the Mortal cup, the Mortal sword, and Mortal symbols are scattered throughout the gothic architecture, complete with stainglass windows and a fully stocked library. A grand piano, a map of Germany, a birdcage, a magnifying glass, and a statue constructed with the images of skulls and bones were also among the various trinkets and set pieces found in the study in The Institute belonging to Hodge Starkweather (Jared Harris).

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Director Harald Zwart Talks Collaborating with the Author, Why He Wanted to Make the Film, & More on the Set of THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

Having the author on set, was there any trepidation about that on your part initially?
ZWART: I know sometimes people think that can be a frightening thing, but Cassandra’s really flexible with her material. She sees that as long as we keep her intentions and what she knows that the fans love, she’s been very cool. And I’ve been emailing and calling her a lot where I’ve been going through the movie and I’ve said “Can you come up with a different solution of how to do this? Because I can’t shoot this or it doesn’t work.” She writes me pages. So that’s been really great, she’s been really fantastic in that sense.

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Set Visit: Lily Collins takes a dark trip in 'The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones'

"Take out the cup, Clary...I want my cup!" screams Meyers as he holds a grip of Collins' long dark hair in one coiled fist.

"That's enough," says Bower, stepping forward protectively.
"Can we say that louder!" Meyers yells, out of character.
There is a pause.



"Keep rolling, keep rolling, keep rolling guys!" the shirtless actor directs.
"That's enough!" Bower obliges, his voice rising.
There is more dialogue here, but seeing as it contains spoilers for those not familiar with the books, I'll skip it.
"You said you wouldn't hurt her!" pleads Bower.
Wham! Lightning quick, Meyers slams Collins' head down onto a table before flinging her backwards to the ground. He then swings out with one of his fists in Bowers' direction. Bowers returns the favor with a spear, which he lashes out with once, twice, three times. Meyers ducks and weaves, then swings again. They give off the impression of dueling male supermodels, which can't be helped: both actors are blessed with runway-ready cheekbones.
This bit unsurprisingly takes awhile to get right. For Collins' part, there is some sort of a pad attached to her forehead to keep her insulated from harm during the table slam. The stunt actress that takes her place when it comes time for real-deal flesh-to-table contact isn't afforded the same luxury.
Wham! Ow. The stuntwoman flies backward to the floor. The fight begins. This is all mapped out with a stunt director, who takes the performers through each step of the sequence. Meyers and Bower practice their ducking, weaving, swinging and punching in slow motion. Meyers is impassioned. His crystalline blue eyes are focused, piercing.

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'The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones': 11 Things You Need to Know

Said producer Robert Kulzer: "It's this slow progression of taking the lead character, and hopefully the audience, from a here-and-now present day urban environment into this really, really fantastical world. Both worlds kind of coexist."
But rather than let loose with the CGI, director Harald Zwart attempted to ground "City of Bones"' fantastical elements in reality, not only for practical reasons (like keeping the budget from skyrocketing), but also to ensure the story stayed accessible to audiences, and that means playing up on the emotions more than the monsters. Lily Collins explained, "What they've done with this project is really acknowledge the fact that it is such a fantasy world, that if we don't make it real in some way, you're going to lose the audience in the CGI stuff."
"Harald is the ultimate director for this project, because it's not really his genre -- he's all about character and emotion," Collins continued. "He's made it a story about real people in this fantasy world."
Still, that doesn't mean "City of Bones" isn't suitably epic. "No one's going to be disappointed in the scope of this movie," promised producer Don Carmody.

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Lily Collins Talks Script Changes, the Project’s Development, Chemistry with the Cast, & More on the Set of THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

What was your reaction when you were first approached with this role? Was it something that spoke to you?

COLLINS: Yeah, I was actually a fan of the series before I was cast. I’ve always loved fantasy books. Even just growing up, I’ve always kind of loved magic and fantasy. Having read the books and being really familiar with Clary, and just kind of admiring her as a character, when Screen Gems originally approached me for it, I had just done Priest. It was kind of some of the same team that was part of that project. I was thrilled. I was like a fan, so a fan being cast as a heroine that they admired. Then it took about almost two years for it to actually happen. I think it went through the process of changing hands and new people involved. I think everything happens for a reason because the team we got together for this is so amazing. Everyone has brought something new to the table.

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Set Visit to The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

"I read with a couple of different guys that had come in," said Collins. "Jamie just came in and that was it. He was just himself. He had this perfect mixture of being this witty, kind of jokey, cocky in the best sense of the word, but also extremely vulnerable, emotional. And that’s what Jace is. He has to walk in a room and make people turn their heads and that’s what Jamie does.""Lily and I just automatically clicked," Bower explained. "These two characters just came out of us and it was like we had known each other for years, it was so weird. 'Twilight,' that was so successful because people invested in the love between these two characters, and that's what I want them to have with this."

Read more at Comingsoon.net

Jamie Campbell Bower Talks Fake Tattoos, Female Protagonists, Working with Lily Collins, and More on the Set of THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

How did you physically prepare for this role and what’s the deal with the tattoos?
BOWER: These are all real and terribly made. No. Physically, I’ve trained really hard for it. It was sort of — I started training four months — three months before we started shooting, and I sort of toyed around with different physical forms and at the end of it, what I wanted was to get to a point whereby we’ve seen this sort of big jock kind of character before and I didn’t want that and I didn’t really think that that was something that I believe, particularly, you know, with my younger cousins or whatever being girls that they’re really into — you know, the 15-year-old markets — I don’t know if that’s as sexy as it once was anymore. I think it’s more about the rock star or the girls that I, you know, the 15-year-old girls they’re into, like, skinny m------- from bands and the sort of lost souls and all that kind of s--- and I love that and I think that’s really cool. Ultimately, at the end of that, what I wanted to do is I built up the muscle, and then I just trimmed everything down and just got super lean and it was really tough; really, really hardcore. I did a lot of stunt training; a lot of fight training and physically kind of ruined myself but in the best way possible. It wasn’t like I was doing stupid s---- because I was doing stuff that was good for me, but, you know, you wake up at 5 o’clock every morning, and do three hours of training, then you have a half an hour to eat, and then you go back and do another two hours, then half an hour to go and sleep, and maybe have a shower if you’re lucky, and then go through lines or learn the piano and all this kind of stuff. Yes, it’s exhausting, but it’s part of what I enjoy about it.

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Jared Harris Talks Fight Sequences, SHERLOCK HOLMES, and More on the Set of THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

So what grabbed you about the character then, and the concept?
HARRIS: He’s a fun character. You don’t know which side he’s playing on, which is always interesting to do. And yeah, he does a couple of 180s in the story. And it’s a fun world. It’s like this idea that’s not that far removed from, you mentioned Fringe, right? You know, that there’s parallel worlds, there’s worlds going on next to each other, and this shadow world exists alongside the world that we live in and that we can see. And you know, it’s fun. It’s imaginative, and it’s supposed to be good fun.
You have a tattoo on your neck right now.
HARRIS: That’s right, I used to be a Shadowhunter. I can still kick ass, man.

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Author Cassandra Clare Talks Casting, Changes from the Book, and More on the Set of THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

Question: So what’s it like for you to finally be on the set of this film being made?
CASSANDRA CLARE: It’s my second set visit but it’s amazing to see it come to life like this. The sets are really beautiful. They are very intricate. Hopefully you’ll see them when we go out and tour the set, but they really recreated these sort of imaginary places with incredible attention to detail. There’s a place in the books called The City of Bones that…the books are named after that…the underground city is built out of human bones and corpses and I think they made 1,000 or 2,000 different models of skulls and each one is different aged to look differently, each one has different sort of features and has been changed in a different way so even though you probably only see it in a glancing shot in the movie, I know every single one of those is different and I think it adds incredible texture to the film.
What was your initial reaction when you were approached regarding optioning your book into a film?
CLARE: I thought a lot of things get optioned all the time and they rarely ever get made, so I thought, “Well, okay, it’s wonderful that someone likes these books so much that they want to option them,” and it was originally an option project by Unique Features, which is Michael Lynne and Bob Shaye, who executive produced Lord of the Rings, which are my favorite fantasy series, so I thought, if you’re going to sell your fantasy series to someone, who’s a more trustworthy bunch of people than them? So I thought, “Well, I’m happy to option it to these particular people; probably nothing will ever happen.”

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Producers Don Carmody and Robert Kulzer Talk the Development Process, Casting, and More on the Set of THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

Question: This project was originally going to go, like, two years ago. Could you talk about what it’s been like actually getting this green lit and getting it going?
ROBERT KULZER: Interesting. It’s just always interesting when you go on stage and there’s the perfect director, the perfect cast, and I honestly mean it. The production designer, it’s all falling into place, and you just go, ‘Wow, how did we do that?’ It’s easy to forget, there’s a three, four year process of getting to this point. We had a lot of luck on this movie from the beginning. The fact that the project was originally set up at Warner Brothers and until today I don’t know why they let it go. My interpretation was that they were trying to find the next Harry Potter and Harry Potter is a boy, and Clary, our lead character is a girl. And I guess they went, ‘Whoa, we want a boy…but, we need a boy…but, we need a boy.’ And they let it go. As for doing the search to find big IP’s, we came across this project, we snatched it up from Warner Brothers. There was a writer attached at the time, a young writer, and as it turns out, she is the wife of an executive at Sony, who called me right away and said, “We want this project.” I went, “That’s awesome.” I’m basically just the middle man, the project falls into my lap, I turn it around, I give it to Sony and we have a great movie.

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‘The Mortal Instruments’ Cast Talks Lily & Jamie’s Chemistry

Teen: As the author of the series, what were your feelings when you first saw Jamie and Lily together during their audition together?

Cassandra Clare: It was really embarrassing. I cried, I was so happy. We had been looking for Jace; it was an ordeal process. Every young, blond actor in Hollywood tried out and Lily, bless her soul, went in over and over for chemistry reads with people, and Jace is a tough character. He is a guy who covers up his vulnerability and is real personality with a lot of layers of just being a jerk. If you play him wrong, he’ll just come out as a jerk, but if you play him right, he comes across as “I’ll use my wit to hide my broken heart and my pain and I’m vulnerable and love me.” Nobody was quite hitting that, so Lily did all these chemistry reads with all these different people and I was starting to think “Maybe no one can play this role; maybe I have written a bizarre character that cannot be played.

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'MORTAL INSTRUMENTS': LILY COLLINS ON WORKING WITH HER REAL LIFE BEAU AND A DIFFERENT KIND OF YA HEROINE

"I’ve had many experiences on this set of intense, emotional, physical… I’m doing stunts in these [high heels] the whole time, sometimes in a mini dress, so it’s been maneuvering myself around the sets. I’ve gotten so many bruises at 4 in the morning, all hours of the night, so it’s been an intense ride, but it’s been really fun," Collins told Hollywood.com on the Toronto set of The Mortal Instruments last October.

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