A Seemingly Simple Shot From Asteroid City Took 60 Takes And Four Hours To Film

Making a movie is tough, especially when a seemingly simple shot becomes complicated. 

As anyone who's watched a Wes Anderson film can likely tell, a lot of effort goes into framing composition and production design. Every last detail seems meticulously crafted to ensure the exact idea and aesthetic the director wants is conveyed in the most succinct manner possible. As such, getting his films to look exactly as they're supposed to can be a massive undertaking, as Jeffrey Wright learned all too well during one scene in "Asteroid City."

Wright plays General Grif Gibson in the movie, a military man who hosts the Junior Stargazer awards. But he's still a general when all's said and done, and at one point in the film, he needs to reach for his weapon. This involved an insert shot, which is a filmmaking technique where the camera focuses on one specific detail to draw attention to it. The scene focused on Wright's hand reaching toward the weapon, which should've been relatively straightforward, but things quickly turned complicated, much to Wright's dismay. 

Inserts often don't even involve the actor's face. It's typically something where they may be holding something or reaching toward an object, with the emphasis placed on whatever they're holding. That was the case for one such scene in "Asteroid City," where General Grif Gibson flips over the flap of his holster and reaches for a weapon. It may not seem like something that would take a long time to get right, but Jeffrey Wright explained how it took four hours and 60 takes to get that one shot. 

During an "Asteroid City" press conference Looper attended, Wright explained how he's used to inserts and how they usually take no more than 10 minutes. However, this particular shot took a long time to get right. Fortunately, he understood why as there were extenuating circumstances: "It was really about trying to find a certain cleanliness to the thing that we couldn't quite achieve ... We had a prop guy standing to my left. The lens here to my right, my body hiding him. So I flip up the flap on the holster, and the prop guy puts his finger on it, keeps it up. The camera frame is below his finger." It sounds like a lot of moving parts went into getting what comes across as a simple shot. Wright also mentioned how Wes Anderson wasn't physically there during that scene. Roman Coppola handled the shot, but they still ran everything by Anderson.

Wright was well aware of how strange the whole ordeal was, but when it comes to getting the perfect shot for such an auteur's project, it's worth the effort. "Asteroid City" is playing now in Los Angeles and New York and opens nationwide on June 23.