MULTI-VERSE MAYHEM

Ifyou want to know how DP Larkin Seiple made directing-duo, The Daniels’, mindbending, playfully-anarchic take on multiverse-building Everything Everywhere All At Once grounded and relatable, read on.

The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) and Seiple have a solid track record of wildly-creative and outrageously-absurdist music videos/commercials, yet the best proof of their talents and proclivity for going off the beaten path was the directors’ feature debut, Swiss Army Man (2016). What was ostensibly a story of a man marooned on an island who uses a farting corpse to reach the mainland only to befriend the abruptly animated morbid fellow, turned out to be a poignant take on loneliness, friendship, societal norms, and the lies we tell ourselves to be what we think others want us to be.

A flatulent cadaver revealing inner-beauty and teaching a miserable man important life lessons in a dramedy that left some enchanted and many infuriated. How can you possibly top that?

Well, how about a bonkers action comedy about Evelyn, the most mundane and unfulfilled woman in the world, who discovers that she is living in a multiverse with infinite versions of herself and becomes a heroine fighting to save everyone from a nihilistic uber-villain who experiences all universes concurrently. Though Everything Everywhere All at Once is uproarious fun

By Darek Kuźma

“It was our Die Hard (1988, DP Jan De Bont) moment and we used it to the fullest,” laughs Seiple, “but our general rule for fight scenes was to have many close-ups, like in a Jackie Chan movie where you always see him figuring-out what to do next. It’s not about elaborate choreography, we’re rather more interested in how people adapt, react and see their personal struggles.”

They used a number of visual devices to help the audience follow the story, including varying aspect ratios.

“While testing how to have the faces stay centred in the frame, we realised that they tell their stories despite frantically shifting formats,” recalls Seiple. “All flashbacks from Evelyn’s childhood are in 4:3 looking like Super16mm. When her universe gets actionoriented, the bars start to drop and shift from spherical 16:9 to Anamorphic 2.35:1 – as a nod to Die Hard. For the slightly musical-ish hot-dog fingerverse we went for 2:1, referencing the Technicolor vibe of The Sound Of Music (1965, DP Ted McCord ASC). Some universes we shot in 1.85:1, others through specific homages, but it’s always a storytelling choice to help people track all of the insanity.”

They decided to shoot the film in a building in Simi Valley, CA, around 40 minutes outside of Los Angeles.

“It was a facility of a mortgage lender that went under during the recession. We built a lot of our sets and repurposed pre-existing ones from the Silicon Valley

“All places had to be logistically sound, and work for a number of different set-ups. A hotel lobby served as a movie theatre and a musical stage, etc. A lot of it was about being open to what suited the story.” that takes the concept of a multiverse to a whole new level, it is ultimately a bittersweet film about finding a courage within oneself to be kind to others.

With the visual insanity and dozens of onscreen locations and universes, it is a marvel they managed to do it in less than 40 shooting days, whilst also being disrupted by the pandemic.

Despite the madcap premise, The Daniels and Seiple did everything in their power to make the story relatable. Even when they depict a parallel universe in which life has taken a creative license and people have wieners instead of fingers.

“With them, it’s always the case of taking a ridiculous idea, but with a big heart behind it, and making a connection to the audience,” claims Seiple. “My job was to make sure it didn’t look too goofy, that all the universes could potentially exist, so that you’re able to care for the characters. It was less about trying to make things fantastical and more about making the fantastical feel real.”

The fanny pack fight in an IRS building is a case in point. Waymond, Evelyn’s meek husband, has his body taken over by his action-oriented counterpart from another universe and battles security guards. With a fanny pack. In slo-mo.

TV series – all of our elevator scenes were from Silicon Valley !”, he chuckles. “We also shot on location and at the infamous DC Stages where they had dozens of pre-made sets, all working from only one angle. I wasn’t sure about this, but The Daniels loved the fact that we could do a number of scenes – a prison, a hospital, a martial arts training facility, a bus and others – all in one day. It was a fun challenge.”

Though Everything Everywhere All at Once often looks like a big-budget film, the reality was that they had to be quite creative with location scouting to make it work.

“We were scheduled for 38 but stopped at 36. It was March 2020, one day our producer said, ‘We’re not coming back on Monday.’ It was intense,” he says.

This obviously brought a number of unexpected challenges, like shooting pick-up scenes with Michelle Yeoh (Evelyn) over Zoom – she was in Paris in front of a greenscreen, they were in LA with a day’s work and a stand-in to know exactly how to direct the actress.

“It was tough, but all things considered, we tried to support one another and have some fun with the process,” reminisces Seiple. “The same happened during the grade that I did from my garage in LA while colourist Alex Bickel was sitting in his garage in upstate New York. We were, and I guess still are, like this bizarre family that you can’t get enough of!”

Seiple shot the film with his beloved ARRI Alexa 35, plus some GoPros for CCTV footage.

“I was happy to shoot Super 35 because it’s plenty shallow enough and feels intimate. You get to actually see the sets and keep both actors’ eyes in focus. You can also do action scenes at 200fps. Roger Deakins shot Skyfall (2012) on it and it looked great on IMAX screens, so I’m not sure why you’d need a better camera,” he explains. “We ended-up choosing Fuji stock because it worked better with the skin tones and had a bit more of cyan.”

The cinematographer used a wide range of lenses, especially for the more outlandish universes.

“I’ve never had so many lenses on a feature. I had Hawk Anamorphic, Scorpio FF Anamorphic, Zeiss Super Speed, Super Baltars and many others. For the universe where sapient beings never evolved and our characters are rocks, I used Master Primes because The Daniels wanted it to feel like a National Geographic programme. For the montage of Evelyn becoming a martial artist we used vintage 16mm zooms, and we obviously had this Stanley Kubrick 2001: Space Odyssey (1968, DP Geoffrey Unsworth BSC) homage shot with the Anamorphic Todd-AO lenses.”

Needless to say, the Kubrick reference has a clever twist and sees the monkeys trying to throw up the famous bone in a truly spectacular fashion. Amongst dozens of references Everything Everywhere All at Once has to offer, are a loony version of Pixar’s Ratatouille (2007) and a rendition of Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000, DPs Chris Doyle & Mark Lee Ping-Bing).

“Our film is an homage to the power of movies, but shooting-wise it was more about referencing the ‘memory’ of movies. In The Mood For Love universe is yellow and green, very colourful, but the original’s night exteriors were all Tungsten light exposed with Tungsten filmstock. It’s very clean, but what people remember about the film is its colours.”

Colour was another storytelling device to help the audience not to get lost in the verse-jumping.

“When you see green and yellow, you know you’re in the universe in which Evelyn is a movie star. For Ratatouille we actually referenced Magnolia (1999, DP Robert Eslwit ASC) for its strong rich American colours, and we had red, blue and white throughout,” tells Seiple. For the villain’s verse, which was white and sterile, we referenced Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010, Dp Norm Li CSC) for its inherent creepiness, and… The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990, DP Davod Connell ACS). This movie had a powerful effect on me when I watched it as a kid. I’m sure this tribute of ours doesn’t remotely look like the original, but, again, it’s a memory.”

Considering the colour palette, framing and lensing choices, Seiple’s lighting package was quite humble.

“We rigged a lot of LiteMats to ceilings and had lots of Astera Titan Tubes swapped for fluorescents. We would constantly create walls of LiteMats, like 20x2feet long, as well as using ARRI SkyPanels to create 4x20-feet walls of light. In general, we had to light fairly broadly because of how the story is told,” recalls the cinematographer. “I also had Astera AX3 LightDrops for eye lights and doubling for security lights constantly flashing in some scenes. Plus, a lot of DS 9s in either DS

3 mode or in the cube mode. The only time I used HMI was during the fanny pack fight because we were shooting in winter and lost sun at 4pm. We would then bounce 18K into the ceiling to kind of mimic the ambience that we had lost.”

When it came to the DI, they had everything they needed to enhance what was done on-set and maintain the continuity between the universes.

“We graded for two-and-half weeks. Because it was a crazy shoot and we were always trying to push for bigger and bolder choices, so we did lots of enhancing saturation, shifting colours, making the skin look good, so that we feel the different colours of the flesh, making the characters feel human and less washed-out, which is always the danger with digital cameras,” explains Seiple. “We also added some halation and grain to soften the image and make it a bit more timeless.”

Despite depicting badass IRS guards brawling with spiky objects up their butts (yes, this has a logical explanation), or weaponising rubber penises in a typical Daniels’ manner that might be considered offensive if it was not so damn funny, Everything Everywhere All At Once received numerous accolades since its theatrical release in March 2022. Including six Golden Globe nominations and possibly a few Oscar nods. Maybe because people seek original stuff that pushes the envelope, or maybe because the film’s overlying message – to be kind to others – is so banal that these days it seems almost revolutionary. Seiple is proud of the work regardless of the film’s success. “I’ll say ‘yes’ sight unseen to any project The Daniels will do. They’re unique and that’s kind of what I look forward to – working directors like them, or Hiro Murai, people who are basically good human beings.”