Michael (Sebastian Rudolph) is Michael. Speaking how we think French people would speak. In an interview on Zoom, the Playtech team spoke to the producers and some of the cast of the psychological thriller 1899. . But first, EPs Shannon Burke, Jonas and Josh Pate tell us all about the Season 3 finale. Those visual changes are built on the foundation of a braided narrative that stretches out across all three seasons of Dark. Ideas planted early in the series run return as the show moves toward its poignant ending. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. Also for [Lisa] because it was so iconic for Jonas as his character. At the same time, the refugee crisis was happening in Europe [around 2015/2016] and it was a very unstable phase. Friese: I think its something about growing up in Europe, or growing up as a German, when you consume entertainment, which, at least in our experience, is coming largely from Hollywood. But this is a big, new toy and not a lot of people have used it yet. It's just the camera trick. We really wanted to get every culture, all the languages, right and not have people speaking in clichs. Im still not sure about the percentage, but its probably 10 percent [of the mysteries] we are not goiong to answer just for the fun of it, but they will be smaller. But where they're going isn't to a different time period; she clicks a device and suggests they're going to a different world. One reference we did not use, and not because we dont like the film, because we loved it when it came out, wasTitanic. Two weeks after the release of Season 1, I was on Twitter honestly 24 hours a day. And I dont want to spoil the meaning of that yet. If seeing an entire reality flipped in the last season of Dark seemed jarring, know that it felt just as dissonant to the people helping to bring it to life. Netflix has yet to address the viewership for Season 2 since it was only released recently on June 21, but the show is already in production for its third and final season, which will air sometime in 2020. The entire script was in English, but everything was dual dialogue. Is the final season truly the final season, or will the cycle continue, as it does ad infinitum within the context of the story? It's a highly rewarding if not particularly easy viewing experience, being at times hilariously confusing, especially if you're not a German speaker and are busy reading subtitles while new faces appear on screen. Multinational immigrants traveling from the old continent to the new encounter a nightmarish riddle aboard a second ship adrift on the open sea. Its what we love about this thing. According to Friese, creating the mythology of one of their shows is a long, painstaking process. All Rights Reserved. ", Triangular symbols, such as those used in alchemy to denote the four elements, have popped up in the promo materials for the show so far. And that's the same here again, now with the pattern pyramid and the triangles. Interviews with leading film and TV creators about their process and craft. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! The entire first season was filmed at the Dark Bay LED studio on the Studio Babelsberg lot outside Berlin. 2023 IndieWire Media, LLC. By the end of Season 2, we're dealing with a number of different time periods spanning more than 100 years but we're also introduced, in the last seconds of the finale, to the possibility of an entirely new and potentially identical dimension. You will have something very personal toward the story. For two or four weeks I was completely lost to the world.. One must watch it. Sometimes its just a table or a column in the dining room, or in a landscape, maybe a hill, to create depth. After that, it goes straight to the computer. How did the script work did you write in German and then have things translated? Do I actually have free will? "When we. But now Im fine. And then we try to find a world of symbols that all ties into our theme," she says. Friese: I completely agree. Ahead, EW sat down with the creators to pick their brains about all of that and solve the mysteries of what viewers can ultimately expect when 1899 drops on Netflix on Nov. 17. Jantje Friese: What we really liked about 1899, not 1898 or 1897, is that it's on a threshold. Friese credits casting director Simone Br for the series uncanny casting coups. So that is like five pages of conversation between the writer, the translator, the language expert: Here should they say tu or vous? It became a really complicated process. Literally, it's bad. bo Odar:Another good example is the word ambitious. There were some really tough choices to be made, especially in the in the editing room. Halle Bailey, Melissa McCarthy, and director Rob Marshall share the tale behind making their underwater musical with a groundbreaking Disney princess. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Did the actors all know about the ending? . Its nice that this is built upon something that we created and someone else will come up with a new idea and so on. Especially with a show like Dark, which does close so many of those open loopholes, theres always a certain amount of desire to stay with those characters and see what happens after the turmoil has subsided. bo OdarBut lets not forget thatDarkwas three seasons. In every season there is what I always call a bridge episode, because to me its like the bridge in a song Friese said. The international cast includes Darkalum Andreas Pietschmann, Emily Beecham, Aneurin Barnard, Fflyn Edwards, Miguel Bernardeau, Maciej Musial, Lucas Lynggaard Tnnesen, Rosalie Craig, Clara Rosager, Maria Erwolter, Yann Gael, Mathilde Ollivier, Jos Pimento, Isabella Wei, Gabby Wong, Jonas Bloquet, Alexandre Willaume, and Anton Lesser, among others. Old Ines (Angela Winkler) in actual life has a mole, so you put that on younger Ines when you tried to make them match.. We asked creators Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar as many of those questions as we could. It takes 60 seconds to spin and its a huge turntable. When you write, how do you plot things out? So every riddle we put in there, we feel we have to solve it, she said. But usually, its the theme that starts the whole process. We said, this is a determined world, or it's based on determinism. Were going to see a bit more about grown Ulrich, she said. More scientific-oriented thinking started [influencing society] while you still had very religious beliefs [also prevalent], and those two things pulled on each other, old and new. I personally feel that a lot of very great philosophers came out of from German history. If you turn that upside down, its 666, the number of the beast, so its magical too. Like if one stone starts to roll, and hits another and that ends up leading to the First World War. Then, of course, just like in Dark, we have a big philosophical theme at the center of it all about perception and reality. Im obsessed with history, seeing how everything is related to each other, seeing the reasons for things. Anything else would have felt like stretching it unnecessarily and making it more complicated on a narrative level. It's all rooted in one core idea. I need 360 degrees. Thats when the idea came to use a turntable so you can swap things in easily. "Because there are so many layers of science philosophy and metaphysics and spiritual stuff, and it was quite interesting to see that they are all actually talking about the same thing, just from different angles. How do I free myself from my reactions to certain impulses? It gives this other world a huge chance. [Editors Note: The following contains spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of Dark.]. We had to get cars from England for some shots where the steering wheel had to be on the other side. "I would say it's a drama mystery show, or maybe a mystery thriller. We thought it better to shift the puzzle pieces around. That was the thing Claudia wanted to achieve. For answers to those questions and more, The Hollywood Reporter turned to Odar and Friese for a closer look at the final season of Dark. How did the idea come about for 1899? But you keep checking: Is it still working with the theme or do you need to shift that a bit? Where does he come from? No one is just evil because they want to be; everyone is reacting to their own hurts and wounds. Everything happens constantly in loops. You can change anything. bo Odar: We always think any piece of pop culture should be a reference to some other element of pop culture. There are a lot of symbols throughout, a lot of referencing systems in terms of religion, mythology.. ", Odar mentioned that it was a children's book on quantum physics that finally made it all make sense to him sort of. Also, we actually thought about putting some of the stuff thats now in Season 3 into Season 2, but then decided to move it backwards. Odar says there were two reasons why they opted to use this new technology, which has been used previously on shows such as Disney+'s The Mandalorian. You can never give a satisfying answer. What it's like to film a show in multiple-languages. Make sure to check outEW's Fall TV Preview cover story as well as all of our2022 Fall TV Preview content, releasing over 22 days through Sept. 29. The ultimate example of that is Season 2s epic revelation that police chief Charlottes (Karoline Eichhorn) mother is actually her daughter Elisabeth (Carlotta von Falkenhayn) through more time travel shenanigans. So, in moving forward, lets assume you have watched all of Dark. In Season 1, one of the biggest revelations once time travel is introduced is that teenager Jonas (Louis Hofmann) realizes that the young boy Mikkel (Daan Lennard Liebrenz) who disappears from Winden in 2019, has actually gone back in time to 1986 where he then met and eventually married Jonas mother. Baran bo Odar:We told them from the get-go; it was already in the script. We didnt try to make it easier. What were the biggest challenges in establishing the parallel world? The Film Industry Lost Some Titans This Year What Happens Now? Why dont we have that?. "And then after the third season of Dark, there was this huge pressure on our shoulders, because everyone has expectations, and everyone kind of either wants to go on the same ride or kind of the same ride. Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter. I think you have to watch carefully, because every little piece means something. Then they were: No, no, we love it.. Now I can spoil it: There is already a hint in Episode 1 when everyone is raising their teacup at the same moment. In Season 3, the seventh episode is where we basically fill in all those last puzzle pieces. When Jantje Frieseand her partner Baran bo Odar created their German-language science fiction series "Dark" for Netflix, they had no idea that it would become an international hit. Although the show begins as the story of international immigrants on a steamship headed to America at the turn of the 20th century, by the end of the season we learn that the ship was a simulation, and our protagonists are actually on a spaceship in the year 2099. Weve talked to a lot of people whove had the opportunity to see the first six episodes, and its kind of half and half. Once you rewatch it, its obviously great fun to find all of those little things. And then something thats quite important for series, especially compared to movies, is the whole world-building process. In the Eliott Sumner version we use in the title sequence, the line that features so prominently is feed your head. That was such an important phrase for the entire show that it felt like the absolute right fit. 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And though he believes it's the way of the future of filmmaking, Odar stresses that it was still a ton of work. By making this choice and what you read into it, youre learning something about yourself. Just opening Final Draft took like five minutes because of all those script notes. It was one of those pictures youre drawn to, where you immediately start asking questions: What did he do with that hammer? (!!!!). Thats the beauty of storytelling. You were really, like, lovesick after filming was done. You see Adam blowing wind on the one world, and on the other, you see Eva blowing wind on the other world. This Article is related to: Television and tagged Dark, Jantje Friese, Netflix, TV Interviews. How difficult was it to interact with the actors when youre performing in a language you dont understand? The two resulting timelines are more than just metaphorical reflections of each other. If you're ready, you can also read our series finale recap and explainer. For instance, the ship's dining room, which is a pivotal set piece on the show, was not an actual physical room that they built. In the first season ofDark we still had stuff on the walls, but no one ever looked at it. Its heart-wrenching and really put a lot of press pressure on Season 2. Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! When you see them in life and flesh, they dont look that much alike. Some of it was something that we developed throughout the process. Its both hopeful and ominous at the same time. There was something fascinating about exactly that moment in time. In other [projects] weve done before, we dont like to end on a dot. We planted it everywhere, but no one saw it yet. From Barbie to The Flash, Here Are the Movies That Made the Biggest Impact at CinemaCon. Netflix took over that idea and build another Volume set in Mexico using a turntable tool. We thought that was would be easier. "When I read it, I was like, 'I finally got it!' Odar: We always wanted to plant computer wording. While the closing chapter features answers to some of those questions, the episode before that is the one that holds the key to more than a few loose ends that have been lingering for fans of the show. I used the wrong hand! (Laughs.) But were not going to solve every riddle because sometimes its funnier [that way]. But those limitations are actually amazing, because its still a tool to create illusion. It was really challenging for us in the third season to establish another world with maybe even other timelines, too. To mirror the world we know, we could either do that by rebuilding all of the sets. Netflix was even kind enough to share a 10-minute catch-up video in the week ahead of the final season's release. And then, looking at expression and body language, and all these things, you get an understanding of the performance. The following interview discusses Season 3 of the Netflix . "It was really nice that [Dark] was so well received, especially because it is a very weird, complex show in general," Odar admits. [Note: The following interview discusses Season 3 of the Netflix series Dark.]. What do all the triangles and pyramids mean? At first, they were like, Really? Related In a time where new genre television content feels rare and must be savored at all costs, one specific rabid fandom has a show to sell you on: Dark, Netflixs German time travel thriller from creators Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. The series certainly promises to be as mind-bending as Dark. Was it a challenge for the actors themselves, who are often performing opposite someone whose language they dont understand? We had a lot of photography from really weird people with very strange lighting setups that created a very interesting isolation of the figures in the images.