Kate Beckinsale may be back in the familiar tight-fitting clothing of her vampire character Selene, but there is one change she's had to adapt to on Underworld: Awakening : two directors.
“When I first met with them I thought, 'I wonder how that is going to work.' But they have a real system where one of them directs on a Monday and then the other one directs on Tuesday,” Beckinsale explained, describing it as, “really cool.”
Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein first met each other as young children and made their first movie together ( Wednesday The 11th ) when they we were fifteen.
“We started working professionally together 10 years ago because we got the same script on the same day. We saw it like, 'This is a sign, you know? We should do this together.'” Mårlind told Shock Till You Drop .
"The thing was that we knew that other directors are focused: one guy would focus on camera, the other on performances. We realised that we both like the same thing. So, we said, 'Let's do it every second day,'” Mårlind continues.
“When Björn directs, I'm just his best buddy, which means that I'm helping him and sometimes I can tell him, 'you've got it, move on' or 'maybe you should punch in here and get a closer thing.' I'm prepared to talk to producers or the production designer, while he's taking care of the fire of the day and the next day, we change. Then I'm directing and he's my best buddy.”
“The one that is not directing is kind of silent and doesn't say anything. I thought they would never be able to keep that up, it must be really difficult but they really do,” says Beckinsale. “The advantage is that you get somebody who may have possibly been incredibly frustrated the day before and is so desperate to have his turn that they are full of enthusiasm.”
“It's funny because when fellow directors hear about this they go, 'Goddamn, that sounds great!' But you need to have someone who you've known since you were kids because it's about taste and trust," Mårlind adds.
