Interesting interview with the boys here. Some cool observations about Nic and an interesting concept for the movie that fell through.

http://io9.com/5850432/

Why there aren’t flaming hookers in Ghost Rider 2

In addition to checking out the new Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance footage screened at New York Comic Con, io9 had the opportunity to chat with Crank directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.

The guys told us about fiery mining equipment, the supervillain Blackout's new look, and the hellfire ladies of the night who didn't make the final cut.

At San Diego Comic Con, you guys promised that mining equipment would turn demonic whenever Ghost Rider took the wheel. How does one design hellspawn mining equipment?

Mark Neveldine: It was German engineering, actually.

Brian Taylor: You basically standard mining equipment, add eight or nine shots of tequila, and it begins to talk shape. The idea is that anything he rides becomes hellfire.

What was the dynamic on-set between Nicolas Cage (Johnny Blaze) and Idris Elba (Moreau the drunken monk)?

Brian Taylor: That's two awesome individuals going head-to-head. I think there was a little bit of one-upsmanship between these two really powerful personalities. They definitely brought the best out in each other, and you could definitely feel they both had to be on their A-plus game when the other guy was working.

Spirit of Vengeance was shot in Cappadocia, a very visually striking region of Turkey. What sequences did you film there?

Mark Neveldine: It's this mystical place where he goes to get the demon exorcised from his body and soul.

Brian Taylor: It's where the church behind the church lies.

Mark Neveldine: It looks like it's in the real world, but it's nothing you've ever seen before. We've never seen Cappadocia in film before, even though it's possibly the most spectacular place you've ever seen. Nobody shoots there. This will be the first time I can think of.

As films like Crank and Gamer demonstrate, you have a frenetic directorial aesthetic. How did you guys develop your hallmark style?

Mark Neveldine: It came out of our ADD, our low-budget filmmaking, where you're desperate and have to be incredibly creative because you have no money. You just have to find ways to shoot, some times we shot on rollerblades, sometimes we shot hanging out of cars. We found a style and a lensing that we really liked. We stuck with it because it worked for us — we love that in-camera feeling.

And you maintained this guerilla approach for Ghost Rider?

Mark Neveldine: All the time — we shot hanging off of wires off of cliffs, rollerblading behind motorcycles and tow trucks on highways in the middle of Turkey.

Brian Taylor: You could tell when something's CG. Even if it's really cool, you feel a little safe watching it. The theory that we've always gone by is to put the camera in dangerous places. Every shoot's a series of close calls. We had a couple injuries, a couple airlifts, but it all got on screen and should be fun to watch.

Mark Neveldine: We sent some men to hospitals in Turkey.

Could you give us a little background on your depiction of the villain Blackout?

Brian Taylor: You can see him a little bit in the teaser. He's loosely based on Blackout from the comics, but we've expanded on him a little bit. We gave him some new powers and abilities he didn't have in the comic, but really at the heart of it is a really weird, f***ed-up performance by Johnny Whitworth.

Mark Neveldine: No CG for the character. We worked with [make-up artist] Christien Tinsley who worked on Crank 2 and Passion of the Christ. He went all prosthetics with Blackout, and he created this awesome-looking demon.

Speaking of Crank, when will we see Chev Chelios again? Crank: High Voltage ended with him in a weird place.

Brian Taylor: He ended kind of as Ghost Rider, actually. We have a lot of ideas for Crank 3. Some day it's going to happen, but like the apocalypse, there's no real prediction of when that's going to be!

Finally, were there any designs or concepts that were deemed too outlandish for Ghost Rider?

Mark Neveldine: The three-headed monk, I guess.

Brian Taylor: I'm probably going to talk about the, uh, flaming hookers.

No, please, tell us! We'd love to hear about that.

Brian Taylor: Well, anything he rides he turns into a hell-vehicle, so we figured that might work with a...

Mark Neveldine: A working woman. That might work with a hooker, hellified.

Wow. Did this make it to the concept art stages?

Mark Neveldine: It was part of a really elaborate pitch to the studio that didn't quite happen.

Brian Taylor: We lost horribly.

What was the reaction to that particular idea?

Mark Neveldine: It was like, "Interesting. Very creative, boys."

LOL, this one is cool and funny at the same time

All these NYCC Neveldine and Taylor interviews add something new to the mix, in this one from SuperHeroHype they talk about GR2 post production, the soundtrack and more!

http://www.superherohype.com/features/articles/168672-nycc-exclusive-interview-neveldinetaylor-on-ghost-rider-spirit-of-vengeance

SuperHeroHype: We spoke a couple of months ago in San Diego and in the time since then, you've been working on finishing the movie. What's been taking up the most time in terms of the post? Is it just getting the FX right?
Mark Neveldine: Absolutely. Working with Iloura, dealing with all the FX. You just go through so many different layers and levels and takes of it until you're happy with it and then, of course, dealing with 3D, and all the different stuff. Sound. This is a much bigger movie than we've ever worked on.
Brian Taylor: It's almost like making the movie twice. You're out there shooting for six months and then you're in post for six months. Or three times, 'cause it's 3D.

SHH: Do you already have an edit of the movie done and it's just a matter of getting everything else done or is the editing still in the process?
Taylor: Well, they say you never really finish a movie. They just pull it away from you. You can keep tweaking and editing and tweaking and editing and with something like this, with the 3D and the FX and the sound and the music, you always think you're done with it but then there's more and then there's more and then there's more. It's a really complicated movie. It's fun, but there's a lot that goes into it.

SHH: Even with "Crank," it feels like you're doing a lot of processing. Were you a lot more hands-on with that stuff?
Neveldine: Yeah, "Crank" movies are much more hands-on, but it's much more in-camera.
Taylor: Yeah, "Crank" didn't have a lot of CG

SHH: But you did processing in the edit.
Neveldine: Yeah, but color-timing stuff is a piece of cake. You're talking about two or three days of work as opposed to with VFX in "Ghost Rider," it was probably six or seven months easily.
Taylor: Yeah, sometimes you thought of a shot a year ago and you don't see it for a week before its due a year later. These things can take a long time for these guys.

SHH: What's been the most surprising thing about this process and working on a bigger movie like this?
Neveldine: I don't think anything really surprised us about it. The one thing I think was how great the FX were from Iloura. We were so nervous because we've never had any money to really make movies. You're sub-contracting out to all these VFX companies and you're getting some cool shots here and there, but you're never really… "Ah, it's not exactly what I wanted" but Iloura hit us with shots that were not only exactly what we wanted but better, so that was really cool. That was a really fun experience.
Taylor: With a movie like this, we really wanted the Ghost Rider to be a more intimidating presence. We didn't want the way the Ghost Rider looked to be jokey and silly like he may have been in the first movie. In order to do that, we were looking for a level of photo-realism in the Ghost Rider shots, that's something we haven't really done before. If you kind of get 2/3rds of the way there but you don't really get there, then the whole effect we were trying to get falls apart. So there's a lot of quality control of making sure that every shot really hit the bar of getting that photo-real, you're right there with him.

SHH: Have you guys changed the way you work to get this done? One guy focuses on the music or sound while the other focuses on FX?
Taylor: Not really. We never really delegated anything. We just go in and… the thing about being a director is that you just have to have an opinion.
Neveldine: We try to get a lot of people who are better than us. (laughs) We try to get a whole team of people who can just get the work done and make it great, and hopefully we get what we brained up.

SHH: Have you guys found a lot of Ghost Rider fans either among the FX team or animators who are psyched about doing "Ghost Rider"?
Neveldine: Yeah!
Taylor: There's Ghost Rider fans all over…
Neveldine: Our sound team loves Ghost Rider, huge fans.
Taylor: And we're feeling like there's a lot of wind behind our sails in terms of people wanting to see a version of the Ghost Rider that they didn't feel they got before and a version that was darker and scarier and kinda nastier and more awesome, I guess.

SHH: What are you guys doing for music? You had a pretty coup for "Crank 2" when you got Mike Patton doing the soundtrack. What are you doing for this one? More conventional?
Taylor: No, it's a composer called Dave Sardy.
Neveldine: He did something called "Zombieland."

SHH: Oh, wow. I know Dave from when I used to do music 'cause I worked on a couple of Barkmarket records. He's awesome!
Taylor: Then you know what a beast he is and he's perfect for this. He's able to do big cinematic kind of things but he can do rock that is legitimate rock and not a composer trying to rock out. His stuff is muscular and bad-ass and cool.

SHH: Yeah, I really liked the stuff he produced and then when he started doing soundtracks like "21" and "Zombieland," I was like, "Wow, he's really good at this sh*t."
Neveldine: He is really good and you're gonna love the score for this, it's an awesome score.

SHH: Have you guys thought at all about what you want to do next or is it a matter of finishing this movie? I think doing "Crank 5" was the joke you guys made the last time we spoke.
Neveldine: I think we're going to jump right to "Crank 10" - skip all and dive into that, but yeah, we're still thinking about it.

SHH: Are you going to have Jason in make-up as a 70 year old?
Taylor: Yeah, "Crank" 3 through 9 we just decided were really boring movies at the end of the day, so we want to make a quantum leap and go to 10.

SHH: Do you guys generally have time to write and do that process while finishing this movie?
Taylor: The good thing about writing is it's not actually like writing with a pencil. We actually get to use word processors and software and stuff, so it enables you to write really fast, so you can go "cut" and "paste."
Neveldine: You can cut and paste from the internet. Like if someone's got some cool sh*t there, you can just cut and paste that into your script.
Taylor: Yeah, you don't even really need to know how to spell because they have a thing on that you can press and then it fixes all your words.

SHH: Twitter is great because you can just randomize anything you read on Twitter into your script. (At this point, all three of us start riffing ideas of how this Twitter-written movie might work, though we won't bore you with that.) Can you guys give a hint of what we're going to see today?
Neveldine: A cool behind-the-scenes clip showing the down and dirty way that we shoot and then after that, we're going to come out there and watch the 3D trailer that I think only has been seen - I don't think this version has ever been seen, but similar to the one that was seen at San Diego. It's not online, this version is not online.

SHH: I don't think they've ever done a 3D presentation at the IGN Theater.
Neveldine: Really? Yes!
Taylor: If the 3D doesn't work, we might tip the screen over into the audience

Ah, what an awesome interview ! thanks nextmove and thanks for posting meg! I love these guys, they are funny and you can see their brainboxes are whirring with inspiring stuff and and sparks flying with creativity! 

Lula Argante wrote:

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The new Ghost Rider in the comic is female eva! cool huh!

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 indeed cool! but isn't there a male ghost rider anymore in the comics?

Lady Trueheart wrote:

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I can so imagine Nic sleeping on a hill near Vlad the Impaler's castle, can't you! Would you have the nerve?

I think this is the castle here.

http://www.draculascastle.com/index3.html

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 Lol! Yes! I can!! more pics of Bran castle here in this earlier topic Lady Trueheart:

http://www.cagealotcastle.com/t37807818/ghost-rider-spirit-of-vengeance-news/?page=3&sort=newestFirst

I may be wrong but if remember correctly there is another vlad castel that is in ruins.

There were rumours way back at the beginning of filming of the castle appearing, or Johnny Blaze / Ghost Rider riding up to the castle gates! I so hope that happens!

check out this Brian Taylor interview, from the collection of recently released on set Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance interviews!

http://collider.com/brian-taylor-ghost-rider-2-spirit-of-vengeance-interview/135033/

it is all cool..but this stands out:

Quote:

Nic was saying that a lot of the things in here are very trippy, so I’m just curious if there are particular scenes that stand out as super-trippy to you?

Taylor: In this movie? There’s a lot. Well this exorcism scene is going to be excellent. We shot half of it this morning and we shoot half of it at the end, but we’re really welcoming… you know there’s like two different versions of Nicolas Cage. There’s sort of mainstream Cage and there’s balls-to-the-wall Cage, and we’re definitely welcoming the demon. The performance we’re getting from Cage, it’s going to be one of those epic Nic Cage performances that people talk about.

Thank you for posting Lady A! it appears to be part of the same interview I just posted, lots of press got to inteview the cast and filmmakers at the time of shooting and all the interviews are being released now..and some press sometimes reprint interviews as their own! 

That was great to read! I really enjoyed it! Love what they say about Nic so much.

"He’s a super talented guy who has no ego in his concept."