My name is Marielle Heller.
I'm the director
of 'A Beautiful Day
in the Neighborhood.'
"And trolley.
Action."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So this scene is when Matthew
Rhys's character, Lloyd
Vogel, has shown
up to the studio
to meet Fred Rogers
for the first time.
And they've had their
first very short interview,
and he has a chance
to watch them
film one of the episodes
from the Neighborhood
in the Land of Make Believe.
"Hello, Lady Aberlin."
"Oh, hi, Daniel."
So technically, it was
a very tricky scene.
We filmed what we called
'inside the show.'
Anything that was in
the program, we filmed
on these Ikegami cameras,
these tube cameras
that were just like the
original cameras they
filmed the real program on.
We had a live feed
going to these monitors,
and then we were filming
on a digital Alexa camera,
so we were capturing
two physical formats
of the show at the same time.
So all of the
cameras that you're
seeing that look
like props, they're
actually working cameras
that are also filming
the program inside the show.
And we wanted to recreate
the way they really made
the show, so we filmed it in
the actual studio where they
filmed 'Mr. Rogers'
Neighborhood' originally
in Pittsburgh.
We recreated the set in
the exact same orientation
that they had it as
well and really looked
at plans of where they would
have had their cameras,
and then we set up our cameras
sort of one step behind that
so we could kind of
pull back and watch
the making of the show.
"(SINGING) When the whole
wide world seems oh so wrong
and nothing you do
seems very right."
But we didn't want to
get too bogged down
with the technical
aspects of this scene
because what's actually
happening in the scene
is Lloyd is having a very big
emotional turning point that
starts to happen to
him there, and that's
more important than any of
the technical aspects that
are happening.
"(SINGING) I can stop when
I want to, can stop when I
wish."
And then my secret
is Tom Hanks
didn't actually know
that I was focusing
on him for this scene.
He thought we were
really just focusing
on Daniel Tiger and Lady
Aberlin and the scene
as it was being captured
for the program,
but we were on Zoom lenses,
which means the camera wasn't
actually pushing toward him.
We were just zooming into him.
He figured it out
after a few takes,
but he was so
busy concentrating
on the puppeteering
that he was actually
doing that he was not
really very aware of what he
was doing inside that clock.
And so we used
one of the takes
before he realized that I
was actually focusing on him.
"Thank you, Lady Aberlin."
"Thank you, Daniel."
"I feel better."
"Oh, I'm so glad."
