Time Capsule
Catherine Hardwicke
THE TWILIGHT DIRECTOR ON IMAGES FROM HER ECLECTIC CAREER
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT
“I’VE HAD SO many beautiful actors and fun, wonderful experiences,” says Catherine Hardwicke at the end of her Time Capsule experience. She’s not wrong — Hardwicke is talking to Empire from her Los Angeles living room, just a few feet away from where she shot a screen test for the first Twilight movie with a young Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. “MTV came over and filmed an episode there,” she says. “I want to get a plaque there. That would be cool.” Before and after Twilight, Hardwicke’s career has yielded an array of interesting movies, with eye-catching images.
LOVE FIELD
TWILIGHT 2008
“This meadow scene was beloved by the fans, so how do you live up to that? We actually had some weather problems when we were shooting in Oregon, and I begged to reshoot this scene in LA. I told the producers, ‘This is the biggest scene in the book, we’ve got to get it right.’ We shot it in Griffith Park. We created a nice meadow in these redwood trees. We had a TechnoCrane and we were really trying to feel it and let Rob and Kristen sink into the beautiful grass and into the moment. But Rob and Kristen had such strong chemistry. They had this chemistry read, and I saw this magic between the two of them.”