The Twilight Saga Eclipse: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion

Copyright

Motion Picture Artwork TM & © 2010 by Summit Entertainment, LLC, unless otherwise credited

Text copyright © 2010 by Little, Brown and Company

Complete work copyright © 2010 Summit Entertainment, LLC, and Little, Brown and Company

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: June 2010

ISBN: 978-0-316-12821-6

To Stephenie Meyer, David Slade, and the entire cast and crew who brought the world of ECLIPSE to life; And to Edris Dade, who shared all those TWILIGHT moments in the dark…

—M.C.V.

A major feature film can be made up of hundreds of talented artists representing various crafts and disciplines. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is no exception.

The following gave insights into the broad strokes of making this film, and we thank them for the generosity of their time and their enthusiasm for the work:

ROB FRIEDMAN, CO-CHAIRMAN AND CEO, SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

PATRICK WACHSBERGER, CO-CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT, SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

DAVID SLADE, DIRECTOR

MELISSA ROSENBERG, SCREENWRITER

WYCK GODFREY, PRODUCER

KAREN ROSENFELT, PRODUCER

BILL BANNERMAN, CO-PRODUCER

JAVIER AGUIRRESAROBE, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

PAUL DENHAM AUSTERBERRY, PRODUCTION DESIGNER

TISH MONAGHAN, COSTUME DESIGNER

JEREMY BALL, PRODUCTION VISUAL EFFECTS COORDINATOR

PHIL TIPPETT, VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR, TIPPETT STUDIO

TOM GIBBONS, ANIMATION SUPERVISOR, TIPPETT STUDIO

ERIC LEVEN, VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR, TIPPETT STUDIO

JON COWLEY, VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR, IMAGE ENGINE

ROBIN HACKL, SEQUENCE SUPERVISOR AND ON-SET PLATE SUPERVISOR, IMAGE ENGINE

SHAWN WALSH, VISUAL EFFECTS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, IMAGE ENGINE

CHARLES PORLIER, MAKEUP DESIGNER

JOANN FOWLER, MAKEUP HEAD, SECOND UNIT

GINA SHERRITT, KEY HAIRSTYLIST

ALEX BURDETT, SPECIAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR

JOHN STONEHAM JR., STUNT COORDINATOR

JONATHAN EUSEBIO, FIGHT COORDINATOR

KIMBERLEY FRENCH, SET PHOTOGRAPHER

DOANE GREGORY, PHOTOGRAPHER, SECOND UNIT

ERIK FEIG, PRESIDENT OF PRODUCTION & ACQUISITIONS, SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

GILLIAN BOHRER, VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCTION, SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

ANDI ISAACS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND HEAD OF PHYSICAL PRODUCTION, SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT

All around us, my friends and neighbors and petty enemies ate and laughed and swayed to the music, oblivious to the fact that they were about to face horror, danger, maybe death.

Because of me. ¹

INTRODUCTION

E·CLIPSE (i-KLIPS): 1. to cause an eclipse of; darken or obscure 2. to obscure the fame or glory of; overshadow; out-shine; surpass.

—WEBSTER'S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY

Icy droplets spattered against my face as the rain began to fall.

It was too dark to see much besides the black triangles of the spruces leaning and shaking with the wind. But I strained my eyes anyway, searching for other shapes in the storm. A pale silhouette, moving like a ghost through the black… or maybe the shadowy outline of an enormous wolf…. My eyes were too weak.

Then there was a movement in the night, right beside me. Edward slid through my open window, his hands colder than the rain.

"Is Jacob out there?" I asked, shivering as Edward pulled me into the circle of his arm.

"Yes...somewhere."

—FROM STEPHENIE MEYER'S ECLIPSE ²

Gathering Shadows

On a rainy night in Seattle, Washington, a figure pauses under an awning before stepping into the downpour. The streets are dark and deserted, but what quickens the step and chills the heart is an ominous shadow swooping in like the filmy reflection of a living nightmare. The shadow chases its prey to a dead end on the waterfront, and its teeth leave a crescent-moon-shaped bite mark that takes the victim's humanity, leaving a newly born vampire.

A thrill for fans, this sequence sets up one of the scenes written for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling THE TWILIGHT SAGA novels. Although Meyer's books unfold through the first-person perspective of Bella Swan, the high school student who dreams of being with her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen, for eternity, the victim in the film's opening scene is college student Riley Biers, who has been changed by Victoria. The red-haired and vicious Victoria still seeks revenge upon Edward and Bella for the death of her mate.

Riley becomes Victoria's tool to pluck fresh victims from the streets of Seattle to create a rampaging army of newborn vampires to descend on the town of Forks, Washington, and take vengeance on Bella and the Cullen clan. The creation of the newborns, which happened out of Bella's sight in the shadows of the novel, provided the filmmakers with an opportunity to enlarge on Meyer's mythology.

"In the first two movies, we've been appropriately slavish in having everything intimately seen from Bella's point of view," noted Melissa Rosenberg, screenwriter for all the film adaptations of THE TWILIGHT SAGA. "But for Eclipse, we got to go away from Bella's perspective a couple times, to explore some of the outside world in the context of the mythology."

"Since the books were written from Bella's point of view, anything that she doesn't see, or get told about, you don't know," observed The Twilight Saga: Eclipse director David Slade. "Part of our job as filmmakers was to imagine that stuff, which we did in close contact with Stephenie Meyer. The thing is, all these events, whether they've been written down in the novels or not, have taken place. How did Victoria and Riley meet, for example? Stephenie was amazing, in that she always knew what had happened."

As with the first two productions, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse would be faithful to the book, which raised the stakes for the romantic triangle of Bella, Edward, and Jacob Black, the teenage Quileute with the ability to "phase" into a werewolf. "The first film was about establishing the Twilight world and Bella being introduced to Edward," Slade said. "New Moon was about dealing with Bella's conflicted emotions about Jacob. Eclipse is about how complicated this world is now. As a result, the characters have to be more mature, the story is more mature. The decisions characters make in each scene will lead to life-or-death consequences."

Xavier Samuel as Riley Biers.

Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan, Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, and Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black.

"In the course of the film, Bella hears the stories of Rosalie and Jasper, spends time with her parents and friends—realizing she will have to say goodbye to them—and comes to terms with her real feelings for Jacob and the happy life she would undoubtedly have with him," said Summit vice president of production Gillian Bohrer. "Bella is forced to confront the realities of her choice. She can't have it all, but she can—with eyes wide open—choose the life she wants."

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse had a hard act to follow. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, released on November 20, 2009, had dramatically raised the profile of Summit Entertainment's franchise. Twilight had been a smash hit, with almost $400 million in worldwide box office, but New Moon almost doubled that—by mid-January 2010, the domestic box office topped $290 million, and the international box office was over $410 million, a staggering return for a production reportedly budgeted at $50 million. "The Twilight Saga franchise has been an incredible ride and we at Summit have always believed in the power of the characters and story that Stephenie Meyer created," said Summit co-chairman and chief executive officer Rob Friedman. "Translating these elements to film has been a wonderful challenge and we are pleased that with the second film we were able to grow the audience and fan base for The Twilight Saga."

Bella (Stewart) visits her mom (Sarah Clarke) in Florida.

But box office numbers were just a way of keeping score. The studio and the filmmakers were riding the wave of a pop culture phenomenon. "Twilighters" (one of the names bestowed upon the fervent fans) were a presence, both in the virtual realm of Internet blogs and fan sites, and on location—in the Portland, Oregon, area, where Twilight filmed during one of the worst winters in years, and on The Twilight Saga: New Moon sites, including the production's base in the Canadian city of Vancouver, British Columbia, and the medieval cobblestone streets of Montepulciano, in the Tuscany region of Italy.

Indeed, as the first decade of the twenty-first century drew to a close, vampires were shining in the pop culture firmament. In the wake of the first two wildly successful film adaptations of THE TWILIGHT SAGA, vampire-oriented material included the television shows The Vampire Diaries and True Blood and feature films such as Daybreakers. In fact, in 2007 David Slade had followed up his first feature, the 2005 release Hard Candy, with his own vampire epic, 30 Days of Night, based on a graphic novel about a pack of feral vampires who descend on a remote Alaskan town during its seasonal thirty days without sunlight.

Slade would be the third director for The Twilight Saga franchise. After the success of the first film, released on November 21, 2008, Summit quickly scheduled the second for theatrical release the following November. The production time line shrank even further with the June 30, 2010, release date for Eclipse. It created a revolving door, with preproduction on the next film beginning even as the previous film was in postproduction. It was physically impossible for one director to juggle two productions simultaneously. Summit Entertainment also determined that each of Meyer's books had its own distinctive atmosphere and story line, and it made sense to match the material with the appropriate director.

Director David Slade

Producer Wyck Godfrey and director of photography Javier Aguirresarobe on set.

"Twilight is raw and real and Catherine Hardwicke was the first director I met with and the only director for that movie," Summit president of production Erik Feig has noted. "New Moon has more complicated emotions, with bigger forces at work, and Chris Weitz was the director with the skill to show that. On Eclipse, the challenge is, how do you visualize and show an audience that a choice has consequences and that Bella is in a crucible of multiple decisions and options? Who can get that? David Slade." ³

"Director David Slade was the perfect choice," said Summit co-chairman and president Patrick Wachsberger. "He brought to the production a sharp visual sense and an edge to the storytelling that parallels what is going on in the lives of Bella, Edward, Jacob, and all the other characters that make up Eclipse."

Producer Wyck Godfrey was intrigued with Slade after seeing the director's low-budget independent debut feature. Hard Candy tells the story of a teenage girl who connects with an older man online and then holds him captive in his house to exact revenge for the dark secrets of his past. Although far from the gothic romance of Bella and Edward, that movie made Godfrey want to hire Slade for Eclipse.

"In Hard Candy, David really accessed [Ellen Page's] abilities and did a great job telling the story from the point of view of a teenage girl. In his next film, 30 Days of Night, David demonstrated how well he could handle intense, frightening action. While Eclipse, like the rest of The Twilight Saga, is told from Bella's point of view, it's also a much darker and more dangerous movie than New Moon. Given David's unique mix of talents, he was the perfect choice."

For Godfrey, selecting the right director was just the first step in the process of assembling a film crew. "Being a producer is like being a coach of a football team, where your job is to recruit the best players. The director is basically the quarterback, the player on the field who makes it all happen. But just as a quarterback might be better suited to a certain receiver or running back, you have to find [department heads and crew members who] play to the strength of the director.

"We ended up keeping Javier Aguirresarobe, our director of photography [DP] for The Twilight Saga: New Moon, because David Slade really liked his work. Then David had a production designer he had worked with, Paul Austerberry, and the shorthand they had developed helped David, who was being thrown into this machine that had already been built."

Austerberry, who had worked with Slade on 30 Days of Night, noted that the vampire worlds of the two films were like night and day. "The vampires [from 30 Days] are feral and vicious."

Meyer's vampire mythology isn't based on the classic malevolent night stalkers who perish in sunlight and must crawl into their coffins before daybreak. In the world of THE TWILIGHT SAGA