Behind the Scenes of Us

(upbeat music) - The idea for "Us" came when I was on a book tour.

It was a great privilege, but I was seeing a lot of cities for the first time, and often seeing them very briefly.

So there was an element of stress and panic to it, and I wanted to write about a European journey that was funny and at times farcical.

You see, this is why we got up early, to beat the crowds.

- [Albie] This holiday, are we gonna do anything spontaneous?

- Seriously though, we're due at the Anne Frank house at five, so if wanna see the tulip- - Hello Petersens!

- Oh, Christ.

- I could show you the real Amsterdam.

- Ah no, no we don't have time for the real Amsterdam, we're seeing this one.

- I know Amsterdam pretty well, I'm always struck by the architecture and the details in the buildings, and to be able to hang out here and be our characters in and amongst all this beautiful scenery, it's a real pleasure.

- Shooting out of sequence was very challenging.

Walking in a door in Amsterdam which then turns into a staircase in Paris, which then turns into a bedroom back in the studio in London.

(bright music) - Well, for us as an art department, and quite a small art department, it has been really challenging, because we've got nearly 200 locations, we're in five countries over two timelines.

To create those timelines faithfully and get the sense of geographical accuracy, that's been our main challenge.

And what we had to work out is which interiors we'd do in each country, and which locations we were going to split back to the UK.

So for instance, with the Paris hotel, we did our exteriors in Paris, we created a breakfast room in Hatfield.

- It was almost like a mini studio, We had the Petersen's when they were younger, their apartment was one floor, and then you bought downstairs and there was a Paris restaurant, and you walk along the corridor, there was a Venetian hotel bedroom.

The first journey they take is by Eurostar to Paris, we went on the train with them and we filmed on the Eurostar.

- We had quite a lot of material to shoot in a completely finite amount of time.

Douglas had to say, "We're in France," exactly now as we came out of the Eurotunnel.

There was only one chance to get that, that was quite stressful, though exciting.

- We completed a scene about a minute or two minutes before we pulled into the station.

It enabled us to make it to really feel hopefully as if we're all on the journey with them.

- It's not unnatural, two adults talking about relationships.

- It is unnatural, I'm your son.

- Went to Paris, I'd never been to Paris before.

There for a few days and that's really nice.

Just huge, it's just massive, Paris.

- Trottinettes we had, oh that was hilarious.

Bicycles, I like bike.

I mean I had a great time on those things.

(upbeat music) - I've never been to Amsterdam before, and to explore a city in this way is really cool, 'cause we get to shoot in locations that you maybe wouldn't get to go to.

- Because Amsterdam is becoming very popular to film in, and it's difficult to get a location, key in actually getting the permission from the council's to have a good location manager and good production team.

- We're in Barcelona, if we'd been here a longer time, we would've been able to see it all.

But as you can see, all the buildings are really cool.

There's loads of little alleyways.

- I think Barcelona, actually the nicest thing was a place called Bic a very Catalan town, but a very old town.

We turned up in Venice and we were filming on water taxis coming down the Grand Canal - For me, Venice is just such a treat.

Freya.

- I'm Douglas.

- Filming at night in cities is terribly difficult.

Filming on the water, filming on public transport all of these things are an absolute nightmare.

There's some very ingenious scheduling and design work that has allowed us to give an impression of perhaps more time abroad than we actually had.

- We were very keen to ensure that there was a sort of elegance to all the choices of how we shot.

We used a lot of Steadicam.

- We had a different production company in each city we were in, so from a logistical point of view, it was incredibly complex.

Each city had its own sense of magic.

- And so to Walk up a street in Amsterdam and go into the cafe that they're in, and not have to think, "Okay right, what would it be like to sit in a cafe?"

There's noise outside, there's a canal over there, you don't have to do any of that, it's a dream.

- It's lovely to be filming on location, where you can really immerse yourself in the whole story.

- There was quite a lot of stress, but it was relieved every time you looked up at the amazing place you were in, if you remembered to.