Transcription
The basic idea behind the Batpod, as I pitched it to Nathan Crowley, the production designer, was that it would be a bit of an anti-aircraft gun on wheels, not so much a motorbike. So, we built models, eventually built a full-size mock-up in my garage where we do a lot of our very early pre-production work, and we showed it to Chris Cornwall.
"Can you try and find a way to make this thing drivable?" because we knew we'd have to find a way to do this bike for real. And I just said, "You've got to be joking. You've got to be joking." It was the most weird, bizarre-looking thing ever. And, you know, when I saw the huge wheels, front wheels and back wheels, the first thing I said was, "Well, I don't know where they're going to be able to steer this thing. It'll probably go great in straight lines, but I don't know whether it would be able to turn corners."
It became apparent to me that I had to quickly get together, very quickly, a prototype, a very basic prototype, to see if we even stood a chance because it came out of the Batmobile. It allowed us much more of a functional machine, and that's what gave it its styling. Just the way that when you pull out the, you know, the front axles or the front suspension of the Batmobile, what kind of shapes does that give you? That's where we started.
Just the drivetrain for it was completely unusual. It was the usual clash of engineering versus design, and we want to keep the look of it, otherwise, there's no point in making it. You know, the engine is quite well ahead, and if we had to come up with lots of different ideas, like the, the whole chassis of the, of the Batpod is actually the exhaust. So, we didn't see an external exhaust; we used the chassis as the exhaust system and the radiators of footpads, you know, all these things that change a normal motorbike into what the Batpod became.
And it's not like a normal motorbike where you sit on it upright; you actually lie on it, so you're flat. That was an incredibly hard thing to ride. No one could just get on that and ride it; it was too difficult. We brought in a guy called Jean-Pierre. He came in and he worked really closely with Chris Cobalt and his team on the bike, developing it from ground up. So, there wasn't, there wasn't one bolt for that bike that was standard, and they just kept working and tweaking and talking to each other, and fantastic engineering, and eventually, they got the bike to do a hell of a lot that we didn't expect it to be able to do.
In the development stages, we had a few, you know, falling off, turning corners, and trying to do things. And the first time he got on it, he just rode it around. He rode it up payments. He actually stood up on on the seat and then, and he just got off and said, "I can make this work. This is going to be my bike." He said that this is not riding a motorbike; you're riding the Batpod. It's its own animal.
There's there's a huge amount of testing. You know, 98% of everything you you see on the screen can be tested as from once to 25, 30 times. You know, you have to keep getting it right. You start off small, and they get bigger and bigger, bigger, get people closer, closer, closer, you know, until you get to that mark where that's the cutoff line.
Key visual element that we hadn't expected to get was actually the cape and where the cape blows in the wind as he drives. We had devised with Lindy Hemming a backpack shape that the cape could fold up into, using the memory fabric idea from the first film. Originally, every time he rode the bike, we were going to use that backpack shape because we felt that the cape would immediately get caught in the rear tire and pull the rider off.
But as Chris's guys started to test the running of the bike with the costume on, they found that in fact, it picks up the the wind right away and it never actually got caught in the wheel. And I was delighted about this because I think there's something about the image of the cape blowing as he's riding the bike that really makes it Batman, makes it what it needs to be. And we were able to get stunning footage of the Batpod.
Once again, we shot most of it off with the ultimate arms. We were able to swing the camera in front and behind, up and down, all around the Batpod, and really get some stunning footage, particularly on a lower wacker. Again, we photographed most of the Batpod work in IMAX too, so we had to stay pretty wide because it's long. In the IMAX format, it's tall, and it's just stunning on camera. I think it's just, it's a really sexy machine.
For the most part, on the chase, we did a lot of footage mounting an IMAX camera to the front of a motorbike, very unwieldy thing for the operator to drive, but we were able to get some some really great shots following the Batpod through the events of the chase with it. I think this kind of action, this kind of chase, is most interesting when you're really feeling what the characters are feeling, you're really passing through the action subjectively.
[Music]
There is a Batman given a challenge like the Batpod, it's a matter of first just playing a lot of different sounds to that image. My feeling is that you need to start with something real. You can manipulate a real sound pretty dramatically, and then Chris had the idea that it should never shift, that it should just keep ascending in pitch like an unstoppable force.
We had an idea to use a concept called a Shepherd tone, which allows you to continually change the pitch of something infinitely and requires that the the sound have a specific pitch. Most electric motors do, so we gravitated towards those. Recorded some electric race cars, a Tesla kind of high-tech electric dragsters, basically, and kind of manipulated them and then cut those sounds to picture.
[Music]
The fun thing about having the Batpod in this movie is that it does all the great things that the Tumbler did. It's fast, and it's cool, and it's fun to watch, but it also adds a little bit of jeopardy somehow. It's a little bit more dangerous than than the Tumbler was for for Batman, and it's visually exciting watching Batman chase down the streets of Gotham, sort of keeps you on the edge of your seat.