Mammia Mia Here We Go Again Kiss the Teacher Scene
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New College, Oxford University, 1979 — this is where we first encounter a immature Donna (Lily James), the character originally played by Meryl Streep in 2008's Mamma Mia! In the new film Mamma Mia! Here Nosotros Go Again, Donna strides down the aisle of her graduation ceremony in gold platform boots, strips off her graduation robe, and launches into a riotously fun rendition of "When I Kissed the Teacher" that spills out into the streets of Oxford.
The number is a colorful, energetic way to kick off a sequel that was x years in the making (an idea producer Judy Craymer says was "e'er in the hemisphere"). Hither We Go Again flits dorsum and along between the past, where we follow a young Donna (and the Dynamos, Tanya and Rosie) every bit she meets (and hooks upward with) all three of Sophie's potential fathers, and the present day, where Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) tries to honor her female parent'south legacy by opening a hotel while facing her own pregnancy.
Not just does "When I Kissed the Teacher" open the motion-picture show, it also marked the start of shooting for the sequel. "I thought if we just went for it and if we nailed it, it would set up the tone for what we were going to practise from so on," director Ol Parker tells EW.
"We were similar, 'How exciting, we get to develop these relationships as Dynamos and form this bond of sisterhood through our rehearsal procedure,'" adds Jessica Keenan Wynn, who plays young Tanya in the moving-picture show. "Then on solar day one when nosotros arrived, it was only the most massive undertaking. There were hundreds of extras and ensemble dance members, three different cameras coming in at you, and then we had to re-cake it.… It was a huge endeavor, but being thrown into the deep end is the best mode to beginning the whole process, because it was quite an piece of cake ride after that."
Below, the film's cast and crew members spill the details on the careful planning, ingenuity, and disco magic it takes to bring this ABBA song to life on the large screen.
We meet young Donna at Oxford in 1979, as she turns her graduation into a concert.
OL PARKER (director): I wanted to evidence young Donna as iconoclastic, prepared to shatter conventions and exist a rock chick. The funniest thing would be to put her in the stuffiest possible surrounding and so have her milk shake that up.… [The song] was originally "Super Trouper," so when they sing it in the first movie, it'south like a callback to their youth.
JUDY CRAYMER (producer): I went to Sweden to meet with [songwriters] Benny [Andersson] and Björn [Ulvaeus]. It was the aforementioned setup at Oxford, and Bjorn went, "What most 'When I Kissed the Teacher'?" There's a sense of irony and wit in the lyrics, and it'due south such a loftier-energy number, that was it. That's how it found its space equally the commencement song.
PARKER: I [wanted] the get-go track to be something new. There are so many other brilliant songs in the ABBA catechism, I wanted to establish from the start we weren't but going to replay all the greatest hits. ["Super Trouper"] didn't seem to announce the sequel as a sequel; it seemed like a retread rather than a sequel.
CRAYMER: That moment had to prepare so many elements — she was leaving academy, her friendship with Tanya and Rosie, the fact she was slightly anarchic and a bit of a minx — and this song did it. We inverse the lyrics slightly. Because in the vocal written by ABBA in the '70s, it was patently a male teacher, and the vice chancellor is a adult female, played by Celia Imre, which we idea was part of 1000amma Mia, the whole alloy of empowerment and fun.
PARKER: Sometimes y'all heed to the lyrics and that will dictate where yous put it, to a degree, and you're trying to write towards it, equally it were. And some songs you write yourself into a place and you go, "Now what song would fit in that location?" In this instance, that was "When I Kissed the Teacher." Yous can have her kissing Celia Imre, which is always a pleasance, only also it's a banging track.
ANTHONY VAN LAAST (choreographer): I didn't desire to make information technology cute, because Donna is a strong woman. I wanted to give information technology a real forcefulness of movement and show something a fiddling chip anarchic with the three girls [as] a unit.
ROBERT D. YEOMAN (cinematographer): It was shot at Oxford at [New College]. It had very dark forest and an old English language feeling to it. We wanted to give information technology some life, then we put large lights outside the stained glass windows and shined them through to give the feel of the direction of sunlight coming through.
PARKER: That was the most fabulously pompous place nosotros could discover. In a good style. Fabulously learned and impressive. It was all the funnier for Lily to rip off her costume and get for it.
JESSICA KEENAN WYNN (young Tanya): I felt like English royalty. I felt like I was a invitee in someone'southward castle. To be in a place of then much wisdom and history was exceptional and an laurels.
YEOMAN: We wanted to requite it a certain amount of energy.… It wasn't a proscenium kind of affair where you lot simply lock the camera downward and let them do their matter. We wanted to be very active with the photographic camera and move very quickly, because they're moving around very quickly. Trying to follow the activeness and keep the energy going as much equally possible.
CRAYMER: [It] was setting the tone for those women and where they were going to go. Oxford could allow Ol to bring all that into that song.
Donna, Tanya, and Rosie (Alexa Davies) strip off their graduation robes to reveal their Donna and the Dynamos getups, including platform boots and bell-bottoms.
WYNN: You feel tall, imperial, and secure considering the boots were custom-made for u.s.a.. Once we got them in rehearsal, we felt like nosotros finally understood what the Dynamos were.
CRAYMER: Those costumes are, in theory, cut out of the defunction of their rooms. That's how they would've made their fun clothes. They would have cut stuff out of the sofa and stuck them on their jeans. The plume boa is meant to exist a chip of a shaggy rug they've torn up and put around their necks.
WYNN: The little elements of having star patches on the boots and throughout our costumes, I idea that was a nice nod to almost a David Bowie element we took into it. In the dorm room, Tanya has a massive poster of David Bowie. If you look shut enough, you can come across our curtains, in the corner — they've all been cut upwardly, which is a cute trivial addition.
As the number gets going, the professors behind Donna become kissed and bring together the trip the light fantastic.
CRAYMER: That's ABBA'due south Bjorn [Ulvaeus] as i of the professors. The row behind in the ruby robes are all erstwhile Mamma Mia phase actors. There'south some of the original cast, and cast over the last xx years.
VAN LAAST: Information technology was like a huge reunion. The bully matter about Mamma Mia is we're like a family. They came with groovy spirit and [were] unbelievably supportive. Information technology was the commencement affair nosotros filmed.
CRAYMER: They sat there very patiently for iii days. It likewise gave Ol something actress-special. Considering information technology wasn't a merely crowd scene. They are already accomplished actors that were really happy to do this because they were in Mamma Mia and part of the alumni.
PARKER: Bjorn was baffled past how long it all took and how wearisome it was.… There was something worrying to me most having a celebrity cameo within the start three minutes of the film. But it just seemed the right place for him, and he was very funny. Nosotros shot outtakes of him dancing on phase with the plume boa.
WYNN: At that place was then much electricity in the room — to beginning off having these one-time castmates there to lead the states into the sequel. Information technology was almost like a baton laissez passer. It was a treasure to be in their presence and to perform for people that have been involved with this musical from its incarnation.
Donna and the Dynamos bound into the audition and oversupply-surf in an overhead shot.
PARKER: The video for "Drive," by R.East.Thousand., has a summit shot of Michael Stipe rolling around on the artillery of the crowd. He's held aloft above them. It's black-and-white and much more arty. I sent that to [Anthony] going, "Annihilation here?" and he was like, "The three of them could exercise it."
VAN LAAST: It was highly, highly choreographed for prophylactic. Unlike existent crowd-surfing, where the people are moved around by the oversupply, the catchers underneath did the move and all the people on the exterior stayed all the same. Underneath each person, we had about 5 people who were the pivots to move them. If you're looking at the film, yous'd never know that.
WYNN: In the rehearsal process, they actually catered to my essence of Tanya and gave me the cutest boys to fall into.
YEOMAN: That [overhead shot] was off a crane we brought in and put up as high as we could get. And so they surrounded [the stunt people] with dancers to fill up the frame and get in an homage to Busby Berkeley.
PARKER: That was take one. Nosotros expected it to exist very hard — they're trying to plough them exactly in rhythm, and that'southward non like shooting fish in a barrel. We hadn't got it right one time until the beginning take of the motion picture.
VAN LAAST: I looked downwardly and the 3 girls moved in perfect sync, and it was similar, "Oh, God, that's really, really good."
WYNN: On the mean solar day of, those ensemble members were key to the success of that shot. We didn't take to practise it too many times; I think after iii or four times they had the perfect shot from upward above of us twirling around. How can you non feel like the ultimate superstar?
Credit: Jonathan Prime/Universal
They burst from the hall and wheel into the Oxfordshire countryside.
PARKER: You want to become from one place to another and I thought about driving in cars, but that seemed a bit fanciful. My main retentiveness of university was riding downwardly country lanes with a bottle of something in my hand.
VAN LAAST: That wasn't in the original script. All the students in Oxford ride effectually on bicycles, so we should salute that in the number.
CRAYMER: There was a phase at Shepperton where they were rehearsing with bicycles and the stage and everything. It was pretty amazing when we really got to the location.
YEOMAN: We had a camera auto with a modest Technocrane and a lever head on it. It's a fiddling uncontrollable, but it gave it a sense of spontaneity. We simply found a petty lane out in the countryside at that place that was very beautiful. I couldn't really light them, so nosotros backlit them and merely had them riding.
VAN LAAST: They were trained past stunt people, and then we picked the best cyclists and mixed [them] in amongst our cast. That was how we kept it together.
WYNN: Nosotros were rehearsing information technology and I stuck my legs out, like a wide second position, and [Parker] was like, "Y'all demand to do that now, every time." That's called when Jessica Keenan Wynn is having too much fun and the managing director ends up putting it in.
PARKER: The bit yous tin can't encounter is a really steep loma, then when they come around the corner they're all absolutely exhausted, merely they have to pretend that they're not and take plenty of lungs left to sing a song.
Credit: Jonathan Prime/Universal
The number concludes with the Dynamos dancing on top of a clomp before ending with a freeze-frame jump into the Cherwell River.
PARKER: The girls were simply going to dance past the lake. We were going to create a pub garden and the girls would become on a tabular array, and the others would be dancing around them. [While scouting], we were standing by the lake, and 100 yards down the river there was a barge. There was no ane there, so I jumped on, stood on the roof and was like, "This would be absurd to dance on."
VAN LAAST: The starting time fourth dimension we got on the boat, it was really rocky. The boat had to exist completely reconfigured. Because when you're wearing platforms, y'all tin't actually experience where your anxiety are. We had divers go downwardly and wedge the boat properly.
WYNN: Nosotros'd been practicing on a very high wooden platform for a while. In one case you go on a boat, you see all the elements around yous: That's hard grass, those are flowerpots, that's water. Nosotros had to make sure we were very in tune with each other and with our environment.
PARKER: They had a crash pad. Realistically they would've jumped in [the water], but if they do jump in we can't shoot again for another hour [considering] Lily'southward hair is a production, the clothes [have to dry out].
WYNN: At that place's things you don't think about when you're jumping off a barge on to a platform, similar keep your head up and smile, don't look like y'all're in pain, don't look like y'all're going to die.
PARKER: [In the first moving-picture show], they went in the water in "Dancing Queen." They all did that leap, so I had this idea to exercise a freeze-frame. Lily is doing the bomb, which is a tribute to what Meryl does in "Dancing Queen" in Mamma Mia. It just seemed lovely that the two girls on either side would do a star spring and Lily would do the Meryl flop. Information technology's a callback.
WYNN: It's one of my favorite moments of the picture, that freeze-frame of the three of united states of america jumping into what's next in our lives.
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Source: https://ew.com/movies/2018/07/18/mamma-mia-2-when-i-kissed-the-teacher/