He hasn’t written in the notebook since completing Pacific Rim, but he adds, “Now that I’m doing [the TV version of] The Strain and Crimson Peak, I may restart. But I really want to finish this volume, so I can put it in a safe place, and I can start carrying a new notebook again. Once I’m not working on a supersecret project, I’ll be relaxed.”
What of the future? For a writer-director with such dark visions, Guillermo’s outlook is enduringly hopeful. Paraphrasing science fiction legend Theodore Sturgeon, one of his favorite writers, Guillermo observes, “There’s the famous Sturgeon’s Law, which is, ‘Ninety percent of everything is shit.’ Now the way I live my life is the del Toro Law, which is, ‘Ten percent of everything is awesome.’ You know what I’m saying? I agree with Sturgeon, except I think that it’s amazing that we get ten percent.
“All I know is that hatred makes life so much shorter and bitter. And every time you can give love, give love, if you can—and you can’t all the time, I mean I’m not a candy-ass Teletubby, I’m a human being, you know. I hate people and I love people. But whenever you can, just fucking love. If you can choose, choose love.”
Kaiju concept by Guy Davis.
Concept of Stacker Pentecost in his office in the Shatterdome by Vicki Pui.
Film teaser poster art by Hugo Martin.
Mako Mori (Mana Ashida) is rescued by the Jaeger Coyote Tango.
Sketch of the Chinese Jaeger Crimson Typhoon by Francisco Ruiz Velasco.
Concept of a Precursor by Keith Thompson.
Concept of the Kaiju Knifehead by Wayne Barlowe.
Del Toro applying some more patina to the Alaskan wall set during shooting.
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 7
–Ultra Primes (T1.9) 14, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 40, 50, 65, 85, 100, 135, 160 mm for each unit Macro Primes (T21) 16, 24, 40 mm, VariablePrimes (T2.2) 16–30 mm 29–60 mm, 55–105 mm zooms 15–40 mm, 28–76 mm, 17–80 mm 24, 290 mm, each unit.
–Cold colors in the Tokyo FB except for the shoe in Mako’s hand.
–Rain of slow, gray ash
–On the battlefield everything is blood and mud. The strongest lines are the horizontal ones and in the forest and the castle the most powerful lines are vertical. The cannons destroy the forest when they try unsuccessfully to halt the advance of the enemy troops.
–The confusion interrupts the battle, putting both armies in a constant state of alert, sensitive to the slightest sound.
“Mako on the stairs”
–Use the clock of war to mark time with news in last third of the film.
–“Don’t let your feet touch the ground” by Ash Koley.
–The Beast was afraid of becoming vulnerable. He isolated himself from the world, poring over his books and maps.
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 10
–When is the right time to say good-bye? How can we know if we’re unaware of the host’s identity? How to know if we are midway through the meal or if it has already come to an end?
–I’m a father but I still feel like a son, I’m an adult but my fears are those of a child. I’m alone but I live among many, I feel like time is running out when everything is just getting started
–The dark fairy hated the prince because she loved him with a passion.
–Always say what you think, always do what you say, and know what makes you happy. Live or die abiding by firmly made decisions, doing what you think is the right thing.
Mako in the rain, sans helicopter
Del Toro’s notebook sketch of Mako Mori’s first appearance, alone in the rain, inspired costume designer Kate Hawley.
GDT: Well, what happened is, I lost a lot of the rhythm of working in the notebooks during The Hobbit, because I was so afraid—I’m still afraid—of carrying that notebook. I used to grab my notebook and travel with it everywhere and make annotations, but with The Hobbit, secrecy was so paramount I was paranoid about leaving it behind in a coffee shop. So I stopped carrying it. And to this day, I have it at home, but until I finish that notebook, I cannot carry a notebook, because the three movies haven’t come out yet.
MSZ: How did you get back into working in the notebooks for Pacific Rim?
GDT: I was really, really invested in this image of the girl with the red shoe [opposite]. Because it’s something that I felt was very iconic, and it defined the entire palette of the movie for me. The movie is incredibly saturated with color, but I wanted Mako’s flashback to have few colors and feel almost monochromatic. Blue is dominant in her memories and it permeates her in the present—her hair is streaked with that blue. She is marred by the past. I also wanted her introduction scene [above] to be monochromatic and we art directed that whole introductory sequence in the rain to be only concrete gray, cyan, and gold. So the two sequences are linked.
But once Mako and Raleigh connect, more colors begin to be associated with them. The first Drift they do is all in blue. After that, when they are fighting in Hong Kong, all these colors start coming in, and we end up with them immersed in a sea of red. And the red is the same red as the red of her shoe.
I think that if you’re going to go crazy with colors in a movie like we do in Pacific Rim, you have to have peaks and valleys; you have to have places where the eye can rest. And so we have that regular red, for when Raleigh and Mako connect. And then when they are not connecting, or when they are alone, they each have another color. Mako’s palette is cold, while Raleigh’s color code for when he is by himself is rust and grime and amber.
NOTEBOOK 5, PAGE 9