The Official Twilight Saga Facebook Page pasted a thank you letter and picture from Bill Condon.  Here is what he had to say to the fans.  

On the flight now from Madrid to Berlin, I wanted to check in one last time, as you’re finally getting a look at what we’ve all been working on so intensely.  It’s hard to believe that after our Berlin premiere tonight, my TWILIGHT journey will finally come to a close.  It’s been almost three years since I first wrote to you.  I’m very proud of what we’ve created together since then, and I hope that PART II fulfills your expectations for the grand finale to Stephenie’s sprawling saga. Fingers crossed that you’ve also managed to stay at least mostly spoiler-free, in order to enjoy the twists and parting gifts we have in store for you… 

Thank you again for making me feel like a member of your fandom family online…for sleeping in The Line in San Diego in order to laugh with us in Hall H…for traveling great distances to join us in L.A. for last year’s Tent City and this year’s Fan Camp.  Above all, thank you for trusting me with this universe you care so deeply about – we tried to match your intensity in our attention to every detail.  That said, I don’t think I’ll ever live down the shame of being spied on by Twihard covens around the world on our very first night of shooting in Rio.  Thanks to photos shot and instantly posted online of Bella and Edward on their honeymoon, we were called out in real time for missing a certain engagement ring…  (Sorry — again!) 

As with you all, what I’ll take with me from my time in Forks are so many great friendships – our massive cast of talented actors, and new creative partners such as Melissa Rosenberg, Guillermo Navarro and Phil Tippett.  I hope to know them all for years and to work with them again soon, making movies yet to be dreamed up.  At the L.A. premiere Monday night, Phil said we should make a “bloody, giant monster movie.”  But is there room for a musical number?  

See you at the theatre. 

Forever,

Bill

I think I speak for the entire fandom when I say… No, no, Mr. Condon. THANK YOU!

Jen Yamato at Movieline has the be all end all interview with Bill Condon.  She gets him to tell us what scenes were cut and will end up on the DVD, how they decided how the final battle would go down, and most shockingly that Bella and Edward were going to die!  They discuss the CGI of Renesmee, Kristen Stewart’s strength as Bella, and  the inspiration behind some of the new vampire’s characterizations.  The article is chalked full of spoilers.  Massive spoilers.  Detail oriented spoilers.  I can’t stress it enough, if you don’t want to be completely spoiled, do not read the story!  

Here is a sample of what the article contains.

And yes, it’s spoiler heavy.

You have been warned.  

We briefly see a flash forward to the grown Renesmee, living happily ever after with Jacob once she reaches her full maturity a few years down the road — when Jacob finally gets to date Renesmee.

Condon: Finally, yes! On La Push.

What was the trick to figuring out how to include that happy romantic ending for Jacob and Renesmee without it being creepy?

Condon: Well the thing is, obviously it was controversial the minute it was written. But as a filmmaker you have a great ally in Taylor Lautner, and Taylor was concerned about it. But Taylor is a pure soul. He is able to look at her with love and it doesn’t have another component to it, and I think another actor couldn’t have done that. I think there’s something so essentially sweet about him that it’s a generous love.

You filmed Parts 1 and 2 simultaneously, sometimes having Kristen Stewart play weak, dying Bella in the same afternoon as strong vampire Bella.

Condon: I really do think that Kristen Stewart is amazing, but I feel like in terms of this series she doesn’t get credit for how much she accomplishes. I think if someone were to sit and watch these two movies that we made together at the same time and realize that Kristen shot that all together, it’s just another level of her gift. She was stepping out of her comfort zone, because there was so much Kristen in teenage Bella — and now this was someone who she was just creating. I think Kristen, who’s tough on herself, was able to step out of all that stuff and just really own everything.

You’ve cited the old school Hammer horror films as a tonal reference for parts of Breaking Dawn – in what ways did you hope to capture that feeling?

Condon: When I read this, I always thought that these vampires that get collected from around the world are like the vampires I grew up with. Alistair, that whole crowd — that’s the British hammer vampire. Obviously we’ve got the Draculas. There’s The Awakening in that whole Egyptian culture. So it felt to me even though Alec isn’t part of that, you’re in London in that scene in the alley — God, just go full-out Hammer with this. Even in the costumes and the way we shot it, Michael Sheen with the other guys behind him, it really to me has the feel of a Christopher Lee movie.

I love that, and I love the fact that you’ll now get a lot of Twilight fans Googling “Hammer horror.” Now, which scenes and moments didn’t make the final cut that you wish you could have squeezed in?

Condon: I know fans of the novel are going to be disappointed in this, but Garrett has a big speech on the field, during which the mist comes at him and Bella stops it. It was great to do, and Lee Pace was amazing, but we spent almost a half hour on that field and to spend another five minutes doing something that was a kind of repeat of what she’d already done with Jane’s pain… that was a shame, that was cut. And a couple of other scenes — we did a “Bella training to fight” scene, and that was fun. It’ll be on the DVD. But it just came at the wrong time. Again, it seemed a little redundant of her learning how to use her shield.

Read the whole article at Movieline.

If you haven’t seen Breaking Dawn Part 2, you probably don’t want to watch this quick interview with Bill Condon from the UK premiere. The director tells us why the film ends the way it does. Personally, it was the very VERY end that made me cry for the very reasons Mr. Condon mentions here. So once again, thank you Bill!

The Huffington Post has a great interview with Bill Condon about the difficulties he faced in bring Brekaing Dawn part 2 to the big screen.  He also talks about why he took on the project and where he think Rob, Kristen, and Taylor’s careers are headed.  Read the whole story here. 

You’ve been with this franchise for a few years now. What was the biggest surprise you encountered?

I had never done a big visual-effects movie. There are twice as many visual effects in the second film — there are over 2,000 shots — than there were in the first. We started cutting that when the first movie got released — so, a year ago. I didn’t know how intense that process would be. We were just finishing up a few days ago. It feels like being in production for an entire year. There’s such a big pile of work to do. It’s long days and six-day weeks. The thing I learned is movies like this get made more in post-production than they do in production.

The other tricky thing is that today’s audiences are conditioned to spot bad effects. I imagine that makes the task even more difficult?

There are so many shots where there are five different vendors working on it at the same time. Guys are putting in wolves, other people are putting in Bella’s power, other people are putting in background and snow. It’s crazy. Also, doing some beauty work on some of the actors. It’s unbelievably intricate. The thing that sort of kept haunting us was the fact that you just know when something doesn’t feel right. You can get 1,900 shots right, but if a few really stick out, people will say, “Oh, it had cheesy effects.” You don’t really get a pass too much. Again, because this is really different in scope and style to the other movies — this really is a full-on action movie — I think the pressure was on to really step up our game.

You also had to rapidly age Mackenzie Foy, who plays Renesmee.

It’s exponentially harder, because this is a character who every time she goes out of the room and comes back, she’s grown a few inches. It’s all these subtle changes. Then imagining what Mackenzie Foy would look like at age 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Also, it’s not just that it’s Mackenzie — she’s playing a creature that’s half-human and half-vampire. So, adding that aspect to it. She’s not an entirely real person. And anybody’s face changes from shot to shot based on the angle. People’s faces — what we know about them — evaporates quickly. So, doing all that an applying it to an imaginary person who then has to emote and connect and speak — it was the next-level kind of challenge.

When you’re working with such an effects-heavy film, is it hard to get the performances you want from the actors?

Luckily, they’ve been doing this for a while. But, their character have powers in this film. There’s a beautiful idea in here that the reason Edward was interested in Bella in the first place was that he couldn’t read her. She’s a mystery, in other words. Which is what draws us to people, you know? But that quality she had becomes more developed when she becomes a vampire: she has an actual shield around her, and she’s able to project it to protect other people from bad powers. So, something like that, it’s just counting on Kristen to suggest that the shield is being pushed out and the other actors giving a sense of where it is. It’s all about having actors so good and committed, who really worked hard at making it feel real.

I think I speak for the fandom when I say that Bill Condon has been an amazing influence on the Twilight franchise! Here are a couple of the interviews he did at the premiere last night.

Breaking Dawn Part 2 has its serious and funny moments too.