New moon on the rise

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Robert Pattinson, centre, with Nikki Reed and Kellan Lutz as members of a vampire clan in "Twilight," the big-screen adaptation of the first of Stephenie Meyers young adult novels. Photo by The Los Angeles Times.

Robert Pattinson is having an Obi-Wan Kenobi moment.

Inside a soundstage where The Twilight Saga: New Moon is shooting, the lanky English heartthrob stands in front of a tall, wide green screen murmuring a tender admonition: "You promised me nothing reckless."

Motion-capture cameras hurtle toward him across a length of track affixed to the stage floor, while a team of technicians studies his stance and the tilt of his head.

The plan is to digitally insert Pattinson, who plays swoony good guy vampire Edward Cullen, into a scene that was filmed much earlier - one in which he appears as a spectral vision to his co-star, Kristen Stewart, cautioning her headstrong character, Bella Swan, against hanging out with some unsavoury-looking biker types.

For the effect to work, Pattinson's image will need to be dropped in at exactly the right position, so despite the cast and crew nearing the end of a very long day, perfectionism is still the standard.

The team working on the sequel to last year's Catherine Hardwicke-directed Twilight, which brought in an unexpected $365 million worldwide for Summit Entertainment, has moved quickly to sustain the momentum of the sexy, youth-oriented franchise.

Between takes, Pattinson chats with the crew while director Chris Weitz stands several feet away, his arms folded behind his head.

Visual effects, "that's not my thing," he concedes with a wry smile.

What does interest him is literature.

New Moon marks his third consecutive literary adaptation after having directed About a Boy, from the Nick Hornby novel, and The Golden Compass, the big-budget fantasy based on the first chapter in author Philip Pullman's award-winning His Dark Materials series.

It was his experience making that film - which should have been a dream project, given Weitz's reverence for the source material - that made the idea of taking the reins on the second Twilight film so appealing.

During post-production on Compass, Weitz was unable to persuade New Line Cinema to allow him to move forward with the ending he'd originally planned for the $180 million film, one that was decidedly grim but faithful to Pullman's vision.

The movie was released with an alternate ending that the studio felt would be more satisfying to audiences, but something about the project failed to connect; it earned only $70 million domestically, though it did fare better overseas.

"It's one of the great sadnesses of my life that it didn't turn out the way I intended it," he says.

New Moon, a story about surviving the ultimate heartbreak and loss, is Weitz's chance to heal his wounds and find a new creative path.

It's a path that winds through the gloomy forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Italian village of Multipulciano.

The last three days of the shoot were to happen there, but before then, Weitz needed to complete the complicated camera manoeuvres that would enable him to transform Pattinson's Edward into an apparition.

For anyone unfamiliar with the world of Twilight, a primer: In author Stephenie Meyer's first tale, 17-year-old Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington, to live with her small-town sheriff father.

She soon falls for the mysterious Edward Cullen, a vampire who, like the rest of his extended "family," abstains from drinking human blood.

In New Moon, Edward opts to leave town to protect Bella - whose proximity to these powerful supernatural creatures places her in almost constant danger - but his decision leaves her broken and inconsolable.

She begins to regain her bearings spending time with her friend Jacob, but it's not long before his unrequited feelings for Bella and his own otherworldly nature become a source of real tension between them.

The film's success, driven by the unrelenting support of Meyer's fans, most of whom are teenage girls (but whose ranks also include some young men and mums), catapulted 19-year-old Stewart and 23-year-old Pattinson to a stratospheric level of stardom that seems to make both actors deeply uncomfortable.

Their reticence about fame is understandable: The nature of their off-screen relationship has become the subject of frequent tabloid speculation and, earlier this summer, Pattinson was grazed by a taxi in Manhattan where he was shooting the indie drama Remember Me after an overzealous mob crowded him, pushing him on to a city street.

Taylor Lautner (17), who plays Jacob, hasn't experienced exactly the same sort of frenzy, but with his character moving to the forefront of the action in New Moon, he soon might.

There is, after all, an entire camp that argues that Bella should wind up with his character rather than the brooding Edward.

"I don't know if you can get used to it," the baby-faced Lautner says of the ardour the series inspires.

"We have seen the passion and dedication in the fans. We wouldn't be here without them, but they're everywhere."

After this film, Weitz departs the Twilight saga; director David Slade - known for his edgy-with-a-capital-"E" feature debut Hard Candy and the bloody horror outing 30 Days of Night - helms the third film in the franchise, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, which is to be released next year.

Producer Wyck Godfrey says changing directors while maintaining the same actors and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg will bring a different energy to each Twilight movie without disrupting the overall continuity.

Weitz was brought on after Hardwicke opted out of doing New Moon, citing scheduling conflicts, but Slade's selection raised some eyebrows.

The heart of the story is the romance between Edward and Bella after all, and Slade doesn't seem like much of a romantic.

Godfrey points out that Eclipse is darker in tone than the stories that precede it and more action-packed, making Slade the right choice.

"Ever since I saw Hard Candy, I was obsessed with him as a film-maker," the producer says.

"That's a female point-of-view movie, and it's very different from the average female point-of-view movie. He's also done tons of videos that are female-friendly, and he has some teeth to him too, which I think is good."

A bigger question mark hangs over what is the most adult entry in Meyer's series, Breaking Dawn.

Godfrey was mum as to specifics, saying only that everyone involved fully intended to make what would be the fourth movie.

"We're shooting New Moon, prepping Eclipse, doing all the marketing - it's a little overwhelming to really think in a detailed manner of how we're going to crack this, but we have every intention to," he said of Dawn.