Breaking Dawn promo and interviews is getting into full swing, and as a result, four new interviews with the film’s director have popped up. This first is Bill Condon’s interview with Fandango. In it he talks about one pretty major plot difference in comparison to the book:

Fandango: What is Irina doing at the wedding (as seen in movie photos)? That’s noticeably different from the book.

Condon: In that case, it’s just about good movie storytelling. Just imagine if she’s not there and then in the second movie, she shows up, sees Renesmee and freaks out. No one will know who she is. People will talk about who she is, as they do in the book. Or you’d be stuck with some clunky flashback. To make something really cinematic, you put it into the present tense. She doesn’t want to come, she’s convinced to come, she gets there, she sees something that upsets her and she leaves – so that you see, you experience what it is that’s bothering her. It’s because her problem with the Cullens is the lynchpin for the entire second movie. Part of it why it’s there has to do with servicing what’s going to happen in the first half hour of the second film.

He goes on to talk about such things as his favorite scene to film; his surprise and excitement over the fact that the wedding dress hasn’t leaked into the media; getting a glimpse at Edward in his early years as a vampire, and much more. Read the rest at Fandango.

In his interview with HitFix, he talks about being prepared to work on a film that has a built-in audience of die-hard fans:

Most moviegoers and ‘Twilight’ fans wouldn’t realize that you’ve come from working on another movie where there was this hardcore fan base.  On ‘Dreamgirls’ there was lots of pressure to get it ‘just right’ from fans.  Did you take anything away from this before you worked on ‘Breaking Dawn’?

That’s a really interesting question and I suspect it’s part of the appeal of getting involved with this.  When you work on something that does have a huge fan base there is the potential for a lot of pitfalls, but there is this incredible thrill of seeing that kind of movie with an audience. If you somehow connect to their dreams of what this could be were I think there is a special anticipation that you don’t get in an everyday moviegoing experience. I wonder, I hadn’t thought of that before, but that’s probably part of what turned me on about doing this. But, yeah, there is this sort of thing you have over your shoulder of trying to — you can only do it in your own way and your own take of what the material is, but because it means so much to so many people you hope you tap into the collective unconscious and visualize it in a way you might imagine it.  Or sometimes different just as satisfying.

Read the rest here, where he talks about the challenges of making two movies back-to-back, getting to work with visual effects, the film’s score, and way more than I can fit into one sentence!

Next, Bill talks to Moviefone about his introduction into the Twilight Saga:

Were you familiar with the books and movies, or did you have to do a crash course before shooting?
The movies — the movies, then the books. But the movies I knew.

So, during that time when your were reading the books and watching films, did you stumble onto anything in particular that you thought you could bring to the franchise that wasn’t done before?
I don’t think it was about what hadn’t been done before. What I did think was interesting is that these movies are really different, one from the other. Based on the director. And that excited me. It didn’t feel as though you were fitting into any template, which would have been as interesting. For me, I was really turned on by the first movie, and how the first half is a real classic Hollywood romantic melodrama — a kind that doesn’t really get made anymore. Soulful and about a women’s concerns, which are more interesting to me maybe than a teenage boy’s concerns. Then it turned into a flat-out horror movie in the second half. I have a background of that and a love of that. Then the second movie is this epic story that was interesting in another way. It was on a canvas I had never been involved with before. A lot of things added up to make it appealing.

Some of the things ge goes on to talk about are the appeal of franchise films; his continued disappointment with the Breaking Dawn leak; and working with the actors who knew their characters but were open to new ideas. Read all about that at Moviefone.

And lastly, Movieline has posted a teaser of their interview with Bill where he talks about that dance-off that happened on the set of Breaking Dawn Part 2:

‘It was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen,’ Condon told Movieline. He explained how it all happened.

‘In that second movie, as you know from the book, a half-hour of it takes place in this one location, this one field,’ Condon said. ‘We shot there for, when you include the second unit, a couple of months — but the first unit was there for many weeks.”

‘When we came to the last, widest shot, with 80 vampires on one side and 27 vampires on the other, I’m sitting up the ladder and suddenly you hear this music — ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).’ And the Cullen side starts this incredible, West Side Story-kind of rumble. The other vampires then start to dance back. It was unbelievably big.’

Personally, I am insanely excited to get to see the footage of that dance-off!