Director Greta Gerwig feels like a natural fit when it comes to bringing Barbie to life. An accomplished filmmaker, both her previous directorial projects — 2017’s Ladybird and 2019’s Little Women — capture the distinct flavor of a girl’s adolescence and coming of age, so what better choice than to have her take on a project that is such a powerhouse symbol of childhood and coming of age that is the Barbie doll?

With Barbie being a staple on toy shelves since 1959, Gerwig made the choice to adopt many era-appropriate filmmaking choices for the Barbieland scenes, and she shared just how much went into bringing those choices to life in her interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff. According to Gerwig, that degree of practical, in-camera effect was the result of very precise teamwork, the finished effect being the visual treat that arrives in theaters this week.

Gerwig also talks about what her most terrifying proejct has been to date, and how Barbie prepared her for what’s next. For more from the director, check out Perri’s interview in the video above this article, or check it out in the transcript form below.

PERRI NEMIROFF: So I know you go after projects that terrify you. Is Barbie the most terrifying project you’ve done thus far? No?

GRETA GERWIG: Easily! Easily, so terrifying, yes.

So what is number two?

GERWIG: Well, I mean, honestly, whatever project I’m working on feels like the most terrifying one. But yeah, it feels like…I mean, they’re all terrifying. But yeah, Barbie, it was totally terrifying the whole time.

Image via Warner Bros.

Is there a single scene or aspect of this movie that you were most nervous about, you know, executing the way that you wanted?

GERWIG: Everything about the way this movie was made was a giant question mark. It was like I don’t know how we’re going to do all of this. Because I wanted to do practical builds for everything, and I also wanted, any time I could, to use whatever film technique from like 1959 was. So I needed to build the entire thing by miniature and then shoot the miniature and then composite that into the image. I had to do everything practically, like the entire transportation sequences. That’s all practical builds, that all happens in camera. And so everything had to be worked out.

I spoke with Rodrigo Prieto, Sarah Greenwood and Jacqueline Duran who are the DP set designer, costume designer, I talked to them for a year before we were even in like prep prep because we just didn’t know how any of it was possible. I mean, the whole thing was extremely… every day was like this challenge of execution. But in a way because I had this very clear vision that I wanted everything to be practical and in camera, it made it easy in terms of how we went about stuff like with, the mermaids or something. It’s like, well, if you were making a stage show, she’d be on a sort of almost like a seesaw rig. Like you wouldn’t have like a big jump up into the air and a tail flipping a splash. You would just rig her up and rig her down and walking into that simplicity was part of it. So all of that, the set designers and the figuring out all the houses and everything. It was an execution done so perfectly. I am so grateful to everyone who made it.

With everything you accomplished on this, going forward have you, like, I guess, acquired a new film making goal? Or maybe does like one of your goals feel more within reach because this movie exists.

GERWIG: Yes! Yes, yes. I mean, right now every time I’ve gone to make a film, there’s always something challenging or a new aspect to it and, and this one, it felt like I got, it was like a level up. And also just learning how to execute something like this, how to work with certain constraints, the best way to realize certain visions, like all of that. Everybody I think who’s a director has a bit of a fantasy baseball team in their head of like the movies they’re going to make in the future. And I have movies I want to make that are tiny and I have movies I want to make that are huge. But I knew that if I wanted to make some of these big canvas movies, you got to get the hours under your belt because you can’t, I mean, they can be totally overwhelming. So, it, it definitely makes me feel like, “ok, now I feel slightly more prepared to maybe tackle the, the next thing.” But yeah, it’s, you know, it’s only new mistakes, only new, new challenges. I’m just so lucky that I get to do it.