The Bagger’s pals over at Vulture have a lengthy examination of how Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal came to make “Zero Dark Thirty,” from Mr. Boal’s abandonment of his original script, which he spent two years on (about the failed hunt for Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora) to the tough working conditions on their six-month shoot in India and Jordan. Not that it put a dent in Ms. Bigelow’s directorial vision: she shot two million feet of footage. “The average is probably half of that,” Megan Ellison, a producer of the film, told the Bagger at a recent lunch at the 21 Club.  (That Ms. Bigelow could afford to do so was in no small part due to Ms. Ellison, an independently wealthy underwriter – she is the daughter of the Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison – with a taste for risky projects. Her other credits this season include “The Master” and “Lawless,” although she’s also got “Terminator 5” coming.)  Still, Ms. Ellison, who spent time on the set abroad, acknowledged that the “Zero Dark Thirty” shoot, had “hard conditions,” starting with the choice of locations.  “We moved to India at the last minute,” she said, “because we got our permits approved there, and it looks so much more like Pakistan than shooting in Jordan.” Their cameras were stuck in customs, and they had to use a diplomatic pouch to transport the night-vision goggles they needed for the pivotal third act, a recreation of the raid on the bin Laden compound.  None of this bothered Ms. Bigelow. “Nothing fazes her,” Ms. Ellison said. “She’s just so efficient on set. Our first day, we did 72 set-ups,” dozens more shots than are normally captured. “She moves fast.”
"Zero Dark Thirty" wasn't an easy production -- locations changed and cameras got stuck in customs, as one of the producers recalls.