It’s not easy to imagine how a book like Cloud Atlas, the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, could become the Cloud Atlas movie, written and directed by Tom Tykwer and the Matrix-creating Wachowski siblings. But sure enough, the time- and space-jumping epic—a story that takes place over five centuries—is coming to American screens on Oct. 26.
(MORE: Cloud Atlas and the Lure of Unfilmable Books)
In this video featurette, exclusive to TIME, go behind the scenes on the set of Cloud Atlas and find out how the cinematic magic happened. Watch Tom Hanks and Halle Berry play multiple characters each, see Hanks demonstrate (by reading one line many ways) how film dialogue goes a step beyond novel dialogue—and learn from the directors and novelist how the process of adapting Cloud Atlas into a movie script was like playing with Legos.