Posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2012 by Peter Sciretta
While on the Utah set of John Carter, a group of journalists (including myself) has the opportunity to interview to the cast and crew. On the following pages, you can read the interviews we conducted on set, transcribed in full:
I visited Mars almost two years ago. It was April 2010 and the film set was in the middle of nowhere. Finding Nemo/WALL-E director Andrew Stanton was making his live-action debut John Carter, a big screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s novel A Princess of Mars. There had been many failed attempts to bring the material to the big screen, but somehow Stanton was able to convince the studio heads to let him be the one to make the adaptation at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Disney flew a group of journalists into the Las Vegas airport, where we boarded a shuttle bus to a location five hours away. A location so far away that we were no longer in Nevada. Located at the center of the Grand Circle, Big Water Utah has a population of only 417 people (which probably explains why you didn’t see many John Carter set photos). The set was located out in the middle of a desert.
You wouldn’t have any idea a big Hollywood production was being shot in town, aside from small yellow signs that read “BARSOOM” which help crew members find the small dirt road which leads to the set. And by set, I mean a few structures which have been constructed on the grey dirt in the middle of these large brown hills made of sandstone. Barsoom, of course, is what the Martians in the books call their home planet.
Posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 by Germain Lussier
Walking around the set of the upcoming sci-fi action film, In Time, is a smorgasbord of physical perfection. Attractive guys and girls are everywhere and even during an interview with the film’s stars, it’s hard not to glance behind them at the veritable fashion runway parading to craft services.
The reason everyone on set is so beautiful is that, in the world of in the world of In Time, the human body stops aging at 25. At that point, a genetic clock on your wrist begins counting down your final year of life. Through various legal, or illegal means, you can accrue time on your clock and hypothetically live-forever looking 25. Or you can run out of time and die, leaving nothing but good-looking corpse.
Only in this world can can Olivia Wilde be the mother of Justin Timberlake, Vincent Kartheiser be the father of Amanda Seyfried or Cillian Murphy play a gritty, 70-year-old detective. And this conceit could only come the mind of Andrew Niccol, the brainchild behind The Truman Show, S1mone and Gattaca, which also dealt with mortality.
“I think of [In Time] as the bastard child of Gattaca because [when I was making it] I thought the holy grail of genetic engineering, of course, is to find the aging gene and switch it off,” Niccol said, “But then the implications are so huge that I thought ‘That’s another movie.’ And it turns out, it’s become another movie.”
In an era where movie fans consistently bitch about a lack of original ideas, In Time is just that and on day 44 of a 54-day shoot, /Film was lucky enough to be on the Los Angeles set of the October 28th release, speaking to the stars, director, producer and learning that this world might look great, but is anything but. Read the full set visit after the jump Read More »
Posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 by Peter Sciretta
On July 4th 2010, I sat in a former Model T Ford factory in Detroit. The huge building was transformed into a futuristic make-shift boxing arena — The Crash Palace (seen above), filled with hundreds of punk-styled boxing fans, covering the floors to the rafters. I sat in front of a huge monitor off to the side, observing what was being filmed in the boxing ring in front of me.
As Shawn Levy filmed his movie that is set in the future, I realized that the future was happening right in front of me. I visit a lot of movie sets, and while each is very different, the production is usually very similar. This is one of the few times I knew I was watching something new as I sat on set. On the monitor, one robot was slugging it out with another mechanical fighter. What’s remarkable about this situation is that the ring was completely empty.
Posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 by David Chen
While I was in New Zealand visiting Weta last week (see part 1, part 2, and part 3 of my write-up for that visit), I found myself unable to resist the chance to take a Lord of the Rings tour. In particular, the Rover Rings tour in Wellington, New Zealand seemed like a solid operation, and was fairly well-reviewed online.
I’m pretty cynical about the pandering, opportunistic nature of such tours in general, and the price of this tour did nothing to assuage my fears ($95 for a half day, $175 for a full day, including lunch). But I was already all the way on the opposite side of the world and Peter Sciretta agreed to front part of the cost if I wrote it up, so I figured, “What the hell, why not?” I decided to take the plunge and fork over the $95 for the half day option.
Hit the jump to see photos and videos of the Rover Rings Lord of the Rings tour, as well as my general thoughts on whether it was worth my time and money.
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Posted on Monday, August 1st, 2011 by David Chen
Last week, I was fortunate enough to visit Weta in New Zealand and receive a tour of their facilities as they were in the middle of making The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Unquestionably, the highlight of the day was an hour-long Q&A session featuring Jackson in-person and Steven Spielberg via video in LA.
Today, we present to you part of that conversation, in which Spielberg and Jackson extol the virtues of the Weta filmmaking process (read my original piece, for a brief description of the mocap warehouse that is being employed for this film). Tomorrow, we’ll have more of the conversation, in which the two directors discuss some of the direct logistical benefits of motion capture technology.
Read More »
On June 20th, I flew to San Francisco to visit Barsoom Studios, in an office building minutes sown the road from Pixar Animation Studios, to see the first footage from John Carter, a big screen adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic sci-fi novel A Princess of Mars.
In a screening room, Finding Nemo/Wall-E director Andrew Stanton gave us a powerpoint presentation explaining why and how he became involved in the project, and the unique methods they used to “shoot” the film (you can read a transcript of Andrew’s complete presentation and Q&A elsewhere on /Film). We screened a couple scenes from the movie, and the teaser trailer which will be attached to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II (expect to see it online on Thursday, July 14th).
After the jump you can read my brief thoughts, followed by a video blog I recorded with Frosty from Collider (who admits he knows nothing about the source material) and Eric Vespe (better known as Quint from Ain’t It Cool, who knows way way way more than I will ever know about the source material). So we have a good spread of opinions based on a wide range of expectations and knowledge of the source material.
Posted on Monday, June 20th, 2011 by Peter Sciretta
I’m a huge Muppets fanatic. Over the past five years, I’ve been on the set of many movies and interviewed many big-name directors, actors and writers. This is not a brag, this is set-up. In November of last year, I got a tip that the new Muppets movie was filming at Jim Henson Studios on La Brea in Hollywood. Within minutes, I found myself standing across the street, watching as The Muppets performed in front of the Henson lot (which was transformed into The Muppets Studios_. For me, standing across the street watching The Muppets in action was cooler than being in the great hall of Hogwarts. And lets be clear, I wasn’t even close to the action, I was all the way across the street, snapping photos like a tourist.
That night I got home and shot an e-mail to the nice people at Disney and begged and pleaded, if they invite me to anything this year, please let it be a invite to The Muppets set. For me, that would be better than The Avengers, John Carter or whatever other cool movies are on their slate. In January, an e-mail hit my inbox and clicking on it was like opening a Wonka Bar and finding a shinny golden ticket — I was going to go to the set of The Muppets. After the jump you can watch a video blog I recorded with Steve from Collider talking about our adventure on set, and what we learned about the movie. Enjoy!
