This documentary is a must see in my books. Keanu Reeves is going directly to the source with this no holds barred approach to understand what is happening in today's filmmaking community.
Of course 3D, high frame rates, digital vs. film are all going to be huge topics - but to see these titans discuss their bread and butter makes for extremely interesting viewing.
Keanu Reeves of course has his 3D samurai epic 47 RONIN opening in February, 2013.
The videos I have below include outtakes from Reeves' discussions with James Cameron, David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Steven Soderbergh, Wally Pfister, Robert Rodriguez, The Wachowskis and John Malkovich.
And these are just the outtakes! The content in the edited documentary must be totally enthralling.
Oh and I have Soderbergh leading into Wally Pfister's clip by design. I think you will see why.
If you have managed to see it, let me know your thoughts! You can view now on iTunes.
Guillermo del Toro recently spoke to MTV about his good friend Alfonso Cuarón's GRAVITY and obviously he is very enthusiastic about it.
Cuarón is pulling no punches. He went straight to the top of the industry and sought advice from David Fincher, James Cameron as well as del Toro.
Here is the storyline for the movie (adapted from Deadline): "[The film] is set on a remote space station. While a team leader (Clooney) and a female colleague are traveling outside, the other team members get wiped out by a debris field from an exploding satellite. The film's central focus is the heroine's desperate attempt to return home to her child."
Check out a very enthused Guillermo del Toro talking about hooking Cuaron up with Cameron as well as his thoughts on the project:
Who isn't excited now? I mean really. If Cameron is saying he is five years ahead of the time in his technology use and he pulls it off? I expect cinematic history here in some capacity - seriously. Potentially a one shot 20 minute opening space scene, in S3D using brand spanking new technology to achieve a very visual director's masterpiece. I have always loved Sandra Bullock's characters and George Clooney adds some real depth. Can't wait!
Wow. Seventy percent is a hefty number and if David Fincher can pull off that amount of CG in a compelling way (he certainly has the credentials) than 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA should be an amazing movie.
Here's what Fincher had to say recently on the matter:"I would love to to something like that. I would love to do something probably more like Avatar than Tintin. I like the idea of something that is a little more… complicated. I love the idea of a ‘cartoon’, but I would like it to be sort of very, very dense. And, in fact, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea will be probably 70% CG. [...] I love motion capture and think it’s only in its infancy, and eventually there won’t be a difference between motion capture and acting. Because that’s all motion capture is, is being able to capture acting."
Can't wait to see some first looks from this project! I'm a big fan of Fincher and all of this in 3D (especially the fact that it will be underwater) is going to be massive.
MTV got a chance to talk to Morgan Freeman during the recent RED junket and he confirmed rather clearly that Arthur C. Clarke's RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA is still in the works.
Freeman: "That's a gotta be done movie. We just have to figure out how to do it. We've been trying for 15 years now to get a script, and you would think that it is easier than it is? It's not. It's really hard. (David) Fincher is still part of that conversation."
Check out the whole interview (rather short) below:
Here is the storyline from the novel (POTENTIAL SERIOUS SPOILERS): The "Rama" of the title is an alien star ship, initially mistaken for an asteroid and named after the king Rama who is considered to be the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu (Clarke mentions that by the 22nd century, scientists have used the names of all the Greek and Roman mythological figures to name astronomical bodies, and have thus moved on to Hindu mythology). Asteroid 31/439 is detected by astronomers in the year 2130 while still outside the orbit of Jupiter. The object's speed (100 000 km/h) and the angle of its trajectory clearly indicate that this is not an object on a long orbit around our sun; it comes from interstellar space. Astronomers' interest is piqued when they realize that this asteroid not only has an extremely rapid 4 minute rotation period but it is quite large in size for an asteroid. An unmanned space probe dubbed Sita is launched from the Mars moon Phobos, and photographs taken during its rapid flyby reveal that Rama is a mathematically perfect cylinder, 20 kilometres in diameter and 54 kilometres long, made of a completely featureless material. In other words, this is humankind's first encounter with an alien space ship.
The manned solar survey vessel Endeavour is sent to study Rama, as it is the only ship close enough to do so in the brief period of time Rama will spend in our solar system. Endeavour manages to rendezvous with Rama one month after the space ship first comes to Earth's attention, when the giant alien spacecraft already is within Venus' orbit. The 20+ crew, led by Commander Norton, enters Rama and explores the vast 16-km wide by 50-long cylindrical world of its interior, but the nature and purpose of the starship and its creators remains enigmatic throughout the book.
The only lifeforms are the cybernetic "biots" who completely ignore the humans, and who are busy all about the spacecraft, appearing to be prepping Rama for a major upcoming maneuver. After several adventures and misadventures, including a 1 gigaton nuclear missile fired from Mercury with the intent of destroying Rama, Endeavour is finally forced to leave a few weeks later as Rama moves too close to the Sun for Endeavour's cooling systems to compensate. Rama is then flung out of the solar system toward an unknown location in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud, harnessing the Sun's gravitational field with its mysterious "space drive" for use in a slingshot maneuver.
I REALLY hope this thing gets made. Freeman has earned the right to champion a movie like this to fruition and quite frankly it deserves to be made. This classic novel belongs on the big screen and in stereoscopic 3D!
More when I get it... Thanks for the heads up Adam!
Jim here. I just got some rather interesting news from one of my newsources about recent visits to James Cameron's AVATAR production:
"I can't say too much about Avatar, I'm sure you understand, but I can confirm that David Fincher visited the set around the time that Ridley Scott stopped by. Just thought you'd like to know. Alien 3-D, anyone? Haha... love the site."
While an ALIEN franchise movie in 3D would be awesome, that is not quite what I am thinking...
We know that Fincher was interested in shooting HEAVY METAL in 3D (last I heard this project is in doldrums) - his quote to MTV was: "I'm in talks right now to do a series of CG-animated 3-D films for HEAVY METAL." It could be that he was referring to animation 3D and not stereoscopic 3D however so I am leaning away from HM3D.
But I am thinking that Fincher is aiming to do RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA (based on the Arthur C. Clarke novel) in motion capture 3D. Again, here is more from MTV on this from January 2008 interview:
MTV: How about "Rendezvous With Rama"? That's a legendary sci-fi property you've wanted to do for a while. Fincher:I'm waiting to get a script. It's my understanding that [producer] Lori [McReary] and Morgan [Freeman] have a script, and when they're happy with it, they'll send it to me. It's a project I've always loved. It's probably technologically within striking distance right now. That was always the thing: You couldn't afford to build these things as sets. It's just too huge.
MTV: Would you shoot it using a lot of green screen? Fincher: I think it's more along the lines of motion-capture. There's probably a week or two onboard the ship that you'd have to do the weightlessness and the landing before they get to Rama. We'd probably do it with some kind of performance-capture.So. Connect the dots. A well established director who knows of, and is interested in 3D. A guy who has a SciFi project in the works for years but wasn't able to pull it off without modern filmmaking technology (sounds familiar doesn't it?). And a guy who recently visited the AVATAR set to see Cameron and performance capture in action. Other directors have come and were HEAVILY influenced by what they saw - even Ridley Scott is back at SciFi after vowing to never do another one. That is the power behind what Cameron is doing with AVATAR.
Note that he used the term "Performance Capture" and not "Motion Capture". Performance Capture is the term used by Cameron as he alludes to the capture of an actor's performance and not just body motion.
So I submit to you - David Fincher is gearing up to shoot RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA in stereoscopic, performance capture 3D using similar techniques that are being used in Cameron's AVATAR.
Here is what actor Morgan Freeman had to say about the project to MTV back in 2007: "I play the captain of the spaceship Endeavor that is charged with rendezvousing with this thing from outer space to find out what it is [and] what its intentions are. It's a very intellectual science fiction film, a very difficult book to translate cinematically... we have found it very difficult to translate, to get ready for film. There are no guns, no explosions. Although it's fiction, it's all based on pure science."
So it sounds like a very compelling movie whose limelight may soon be upon us. Freeman would be an excellent choice as a starship captain! I thought he was one of only a few things that enabled us to suspend disbelief in DEEP IMPACT so his presence is definitely welcomed here. What are your thoughts on this classic SciFi tale being shot in "AVATAR" mode? :-)
