A Conversation with the Season General behind SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, producer

Thursday, 16 September 2004

Reported by Joseph B. Mauceri SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is a state-of-the-art special effects movie that makes cinematic history as it strives to create a world never seen before. With more than 2000 effects shots, this feature uses live action shot against a blue screen and fills all the other details in digitally. More than six years, producer Jon Avnet found the founding that allowed first-time director Kerry Conran to take a six minute animated short and grow it into an alternated universe of breathtakingly lush, long-lost sci-fi worlds where pulp fiction fantasies come to life. Producer Jon Avnet has directed and produced more than 50 motion pictures and television movies, in addition to serving as the chairman of the board of directors of the American Film Institute and chairman of the Center for Advanced Film Studies Advisory Board at the American Film Institute. Already in pre-production on several other projects, Avnet was eager to talk at length about this six minute film he saw that he would help bring into being and launch the create of a visionary filmmaker. FEARS: So this ìgrand experimentî all started with a six minute video that Kerry Conran (writer/director) created? Jon Avnet: It was impressive, and I hadnt seen anything like it. It wasnít just the subject matter, it was the framing, the lighting, and the lens through which old movies were seen and not just recirculated, but honored in a way. I asked Kerry, ìWell, what do you want.î He said, ìI want to make my movie.î Then I utter those fateful words, ìI think I can do that.î That was about six years ago. I dont know what I was thinking at the time, but I decided to make this movie, and had I known then what I know now, I would have shot myself first because of how difficult it was. FEARS: Thatís not very optimistic. Jon Avnet: If you sat in my chair and lived through what I lived through, you would think I am guilty of an understatement. First, we literally had to create our own effects house, with between 85 and a hundred people working there. There are some 2000 effects shots in the film. The level of complexity is extraordinary. Whenever anybody glibly tells you that they want to do something different, if it is different and there is no pattern to follow, creating that pattern is difficult. Itís enormously challenging! Having said all that, Im excited by what we have. However, it was a long, tough, trip to get here. Id show up after I dropped my daughter off at school and the first thing I would check was the air conditioning to make sure the rendering farms hadnít blown up over night. The air conditioning went out once, maybe twice, because those puppies really heat up. We were trying to render some of the largest images that anyone had ever tried to produce. We had to write code to get that to work and for weeks on end we couldnt render New York City. New York City is a pretty big image to render. When you think about those robots walking in New York and those planes flying there, and imagine lighting that. You have to turn all that into ones and zeros. Sending all that through a little processor to make those puppies come out and look half decent, or half real, or look the way we wanted, which was stylized, heats up those computers. So it was very demanding. FEARS: What was that the most difficult shot of the film? Jon Avnet: In terms of how many polyhedrons you were dealing with, New York was pretty tough. Some of the rocket cavern stuff was pretty big too. But there is a reason why ILM is what it is. George Lucas is no dummy! Youve got some of the best people in the world working up there. Theyve got a tremendous amount of R&D and staff. What we were doing was very admirable on one level. FEARS: At the core of the story is the obvious influence of the classic serials, which generally took audiences on a short side. How tricky was it to take that concept and try to sustain it in a 90 minute feature? Jon Avnet: I didnt start out that way. After I saw the short, again some six years ago, I spent two or three days talking to Kerry about tone and the story. I was concerned because I didnt want to do something where there was a lot of winking at the audience or campy stuff, personally for my own gag reflex. After spending a certain amount of time with Kerry I felt that he was an extraordinarily intelligent person and that our tastes were similar. We spent two years working on the script. In those two years he probably did seven or eight drafts of the screenplay, and I am not a fun person to work with if you want smooth sailing or lack of opinion. Kerry and I banged heads, and over time we developed an interesting, functional relationship and a good collaboration. It made me think, ìOk, we can go through this.î Kerryís got strong opinions, but he also can listen. I felt I could defer to him as well and not be disappointed. When I put up money, or work this hard on a project, I want to at least get to like it. Even though it is tremendously influenced by the serials, it comes right out of the cliffhangers and its unabashed melodrama. So there is a narrative that plays for 95 or 100 minutes, and Im talking about the film, forgetting the credits. These are the longest credits in the world, and I think only the ìLord of the Ringsî is longer. FEARS: Did you ever consider doing some sets and maybe making it a bit less CGI intensive? Jon Avnet: No. I basically bet on Kerry. First of all, my level of sophistication was not that great, even though I had done some goofy movies, like ìGeorge of the Jungleî and ìInspector Gadget.î Those had enormously high effects budget, but I didnt create an effects house to do them. So it wasnt something I was highly knowledgeable about. Kerry was wrong a lot of the time, but he was also right and I believed in him. The wrong ones are the ones you remember because you have to fix them. But as we went forward, I said, ìKerry, do we really need to, or do we need to?î We shot with fairly flat lighting. So the more blue screen you have, the less actual light you have spilling on real objects and the more you are able to change something, from backlight to sidelight to those beautiful vintage touches. All of that makes this film very special. FEARS: In terms of lighting nuances, do you think it would have looked fake with bright lighting, like ìVan Helsingî did or cartoonish like ìShrek?î Jon Avnet: Yes. First of all I hate that lighting personally. To me in most of these big movies, even Spider-man which is not a bad movie, I thought it was pretty good, but the lighting, it looked so garish. This came from a different sensibility and really sort of honored the pulp tradition to film. Will everybody like that? I dont know but I think it is gorgeous and completely singular. The other thing is that I love film, and the history of film. This is an unabashed non-cynical valentine to the movies that have made film what it is. FEARS: Given what you were proposing, how hard was it to get all the stars involved because this wasnít a traditional movie? Jon Avnet: Well I think it was gutsy on their part, and Ive been doing this a long time, so I have credibility with a lot of the actors and a lot of their representatives. Basically they were relying on me to not have them be embarrassed. I was relying on Kerry. And I was relying on my relationship with them to pull this off. It would have been a nightmare for me to fire Kerry. Thats great, and then Id go in and fix it? What a mess. I had to believe that he was good enough to do this and it wouldnt be a bad experience. I went to Jude and made him look at the tape before he read the script. I wanted him to see what was exciting me, even though I wouldnt consider myself the most commercial producer in Hollywood. There are people a lot higher on the list than me, but Im not the village idiot and Iíve made some good movies. I showed it to Jude and he liked it. I gave him the script and he read it. He said, ìOk, this is really interesting.î I explained it was all to be shot on blue screen. I wanted Jude because I thought hed look fantastic in the period and he has that theatrical background, and in the blue screen world hed be able to conform. He is a very experienced actor and with an inexperienced director hed be able to supply the life of the character. And boy did he! He made the process flow. It was similar with Gwyneth. I knew her a little bit. I think Kerry thought it was a cruel joke when I suggested Gwyneth because he had never imagined it that way. My thought was that we had to get good actors, regardless. Ive always tried to spoil myself. I usually hire them off stage here, or in London. It is really fun and I love great actors. FEARS: So, you built this effects house. Is it still intact and are you working on anything else? Jon Avnet: No. Weapons of Mass Destruction were found there and... (Laughs) No, itís gone. Thank God. Our people did a phenomenal job. We did 1100 shots in a year and in total some 2000 shots, and towards the end we fixed another 200 to 300. It is a staggering amount of shots to be rendered and composited in a year. But it was literally a start-up there was nothing there. We used some packing place in the porn capital of America, Van Nuys. FEARS: Why disassemble it? Jon Avnet: Show me the money. The answer is kind of interesting. This equipment today is state of the art. A year from now... FEARS: OutdatedÖ Jon Avnet: Thats part of what makes those effects company such a difficult business. So do we keep the stuff, or do we say, lets get this thing going and then well redo it. What are we going to do thats different? Believe me there are some things which we will do different. But the big resources is the experience and some of the people that weve worked with who are so fantastically talented and so devoted to this movie to do that much work at that level of quality. FEARS: Back in the 70s, when ìslasherî films and physical effects were all the rage you had these kids working out of their garages and building these monsters and effects. It seems this new generation is in their garages using iMacs instead. Was it difficult to find experienced talent to pull this all together? Jon Avnet: We didnt have the money to find experienced talent initially. So what we did was we got certain key people who had some pedigree and experience and then we trained them. Then we mixed in a few more experienced people with a bunch of kids. There was one guy who worked on this film for two and a half to three years. At one point we offered him a raise and he wouldnt take it. He said that the reason was that he signed on to do this job and get this thing rolling. Hes not from our culture of course. But thats the way he was. He loved working on this project. And most of the people that came to this didnt come for money. They came because they saw that we were trying to do something interesting and that we were able to do it. Kerryís story proves that you can do some unbelievable stuff on your Mac. You can really create a world. What Kerry wanted was to have a big film with a low budget. He wanted to have sets that looked like what Greg Toland shot in Citizen Kane. But in order to do that, how are you going to build those sound stages? How are you going to get the extras? So he had to use what he could do with a computer. Some animation techniques try and create that world. Thats a big, big job. There are things in the film that are quite revolutionary. I think the impact of it will depend on how successful it is. People in Hollywood are not quick on picking up on new ideas. They are so slow! We did this for 50 to 60 million dollars less than you would do a conventional movie. It has staggering implications on a monetary level alone. Not that it is photo real, not that it is competing with ìVan Helsingî or whatever you want to call it. But the step to that is not a big step. It all came from Kerrys imagining how to do it, and my backing Kerry so the experiment could be realized to whatever level. FEARS: Given this entire universe you created, but that you dismantled the studio, did you backup all the files for video games or toys? Jon Avnet: Yeah, weve got everything. FEARS: Having lived through this once are you to taking on a sequel? Jon Avnet: Im ready. The good news is that Kerry and I are still talking; the bad news is that Kerry and I are still talking to each other! 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