How did you get started in special effects?
I began in London at a company called CFC, which is now Framestore-CFC, and I worked there for about seven years before moving out to the States. I began as a runner and answering telephones; a good classic film story of starting at the bottom, which I have a lot of respect for.
So you started working digitally rather than coming through traditional animation.
Yes. More of a learning-on-the-job. A kind of apprenticeship scheme really.
They don’t seem to have too many of those any more.
When I started there weren’t any formal courses. It was all pretty new back in the early ’90s, so it really was a case of people being willing to take a risk and try things out. Increasingly now there are courses, which I think is good, but it obviously adds to the competitive nature and it’s not quite as unstructured, if you like.
What is it like working with the Wachowskis?
They’re fantastic to work with really. They’re very easy going as people: very clear minded, but very smart. You know they understand everything you do, and more, but they acknowledge everybody’s role. They’re very collaborative and willing to listen to suggestions and input, but at the end of the day they have a hand in every detail and decision. Once they start to form the picture of the film they want to put together they are very clear about how they want that to be guided.
Do you think that there is a tendency now to rely more on special effects than concentrating on creating a good story with strong characters?
I definitely think that there are some movies that you could say that is true. On the other hand, that is part of the genre. The studio, or production company, may be deliberately making a movie that is going to draw people because of the big explosions. I’m a firm believer that visual effects, and all aspects of movie making contribute to the overall picture, and they shouldn’t be there to try and outshine another part. This movie is a little hard to defend on that account.
From what I’ve seen it looks a little over the top.
In a way that was always the intention. The Wachowskis always wanted to do something very different and they wanted to make a movie that was bright and colourful, aimed at families and that was funny as well. There’s quite a bit of comedy in it.
It comes from a Japanese anime origin.
It does, and I wasn’t familiar with it, coming from the UK. The original ’60s’ Japanese series is very primitive in its appearance, very early Japanese animation, or at least one of the first that made it to the West, and that was at the core of what they wanted to reproduce, both in story – in the spirit of the racing family story – and the bright colours and trying to provide something that will be fun for kids to watch, and so far it seems to have had a very good response.
Did the Japanese origins influence the overall look of the film?
The source of the animation was a key component. Like I said, the original series is extremely primitive so we wanted to modernise and update that look-and-feel a certain amount. We also looked at the more contemporary Japanese animations, such as GHOST IN THE SHELL, APPLESEED and AKIRA, and what we found was they were going into a very 3D CGI realm and we felt there was something more interesting in the batch of films that came out before that, which have continued in the works of Miyazaki, like SPIRITED AWAY and THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO. These were very inspiring to us, and the techniques they used mimicked camera moves, and build conveyor belts or rotating drums that the car is riding on, and the road rolls underneath the car and you get things that we were quite familiar with in animation, but it has no bearing on reality. The idea for us to take it and put it in a creative, photographic-looking version of that seemed quite interesting. That’s what we really set about to do; to adapt a lot of animation techniques, which in many respects are quite old and traditional, such as rostrum cameras that are used to photograph static background plates and slide around it rather than use a real dolly track or camera jib. We shot a lot of stills photographs with these complete 360° stills panoramas that we could then move around and imitate movement behind our foreground actors. It’s definitely quite an interesting look. For many years we’ve sometimes used techniques like that but we’ve pushed them until you don’t quite notice them, and you take it to be real. In this movie we wanted to push it beyond that so you are fully aware that there are flat, static backgrounds that are built from photographs but somehow the motion of them tells the story and in many cases provides visual interest.
Usually the secret to good special effects is that you don’t notice them.
Depending on the context, but yes. Ideally your techniques are hidden, like a magician. Arguably, with this one, we have laid our tools on the table and said, “Look, we’ve done with hiding them and here’s how it works.” People are pretty cine-literate these days, so we just want to have fun.
THE MATRIX has had a huge influence on the look of advertising, in the same way that BRAZIL and BLADE RUNNER did in the ’80s. Do you feel proud or annoyed when you see all your work has been subverted in that way?
I have a pretty open mind about it. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. I think it is more credit to Larry and Andy [Wachowski] and they really are visual pioneers. That’s one of the great aspects of working with them, is that you always feel challenged to do something against what you felt you were trained to do, but ultimately you are producing something with an element of risk to it. You never know if people are really going to take to it, but at the same time it’s different, and working on it is a different and rewarding experience, even if people don’t take to it, at the end of the day.
Do you have any advice for the young guys that want to get a foothold in the special effects world?
It’s still a booming and exciting profession and there are more and more opportunities. We are about to see a transition as HD television and movies become a more common field. One of the things we learnt with this movie was that it wasn’t so much the technology that we were pushing to create what we did, but we were using technology that has reached a stage where we had a lot of creative rein and we could start having fun trying to create images that were themselves stimulating rather than just concentrating on the technical construction of the film. That is a significant turning point, I think. We are going to start seeing a flood of vastly more creative content coming out, which opens the doors to many more visual pioneers out there.
What do you think about the future of 3D in cinema?
I think it will always have a place, it’ll be like a genre. I don’t think it will become a total replacement, at least not any time soon. The prospect of 3D televisions that will really transform that world seem to be quite far away, but the devices I’ve seen are very interesting. We saw one at Siggraph the other year that was the basis for a potential 3D television but it was extremely noisy and was like standing next to a Van Der Graaf generator. So clearly a bit of work to go there.