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Post by architect on Jan 5, 2012 22:47:04 GMT -5
A Minute with Jeremy Renner Q: Is it true you went in to discuss a possible role in "Super 8" when you were offered "MI4" instead?
A: "It's true. I was discussing 'Super 8' with J.J. Abrams, who directed that and produced ("MI4"), and that was a very secretive project too, and within a few hours I'd met Tom Cruise and ("MI4" director) Brad Bird. I went in for one movie and came out with another!"
Q: Does that happen a lot?
A: "Not to me. It's very strange. I called people and said, 'You won't believe what just happened.' It was crazy and I was shocked to suddenly be in 'MI4.' But it was so easy, sitting down with Tom and Brad. It's this fantastic fun franchise ... And there was no script then. They just pitched me the whole story, where my character was at, and it all made sense. It was very easy to say, 'Yes.'"
Q: Any surprises working with Cruise?
A: "Just how dedicated he is. I think he has 48 hours in a day, compared to our 24. He gets so much done and is so focused. He has this childlike outlook, where he's constantly learning and growing all the time. He has this immense amount of energy because he's so excited about what he's doing. He loves what he does, and that's awesome to be around. It's infectious."
Q: There's a rumour that you may take over the franchise.
A: "I heard that. I hear lots of rumours -- that I'm sleeping with half of Hollywood -- and I'm like, 'who has the time?' No, it's not true about 'Mission: Impossible.' There's no taking over. It's not happening. SOURCE
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Post by serin on Jan 9, 2012 6:24:29 GMT -5
January 9, 2012 at 1:00 am Our love of spy films is no secret Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” (David James)In "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol's" exuberant fantasy and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's" grim reality, the spy-movie genre continues to thrive. The films are excellent examples of their type of spy movie and could hardly be less alike. "Mission: Impossible," starring insanely daring actor Tom Cruise as insanely fearless secret agent Ethan Hunt, exemplifies the enduringly popular formula of secret agent as action superhero. Seeing Cruise do his own stunts on the outside of Dubai's 160-story Burj Khalifa — the world's tallest building — is enough to make viewers wish for theater seat belts. "Ghost Protocol" — already a box-office hit — is a pure comic-book adventure in which reality never intrudes. It aims to work you into a state of adrenalin-fueled excitement. Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force conjure up any fantastic futuristic gizmo at a moment's notice, or easily shake off any kind of fall, punch, bullet or car crash. Events are far more grounded in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," set in the early-1970s Cold War and based on John le Carre's classic 1974 espionage novel. Where "M:I" has second-to-second thrills, "Tinker Tailor," which opened Friday, slowly builds a deep, palpable atmosphere of danger and tension. The unlikely "hero," played by Gary Oldman, is George Smiley, a moral man who has spent decades of moral ambiguity in the over-lit halls of the British Secret Service, playing deadly games of chess with Soviet spy-master Karla. Smiley — the name is nothing if not ironic — uses intellect, not muscle, to fight his foes. When he can identify them. Ongoing spy series You can read the rest here: www.detroitnews.com/article/20120109/ENT02/201090302/1034/rss28
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Post by serin on Jan 10, 2012 9:02:01 GMT -5
The Possible of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Vol. 1
Monday, January 9,2012 Movies like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol are certainly entertaining. But for those of us stoked on living in "The Future", they also provide a great public service. If companies don’t think they can sell it, they won’t front the money for R&D, and we won't get awesome stuff to play with. So when we see Tom Cruise and friends using cool gadgets to save the world, it serves to whet our appetites (and loosen our wallets) for the Future of Stuff. In my next few posts, we’re going to take a look at a few of the cooler technologies featured in M:I GP to see how close they are to you:
Item 1: The Contact Lenses.
Seems that since he left the island, Josh Holloway has ditched his makeshift glasses for a sweet set of contacts. Those Heads Up Display (HUD) Lenses were the coolest, and, aside from the sweet car (see my next post), they win the prize for most obviously marketable gizmo. Transparent displays are nothing new. But how realistic is sticking that sucker on your eye? The quick of it is: Not very. But we’re on our way.
Researchers at the University of Washington recently completed a successful test of a contact lens LED display. Granted, the thing could only manage a single pixel and the pictures of it sitting on anesthetized rabbit eyes are a super bummer, but hey: Science! The point of this test was to prove that the technology is possible. It is. Now these guys will start figuring out how to implement multiple pixels and, hopefully, fix the whole “extended use could lead to lactate build-up and corneal swelling” issue.
For now, if you’re okay with not having a computer screen snug up against your peepers, here are a couple of gadgets that might do the trick:
According to a press release from the Recon Instruments team, astronauts out on spacewalks use paper checklists on their arms. Seriously? Paper? What a let down, astronauts. Thankfully, Recon invented this fancy, non-paper Micro Optics Display and NASA says they’re gonna give it a whirl. For us planet-bound humans, Recon sells these things in special goggles for skiers. The display shows the wearer graphical ski related data like speed, altitude, air time, and location (just in case you get a little too high up the slope). Also, with smartphone connectivity you can get calls/texts, hook up to GPS, and control your music playlist telepathically [not factual].
In a much more sinister, Big Brotherly, instance: Brazilian police are testing glasses that will allow them to capture the biometrics of 400 faces per second. The data is cross-referenced against a central computer storing some 13 million faces. If there’s a match the glasses will highlight the perp in Robocop Red for further crime-stopping. That’s just the most interesting feature. The glasses enable their wearer to identify a suspect up to 12 miles away! What? They hope to use these for quick response crowd control during the 2014 Olympics.
Item 2: The Gloves:
One of the most exciting scenes in the movie was when Tom Cruise Spidermanned (read: scaling walls) his way all over the Burj Khalifa. Apparently he was actually doing that. Tom Cruise was actually jumping around the 123rd story of the tallest building on Planet Earth. Of course, while in the movie he was using these neat gloves, the actor was in fact hooked into all sorts of wires, harnesses, and safety machines. But if you were, say, an actual person without the aid of special effects, would those gloves work?
Lo! There are real immediate technologies that would make these gloves totally possible...soonish. For now the focus has been on building wall-climbing robots that use something called electroadhesion, a technology made possible by SRI International. Other notable SRI projects include the computer mouse, HDTV, the Internet, and, most recently, Siri.
Now look. I’m not going to pretend that I understand how this thing works. If video presentations are to be believed, the science behind this may work only when mumbled in a slow, heavily accented, monotone. The basic principle is the same as when you rub a balloon on your head and stick it to a wall. But here the balloon is a robot, and your hair-static is “a plurality of electroadhesive gripping surfaces, each having electrode(s) and each configured to be placed against respective surface regions of a foreign object.”
In August 2011, SRI received a patent for their electroadhesive system. It’s very dull and jargony and stuffed to the brim with exceptionally boring ways that this innovation could be used in the real world. Typically that’s what’s up with patents. Where it gets interesting—after eight pages of “the electroadhesive gripping system of claim [1-]28 wherein said first and second…gripping system…end effector…” yadda yadda—is claim 32 (of 33), “wherein said electroadhesive end effector resembles a human hand.” Bam!
According to the text, this “end effector” (i.e. Glove) would be used to help people with arthritis lift heavy bags. Actually! But, come on, if old people are lifting bags with battery operated gloves, then you know that Special Ops dudes are scaling the walls of evil somewhere.
To be continued….
New York Press.com
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Post by serin on Jan 10, 2012 9:08:23 GMT -5
Speaking of Josh Holloway.. I was very disappointed that he appeared for a few minutes in MI 4 and disappeared for good. No chance to see him in MI 5.. I wish Josh were Ethan's side kick in the movie instead of Jeremy Renner.. Holloway looks great and he can act .. He was very good in his scenes..What more do they want ? *
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Post by architect on Jan 16, 2012 23:01:46 GMT -5
It's ok, he died a good death
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Post by architect on Jan 16, 2012 23:05:24 GMT -5
Brad Bird on filming in IMAX ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you know you wanted to move into live-action films?
BRAD BIRD: Like a lot of people in Hollywood, I’ve spent a big chunk of time in development hell, where I was trying to get films off the ground. The industry is very much a fear-based industry, so you go through a long period where people will let you audition for a dance but they’ll never let you onto the floor. Half of the projects I tried to develop in that period were live-action. And it just happens that the first chance I was given to make a film, it was animated. Once you make one of those, you get more opportunities, though usually they just stay into that groove. After Iron Giant, which was my first feature, there was the opportunity to do The Incredibles, and then The Incredibles rolled into Ratatouille. At this point, I needed to make a stand and try to do something outside animation. I didn’t just want to be known as the animation guy.
EW: With your animated films, you had time to write, brainstorm, and pre-visualize elaborate, intricately detailed action sequences. The ambitious action in Mission: Impossible has the same quality of cleverness and interconnectedness. Did you have the same kind of time to map those out, or does that kind of storytelling come pretty naturally to you now because of your animation experience?
BB: On this film, I think I imagined that I was going to get to pre-visualize more than I did. I only got to pre-visualize two and half sequences, and obviously one of them was Tom climbing the building in Dubai. But we had this incredibly aggressive shooting schedule — shorter in terms of the number of days than the previous Mission: Impossible, even though the film was bigger. They kept saying, “You have to do a shot list, you have to do a shot list.” I would come up with a shot list a couple times, but it didn’t make that much difference. I was getting back home from work at 11:30 at night and I had to get up at 5:30 in the morning to work. I finally told them: “Shot list or sleep? Which one do you think I can do without?” For the most part, if I came to set each day knowing what the first shot was, they could start working on that, and I could figure out the next one, and the next one, and stay ahead of them. I think because I came from animation, and because I was used to pre-visualization, I had developed a good sense for what shots we would need and in what order they would go. I was happy later on when stuff I hoped would cut together did cut together and it all seemed to make sense.
EW: What sequence was most challenging to map out and cut together?
BB: It would probably seem to people as a series of sequences, but I view the whole Dubai section as one sequence with a lot of different parts. It’s not just Tom climbing around and on the world’s tallest building [Click the link for behind the scenes how-they-did-that], but the simultaneous action between different sets of agents negotiating deals in two different rooms, leading into the fight between Paula Patton’s character and the assassin (Léa Seydoux), leading into the sandstorm chase. That sequence was the most challenging, because of the fact that it was constantly chasing tempo, from big and wide, to tiny little close-ups of hands and eyes and glances. Sometimes it got quiet; sometimes it was wild. It was like a piece of music, like An American in Paris, where some parts are fast and some parts are slow and you are continually trying to move from one and another.
EW: How much of the movie was shot with IMAX cameras?
BB: It winds up being about 25 minutes of the film, I was really inspired by what Chris Nolan did with The Dark Knight. We were not able to do as much as Chris did, but the first time I saw The Dark Knight, I saw it in an IMAX theater. It just seemed so vivid and visceral. In all this push toward 3-D, I think people have forgotten the impact of a really big screen with a really bright sharp image. It makes you feel like you’re experiencing the movie.
EW: What parts of the film were shot in IMAX?
BB: The part at the beginning that takes places in Budapest that deals with an agent played by Josh Holloway (Lost). Tom climbing the building in Dubai. The shot of the Kremlin blowing up. And there’s the climactic scene set in the car park. It’s marvelous to work in 70mm and I wish more people did it. It would be cool to see what someone like Steven Spielberg would do in 70mm.
Q: Does that car park really exist?
BB: There is one like it in Germany. The sequence was in the script but it wasn’t defined. It said: “There’s a fight and chase in a car park.” I think that’s literally what it said. It was left wide open for me to define what that was and figure out how the action would escalate. That was one that absolutely had to be pre-visualized, because we had to figure out just how much we had to build and how much could be left to special effects. We ended up building an enormous set in an airplane hangar — there was no soundstage big enough to hold it. SOURCE
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:13:49 GMT -5
Brad Bird on Evolving from Animation and Tom Cruise's Fearlessness Q: Tom Cruise has a real eye for auteurs, having worked with Spielberg, Scorsese, Kubrick, Michael Mann...
A: Oliver Stone, Cameron Crowe, Ridley Scott...
Q: How does it feel to join those ranks?
A: Well, I've been a huge fan of Tom's work for a number of years. I met him right after The Incredibles and we got to hang out for a couple of hours. We just talked about film and what we loved about it and what we admired and how much we enjoy the process. And I've known J.J. [Abrams] for much longer than I've known Tom. We had looked for opportunities to work together and the timing never worked out. In this case, I was looking for something to do when [Ghost Protocol] was being discussed. J.J. said, "What about the new Mission?" I said, "There's going to be another Mission?" And then bang, before I knew it, I was on top of the highest building in the world filming Tom Cruise in IMAX.
Q: Tom has had a lot of creative input in this franchise. How did you go about sharing your visions with each other for Ghost Protocol?
A: I think that one of the things Tom set out to do, which I think is very enlightened for the franchise, is to have each film take on the stamp of the director. I think the reason he decided to do that is because he likes working with directors with specific, pronounced points of view. That's part of what attracted me to this. I thought that was cool because then I'm not trying to fit into someone else's [directing] style. I'm doing what I think would be a cool Mission: Impossible. One of the earliest things J.J. asked me was, "What things would you love to see in a spy movie?" I pitched several things and several of those things ended up in the movie.
Q: Like what?
A: Well one of them was the sandstorm. The Burj Khalifa sequence was always in the script and that is one of the things that attracted me to the movie but I was looking for a way to show how unbelievably tall that building is. It's almost twice the height of the Empire State Building. I thought, "What if there is a shot of it sticking out above the clouds and you see Tom climbing on it, with the clouds below?" One of the producers, Jeffrey Chernov, suggested a shamal, which is a giant sandstorm. I thought that shouldn't just be a shot though, that should be a sequence. Then I thought, what if we had a chase scene in a sandstorm, where you can't see anything. It was very challenging to shoot. Dan Bradley, the second unit director, had his work cut out for him getting some of those shots. Tom ran around in that stuff for days.
Q: At the screening, [producer] Bryan Burk mentioned that it was exhausting to watch Tom Cruise give 110 percent every day on set.
A:Yeah, Tom only has that setting and "off." [Laughs] You can't run like that 24 hours a day so he does stop at some point but he only knows how to push it to its max. Continue Reading . . .
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:16:33 GMT -5
Brad Bird on the toughest shots of his career Q: How did you do the Burj Khalifa stunts?
A: It took months and months to plan but it probably took a week, or two weeks to film. When we were first talking about the scene when Ethan climbs the building, we imagined we would do it mostly through special effects. But after talking to the government of Dubai, it became clear to us that we might be able to film Tom on the real building, then it became something that we all kind of got seized with. Tom was immediately like, ‘let’s do it’.
Q: We had to break the windows in order to get our equipment through there but of course we put them back. At first we were only going to do it to a few windows and then we kept thinking, ‘oh we can get this shot’ and ‘wouldn’t this shot be cool’ and we ended up taking out something like 27 windows. But we put them back – we wanted to be allowed back in to Dubai!
A: How did you ensure Tom was safe?
Q: We had wires and we removed them from the film, but they were small wires and I wouldn’t have gone out there. But Tom takes stunts very seriously, he loves the challenge of it. The only one who wasn’t relieved when we finished that sequence was Tom. He was kind of grumpy for a day or two. If he could he’d be out there right now.
A: You shot some scenes using helicopters too?
Q: There were so many moving parts that needed to fit together at once. We filmed it in Imax which is a really cumbersome camera. It’s big, it’s noisy, it’s heavy and the loads of film magazines don’t last very long, because the film is so large. The cameras are so big that we had to land the helicopter just to change the magazine. Also we had to stay in the air so we burned through gas quickly. So you had to call ‘roll’ of the cameras, and immediately have the stunt ready because you didn’t have enough film, and you didn’t want to stop shooting to have to land the helicopter, reload the camera, and then fly back. So to get Tom to do the stunt, have the camera in position and have the film ready and have that all happen at once was very difficult.
A: Was the filming mostly done with helicopters?
Q: No, fortunately there were only a few shots done with helicopters and those were the trickiest of all. One time we were looking through a video monitor and hovering and then the wind came up and the helicopter drifted, and it was a better shot, so I shouted: ‘That! Make that the ‘A’ position!”, and the team were going “Are we ready to film?”, and I’m like” “Start now! Now!”, and Tom’s hanging on the side of the building going: “Start filming - I can’t hold on!” Continue Reading . . .
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:19:08 GMT -5
'On the Spot' Interview with Brad Bird SR. Hi Brad, just wondering…How was the experience working with Michael Giacchino, in the soundtrack, especially in the opening sequence using such an iconic the main theme?
BB. Well, Michael loves and is a big fan of other composers as I`m a fan of other directors. He knows all the composers and recognizes that the Mission Impossible theme is one of the greatest themes ever written for anything…Immediatly gets you blow up, and you immediately are ready to see something, you know, because that music makes you so…when we have this idea of doing a more elaborate title sequence for the film, he was really excited about it, and he wanted to make a different version of the theme song that very much respected the original music and play with it in a good way, so…is wonderful to work with him…you know he not only did this Mission Impossible, he also did J.J’s Mission Impossible and he did my previous movies ‘Ratatouille’ and ‘The Incredibles’…I hope that we can always be able to work together, because he is just an amazing talent.
SR-DGC. How was directing live action performances coming from an animation background?
BB. Well, you direct when you record the voices in animation and you direct the animators…Much of the world, believe the animation process is a kind of technical exercise that doesn`t involve the kind of decisions that actors made, which couldn`t be further from the true, because the best animators are in fact actors and when you ask them about what they do, they speak in the terms that actors speak, they speak about of what are the motivations, finding somebody’s physicality, how they walk, how they set…In the very best animations the characters are differentiated by how they move, the same way that actors are differentiated, nobody would in some a way, even if you made them with the exact same body, you can tell John Way from a Robert Redford for they way they move…So the thinking process with real actors is pretty much the same, but how you are dealing with them is different, because all is there happening and in animation is split and live action all happens at once.
I think the main difference is the spontaneity, you can imitate spontaneity in animation, but is hard to achieve it in anything behind the soundtrack, because is just too time consuming in terms of resources…But in live action is all about creating an atmosphere on the set where people feel free to invent and great things can happen out of the blue, you know…you can be going on for 3 or 4 takes and is dead, and then somebody gets one little idea, and suddenly is alive again and that is something that works great there, and you realize there are other parts on the movie where that can also work…is a very alive thing. SOURCE
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:23:42 GMT -5
Brad Bird drawn to a fresh challenge BRAD Bird is used to directing muscle-bound action heroes who effortlessly scale buildings, hunt down terrorists and save the world from imminent disaster. He's just not so familiar with directing people: real people.
When the opportunity arose to tackle The Ghost Protocol, the fourth instalment in the film series starring Tom Cruise, Bird didn't ruminate on it too long.
"Work with Tom Cruise and (producer) J.J. Abrams on one of the biggest action films ever?
It was a no-brainer," he tells The Australian at a Sydney hotel.
"And Tom really brings it to this movie. He's got this amazing energy; the cast just feeds off it."
Without the aid of a stuntman, Cruise, 49, is at his age-defying best, scaling a portion of the world's tallest structure, the 829m Burj Khalifa in Dubai, before sprinting - attached, of course, to a wire - down its vertical face in the film's most nail-biting sequence.
"That move where Cruise runs down the building's facade is actually called an Australian rappel," Bird says. "One of the stuntmen brought that up. He said, 'So, Tom needs to get several floors down in a hurry? This would be cool'."
Bird is effusive in his praise of Cruise's work ethic.
"Here you have a world-famous star who is willing to swing around on the upper half of the world's tallest building on a tiny wire . . . that doesn't happen every day," he says.
"If a 20-year-old did what Tom did, I'd be impressed. He pushes hard. He's an aggressive guy. He wants the film to be great and he really does his homework.
"I like to work that way, too. So we got along very well." Continue Reading . . .
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:28:36 GMT -5
Brad Bird talks MIGP with Moviehole Q: Hi, Brad. How are you?
A: Good, Clint. How are you? Thanks so much for taking the time out, man!
Q: Pleasure. Thanks for stopping by Australia and bringing a great movie with you.
A: Glad you like it! That means a lot!
Q: Yeah, I really did it was great. d I suppose the first question for you is did you like bow at the altar of the original TV series or are you a fan on most of the films?
A: Well, I definitely saw the series when I was little and I think that when it comes to sort of a pop idea, I mean it’s all summed up in a title Mission Impossible. It tells you everything you need to know about the attitude of the thing and I just think it’s a really great sort of pop concept and so, when I got an opportunity to do one of these films I jumped on it.
Q: Was there one of the films in particular that came before yours that inspired you to chase this job?
A: Well, actually it was more the people involved. I had known JJ Abrams a quite a numbers of years and we’ve been looking for opportunities to work together and the timing never worked out and I met Tom right after the Incredibles and we ended up talking about movies for two or three hours and what we loved about him and who’re our favourite filmmakers and it was just all it was surprising how comfortable I was with him right away because he talked just like any sincere film lover. I mean he knew a lot about a lot of different movies from all time periods and it was clear that he’s doing it because he loves it so, when I got an opportunity to work with both of them in one project that just sounded great to me.
Q: Would you classify your film as a stand-alone or sequel?
A: There’s one tiny storyline in there that is a follow through but, I would say, in every other way, it could be a stand alone movie.
Q: Was it important for you to bring in some new faces and then, leave some of the, I guess, other characters on the bench this time?
A: Well, it wasn’t ever discussed that way. I would say that what attracted me… One of the things that attracted me to the project was the storyline because the storyline… Usually, Ethan Hunt, who is the character that Tom Cruise plays in these films, he usually picks his team. And in this film, the team is thrust upon him and then, that team is isolated which is what the protocol refers to is it’s a scenario where you are cut off and there’s no communication with the main office and you’re on your own. And the idea of having a team that was basically unfamiliar with each other kind of, then, cutoff and put on in extreme circumstances just sounded really interesting to me.
So I really loved it and I loved getting a chance to work with this cast, not only Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg, but also Paula Patton who is a great up and coming actress and Jeremy Renner who’s one of the finest actors around right now.
Q: He is indeed. Now tell me, coming from an animation background can you imagine Mission : Impossible working as an animated series – or animated film?
A: I don’t know. We don’t have to repackage it. I think it works fine as it is and… [laughter] But sure, I think an animated film can be anything. I think that people are often somewhat narrow-minded in terms of what kind of subject matter can be done in animation. You notice the Japanese are a little more loose with what kinds of things they take into an animated film. I think that that… I think you can do an animated film about any subject matter. The only difference is you should handle it differently for animation but in terms of what you can make, I think you can make it about anything.
Q: Would you be back for another Mission Impossible should they..
A: It’s really rough to discuss having another kid when you’re still in the delivery room, recovering from the process, so ask me in about six months [Laughs]. These films involve some wear and tear, you know.
Q: Yeah, exactly. I’ll see you get a rubdown. Then, we’ll talk Mission Impossible 5.
A: Okay. [laughter] It’s a deal. let’s catch up then. SOURCE
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:32:53 GMT -5
Brad Bird Goes From Cartoons to Tom Cruise The Wall Street Journal: What were your biggest challenges working with live action?
BB: The biggest thing is just the size of the film and the fact that when something doesn’t go right you can’t sit and confer. You have to do something right then and there because you are not going to be coming back to a location or a country or you are going to lose the arena you booked for that particular moment. There’s always some limitation and you can’t linger over decisions, you have to figure out something that will work so you get what you need before you move on. So there’s that limitation, once principal photography starts, it’s a race that you have to finish.
WSJ: Were there any techniques you used in animation that you applied to “Mission: Impossible?”
BB: I think it was the ability to pre-visualize. Originally, I thought I was going to be able to do that on a lot more of the film and be able to storyboard it or do anamatics. But I really only got to do that for two-and-a-half of the films mini-set pieces. When it became clear that we had to keep shooting, whether I prepared or not, I embraced coming up with shooting strategies on the spot. I think it was the fact that I was used to pre-visualizing that helped me organize it in my head, and just be able to go, “put the camera here, then do this and then do these moves” and keep it clear. I think animation helped me with that.
WSJ: Did you map out the action scenes prior to shooting?
BB: I have different shooting strategies for different parts. If you take the middle of the film, all the stuff that takes place in Dubai, it’s almost – this sounds pretentious – but pieces of classical music have turns where it will go from a pastoral sound to a storm occurring and the feeling of the music will change. I think that is true in terms of visuals. In the Dubai section, all the camera moves where Tom [Cruise] is climbing the Burj [Kalifa], they are all measured, wide, slower smoother camera moves. And then when it gets into the part where there are two rooms with simultaneous action it becomes more about hands and glances and the shots are more locked off and its kind of quiet and tense. Then when Paula [Patton] fights with the assassin, its very jagged and the cuts are quick and it’s all hand held. All these little pieces of story have a different shooting strategy.
WSJ: Why make your live action debut with this film?
BB: I’ve wanted to get several live action projects made, but reality had different ideas. I was working on “1906″ and I looked up and it was two years later and I was still wrestling with story problems and I didn’t want my career to be, he planned “1906.” I wanted to make a movie rather than prepare to make a movie. So I looked around and J.J. [Abrams] and I had known each other for a number of years and I met Tom right after “The Incredibles” and we had a great talk about what we loved about movies. And here was a chance to do it in one fail swoop and to do it in a franchise that embraced directors individual style.
WSJ: There’s a scene where Cruise is looking out the window on the 123 floor of the Burj Kalifa and the camera follows him out. How did you get that shot?
BB: There is a very delicate balance between what the camera is doing and what the actor is doing and its really kind of like a dance because Tom had to wait for the camera to get to a certain point before he could move, but it couldn’t look like he was waiting for the camera. So he had a little ear bud in his ear and I could talk to him really softly and I would say “look to the left,” because I am watching what the camera is seeing. So it was this dance between to director of cinematography and the boom and Tom and me and getting it all happen in the right order. I think we did something like 14 takes to get the one we got but we knew it was an important moment to get the film right.
WSJ: Although there are special effects in this film, they never distract you from the dialogue. How did you do that?
BB: It’s really the storytelling. There is a strange thing where you can have a crazy idea and if you execute it or order things in a slightly different order, the preposterous idea is acceptable. Where you are still doing the same five things, but you are doing then in one, two, four, three, five.
WSJ: What do you mean?
BB: Here’s an example. The sandstorm occurs at just the right point in the movie for it to be considered sort of preposterous. It happens at the point that it needs to for there to be this very dramatic scene. But because we stop and observe the sandstorm coming before it hits and we have the characters note it and then we forget about it, then when it finally hits it doesn’t seem like this incredible coincidence. We played fair with the audience, we didn’t just have it hit, we announced that it’s coming and then we forget about it. And because we stop and say, “oh there’s the sandstorm,” we have other things to do and move on with the story, when it happens it doesn’t seem so bizarre.
WSJ: So it’s just in the timing?
BB: Sort of. I think we did the same thing with the goggles. We didn’t just have Tom conveniently have the goggles, we make a point of he forgets about the goggles and Jeremy’s character goes “goggles” and he stuffs them into his jacket really quickly from the climb and then when the bodyguards go through his jacket they find the goggles and they look at him like “what the hell are these” and you make it a little character moment where he kind of shrugs and goes “what are you going to do?” So when he has the goggles when he needs them in the middle of the sandstorm nobody is jarred by it. It is how you present the ideas and what order do you present them in and do you play fair with the audience? And if you play fair, the audience will go along with you. They will feel like they were respected and I think that that’s one of the pleasures of storytelling, finding a way to solve these problems.
WSJ: Are you going to keep it in live action or return to animation?
BB: I love both and as long as I get opportunities to do both. The thing for me is telling the story that I am most enthusiastic about telling, whatever medium is best for the story, I’ll take it.
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:39:49 GMT -5
/Film talks to Brad Bird /Film: All right, so ten quick minutes. What is the most surprising or enlightening thing you learned from going from animated filmmaking to live action?
Brad Bird: That you shouldn’t cut right away. (Laughs) I think that I was all set, because I’m used to really pre-visualizing things and being very specific about when I cut and exactly what I need that when I started shooting this, I started calling “cut” way early and I didn’t want to shoot coverage too much. I wanted to say “No, I only need the camera to be here for this shot” and I kind of had to be indoctrinated into that process. I still am a believer in mainly being one camera, but there are a couple of times where I was… There were more than a couple of times where I was encouraged to shoot two cameras and I’m really glad I did, because it allows you some flexibility in the editing room.
Q: Yeah, I mean because with all of your animated movies you do the movie four times over basically before…
A: Yeah and you are very specific about it early.
Q: So how long did it take for you to learn about shooting coverage, different angles, or do you think shooting too much is a curse of live action?
A: Well different angles I was already there, in fact a lot of people have commented that my animated films feel more like live action films in terms of the way they are shot and edited, so that was no problem for me to make that adjustment, but being able to have… to physically move around and have some limitations like you can’t drop a camera a thousand feet on a dime, it will crash right through the ground and kill people.
Q: [Both Laugh] Right.
A: So there are some things like that, but I loved the spontaneity of live action filmmaking. That’s something that’s very hard to get into animation and I think live action films kind of subsist on it.
Q: Now this is obviously your first live action movie and (producer) Bryan Burk told us yesterday before we saw the IMAX footage that you sort of jumped at the chance, which makes sense. It’s a huge movie, a huge franchise, but were you at all scared about the responsibility of the franchise, this huge budget, this… new experience?
A: little bit sure, because it was big and very complicated and we didn’t have a lot of prep time and so yeah, sure. I was… I was healthily frightened, but I think that you also are that way before you go out on stage, but that doesn’t keep you from going out. I think if you surf or ski you also learn to respect nature and know that you better do your homework, you know?
Q: I was watching the Dubai sandstorm chase last night and I couldn’t help think of Dash in The Incredibles. Are there any scenes in your previous films that you look at and think that maybe they helped influence your work in Mission: Impossible 4?
A: I don’t really think about it that way, because I don’t sort of stand outside of myself, I just go “This will be cool” and “That would be cool.” I just was attracted to the idea of somebody putting a chase in a place with limited visibility. That just sounded like a really cool challenge to me.
Q: Okay and the publicist is trying to wrap me up but I have like two more minutes, so I’m going to keep going. What is the most Brad Bird thing about Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol?
A: (Thinks for a moment) The director, maybe?
Q: [Both Laugh] Sorry, I guess to rephrase it, “How is your movie different specifically because of you as opposed to the last three?”
A: I can’t really talk about it that way, because I just kind of do what I think I would like to see. I think that there’s a playful quality to it though that might be unique to this movie that sort of enjoys its “movie-ness” without hopefully cutting any of the suspense or any of the action that people want to see when they see one of these movies. I’ve mentioned before a movie that really inspires me is Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it has a slightly whimsical feel to it, but not at the expense of the intensity of the action. You never have the characters winking at the camera and yet it’s a “movie” movie, you know? It’s a popcorn chewer and so I say “Pop it up and throw some butter on top and we are good to go.” SOURCE
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Post by architect on Jan 29, 2012 15:43:07 GMT -5
Brad Bird on Making Great Movies Since the turn of the century, director Brad Bird has galvanized Hollywood with animated masterpieces The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Now he’s boosted a sagging spy franchise with Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, his live-action thriller that has ironically blown past comics-based blockbusters like Captain America and Green Lantern to become the year’s finest action film.
“A lot of live-action directors have to describe things, but if you work in animation you describe things by visualizing them,” the Oscar-winning Bird told Wired.com by phone last Friday, as Ghost Protocol opened in limited IMAX release. “That part came fairly easy to me, especially when it came time to realize the vision with cameras.”
Bird’s made stunning films from the start, and the PG-13 Ghost Protocol, which opens wide Wednesday, fits his curriculum vitae like a virtual glove. The director talks about Mission Impossible‘s resurrection, Tom Cruise’s balls, Alfred Hitchcock‘s genius, the future of his stalled disaster epic 1906 and much more at the link below. Continue Reading . . .
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Post by serin on Feb 17, 2012 11:10:25 GMT -5
Seth Rogen Gave His Oscar Vote To Ghost Protocol; What Else Got Snubbed?
Take that, Hugo! Not this year, The Descendants! If Seth Rogen could have his way, it would be Tom Cruise bounding up those steps to accept a Best Picture award at the Oscars this year. Or, well, we guess the producers are technically the ones who accept the award … the point is, Ghost Protocol was a great film! “I honestly thought that Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol was one of the best movies of the year,” the 50/50 actor admitted to The Huffington Post while promoting his hosting gig at the Independent Spirit Awards next Saturday. “It got no love from the awards whatsoever. I loved that f—ing movie. It was great … I’m an Oscar voter. I voted for it.” We couldn’t agree more; remember when Cruise is clinging to the side of the skyscraper? Ah-mazing. Which got us thinking: Which movies and actors were unjustly left out of the running merely because they didn’t feature a war horse or Jonah Hill? thefabtimes.com " Dont those guys know that Tom was also the producer ?
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