Zathura Used Old-School F/X
From SciFi Wire:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/i...ory=0&id=32913
Zathura Used Old-School F/X
Jon Favreau, director of the upcoming SF family film Zathura, told SCI FI Wire that he purposely wanted to rely on old-school special effects, a la the original Star Wars movies, rather than on computer-generated effects.
"The biggest thing that we did as opposed to how it would normally be done is to shoot the spaceship scenes like they would have done with the old Star Wars, not the new ones," Favreau said in an interview. "Rather than pouring money into CG, we built miniature models and did stop-motion control and shot it on miniature sets and cobbled it together. That's the way they used to do it. It's fun, and you have something to hang up in your house."
Special-effects master Stan Winston helped Favreau design Zathura's robot and Zorgons. (Zathura, like its predecessor Jumanji, is based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg.) The robot is bulky and awkward, reminiscent of Robbie in Forbidden Planet, but it has one major difference. "You look at Forbidden Planet, and it looks like a person hiding inside it," Favreau said. "And Alien was scary, but when you finally saw the Alien, you could see the creature was just a guy in a suit. We built the robot puppet first and made it so that the legs and arms were too small for a person. There was a guy inside the costume, with his arms folded across his chest, and we put his feet on with CG and connected it to the torso. You can't see how a person could be in there, but there was, so it was a perfect mix of the two."
Winston's team also kept the giant lizard-like Zorgons from looking too frightening, but also kept them from looking silly. "They bump into each other. They're clumsy. There is some comic relief, but they do eat meat, there is some threat," Favreau said.
Zathura stars Tim Robbins as the father of three children, played by Jonah Bobo, Kristen Stewart and Josh Hutcherson, who find a magical board game that transports their house into outer space. Favreau decided to keep the film's look close to that in Van Allsburg's book. "It would have been great to show the house blasting off," Favreau said. "It would have been like the little kid opening up the door in Close Encounters, with the light under the door. But we wanted the discovery to be the same as it was in the book. It would have been a real cool shot, but the whole idea of the house is like the parable of The Wizard of Oz: It is a parable for a dream, and every movie should be seen as [if] it could be a dream."
One special touch Favreau added himself was a red bicycle floating near the house through most of the movie and landing back with the house at the end of the film: a nod to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. "It was something mundane that really grounds you when something really extraordinary is happening," Favreau said. "And we used the model of the house and the CG bicycle, which was another marriage of the technologies we used in this movie." Zathura opens Nov. 11.
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/i...ory=0&id=32913
Zathura Used Old-School F/X
Jon Favreau, director of the upcoming SF family film Zathura, told SCI FI Wire that he purposely wanted to rely on old-school special effects, a la the original Star Wars movies, rather than on computer-generated effects.
"The biggest thing that we did as opposed to how it would normally be done is to shoot the spaceship scenes like they would have done with the old Star Wars, not the new ones," Favreau said in an interview. "Rather than pouring money into CG, we built miniature models and did stop-motion control and shot it on miniature sets and cobbled it together. That's the way they used to do it. It's fun, and you have something to hang up in your house."
Special-effects master Stan Winston helped Favreau design Zathura's robot and Zorgons. (Zathura, like its predecessor Jumanji, is based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg.) The robot is bulky and awkward, reminiscent of Robbie in Forbidden Planet, but it has one major difference. "You look at Forbidden Planet, and it looks like a person hiding inside it," Favreau said. "And Alien was scary, but when you finally saw the Alien, you could see the creature was just a guy in a suit. We built the robot puppet first and made it so that the legs and arms were too small for a person. There was a guy inside the costume, with his arms folded across his chest, and we put his feet on with CG and connected it to the torso. You can't see how a person could be in there, but there was, so it was a perfect mix of the two."
Winston's team also kept the giant lizard-like Zorgons from looking too frightening, but also kept them from looking silly. "They bump into each other. They're clumsy. There is some comic relief, but they do eat meat, there is some threat," Favreau said.
Zathura stars Tim Robbins as the father of three children, played by Jonah Bobo, Kristen Stewart and Josh Hutcherson, who find a magical board game that transports their house into outer space. Favreau decided to keep the film's look close to that in Van Allsburg's book. "It would have been great to show the house blasting off," Favreau said. "It would have been like the little kid opening up the door in Close Encounters, with the light under the door. But we wanted the discovery to be the same as it was in the book. It would have been a real cool shot, but the whole idea of the house is like the parable of The Wizard of Oz: It is a parable for a dream, and every movie should be seen as [if] it could be a dream."
One special touch Favreau added himself was a red bicycle floating near the house through most of the movie and landing back with the house at the end of the film: a nod to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. "It was something mundane that really grounds you when something really extraordinary is happening," Favreau said. "And we used the model of the house and the CG bicycle, which was another marriage of the technologies we used in this movie." Zathura opens Nov. 11.
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