WEBVTT - Rerun: Tron- He Fights For the Users 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:15.560 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:19.079 your beloved host, and I love all things tech. But 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:23.520 I am a little under the weather today, So to 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:28.040 lean a bit upon past Jonathan who worked ever so hard, 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:33.400 as well as former Tech Stuff producer Ramsey who who 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.559 is still with the company. He just produces other stuff. Now. Uh, 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:41.880 I thought I would revisit this episode I did back 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.839 in two thousand seventeen, November twenty second, two seventeen to 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.519 be precise, called Tron. He fights for the users. And 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.519 the reason this came to mind to me is because 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:58.400 over at Walt Disney World, over in the Magic Kingdom, 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.760 one of the things that they the company is busily 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:07.240 building out is a Tron light cycle amusement park ride, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:12.280 a ride that is already in a Disney park in Asia, 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:15.679 but this will be the first North American version, and 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:19.959 I eagerly anticipate the opening of that ride because it 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:23.520 looks like it's going to be incredible. And I've always 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:26.160 loved the aesthetic of Tron, so the idea of being 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:30.480 able to inhabit that world, even for just a short 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:34.000 duration of a roller coaster ride really appeals to me. 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.760 So I thought we could dip back into this episode 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:43.560 from and listen to an interview I did regarding the 0:01:43.600 --> 0:01:48.880 film Tron. Let's listen. In you have a hero who 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.080 rises up against a tyrant of a villain and helps 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.640 a group of resistance fighters overcome oppression. Now, that story 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.560 has been told in numerous ways before and since, but 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:02.000 this particular version had some really interesting quirks to it. 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.480 The film was called Tron. Tron follows the story of 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.480 a character named Flynn, who is a video game designer 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.280 and hacker who once was the employee of a corporation 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:18.040 called InCom. One of Flynn's co workers named Dillinger, stole 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.960 Flynn's work and arranged Flynn's removal from the company and 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:26.160 covered it all up. Flynn plans a daring computer raid 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:28.200 on the company with the help of two of his 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:32.440 former co workers. His big goal is to uncover the 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:37.679 actual evidence that in fact, Dillinger stole Flynn's work, and 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:42.919 his big opponent in this raid is an artificial intelligent construct. 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:45.640 It's a piece of code, it's some software. It's called 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:50.000 the Master Control Program or m c P. Now, originally 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.040 that started out as a chess game, but it had 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.680 started to assimilate other programs into its own code and 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:01.600 systematically growing more powerful as a result. Old so imagine 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:06.240 sort of like the borg absorbing other entities to gain 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:08.720 more strength as kind of what the m c P 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.520 is doing. It gets more and more capability as it 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.040 absorbs other programs. So, while Flynn is trying to break 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:20.000 into Incom's systems, the m c P detects him and 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.880 uses a laser to convert Flynn into digital information and 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:28.280 essentially upload him to the computer. That pulls Flynn into 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.000 the computer world and their Flynn encounters programs and in 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:36.240 the world of the computer simulation or the computer environment, 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.920 these programs have the appearances of humans in this universe. 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:44.200 They also resemble their creators, whoever programmed them. One of 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:48.240 those programs is Tron. The name is short for Electronic 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.120 Tron is a security program and is designed to keep 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.520 an eye on the m c P. But he also 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.200 acts kind of like a gladiator in various games that 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:00.600 the m c P forces programs to participate in, and 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.640 and as some people mentioned within the context of the film, 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.360 he fights for the users. It's one of my favorite 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:10.440 quotes from Tron. Users in the Tron universe are sort 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.000 of seen as like gods. They are the creators, and 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.760 the programs look to users for guidance and for approval, 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.039 and they have had all communication cut off by the 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.760 m c P, so they wonder if the users are 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.760 still out there. There's this whole existential crisis going on 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.960 in the world of Tron, and that's an interesting piece 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.000 of the mythology of the movie. Flynn eventually, of course, 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.160 helps bring down the m c P and he escapes 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.200 the computer world. He's also able to prove that Dillinger 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:42.839 stole his work, and he ends up becoming the new 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:46.000 head of Income as a result. Now, the film was 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:48.479 not a big success at the box office, but it 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:51.599 did find itself a cult following and also had a 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.640 profound impact on the way people would visualize cyberspace. I 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:57.760 would even say that you could see elements of the 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.479 design from Tron find its way into early implementations of 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.760 virtual reality, and the production of the film itself relied 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:08.400 heavily on some really innovative work from numerous people in 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.760 order for the film to actually come into being. So 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:15.680 Ramsey the Wonder producer arranged for me to have an 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:19.080 interview with the writer and director of Tron, Stephen Liszburger. 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.800 What follows is our conversation about the technology he used 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.599 to create the movie, as well as his philosophy about 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:30.719 technology and stuff in general, really the things that informed 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:34.520 the creation of Tron. I hope you enjoy Stephen Lisztburger. 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:36.560 It is a pleasure to have you on the show. 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:40.840 Thank you for joining Tech Stuff my pleasure. Now before 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:43.640 we jump into Tron, and I've got a lot of 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.839 things to ask about for Tron. Uh, maybe my listeners 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:51.800 would probably appreciate understanding a little bit about your background 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.960 leading up to Tron. You had a background in animation 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.480 leading up to that. I come from the East Coast, 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.800 it's more to New York, and went to college in 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.840 Boston at TOPS and went to the School of the 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:10.680 Museum of Fine Arts, where I studied film for five years, 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:15.240 including animation, and I had my own company in Boston 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:21.080 that did some live action but primarily animation, and uh, 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:26.119 we eventually ended up with a studio on the East 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.520 Coast and went on the West Coast. We're and our 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:35.560 biggest job was doing Animal Olympics for the NBC Television network, 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:42.200 and during that we developed Tron and then tried to 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.719 do it independently, but we couldn't pull it off. So 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:51.200 we were fortunate enough to get in business with Disney. Yeah. 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:54.960 I imagine a project with the scope of Tron would 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:58.240 have been extremely challenging to pull off without some some 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:03.520 pretty major hell. And I also imagine that Disney's background 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:08.479 in animation. Uh lad to some some aid when you 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:10.760 guys were working on Tron, because I don't know that 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:13.920 people who have seen the film are really aware how 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:20.960 much actual hand drawn animation techniques were incorporated. This was 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:25.600 an era before computer graphics had reached that digital age 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.400 where you do everything you know digitally on a computer 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:30.600 and then you can just export to a video file. 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:34.720 This is way before all of that, So I imagine 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.760 Disney's involvement was somewhat helpful because that was a studio 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:41.840 that actually understood animation. Yeah, all of that is true. 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:47.360 And just to unpack that, Um, if we had tried 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.800 to do it independently, I think it would have we 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.280 wouldn't have made it. Eventually. We would have had to 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:59.480 either go under or bring in someone else because we 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:04.040 were somewhat naive. We had an idea how we would 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.920 do it, but we in retrospect the scale of it 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:12.200 was something that none of us had experienced with. On paper, 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:15.400 we thought we could work it all out. It added 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.200 up and made sense. But when we got into it 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:22.680 at Disney, many times I thought, I'm really glad we're 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.280 here and not in any other studio because, as you said, 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:32.000 we we had We had hundreds and hundreds of thousands 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:37.160 of pieces of artwork, um put any into just the 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:41.920 frame blow ups. Every individual frame of the electronic world 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:45.040 blown up shot in seventy moment are blown up. They 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:49.120 were when they were stacked up. They filled two entire 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:53.600 moving vans. I mean it was tons and tons and 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:59.840 tons of images and it it didn't freak Disney out 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.280 because they said, yeah, we're used to handling millions of 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:08.160 pieces of artwork. And in the end, that was totally 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:14.080 the strength production wise of the project because we all 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.360 of us working on it were familiar with animation. Even 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:19.920 the live action people had quite a bit of experience 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:23.000 and animation, so we sort of took the best from 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:26.680 live action and then we turned the whole live action 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:31.240 movie into an animated movie. And once it was at 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.360 that level. You could treat it like mass production. You 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:38.920 could just keep multiplying the number of teams working on 0:09:38.960 --> 0:09:43.040 the individual scenes. And and there was a system there. 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:47.720 We weren't reinventing the wheel. That system existed. People knew 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:52.679 how to do, you know, animated effects, and how to 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:56.640 work with these numbers of probably it had to be 0:09:56.679 --> 0:10:00.920 over a million pieces in the end. And the funny 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:04.640 thing about it is how efficient it was, because we 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.920 ended up doing all of the special effects in Tron 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.120 one in half the time that it took to do 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.440 them in Tron too well, and and correct me if 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:17.240 I got this, get any of this wrong. I want 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:18.839 to see if I can kind of lay out for 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.960 my listeners sort of a general approach to the electronic 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:27.120 world sequences which took up more almost an entire hour 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.240 of Tron. I think about somewhere around the realm of 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:32.840 fifty three to fifty five minutes something like that of 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.560 a footage in this electronic world. So the thing is, 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.360 there was an underlying template that I had in mind, 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:43.720 which is, you know, a sort of live action short 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:47.480 at the beginning, then followed by an animated movie is 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:51.000 what Disney used to make. And you know, they always 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:55.080 did that with their live action films and animated and 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.160 live or live and animated, and so that combination is 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:00.880 what I was going for, or you know, it's sort 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.920 of a it's it's kind of an animated feature in 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:08.800 terms of that length of about seventy minutes with the 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.480 live action being kind of a short at the beginning. 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.920 So and the way that would work out, like you said, 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.920 you shot on seventy millimeter in large each frame. Because 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.439 to remind my listeners, some of whom are are too 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:25.360 young to really remember the days of film that you're shooting. 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:31.480 It's really funny, you know, once time moves on and 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.440 people forget about how difficult it was in the past. 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:37.880 It's a little bit like the next generation doesn't really 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:42.760 care how difficult it was before. And you know, there 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:48.160 was no way to composite film if you that was efficient, 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:52.040 if you did effects and you had characters and you 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:56.520 had a fantasy background, there really was no good way 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.800 to put all of this together. Blue screen existed, but 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:04.040 shot blue screen. And you know, if if you had 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:07.160 at the time, if you had twenty or fifty blue 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.960 screen shots in the film, that was a lot. Well, 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.920 we had nine hundred composite shots that we had to do, 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.120 nine shots that had you and beings in worlds that 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:23.320 didn't exist, plus their costumes who were supposed to be glowing. 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:28.520 And there was no digital compositing. You couldn't even run 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:34.480 computer animation consecutively. We only had enough computing power. We 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:39.120 had total two megabytes, and we only had enough memory 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:45.040 to render one frame at a time period, so you 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:49.920 could never look at the light cycles moving. You could 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.439 only look at this individual frame. Then you had to 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:56.720 wait forty five minutes and render the next frame and 0:12:56.760 --> 0:13:00.760 look at that one. And the only time we ever 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:03.240 saw the stuff put together is after we set up 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:07.360 a film camera and clicked like an animated movie, one 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:12.240 frame at a time off of this computer animation, and 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:15.200 then people would all go into the screening room and 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:18.440 sit there. Even the guys that did all the computer 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.720 work had never seen it moving, and we saw it 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:26.199 for the very first time when we filmed it one 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:28.959 frame at a time and then ran it back. And 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:33.720 so to put all of this together, to composite it, 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:36.520 the only way we could do it was to do 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:41.320 blow up every frame and make it into an animated movie. 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.640 And what we did to combine it with the computer animation. 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:50.559 Was to try to find a sort of middle ground 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.160 where the live action would look like it had been 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:58.560 rendered by a computer and the computer animation wasn't too 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:02.640 attempting to look too real because we couldn't do real. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.600 Many of the looks in the computer aspects of Tron 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.880 look the way they look because not because we sat 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.520 there and said, oh, wouldn't this look great in wire 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.840 frame instead of fully rendered? No, no, no, it was 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:24.520 wire frame because that's all we could do, and it's 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.880 phenomenal to to give a sense of scale. You're talking 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.480 about twenty four frames a second with film, every single 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:34.080 one of those frames being for the electronic world being 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:37.280 blown up so that animators can go in and and 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:41.800 hand draw elements onto those frames, each of those frames 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.480 having to go through multiple exposures depending upon how many 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:48.520 colors you had, because each time you added a different 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:50.560 color you had to do another level, You had to 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:55.960 photograph everything all over again. Uh, you're you're talking frames. 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:58.560 If you start doing the math, if you're thinking fifty 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.320 three minutes more than because I don't want to do 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:07.680 the mass that right now, but I think, well, the 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.440 thing is, it's um if it goes through the math, 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.320 you say, this can't be done. Because just doing the 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:21.720 colors on each frame, the average number of exposures was 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:26.800 I think eighteen. Some of the frames in Tron were 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:33.200 exposed thirty six times. And because everything had to be 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:35.880 held in focus so that the blow ups were sharp 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:39.040 and the blow ups are about the size of place Matt, 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:43.960 there was no depth of field. At seventy millimeter had 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.800 those light levels, So it wasn't those cameras. Those seventy 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.440 millimeter cameras were used by David Lean to shoot Lawrence 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:54.440 of Arabia, and afterwards I really understood why, because in 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:59.000 the desert there's enough light. But for any of the 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:04.040 situations we were in, I had to shoot characters when 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:06.480 they were speaking to each other and over the shoulder shots. 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.880 They had to be shot on separate passes. So I 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.440 would have Bruce in the foreground with no Jeff that 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.280 he was talking to looking at, and I get him 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:18.440 in focus, and then I get him out of the frame, 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:20.320 and then I bring in Jeff and he'd say his 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:24.520 lines and I chewed them separately, each one held in focus, 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:30.400 and then they were put together. But yeah, the the 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:34.680 in animation. There's a thing called an exposure sheet, and 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:41.280 it's showed. It tells the animation cameraman what levels are 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:47.360 photographed and what order, and there there's about, I don't know, 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:53.960 three seconds of animation per exposure sheet. And so what 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:58.320 we did was we took those exposure sheets and instead 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:02.000 of that sheet being filled then for three seconds, which 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:06.359 is seventy two frames, it was one frame in tron, 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:13.080 one exposure sheet per whole sheet, three seconds of animation 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:17.679 per individual frame. But again it was only possible to 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:21.760 put all of this together through animation. We were under 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:25.240 an extreme deadline, I heard all. I never was given 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.119 a real good reason by Disney why we were in 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:32.080 such a rush, but we were. And I've heard various 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.280 theories over the years that there was, you know, some 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:40.200 competition in the marketplace that summer, and so that's why 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:43.040 they wanted us to come out then. But sometimes I 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.440 wonder what would have happened if we had come out 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.600 the following winter, which made more sense, and that would 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.080 have given us six more months. I mean, it was 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:59.680 the deadline was so severe that UM we took only 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:04.919 one day off every fourteen days. That was the legal limit. 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:09.919 So UM we would work thirteen days and then we 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.359 get one day off, and then we worked thirteen days 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:16.959 in it one day off, and to complete the rephotography 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.920 of all these blown up frames. Um at the end, 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:26.760 I think we had twelve this division animation stands going 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:31.080 twenty four hours a day, three shifts on each and 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.000 the strain on the film in terms of getting it done. 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:43.480 From a director standpoint, that was kind of crazy. But 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:47.439 because I was new to this, you know, I just 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:52.840 accepted it. But the picture was after I shot all 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.439 the live action that the film had to be completed 0:18:56.240 --> 0:19:00.639 in three weeks locked, so not on frame of the 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.639 movie could be changed. Frames could be taken out and removed, 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:09.399 but I couldn't change or add anything. So, you know, 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:12.720 now directors get three or four months to live with 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.439 their movie in the editing room. I had three weeks 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:18.760 after that it was locked. And the thing that's interesting 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.960 is what I had to lock was actors in their 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:28.560 unaltered tron suits on an all black stage. And then 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:33.280 I had no computer animation yet because that wasn't done. 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.800 So when I locked the movie and said this is 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.240 the movie I'm making, there were no effects in it. 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:41.720 There were no colors, in it it was black or white. 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.520 Many of the scenes just had individual actors because you know, 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:47.960 it was one or the other, like I said, and 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:52.520 there was just storyboards are a little little frames that 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:57.760 said effect goes here a solar sailor. And at that 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:00.800 point I had to say, okay, I sign off. This 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:05.240 is the movie we're going to release. From there on, 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:12.440 we just did nine months of filling it all in. It's. Um. Yeah, 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:20.200 in retrospect it was insane, But at the time it's 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:25.760 compared to working on Tron to Drown Legacy, where everything 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.840 was composited in real time, where you could just put 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.399 the you know, computer animation together with the backgrounds, together 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:35.640 with the actors, and you know, you could make changes 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:39.240 up until like I don't know, a couple of weeks 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:43.840 before the movie was in theaters. Yeah, this is a 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.639 time where you can't even you can't even review the 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.560 footage immediately afterward, obviously because you've got the filt you 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.240 have to process everything. So oh yeah, of course there's 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:57.040 no video tap. I mean, you know, you shoot it 0:20:57.080 --> 0:20:58.800 and it goes off to the lab and then you 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:03.600 see it the next day in dailies at lunchtime. Um, 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:10.520 there was also no time to do reshoots or reduce um. 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:14.600 I mean it was standard procedure on Tron legacy that 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:17.960 when affects shots or shots were composited, that there would 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:23.560 be multiple redus on each shot, every frame. It was 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:26.320 none of that. I mean we were flying blind and 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:32.399 then we had to commit um. Once in a while, 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:36.600 when something was really screwed up, I would get to 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:41.960 redo it or reshoot a recomposite. But often what we 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:47.280 did say Okay, there's a mistake. How can we incorporate 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:52.320 this mistake into the visuals or into the story, and uh, 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:57.439 we just went with it. So yeah, yeah, I imagine 0:21:57.480 --> 0:21:59.800 that meant that you had a lot of story boarding 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:02.240 was very precise from the very get go, so that 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:07.359 you could you could the team of talented people I 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:14.720 had was unbelievable, once in a lifetime. I it was 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:18.120 one of the great joys of making the film. And 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:23.320 uh yeah, incredible. I mean the team I had from 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:28.080 Listener Studios, my guys, some of whom came from Disney 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:30.920 originally and then left Disney and worked at list of 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.080 Studios and then ironically they found themselves back at Disney. 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:38.520 But we storyboarded the whole film before we ever got 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:41.840 to Disney, and we did all this artwork for all 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:44.760 the different thing you know, aspects the m C P 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:49.399 and Solar Sailor and on the life cycles. That was 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:52.840 all done, but it was done by us in house, 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:57.080 and it was it was interesting that then when I 0:22:57.080 --> 0:22:59.440 got to Disney and they said, well, you know, if 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:02.760 you if you could have a dream, what would it be. 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:05.439 And I would say, well, I'd like Mobius to go 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:09.399 over these storyboards, and then I'd like sit Me to 0:23:09.480 --> 0:23:13.000 go over our vehicle designs, and both of them to 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.240 go over my costume designs, and I like Peter Lloyd 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:20.199 to go over production paintings. And so what what worked 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:25.840 out great is that we never approached these great artists 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:28.000 and said to him, we just have a blank piece 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:30.960 of paper and now I'm going to explain to you 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:33.959 what I'm trying to get to. It was it was 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:36.600 so much better that we said, look, this is as 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:42.360 good as we can get this, and we're pretty confident that, 0:23:42.520 --> 0:23:45.640 you know, there's more room to improve this. And they 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:49.480 never let us down. And I think they really like that, 0:23:49.720 --> 0:23:52.560 you know, because they look at our artwork and they go, yeah, 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:54.720 this is really nice. But this, or why didn't you 0:23:54.760 --> 0:23:57.320 do that? Or why didn't you do this? And Mobius 0:23:57.320 --> 0:23:59.359 would say, you know, you could shoot this this way, 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:01.720 but if you shot it from this angle and if 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:05.760 you showed this, then the audience would know that, and uh, yeah, 0:24:05.840 --> 0:24:09.800 it was amazing that it's awesome, and it's great that 0:24:09.840 --> 0:24:12.919 you already had, you know, a nice idea to go 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:15.919 in with and not have to run the risk of 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:20.639 asking an artist to contribute and then say, oh, but 0:24:20.800 --> 0:24:23.479 that doesn't really fit in what I was you know, 0:24:23.760 --> 0:24:26.360 it says that. And the thing is I wasn't used 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:29.239 to this part of it either. The team that you know, 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:33.840 my guys at Listener Studios, we would throw stuff out 0:24:33.880 --> 0:24:36.040 all the time and we would say, well, you know 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:38.480 that looked good last week, but why don't we try 0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:42.520 this light cycle design this week? And it was a 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:45.280 learning curve for me to work with you know, Sid 0:24:45.359 --> 0:24:51.080 and Mobius, and they would say, no, this is it. 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:56.400 There are changes, there's no revisions. I'm not doing this again. 0:24:58.520 --> 0:25:01.640 That was amazing. It would be at a little bit 0:25:01.720 --> 0:25:05.720 like walking up to Da Vincian singing, yeah, it doesn't 0:25:05.720 --> 0:25:07.560 go that way, could you put some of the life 0:25:07.560 --> 0:25:11.080 cycle and he hands it to you, you don't say 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:14.920 to me? He said, what about this? We do that? 0:25:15.280 --> 0:25:18.320 You know, you know how about mud flaps. And it's like, 0:25:18.480 --> 0:25:22.680 now I don't think so. Thing that happened with the 0:25:22.800 --> 0:25:28.040 LFE cycles I will interject this and it never bothered. Said, 0:25:28.320 --> 0:25:32.800 is that we sent the life cycles to Madgi, which 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:36.840 was still Middleman's company UM in New York. We had 0:25:36.880 --> 0:25:39.960 three computer companies. One was in New York State and 0:25:40.520 --> 0:25:43.000 that's where Chris Wedge used to work, who went on 0:25:43.040 --> 0:25:47.560 to Great Blue Sky Studios and do ice age. And 0:25:47.600 --> 0:25:49.560 then we had a company out here called Triple I, 0:25:50.080 --> 0:25:54.119 where Richard Taylor was. And then we also used Robert 0:25:54.160 --> 0:25:58.320 Abeles company, who was in Hollywood. But when I sent 0:25:58.440 --> 0:26:03.600 the first LFE cycle drawing that SID did to uh Magi, 0:26:05.359 --> 0:26:10.280 they said, we can't do this. The curves are too complex, 0:26:11.200 --> 0:26:14.919 we can't render this. We don't have enough you know power, 0:26:16.119 --> 0:26:19.600 it won't work. And I knew that, you know, it 0:26:19.680 --> 0:26:23.720 was an incredible design. We all loved it, and so 0:26:24.040 --> 0:26:26.240 I thought about it this I remember this was over 0:26:26.280 --> 0:26:30.159 a weekend, some Sunday, and so then I said, how 0:26:30.200 --> 0:26:33.959