WEBVTT - TechList: Tron: He Fights For the Users 0:00:05.400 --> 0:00:09.600 Hey there, it's Jonathan Strickland, and I'm here to introduce 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:14.560 a playlist of ten episodes of my podcast tech Stuff 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:20.000 that are all about entertainment and entertainment related fields, from 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:25.720 video games to television series, two films to internet videos 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:30.440 from yesteryear. So I hope you guys enjoy these episodes. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.440 You can go to the tech Stuff podcast page and 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.000 subscribe to listen to all sorts of episodes about tech 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:42.240 from all realms, and hopefully this will provide a little 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.040 bit of entertainment, a little bit of education, and probably 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.000 more than a few puns, because that's kind of how 0:00:49.080 --> 0:01:06.240 I roll enjoy this playlist. Welcome to text Uff, a 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:12.920 production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:16.160 tex Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:18.200 producer with iHeart Radio and I love all things tech 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:22.040 and we're listening to another playlist episode. This one is 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.800 called Tron He Fights for the Users, where we speak 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:29.040 with the director of the original movie Tron and how 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:31.520 all of that came together. It turns out that was 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:36.880 a pretty remarkable effort. It gave the look of computer 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:41.720 graphics in some places where it was really hand drawn animation. Uh, 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:43.720 it did use c g I as well, but it 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:47.280 was an interesting, you know, kind of marriage of all 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.280 those arts, live action, computer animation and hand drawn animation. 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:55.040 So let's take a listen. Tron follows the story of 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.000 a character named Flynn, who is a video game designer 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.800 and hacker who once was the employee of a corporation 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:06.600 called InCom. One of Flynn's co workers named Dillinger, stole 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.480 Flynn's work and arranged Flynn's removal from the company and 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:14.679 covered it all up. Flynn plans a daring computer raid 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:16.720 on the company with the help of two of his 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.960 former co workers. His big goal is to uncover the 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:26.240 actual evidence that in fact, Dillinger stole Flynn's work, and 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:31.480 his big opponent in this raid is an artificial intelligent construct. 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.200 It's a piece of code. It's some software. It's called 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:38.519 the Master Control Program or m c P. Now, originally 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:41.560 that started out as a chess game, but it had 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:45.200 started to assimilate other programs into its own code and 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:50.440 systematically growing more powerful as a result. So imagine sort 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:55.760 of like the borg absorbing other entities to gain more strength. 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:57.840 That's kind of what the m c P is doing. 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:03.080 He gets more and more capability as it absorbs other programs. 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:06.400 So while Flynn is trying to break into Incom's systems, 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:09.680 the m c P detects him and uses a laser 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:13.880 to convert Flynn into digital information and essentially upload him 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.720 to the computer. That pulls Flynn into the computer world 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:21.320 and their Flynn encounters programs and in the world of 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:25.880 the computer simulation or the computer environment, these programs have 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:29.440 the appearances of humans in this universe, they also resemble 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:34.160 their creators, whoever programmed them. One of those programs is Tron. 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.760 The name is short for Electronic. Tron is a security 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.240 program and is designed to keep an eye on the 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.680 m c P. But he also acts kind of like 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:46.360 a gladiator in various games that the m c P 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.840 forces programs to participate in, and as some people mentioned 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:53.760 within the context of the film, he fights for the users. 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.680 It's one of my favorite quotes from Tron. Users in 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:00.440 the Tron universe are sort of seen as like odds. 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:04.680 They are the creators, and the programs look to users 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.000 for guidance and for approval, and they have had all 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:11.000 communication cut off by the m c P, so they 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.880 wonder if the users are still out there. There's this 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:17.360 whole existential crisis going on in the world of Tron, 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.040 and that's an interesting piece of the mythology of the movie. 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:23.880 Flynn eventually, of course, helps bring down the m c 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:27.640 P and he escapes the computer world. He's also able 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.600 to prove that Dillinger stole his work, and he ends 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:33.880 up becoming the new head of Income as a result. Now, 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.719 the film was not a big success at the box office, 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:39.840 but it did find itself a cult following and also 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:43.799 had a profound impact on the way people would visualize cyberspace. 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:46.159 I would even say that you could see elements of 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.919 the design from Tron find its way into early implementations 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:52.880 of virtual reality, and the production of the film itself 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:56.400 relied heavily on some really innovative work from numerous people 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.320 in order for the film to actually come into being. 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.000 So Ramsey the Wonder Producer arranged for me to have 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:07.560 an interview with the writer and director of Tron, Stephen Liszburger. 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.360 What follows is our conversation about the technology he used 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:14.119 to create the movie, as well as his philosophy about 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:19.240 technology and stuff in general. Really the things that informed 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:23.040 the creation of Tron. I hope you enjoy Stephen Lisztburger, 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:25.080 it is a pleasure to have you on the show. 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:29.360 Thank you for joining Tech Stuff my pleasure. Now before 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.159 we jump into Tron, and I've got a lot of 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:36.360 things to ask about for Tron. Uh. Maybe my listeners 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:40.320 would probably appreciate understanding a little bit about your background 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:44.480 leading up to Tron. You had a background in animation 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.000 leading up to that. I come from the East Coast. 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.160 I was born in New York and went to college 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.240 in Boston at TOPS and went to the School of 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.320 the Museum of Fine Arts, where I studied film for 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.960 five years in looting animation, and I had my own 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:08.160 company in Boston that did some live action but primarily animation. 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:14.160 And uh. We eventually ended up with a studio on 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.680 the East Coast and went on the West coast we're in. 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:22.880 Our biggest job was doing Animal Olympics for the NBC 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:29.480 television network, and during that we developed Tron and then 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.839 tried to do it independently, but we couldn't pull it off, 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:39.720 so we were fortunate enough to get in business with Disney. Yeah. 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.479 I imagine a project with the scope of Tron would 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.760 have been extremely challenging to pull off without some some 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:52.040 pretty major help. And I also imagine that Disney's background 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:57.000 in animation uh led to some some aid when you 0:06:57.040 --> 0:06:59.280 guys were working on Tron, because I don't know that 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.440 people who have seen the film are really aware how 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:09.480 much actual hand drawn animation techniques were incorporated. This was 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:14.120 an era before computer graphics had reached that digital age 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:16.920 where you do everything you know digitally on a computer 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:19.119 and then you can just export to a video file. 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:23.239 This is way before all of that, so I imagine 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.280 Disney's involvement was somewhat helpful because that was a studio 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:30.360 that actually understood animation. Yeah, all of that is true, 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:36.040 And just to unpack that, if we had tried to 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:40.720 do it independently, I think it would have we wouldn't 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.119 have made it eventually. We would have had to either 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:48.440 go under or bring in someone else because we were 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:52.960 somewhat naive. We had an idea how we would do it, 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:57.360 but we in retrospect the scale of it was something 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:01.040 that none of us had experienced with. On paper, we 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:04.120 thought we could work it all out. It added up 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.760 and made sense, but when we got into it at Disney, 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.760 many times I thought I'm really glad we're here and 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:16.200 not in any other studio, because, as you said, we 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:20.680 we had we had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:26.160 pieces of artwork, um put any in just the frame 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:31.000 blow ups, Every individual frame of the electronic world blown up, 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:34.079 shot at seventy moment are blown up. They were when 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:38.520 they were stacked up. They filled two entire moving vans. 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.720 I mean, it was tons and tons and tons of 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:51.040 images and it it didn't freak Disney out because they said, yeah, 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.720 we're used to handling millions of pieces of artwork. And 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:58.840 in the end, that was totally the strength production wise 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:03.320 of the project because we all of us working on 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:06.959 it were familiar with animation. Even the live action people 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.960 had quite a bit of experience and animation. So we 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:13.480 sort of took the best from live action and then 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.960 we turned the whole live action movie into an animated movie. 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:21.840 And once it was at that level, you could treat 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:25.840 it like mass production. You could just keep multiplying the 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:30.360 number of teams working on the individual scenes. And and 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.400 there was a system there. We weren't reinventing the wheel. 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:37.640 That system existed. People knew how to do you know, 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:42.680 animated effects and how to work with these numbers of 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:46.480 probably it had to be over a million pieces in 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.760 the end. And the funny thing about it is how 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.480 efficient it was, because we ended up doing all of 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:58.320 the special effects in Tron one in half the time 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.640 that it took to do them in Tron too well, 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:04.959 and and correct me if I got this, get any 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:06.360 of this wrong. I want to see if I can 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.400 kind of lay out for my listeners sort of a 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:13.720 general approach to the electronic world sequences which took up 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:17.000 more almost an entire hour of Tron I think about 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.240 somewhere around the realm of fifty three to fifty five 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.320 minutes something like that of a footage in this electronic world. 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:28.000 So the thing is, there was an underlying template that 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.600 I had in mind, which is, you know, a sort 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.079 of live action short at the beginning then followed by 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:38.480 an animated movie. Is what Disney used to make. And 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.040 you know they always did that with their live action 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:45.160 films and animated and live or live and animated, and 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:49.040 so that combination is what I was going for. You know, 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:52.439 it's sort of a it's it's kind of an animated 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:56.440 feature in terms of that length of about seventy minutes 0:10:57.040 --> 0:10:59.440 with the live action being kind of a short at 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.920 the beginning. So and the way that would work out, 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.680 like you said, you shot on seventy millimeter in large 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:09.240 each frame. Because to remind my listeners, some of whom 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.720 are are too young to really remember the days of film, 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:19.160 you're it's really funny, you know, once time moves on 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:22.960 and people forget about how difficult it was in the past. 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.400 It's a little bit like the next generation doesn't really 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:31.280 care how difficult it was before. And you know, there 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:36.679 was no way to composite film if you that was efficient, 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.559 if you did effects and you had characters, and you 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:45.040 had a fantasy background, there really was no good way 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:48.360 to put all of this together. Blue Screen existed, but 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:52.200 I've shot blue screen, and you know, if if you 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:55.679 at the time, if you had twenty or fifty blue 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.520 screen shots in the film, that was a lot. Well, 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:03.440 we had nine h composite shots that we had to do, 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:07.679 nine shots that had you and beings in worlds that 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:11.840 didn't exist, plus their costumes who were supposed to be glowing. 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:17.040 And there was no digital compositing. You couldn't even run 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:23.000 computer animation consecutively. We only had enough computing power. We 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:27.679 had total two megabytes, and we only had enough memory 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:33.560 to render one frame at a time period, so you 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:38.480 could never look at the light cycles moving. You could 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:42.000 only look at this individual frame. Then you had to 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.240 wait forty five minutes and render the next frame and 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:49.280 look at that one. And the only time we ever 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:51.760 saw the stuff put together is after we set up 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.880 a film camera and clicked like an animated movie, one 0:12:56.080 --> 0:13:00.760 frame at a time off of this computer animation, and 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.720 then weep would all go into the screening room and 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.960 sit there. Even the guys that did all the computer 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:10.240 work had never seen it moving, and we saw it 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.719 for the very first time when we filmed it one 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:17.480 frame at a time and then ran it back. And 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:22.240 so to put all of this together, to composite it, 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.040 the only way we could do it was to do 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:29.840 blow up every frame and make it into an animated movie. 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:33.520 And what we did to combine it with the computer 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:38.600 animation was to try to find a sort of middle 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:42.280 ground where the live action would look like it had 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:46.640 been rendered by a computer and the computer animation wasn't 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.719 too attempting to look too real. Because we couldn't do 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:55.800 real many of the looks in the computer aspects of 0:13:55.840 --> 0:14:00.079 Tron look the way they look because not because you 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.480 sat there and said, oh, wouldn't this look great in 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:07.240 wire frame instead of fully rendered. No, no, no, it 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:12.640 was wire frame because that's all we could do, and 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:16.000 it's phenomenal to to give a sense of scale. You're 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.760 talking about twenty four frames a second with film, every 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.360 single one of those frames being for the electronic world 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.560 being blown up so that animators can go in and 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:29.840 and hand draw elements onto those frames. Each of those 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.760 frames having to go through multiple exposures depending upon how 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.720 many colors you had, because each time you added a 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.000 different color, you had to do another love you had 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:44.480 to photograph everything all over again. Uh, you're you're talking frames. 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.080 If you start doing the math, if you're thinking fifty 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.640 three minutes more than that, because well, I don't want 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:54.880 to do the math right now, but I think, well, 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:59.920 this thing is, it's um if it goes through the math, 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.840 you say this can't be done because just doing the 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:10.240 colors on each frame, the average number of exposures was 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:15.320 I think eighteen. Some of the frames in Tron were 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:21.720 exposed thirty six times, and because everything had to be 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:24.400 held in focus, so that the blow ups were sharp, 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.680 and the blow ups are about the size of place. Matt. 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:32.480 There was no depth of field at seventy millimeter had 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:36.320 those light levels, So it wasn't those cameras, though seventy 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:39.960 millimeter cameras were used by David Lean to shoot Lawrence 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.960 of Arabia, and afterwards I really understood why, because in 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:47.520 the desert there's enough light. But for any of the 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:52.560 situations we were in, I had to shoot characters when 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:55.000 they were speaking to each other and over the shoulder shots. 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.400 They had to be shot on separate passes. So I 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.720 would have Bruce and the Ford round with no Jeff 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.520 that he was talking to looking at and I get 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:06.520 him in focus and then I get him out of 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:08.480 the frame, and then I bring in Jack and he'd 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:12.120 say his lines and I chewed them separately, each one 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:17.120 held in focus, and then they were put together. But yeah, 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:22.080 that the in animation, there's a thing called an exposure sheet, 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:29.680 and it's showed. It tells the animation cameraman what levels 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:35.480 are photographed and what order, and there there's about, I 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:42.040 don't know, three seconds of animation per exposure sheet. And 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:45.280 so what we did was we took those exposure sheets, 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:50.240 and instead of that sheet being filled in for three seconds, 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:54.880 which is seventy two frames, it was one frame in tron, 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:01.600 one exposure sheet per whole heat three seconds of animation 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:06.199 per individual frame. But again it was only possible to 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:10.280 put all of this together through animation. We were under 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:13.760 an extreme deadline, I heard all. I never was given 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:16.679 a real good reason by Disney why we were in 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.600 such a rush, but we were. And I've heard various 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.800 theories over the years that there was, you know, some 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:28.760 competition in the marketplace that summer, and so that's why 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.560 they wanted us to come out then. But sometimes I 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:33.960 wonder what would have happened if we had come out 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:38.080 the following winter, which made more sense, and that would 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:40.600 have given us six more months. I mean, it was 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:48.280 the deadline was so severe that, UM we took only 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:53.439 one day off every fourteen days. That was the legal limit. 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:58.439 So UM we would work thirteen days and then we 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:00.880 get one day off, and then we were thirteen days 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:03.680 in it one day off, and to complete the re 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:09.440 photography of all these blown up frames. UM. At the end, 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:15.280 I think we had twelve this division animation stands going 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:19.600 twenty four hours a day, three shifts on each and 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.520 the strain on the film in terms of getting it done. 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:32.000 From a director standpoint, that was kind of crazy. But 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:35.959 because I was new to this, you know, I just 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:41.360 accepted it. But the picture was after I shot all 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.119 the live action that the film had to be completed 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.159 in three weeks locked, so not one frame of the 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:53.159 movie could be changed. Frames could be taken out and removed, 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:57.919 but I couldn't change or add anything. So you know, 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:01.240 now directors get three or four months to live with 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:03.960 their movie in the editing room. I had three weeks 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.280 after that it was locked. And the thing that's interesting 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.520 is what I had to lock was actors in there 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:17.120 unaltered tron suits on an all black stage. And then 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:21.800 I had no computer animation yet because that wasn't done. 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.359 So when I locked the movie and said this is 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.760 the movie I'm making, there were no effects in it. 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.280 There were no colors in it. It was black and white. 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:34.040 Many of the scenes just had individual actors because you know, 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:36.480 it was one or the other, like I said, and 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:41.040 there was just storyboards are a little little brains that 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:46.280 said effect goes here a solar sailor. And at that 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.360 point I had to say Okay, I signed off. This 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:53.760 is the movie we're going to release from there on. 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:57.679 We just did nine months of filling it all in. 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:07.320 It's um yeah, in retrospect it was insane. But the 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:13.800 time compared to working on Tron to Drown Legacy, where 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:17.040 everything was composited in real time, where you could just 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.560 put the you know, computer animation together with the backgrounds, 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.680 together with the actors, and you know, you could make 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:27.399 changes up until like I don't know, a couple of 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:32.280 weeks before the movie was in theaters. Yeah, this is 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.040 a time where you can't even you can't even review 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.000 the footage immediately afterward obviously because you've got the filt 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:41.280 you have to process everything. So oh yeah, of course 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:45.439 there's no video tap. I mean you know, you shoot 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:47.200 it and it goes off to the lab and then 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:52.120 you see it the next day in dailies at lunchtime. Um. 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:59.040 There was also no time to do reshoots or reduce um. 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:03.159 I mean it was andred procedure on Tron Legacy that 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.480 when affects shots or shots were composited, that there would 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:12.080 be multiple reduce on each shot, every frame. It was 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:14.840 none of that. I mean we were flying blind and 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:20.920 then we had to commit um. Once in a while, 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:25.119 when something was really screwed up, I would get to 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:30.480 redo it or reshoot a recomposite. But often what we 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:34.720 did we say, Okay, there's a mistake. How can we 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:39.680 incorporate this mistake into the visuals or into the story, 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:45.160 and uh, we just went with it. So yeah, yeah, 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:47.159 I imagine that meant that you had a lot of 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:50.359 story boarding that was very precise from the very get go, 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:54.600 so that you could you could as the team of 0:21:54.720 --> 0:22:00.679 talented people I had was unbelievable, once in a lifetime. 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:05.119 I it was one of the great joys of making 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:11.119 the film. And uh, yeah, incredible. I mean the team 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:15.480 I had from Listener Studios, my guys, some of whom 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:19.199 came from Disney originally and then left Disney work at 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:23.600 Listener Studios and then ironically they found themselves back at Disney. 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:27.040 But we storyboarded the whole film before we ever got 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:30.400 to Disney, and we did all this artwork for all 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.280 the different thing you know, aspects the m c P 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:37.720 and all Solar Sailor and on the life cycles. That 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:41.359 was all done, but it was done by us in house, 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:45.600 and it was it was interesting that then when I 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:48.000 got to Disney and they said, well, you know, if 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:51.040 you wanted, if you could have a dream, what would 0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:53.639 it be. And I would say, well, I'd like Mobs 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.400 to go over these storyboards, and then I'd like sit 0:22:57.520 --> 0:23:01.480 me to go over vehicle design, and both of them 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:03.920 to go over my costume designs, and I like Peter 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:07.920 Lloyd to go over production paintings. And so what what 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:13.879 worked out great is that we never approached these great 0:23:13.960 --> 0:23:16.200 artists and said to him, we just have a blank 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:19.280 piece of paper and now I'm going to explain to 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:22.280 you what I'm trying to get to. It was. It 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:24.919 was so much better that we said, look, this is 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:30.119 as good as we can get this, and we're pretty 0:23:30.160 --> 0:23:33.200 confident that, you know, there's more room to improve this. 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:37.120 And they never let us down. And I think they 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:39.880 really like that, you know, because they look at our 0:23:40.040 --> 0:23:42.159 artwork and they go, yeah, this is really nice, but 0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:44.200 this or why didn't you do that? Or why didn't 0:23:44.200 --> 0:23:46.639 you do this? And Mobius would say, you know, you 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:48.639 could shoot this this way, but if you shot it 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:51.439 from this angle, and if you showed this, then the 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:55.120 audience wouldn't know that, and uh, yeah, it was amazing 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:59.120 that's that's it's awesome, and it's great that you already had, 0:23:59.440 --> 0:24:02.159 you know, a nice idea to go in with and 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:06.119 not have to run the risk of asking an artist 0:24:06.280 --> 0:24:10.399 to contribute and then say, oh, but that doesn't really 0:24:10.480 --> 0:24:12.760 fit in what I was you know, it says that. 0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:15.520 And the thing is I wasn't used to this part 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:18.600 of it either. The team that you know, my guys 0:24:18.920 --> 0:24:22.679 at Listener Studios, we would throw stuff out all the 0:24:22.800 --> 0:24:25.120 time and we would say, well, you know, that looked 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:27.560 good last week, but why don't we try this LFE 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:31.760 cycle design this week. And it was a learning curve 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:34.600 for me to work with you know, Sid and Mobius, 0:24:34.720 --> 0:24:40.760 and they would say, no, this is it. There are changes, 0:24:41.720 --> 0:24:48.520 there's no revisions. I'm not doing this again. That was amazing. 0:24:48.920 --> 0:24:51.119 It would be at a little bit like walking up 0:24:51.119 --> 0:24:54.760 to Da Vincian saying, yeah, yeah, it go that way. 0:24:54.920 --> 0:24:56.639 Could you put some of the life cycle and he 0:24:56.720 --> 0:25:00.280 hands it to you. You don't say to me, said 0:25:00.480 --> 0:25:05.040 what about this? We do that? You know, you know 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:07.600 how about mud flaps And it's like, now, I don't 0:25:07.600 --> 0:25:12.040 think so one thing that happened with the life cycles 0:25:12.200 --> 0:25:16.919 I will interject this and it never bothered said, is 0:25:16.960 --> 0:25:21.439 that we sent the life cycles to MAGI, which was 0:25:21.480 --> 0:25:25.640 Phil Middleman's company UM in New York. We had three 0:25:25.680 --> 0:25:29.240 computer companies. One was in New York State and that's 0:25:29.240 --> 0:25:31.600 where Chris Wedge used to work, who went on to 0:25:31.720 --> 0:25:36.280 Great Blue Sky Studios and do ice age. And then 0:25:36.280 --> 0:25:38.840 we had a company out here called Triple I, where 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:43.160 Richard Taylor was, and then we also used Robert Abeles 0:25:43.200 --> 0:25:47.040 company who was in Hollywood. But when I sent the 0:25:47.119 --> 0:25:54.280 first LFE cycle drawings that said to uh, Magi, they said, 0:25:54.320 --> 0:25:59.760 we can't do this. The curves are too complex. We 0:26:00.600 --> 0:26:04.680 render this, we don't have enough you know, power, it 0:26:04.760 --> 0:26:08.240 won't work. And I knew that, you know, it was 0:26:08.320 --> 0:26:12.639 an incredible design. We all loved it, and so I 0:26:12.720 --> 0:26:15.440 thought about it this I remember this was over a weekend, 0:26:15.880 --> 0:26:18.919 some Sunday, and so then I said, how do I 0:26:19.000 --> 0:26:22.959 keep the integrity of Sid's designed but simplify it for 0:26:23.000 --> 0:26:25.600 the computer? And already you gotta imagine, it was already 0:26:25.640 --> 0:26:29.760 really simple in terms of color and shading. And then I, 0:26:29.760 --> 0:26:31.399 I don't know how where I got this idea, but 0:26:31.440 --> 0:26:34.399 I got the idea of what if you took the bike, 0:26:35.359 --> 0:26:38.879 which was very three d and squeezed parts of it 0:26:38.960 --> 0:26:43.520