WEBVTT - Tron: He Fights For the Users 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.040 Technology with tex Stuff from hat dot com. Hey there, 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.280 and welcome to tex Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:18.480 I'm an executive producer at how Stuff Works. I'm really 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:23.120 excited to bring you this episode today. In nine d two, 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:28.440 Disney released a film unlike any other in the company's history, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.120 And if you boil the story down to its basic themes, 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:34.960 it's really not that unusual. Right. You have a hero 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:38.440 who rises up against a tyrant of a villain and 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:42.040 helps a group of resistance fighters overcome oppression. Now, that 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:45.159 story has been told in numerous ways before and since, 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.680 but this particular version had some really interesting quirks to it. 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:53.199 The film was called Tron. Tron follows the story of 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.200 a character named Flynn, who is a video game designer 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.920 and hacker who once was the employee of a corporation 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.760 called InCom. One of Flynn's co workers named Dillinger, stole 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:08.680 Flynn's work and arranged Flynn's removal from the company and 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.880 covered it all up. Flynn plans a daring computer raid 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:14.920 on the company with the help of two of his 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:19.160 former co workers. His big goal is to uncover the 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:24.400 actual evidence that in fact, Dillinger stole Flynn's work, and 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:29.640 his big opponent in this raid is an artificial intelligent construct. 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:32.360 It's a piece of code. It's some software. It's called 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:36.720 the Master Control Program or m c P. Now, originally 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.759 that started out as a chess game, but it had 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:43.399 started to assimilate other programs into its own code and 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:48.640 systematically growing more powerful as a result. So imagine sort 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:53.960 of like the borg absorbing other entities to gain more strength. 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:56.040 That's kind of what the m c P is doing. 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:01.240 It gets more and more capability as it absorbs their programs. 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:04.600 So while Flynn is trying to break into Income's systems, 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.880 the m c P detects him and uses a laser 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:12.040 to convert Flynn into digital information and essentially upload him 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.840 to the computer. That pulls Flynn into the computer world 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:19.520 and their Flynn encounters programs and in the world of 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:24.080 the computer simulation or the computer environment. These programs have 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.600 the appearances of humans in this universe. They also resemble 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:32.360 their creators, whoever programmed them. One of those programs is Tron. 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:36.959 The name is short for Electronic. Tron is a security 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.440 program and is designed to keep an eye on the 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:41.880 m c P, but he also acts kind of like 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:44.560 a gladiator in various games that the m c P 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:49.040 forces programs to participate in, and as some people mentioned 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.960 within the context of the film, he fights for the users. 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:55.880 It's one of my favorite quotes from Tron. Users in 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.640 the Tron universe are sort of seen as like gods. 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.880 They are the creators, and the programs look to users 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.200 for guidance and for approval, and they have had all 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:09.200 communication cut off by the m c P, so they 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.080 wonder if the users are still out there. There's this 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:15.560 whole existential crisis going on in the world of Tron, 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:19.239 and that's an interesting piece of the mythology of the movie. 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:22.079 Flynn eventually, of course, helps bring down the m c 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.840 P and he escapes the computer world. He's also able 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:28.799 to prove that Dillinger stole his work, and he ends 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:32.080 up becoming the new head of Income as a result. Now, 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:34.920 the film was not a big success at the box office, 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.040 but it did find itself a cult following and also 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:41.960 had a profound impact on the way people would visualize cyberspace. 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:44.360 I would even say that you could see elements of 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.120 the design from Tron find its way into early implementations 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.080 of virtual reality. And the production of the film itself 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:54.600 relied heavily on some really innovative work from numerous people 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:57.520 in order for the film to actually come into being. 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:02.200 So Ramsey, the under producer, arranged for me to have 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.760 an interview with the writer and director of Tron, Stephen Liszburger. 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.520 What follows is our conversation about the technology he used 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.320 to create the movie, as well as his philosophy about 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:17.440 technology and stuff in general, really the things that informed 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:21.200 the creation of Tron. I hope you enjoy Stephen Listburger. 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:23.240 It is a pleasure to have you on the show. 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:27.520 Thank you for joining Tech Stuff my pleasure. Now before 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.360 we jump into Tron, and I've got a lot of 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:34.600 things to ask about for Tron. Uh, maybe my listeners 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:38.520 would probably appreciate understanding a little bit about your background 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:42.640 leading up to Tron. You had a background in animation 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:46.240 leading up to that. I come from the East Coast. 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.360 I was born in New York and went to college 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:53.479 in Boston at TOPS and went to the School of 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.520 the Museum of Fine Arts, where I studied film for 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:01.039 five years, including animation, and I had my own company 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:06.320 in Boston that did some live action, but primarily animation, 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:12.320 and uh, we eventually ended up with a studio on 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:15.799 the East Coast and went on the West coast. We're 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:20.120 and our biggest job was doing Animal Olympics for the 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:27.400 NBC television network, and during that we developed Tron and 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:31.560 then tried to do it independently, but we couldn't pull 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:35.279 it off, So we were fortunate enough to get in 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:40.480 business with Disney. Yeah. I imagine a project with the 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.320 scope of Tron would have been extremely challenging to pull 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:48.159 off without some some pretty major help. And I also 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:53.680 imagine that Disney's background in animation uh led to some 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:56.720 some aid when you guys were working on Tron, because 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:58.960 I don't know that people who have seen the film 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:05.560 are really aware how much actual hand drawn animation techniques 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:11.159 were incorporated. This was an era before computer graphics had 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.000 reached that digital age where you do everything you know 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.279 digitally on a computer and then you can just export 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:19.640 to a video file. This is way before all of that, 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.719 So I imagine Disney's involvement was somewhat helpful because that 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.680 was a studio that actually understood animation. Yeah, all of 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:33.200 that is true, And just to unpack that, um, if 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:37.039 we had tried to do it independently, I think it 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:40.680 would have we wouldn't have made it eventually. We would 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.560 have had to either go under or bring in someone 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:50.120 else because we were somewhat naive. We had an idea 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.640 how we would do it, but we in retrospect the 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:56.880 scale of it was something that none of us had 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.520 experienced with. On paper, we thought we could work it 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.080 all out. It added up and made sense. But when 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:07.359 we got into it at Disney, many times I thought, 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.080 I'm really glad we're here and not in any other 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:15.840 studio because, as you said, we we had. We had 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:22.440 hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pieces of artwork, um 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:27.080 put any into just the frame blow ups. Every individual 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.000 frame of the electronic World blown up shot in seventy 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.400 moment are blown up. They were when they were stacked up, 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:38.520 they filled two entire moving vans. I mean it was 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:45.160 tons and tons and tons of images and it it 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.720 didn't freak Disney out because they said, yeah, we're used 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.600 to handling millions of pieces of artwork. And in the end, 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:58.200 that was totally the strength production wise of the project 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:02.400 because we all of us working on it were familiar 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.840 with animation. Even the live action people had quite a 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:08.840 bit of experience and animation, so we sort of took 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.480 the best from live action, and then we turned the 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:16.520 whole live action movie into an animated movie. And once 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:20.720 it was at that level, you could treat it like 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:24.600 mass production. You could just keep multiplying the number of 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.880 teams working on the individual scenes, and and there was 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:33.679 a system there. We weren't reinventing the wheel. That system existed. 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:38.000 People knew how to do, you know, animated effects, and 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:43.120 how to work with these numbers of probably it had 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:47.120 to be over a million pieces in the end. And 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:49.960 the funny thing about it is how efficient it was, 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:54.040 because we ended up doing all of the special effects 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:57.560 in Tron one in half the time that it took 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:01.960 to do them in Tron too well, and and correct 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:03.680 me if I got this, get any of this wrong. 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:05.160 I want to see if I can kind of lay 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.720 out for my listeners sort of a general approach to 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:13.160 the electronic world sequences, which took up more almost an 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:16.480 entire hour of Toronto. I think about somewhere around the 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:19.200 realm of fifty three to fifty five minutes something like 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.840 that of a footage in this electronic world. So the 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.600 thing is there was an underlying template that I had 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:29.440 in mind, which is, you know, a sort of live 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:33.600 action short at the beginning then followed by an animated 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:37.200 movie is what Disney used to make. And you know 0:09:37.240 --> 0:09:40.520 they always did that with their live action films and 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.800 animated and live or live and animated, and so that 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:47.400 combination is what I was going for. You know, it's 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:51.079 sort of a it's it's kind of an animated feature 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:55.320 in terms of that length of about seventy minutes, with 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.200 the live action being kind of a short at the beginning. 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.600 So and the way that would work out, like you said, 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.640 you shot on seventy millimeter in large each frame. Because 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.200 to remind my listeners, some of whom are are too 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:14.920 young to really remember the days of film, it's really funny, 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:19.520 you know, once time moves on and people forget about 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.040 how difficult it was in the past. It's a little 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.960 bit like the next generation doesn't really care how difficult 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:30.440 it was before. And you know, there was no way 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:35.280 to composite film if you that was efficient, if you 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:39.439 did effects and you had characters and you had a 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.600 fantasy background, there really was no good way to put 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:47.200 all of this together. Blue screen existed, but I've shot 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.960 blue screen, and you know, if if you had at 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:54.200 the time, if you had twenty or fifty blue screen 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.880 shots in the film, that was a lot. Well, we 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:02.480 had nine composite shots that we had to do, nine 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.640 shots that had you and beings in worlds that didn't exist, 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:11.120 plus their costumes who were supposed to be glowing. And 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:15.840 there was no digital compositing. You couldn't even run computer 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:21.400 animation consecutively. We only had enough computing power. We had 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:26.280 total two megabytes, and we only had enough memory to 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:32.080 render one frame at a time period, so you could 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:37.000 never look at the light cycles moving. You could only 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.480 look at this individual frame. Then you had to wait 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:43.640 forty five minutes and rendered the next frame and look 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:47.760 at that one. And the only time we ever saw 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:50.040 the stuff put together is after we set up a 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:54.040 film camera and clicked like in an animated movie, one 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:58.960 frame at a time off of this computer animation, and 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:01.920 then people would all go into the screening room and 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.160 sit there. Even the guys that did all the computer 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.440 work had never seen it moving. And we saw it 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.920 for the very first time when we filmed it one 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.679 frame at a time and then ran it back. And 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:20.440 so to put all of this together to composite it. 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.240 The only way we could do it was to do 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.959 blow up every frame and make it into an animated movie. 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.720 And what we did to combine it with the computer 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:36.800 animation was to try to find a sort of middle 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.480 ground where the live action would look like it had 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:44.840 been rendered by a computer and the computer animation wasn't 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:49.360 too attempting to look too real because we couldn't do real. 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:54.319 Many of the looks in the computer aspects of Tron 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.600 look the way they look because not because we sat 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:01.240 there and said, oh, wouldn't this was great? And wire 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:05.560 frame instead of fully rendered. No, no, no, it was 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:11.240 wire frame because that's all we could do, and it's 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.600 phenomenal to to give a sense of scale. You're talking 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.200 about twenty four frames a second with film, every single 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:20.760 one of those frames being for the electronic world being 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:24.000 blown up so that animators can go in and and 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:28.520 hand draw elements onto those frames, each of those frames 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:32.200 having to go through multiple exposures depending upon how many 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.480 colors you had, because each time you added a different color, 0:13:35.520 --> 0:13:37.920 you had to do another level. You had to photograph 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:43.160 everything all over again. Uh, you're you're talking frames. If 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.560 you start doing the math. If you're thinking fifty three 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:49.160 minutes that because well, I don't want to do the 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:54.960 math right now, but I think, well, this thing is 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.800 it's um if it goes through the math. Do you 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:02.880 say this can't be done? Because just doing the colors 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:08.800 on each frame, the average number of exposures was I 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:14.079 think eighteen. Some of the frames in Tron were exposed 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:20.280 thirty six times. And because everything had to be held 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:22.680 in focus so that the blow ups were sharp, and 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.840 the blow ups are about the size of place Matt, 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.680 there was no depth of field. At seventy millimeter had 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:34.520 those light levels, So it wasn't those cameras. Those seventy 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:38.160 millimeter cameras were used by David Lean to shoot Lawrence 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.160 of Arabia, and afterwards I really understood why, because in 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:45.720 the desert there's enough light. But for any of the 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:50.760 situations we were in, I had to shoot characters when 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.200 they were speaking to each other and over the shoulder shots. 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.600 They had to be shot on separate passes. So I 0:14:56.640 --> 0:15:00.200 would have Bruce in the foreground with no Jeff that 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.960 he was talking to looking at, and I get him 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:04.840 in focus, and then I get him out of the 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:06.920 frame and then I bring in Jeff and he'd say 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:10.640 his lines, and I chewed them separately, each one held 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:15.200 in focus, and then they were put together. But yeah, 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:20.280 that the in animation, there's a thing called an exposure sheet, 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:27.880 and it's showed. It tells the animation cameraman what levels 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:33.680 are photographed and what order, and there there's about, I 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:40.200 don't know, three seconds of animation per exposure sheet. And 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.440 so what we did was we took those exposure sheets 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:48.400 and instead of that sheet being filled in for three seconds, 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:53.040 which is seventy two frames, it was one frame in tron, 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:59.760 one exposure sheet per whole sheet, three seconds of animation 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:04.400 per individual frame. But again, it was only possible to 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.480 put all of this together through animation. We were under 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.960 an extreme deadline, I heard all. I never was given 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.840 a real good reason by Disney why we were in 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:18.800 such a rush, but we were. And I've heard various 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.000 theories over the years that there was, you know, some 0:16:22.080 --> 0:16:26.960 competition in the marketplace that summer, and so that's why 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:29.760 they wanted us to come out then. But sometimes I 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:32.160 wonder what would have happened if we had come out 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:36.280 the following winter, which made more sense, and that would 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:38.800 have given us six more months. I mean it was 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:46.480 the deadline was so severe that, um, we took only 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:51.640 one day off every fourteen days. That was the legal limit. 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:56.640 So um, we would work thirteen days and then we 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.080 get one day off, and then we worked thirteen days 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:03.680 in it one day off, and to complete the rephotography 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.640 of all these blown up frames. Um, at the end, 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:13.480 I think we had twelve this division animation stands going 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:17.800 twenty four hours a day, three shifts on each and 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.720 the strain on the film in terms of getting it done. 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:30.199 From a director standpoint, that was kind of crazy. But 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.159 because I was new to this, you know, I just 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:39.560 accepted it. But the picture was after I shot all 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:42.159 the live action that the film had to be completed 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:47.359 in three weeks blocked, so not one frame of the 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:51.359 movie could be changed. Frames could be taken out and removed, 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:56.080 but I couldn't change or add anything. So you know, 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.439 now directors get three or four months to live with 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.159 their movie in the editing room, I had three weeks 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.480 after that it was locked. And the thing that's interesting 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:09.720 is what I had to lock was actors in there, 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:15.439 unaltered tron suits on all black stage and then I 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:20.919 had no computer animation yet because that wasn't done. So 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:23.639 when I locked the movie and said this is the 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:26.240 movie I'm making, there were no effects in it. There 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:28.439 were no colors in it. It was black and white. 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.240 Many of the scenes just had individual actors because you know, 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:34.679 it was one or the other, like I said, and 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:39.240 there was just storyboards are a little little brains that 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:44.440 said effect goes here a solar sailor. And at that 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:47.560 point I had to say, okay, I signed off, this 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:52.040 is the movie we're going to release. From there on, 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.879 we just did nine months of filling it all in. 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:05.440 It's um Yeah, in retrospect it was insane, but at 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:11.680 the time it's compared to working on dron to Drown Legacy, 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.120 where everything was compositied in real time, where you could 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:18.639 just put the you know, computer animation together with the background, 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.840 together with the actors, and you know, you could make 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:25.600 changes up until like I don't know, a couple of 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:30.480 weeks before the movie was in theaters. Yeah, this is 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.199 a time where you can't even you can't even review 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:36.160 the footage immediately afterward obviously because you've got the filt 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.479 you have to process everything. So oh yeah, of course 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:43.639 there's no video tap. I mean, you know, you shoot 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:45.400 it and it goes off to the lab and then 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:50.320 you see it the next day in dailies at lunchtime. Um. 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:57.240 There was also no time to do reshoots or reduce um. 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.320 I mean it was standard procedure on tron legacy that 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.680 when affects shots or shots were composited, that there would 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:10.280 be multiple reduce on each shot every frame. It was 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:13.040 none of that. I mean we were flying blind and 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:19.119 then we had to commit. Um. Once in a while, 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:23.320 when something was really screwed up, I would get to 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:28.679 redo it or reshoot a recomposite. But often what we 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:32.920 did we say, okay, there's a mistake. How can we 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:37.880 incorporate this mistake into the visuals or into the story, 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:43.320 and uh, we just went with it. So yeah, yeah, 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:45.359 I imagine that meant that you had a lot of 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:48.520 story boarding that was very precise from the very get go, 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.800 so that you could you could well, the team of 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:58.920 talented people I had was unbelievable, once in a lifetime. 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.320 I it was one of the great joys of making 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:09.320 the film. And uh yeah, incredible. I mean the team 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:13.640 I had from Listener Studios, my guys, some of whom 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:17.280 came from Disney originally and then left Disney and worked 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.480 at Listburger Studios and then ironically they found themselves back 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:24.720 at Disney. But we storyboarded the whole film before we 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:28.160 ever got to Disney, and we did all this artwork 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:31.119 for all the different thing you know, aspects the m 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:35.800 c P and all solar Sailor and the life cycles. 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:38.880 That was all done, but it was done by us 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:43.520 in house, and it was it was interesting that then 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:45.560 when I got to Disney and they said, well, you know, 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:48.879 if you wanted, if you could have a dream, what 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:51.119 would it be. And I would say, well, I'd like 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:55.280 Mobius to go over these storyboards, and then I'd like 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:59.359 sit Me to go over our vehicle designs, and both 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:01.520 of them to go are my costume designs, and I 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:05.440 like Peter Lloyd to go over production paintings. And so 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:10.640 what what worked out great is that we never approached 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:13.879 these great artists and said to him, we just have 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:16.720 a blank piece of paper and now I'm going to 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.960 explain to you what I'm trying to get to. It 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:22.720 was it was so much better that we said, look, 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:27.119 this is as good as we can get this, and 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:30.679 we're pretty confident that you know, there's more room to 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:34.919 improve this, and they never let us down. And I 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:37.760 think they really like that, you know, because they look 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:40.200 at our artwork and they go, yeah, this is really nice, 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:42.160 but this or why didn't you do that? Or why 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:44.679 didn't you do this? And Mobius would say, you know, 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:46.760 you could shoot this this way, but if you shot 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:49.520 it from this angle and if you showed this, then 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:52.840 the audience would know that. And uh, yeah, it was 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:57.320 amazing that it's awesome and it's great that you already had, 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:00.320 you know, a nice idea to go in with and 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:04.320 not have to run the risk of asking an artist 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:08.600 to contribute and then say, oh, but that doesn't really 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:10.960 fit in what I was you know, and said that. 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:13.720 And the thing is I wasn't used to this part 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:16.800 of it either. The team that, you know, my guys 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:20.760 at List for Studios, we would throw stuff out all 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:23.000 the time and we would say, well, you know, that 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:25.400 looked good last week, but why don't we try this 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:29.639 LFE cycle design this week. And it was a learning 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:32.159 curve for me to work with, you know, Sid and 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:38.160 Mobius and they would say, no, this is it. There 0:23:38.160 --> 0:23:43.080 are changes, there's no revisions. I'm not doing this again. 0:23:45.240 --> 0:23:48.360 That was amazing. It would be at a little bit 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:51.440 like walking up to Da Vincian saying yeah, but yeah, 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:54.000 it go that way. Could you put some of the 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:57.600 life cycle an he hands it to you, you don't 0:23:57.640 --> 0:24:01.640 say to him, he said, what about this? We do that? 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.440 You know, you know how about mud flaps. And it's like, now, 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:09.280 I don't think so at of thing that happened with 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:14.760 the LFE cycles. I will interject this and it never bothered. Said, 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:19.520 is that we sent the life cycles to MAGI, which 0:24:19.560 --> 0:24:23.560 was Phil Middleman's company UM in New York. We had 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:26.600 three computer companies. One was in New York State and 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:29.679 that's where Chris Wedge used to work, who went on 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:34.280 to Great Blue Sky Studios and do ice age. And 0:24:34.320 --> 0:24:36.280 then we had a company out here called Triple I 0:24:36.800 --> 0:24:40.879 where Richard Taylor was. And then we also used Robert 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:45.040 Abeles company who was in Hollywood. But when I sent 0:24:45.119 --> 0:24:50.360 the first LFE cycle drawings that said did to uh, Magi, 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:57.000 they said, we can't do this. The curves are too complex, 0:24:57.920 --> 0:25:01.679 we can't render this. You don't have enough you know power, 0:25:02.840 --> 0:25:06.320 it won't work. And I knew that, you know, it 0:25:06.359 --> 0:25:10.639 was an incredible design. We all loved it, and so 0:25:10.760 --> 0:25:12.960 I thought about it this I remember this was over 0:25:13.000 --> 0:25:16.879 a weekend, some Sunday, and so then I said, how 0:25:16.920 --> 0:25:20.679 do I keep the integrity of Sid's designed but simplify 0:25:20.760 --> 0:25:23.199 it for the computer. And already, you gotta imagine, it 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:26.320 was already really simple in terms of color and shading. 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:29.000 And then I, I don't know how where I got 0:25:29.040 --> 0:25:31.360 this idea, but I got the idea of what if 0:25:31.400 --> 0:25:35.600 you took the bike, which was very three D, and 0:25:35.880 --> 0:25:40.320 squeezed parts of it between two pieces of glass. To 0:25:40.400 --> 0:25:43.600 imagine that squeezing it between two pieces of glass. So 0:25:43.680 --> 0:25:46.240 if you look at it from the side, what I 0:25:46.280 --> 0:25:49.600 did was I kept that faring in the front from 0:25:49.840 --> 0:25:54.200 the way Sid designed it, but I flattened everything else 0:25:55.080 --> 0:25:58.199 that was also full of all these compound curves, just 0:25:58.320 --> 0:26:00.679 like I was pressing a piece of glass against it. 0:26:01.320 --> 0:26:06.080 And that did it. We got enough of the complexity 0:26:06.119 --> 0:26:08.199 out of it so that the computer guys could do it. 0:26:08.520 --> 0:26:10.080 And by the way, I want to say one thing 0:26:10.080 --> 0:26:16.280 about Magi that it was pretty funny, which is that 0:26:16.400 --> 0:26:21.000