TRON: Legacy, a high-tech adventure set in a digital world that is unlike anything ever captured on the big screen. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, “TRON: Legacy” stars Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, James Frain, Beau Garrett and Michael Sheen and is produced by Sean Bailey, Jeffrey Silver and Steven Lisberger, with Donald Kushner serving as executive producer, and Justin Springer and Steve Gaub co-producing. The “TRON: Legacy” screenplay was written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz; story by Edward Kitsis & Adam Horowitz and Brian Klugman & Lee Sternthal; based on characters created by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird.
Joseph Kosinski is very clear in defining his approach to the making of “TRON: Legacy”: “My goal was to really make it feel real. I wanted it to feel like we took motion picture cameras into the world of TRON and shot it. So I wanted to build as many sets as possible. I wanted the materials to be real materials: glass, concrete, steel, so it had this kind of visceral quality to it.”
To achieve the exciting, iconic look for “TRON: Legacy,” Kosinski gathered around him artists from diverse disciplines. “We pulled people from the world of architecture, from automotive design, people who have never worked in movies before. We flew people in from all over the world,” says Kosinski.
Kosinski and his team knew they would be pushing the boundaries of what current effects technology can achieve to make “Legacy” in the spirit of “TRON.” The result is a complicated blend of techniques, from blue screen to 3D cameras, that Kosinski and his team have melded together for the film. Kosinski explains, “I’m going more on instinct rather than experience, but a lot of the technology we’re using is stuff I’ve used bits and pieces of in commercials. However, this is the first time we’re using it simultaneously at this scale.”
In addition to the technological complexities of “TRON: Legacy,” it is also produced in 3D. As Bailey comments, “3D is definitely a challenge technically; the cameras are bigger and heavier and there are a lot of extra variables that you have to take into account, so it definitely slows the process down. But I think it’s a great reason to go to the movies because it’s an experience that you just can’t recreate on an iPhone or your laptop or at home.”
Kosinski continues, “It is a lot more work to shoot in 3D; the VFX are being finished in 3D, which is also a challenge. Having to create separate imagery for both eyes makes it that much more work.”For shooting “TRON: Legacy” in 3D, the filmmakers employed the newest generation of camera, built specifically for them, and used a 3D technique that is a combination of technologies—completely digital motion-capture of a character and the live-action camera system.
The filmmakers and designers of “TRON: Legacy” let their creativity soar to develop an exciting aesthetic for the film that would immerse audiences in a stunning visual landscape never before seen—or imagined.With director Joseph Kosinski at the helm to steer the film’s look and Darren Gilford tapped as production designer, it was clear to both of them that keeping the first film’s spirit alive was key. “The first film established a look that was so iconic,” Gilford explains, “and a lot of that was because of the limitations of the computer, what they really could do back in the ’80s. It was very geometric, very simplistic. With the computer technology we have now, it’s limitless what we can do. But we made a conscious decision that we would not go totally organic. We’d soften shapes and forms where we could, but we would definitely try and maintain those basic ‘TRON’ geometric shapes.”
To accomplish this, heavyweight talents were required, including concept artist David Levy. It was his job to convert Kosinski’s ideas to drawings and designs and establish the new film as its own world. “Joe’s vision evolved the visuals from the first film. He wanted the Grid to feel exactly like our reality, but with a twist,” Levy says.
Kosinski’s aim was to blend the real and the unreal without anyone noticing. “I don’t want the audience to know where the line rests, so sometimes I’m going to shoot everything completely practical, and then sometimes, it will be one practical set piece surrounded by blue screen. And if we do it right, it should be unnoticeable; it should be seamless,” says Kosinski.
In this respect, “TRON: Legacy” strays far away from the original. “The marriage of photorealistic computer-generated images and actual practical sets really gives you a sense of the world that you’re in,” says Jeff Bridges. “In the original ‘TRON’ we didn’t have that because it was basically black duvetyn with white adhesive tape marking things; we never got the feeling of where we actually were. There’s nothing like walking onto the set for the first time and seeing it all dressed.”
Twenty to 25 designers in various art departments churned out concepts and from those Kosinski and his team created the sets—from real-world locations, mixtures of real architecture with blue screen, to fully digital sets. Gilford estimates that there are between 60 and 70 unique settings in the film, split between 15 impressive fully-constructed sets and varying levels of computer-created landscapes.
Finally, since “TRON: Legacy” will be released in 3D, filmmakers were confronted with a unilateral challenge, one which would influence every decision made on the visual aspects of the film. Production designer Gilford says, “There are certain aspects that we had to design around and certain rules we had to obey. For example, when moving the 3D camera rig, one camera could reveal a light source a split second before the other. It can be a nightmare.”
Much care and foresight was also taken in the production design to incorporate iconic images from the mythology of “TRON.” For example, the art department incorporated many of the original film’s images and props into Flynn’s secret lab beneath the arcade. Those with a sharp eye will recognize the Master Control Program desk caddy from the original film, the tabletop computer interface and a condensed version of the Shiva laser, which takes Sam into the Grid. Others will make out a map of the Grid embedded in the code of the background image and Sam’s drawings from childhood on the wall.
While creating the look wasn’t always easy, Gilford admits that it proved to be immensely gratifying: “For a designer, this was a dream, and for my team as well. I really felt that we were able to assemble one of the most unbelievable art departments for ‘TRON: Legacy.’ It was incredibly challenging—but we had a blast doing it.”
The most important unifying element in the Grid is light. “In our film light links everything together. There are ribbons of light that form beneath the street then crawl up sidewalks and buildings, continuing for miles up into the city,” comments production designer Gilford. “Streetlights arise out of and wrap over the street to give the illusion they’re cradling the street.”
At the End of Line Club at the top of the Grid’s mile-high skyscraper, light is embedded in almost every surface: ribbons of light wrap around the floor and ceiling and around the booths. Even the drinks are illuminated. And the club’s roof and walls are glass, offering a view of the city lights and the beacon of the distant portal.But the element of light is perhaps best identified in the lit suits, which were a challenge to construct. Lead concept artist Neville Page and director Kosinski believed the suits they conceived could be made and shot “practical,” that is, without the use of CGI—so the designers went to work to make them a reality.
In the end the lighted suits were created by using electroluminescent lamps made from a flexible polymer film. Most of the form-fitting suits were made out of foam latex, but the Sirens’ suits were made by spraying balloon rubber over spandex, giving an incredible, super-sleek shape. The actors wearing those suits had to be severely compressed within the suits to compensate for the bulk of the electronics.
“In addition to the main cast costumes,” adds Christine Bieselin Clark, who worked with the film’s costume designer Michael Wilkinson, “we also built all of our background costumes. Once you go into the Grid, everybody has some element of light. We ended up making over 140 foam suits, which there is no precedent for”.The body-molded suits with their distinct lighting patterns are influencing clothes and shoe designers, with “TRON: Legacy” fashion elements showing up on runways and in fashion magazines. The distinctive hairstyles, such as upswept hair, and the bold eye-makeup treatments are setting new style trends around the world.
Lightcycles are an important and vital part of the TRON mythology. One of the designers who worked on the sleek, reconfigured Lightcycles in “TRON: Legacy” is Daniel Simon, a former car designer for Bugatti, who used, as a basis, the original sketches by Syd Mead, the designer of the Lightcycles for “TRON.”
Simon explains the challenges: “A Lightcycle forms a visual unit with its rider. His helmet and body become part of the bike design and stance—but you still need to give him freedom to move. That’s not in your catalogue; you have to start from scratch.” Moreover, adds Simon, “The Lightcycles are created out of a baton, so I had to design the entire inside of the bike, every screw and gear, so Digital Domain could transform it in animation. That was interesting, developing the look of how a vehicle might grow.”
Other vehicles in “TRON: Legacy” include the Light Runner, on the Grid a powerful racing car but in the Outlands a tough off-roader; the Recognizer, a huge, U-shaped vehicle that roams the streets looking for wayward programs; Solar Sailers that are flying cargo ships; and Clu’s Rectifier battleship, which is three times larger than any aircraft carrier in the real world, holding Clu’s entire army.
And while one would expect these amazing vehicles to be entirely computer-generated creations, many were also practically built for certain scenes, in keeping with Kosinski’s desire to constantly blur the line between CGI and reality. The filmmakers contracted a company called Wild Factory, who builds prototypes for Volkswagen, to take on the task of bringing some of the vehicles to reality.
On the back of every illuminated suit is a light disc and as in “TRON,” the discs play very significantly in “TRON: Legacy.” The light disc represents the power source, essence and memory bank of every program.Used as a weapon, it will return to its user like a boomerang. The light discs that were created for the film consist of 134 LED lights, are radio-controlled and attached to the light suits with a magnet. They also house the batteries and electronics that power the light suits.
For Grid-dwellers the baton is an important piece of equipment that can be used as a weapon or to store huge amounts of data and utility programs, and by keying in codes, it can create a Lightcycle or other vehicle around the user. As director Kosinski explains,“The baton is the Swiss army knife of this world. It can form any number of vehicles and it can also form different weapons depending upon your specialty.”
“TRON: Legacy” is a showcase for today’s technology and features some firsts in cinematic history: It is the first 3D movie to integrate a fully digital head and body to create the younger version of Jeff Bridges’ character; the first to make extensive use of self-illuminated costumes; the first to create molded costumes using digital sculpture exclusively, creating molds directly from computer files using CNC (Computer Numerical Cutting) technology; and the first 3D movie shot with 35mm lenses and full-35mm chip cameras.
“TRON: Legacy” took the technology known as facial capture to an extraordinary new level. Using a 3D scan of Jeff Bridges, a mold of his face was built and from that a mask was made with 52 holes in it, acting as a template for the facial marker dots tracked by four lipstick cameras attached to a carbon-fiber custom helmet. Meanwhile, a three-dimensional digital version of Bridges was created by Digital Domain using dozens of photographs of Bridges in his early 30s, its movements correlated with the 52 facial markers on the performance mask.It was the filmmakers’ biggest technical hurdle. As director Kosinski says, “I don’t think there is anything more difficult than creating a digital human that’s going to be in the same scene with other real human beings. And to top that off, it’s a digital human that people know…and we must capture all the charisma and personality of Jeff Bridges.”
When playing Clu, Bridges had the 52 markers drawn on his face and wore the Helmet Mounted Camera (HMC); his facial movements fed into the computer and were used to control the expressions and movements of the digital head. Thus, the digital performance of a younger Bridges was controlled by the real Bridges’ performance, as if the younger Bridges were actually on screen. The information sent to the computer made it possible to instruct the digital head to speak and emote in the exact same way Jeff Bridges would on set.
“Clu had to look, feel, breathe and act exactly like the young Jeff,” comments Academy Award® winner Eric Barba, the film’s visual effects supervisor. “Jeff gave us some really great performances to do that with, but it had to be a believable, realistic human—and in this case a perfect early-1980s Jeff Bridges. We took our E-motion Capture technology and pushed it far beyond anything we’ve done. It raised the bar higher than we’ve seen before.”
“TRON: Legacy” is the first film to use the Helmet Mounted Camera in live action, allowing the actor to interact with others in the scene. The technique, as producer Sean Bailey points out, “enabled us to come up with scenes that weren’t possible. And we had a different challenge than ‘Benjamin Button’: what Brad Pitt looks like at eighty years old is speculative, but most people know what Jeff Bridges looked like when he was in ‘Against All Odds,’ so we had to match that. It wasn’t just technology for technology’s sake; it enabled us to write in a whole new way.”
As technology strives to create ever more realistic immersive experiences, the question arises as to how far the integration of humans and computers can really go. Does the premise of “TRON: Legacy” bear any relation to reality? The filmmakers wanted the movie to be grounded in a sense of reality and have a sense of scientific truth. They felt if the audiences feel there is some underlying scientific premise that has been broken, then the story won’t feel real.So through producer Jeffrey Silver the filmmakers reached out to the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange to advise them, asking questions like: Could you inject a digital version of a human being into a computer? And, could a digital personality be reconstituted into human form? They brought scientists in for a roundtable discussion just to talk about some of the fundamental concepts of “TRON: Legacy.”
The answers surprised them. It seems that if one had enough computing power and employed the principles of quantum physics in a theoretical process known as quantum teleportation, then it could happen. “We were delighted; it set off our imaginations. Science fiction is not supposed to be reality; it’s an extrapolation of what is possible, intended to ignite the imagination,” says Silver.
The 3D experience of “TRON: Legacy” will bring viewers into the Grid, and along for the ride, more than any other film in cinematic history. Using the next generation of 3D technology developed after “Avatar,” “TRON: Legacy” will allow the audience to experience the digital grid and be part of the action in the highly stylized landscape.
The “TRON: Legacy” audiences will discover an exciting, evolved grid that pulsates with the latest technology, stunning visual effects and leading-edge design. With an insightful father-son story that’s grounded in cultural reality, a strong, relatable female lead and a unique, one-of-a kind style, “TRON: Legacy” blends what’s real with super-imaginative, eye-popping visuals and 3D action.
Source: http://www.artooz.com/featured-posts/the-making-of-tron-legacy-2010-movie/
