Oct 10, 2007 05:14 PM
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Hollywood, 2:08 PM
Tue Feb 9
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As a reward for assisting DreamWorks in the daring sting operation that prevented further leaking of secrets related to the production of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of This Thing My Wife Bought At Liberace's Estate Sale, a grateful Steven Spielberg invited some members of the online press to the Universal backlot for an audience with the national treasure himself. Once there, he informed his awed guests about his ongoing debate with CGI-happy Indy partner George Lucas on their differing filmmaking philosophies. Reports /Film:
Producer and friend George Lucas tried at length to convince Spielberg to film the movie digitally but Steven resisted. He joked that he is the last person in Hollywood still cutting the film negatives, and that he learned from the greats and they all worked that way. He says that he has still never used an Avid to edit, and won't do so until Tintin.
Steven gushed about how a film frame is alive with movement and film grain and that digital video is "too perfect." Lucas tried to convince Steven that they could add the film grain to the digital image, which Spielberg found totally amusing because doesn't that defeat the whole purpose? And wouldn't it just be easier to shoot the whole thing on film. [...]Spielberg reassured us that the action was cut old school, and that it would not look modern, joking "I'm not modern." He said there will be "no mtv style cutting" in Indy 4, and that he likes the audience to have a sense of geography of each action scene.
Unfortunately, once Spielberg finished his impromptu lecture on how hand-cutting and practical effects are becoming lost arts in the post-Jar-Jar Binks-era, the curious online scribe broke from the group and mistakenly wandered into a restricted shooting area, overhearing this conversation between Lucas and star Harrison Ford that shattered his illusions about the director's creative victory over his technology-obsessed collaborator: "Listen, don't buy that bullshit Steven is selling you and those kids out there. You're too goddamn old to get dragged behind a Nazi supply truck again, even if we drive it nice and slow. You. Will. Die. If you just put on this spandex suit, grab your whip, and get in front of that fucking green screen over there, I promise that we'll CGI off that craft-services belly you're developing and give you one of those 300 six-packs. And no one will get hurt. Understand? Good. Oh, and just because you painted that Jack Daniels bottle green doesn't mean we can take it out of a shot. Be a pro and leave it in the trailer."
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