Spielberg Wraps Up Motion Capture

According to Variety magazine, Steven Spielberg is about to wrap up filming after just 32 days. Of course, when we talking about filming we are really talking about motion capture data. No cameras (in the traditional sense) are involved in this process. The raw motion capture footage will then be handed over to Peter Jackson who will now spend the next 18 months converting the data into a 3D world.

With the short 32 days period of motion capture being done by Spielberg and the long hard work of post production in the hands of Peter Jackson, there is some debate about whose film this is. Spielberg will be getting full directing credits and Jackson will be down as producer but in reality it is starting to look like the final film will owe more to Peter Jackson than Steven Spielberg.

The Variety article highlights how closely director and producer have to work in a motion capture film, challenging the traditional concepts of the roles. The collaboration between the two film makers is being likened to how Spielberg and George Lucus worked together on the Raiders of the Lost Ark films. Kathleen Kennedy, long time producer of Spielberg’s films, said that the transitions between the two creative talents are relatively seamless and that “They are amazingly collaborative”…

Officially Peter Jackson is down to direct the second film but that will only go ahead if the first one is successful. Yet it may be that Jackson, as producer and controller of the film’s technology, has far more influence over the first film’s success than Spielberg. In a way, this makes me happier. Jackson has shown with the Lords of the Rings and King Kong that he understands fan’s emotional connection to source material and can be sensitive to it. Steven Spielberg’s work has often been with original scripts for the big screen and when they have been adaptions, it has been from relatively obscure books. There is also a very European (or at least British) idea that Jackson as a New Zealander will be more in tune the European nature of Tintin than the American Spielberg.

Source: Spielberg, Jackson dig into ‘Tintin’