It turns out the new photos from the filming of the Tintin movie I reported on the other day are not so new after all.

According to regular readers Sam and Proman, these have been out for a while and originally appeared on Tintin.com. Somehow I had missed then when they first came out and despite having looked twice, I still cannot find their original appearance.

Note: The photos below are copyright to someone, probably the production company behind The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn or Moulinsart.

Two new photos from the filming of Tintin have surfaced.

This shot (reportedly) shows Jamie Bell with another, unidentified actor and members of the crew. Snowy is simply a piece of cardboard on the end of a broomstick and just there so that the actors have something to react to when filming the scene.

Actually, that should be capturing, not filming, the scenes. There is no film or even video involved in this process.

The strange, wet-suit style, costumes the actors are wearing are covered with markers. These markers are tracked by sensors placed all over the room and their location are precisely recorded hundreds of times a second and stored to a computer. This data is then used in the CGI animation process allowing the director to create any style of image they want but based on the real movement of actors.

There is a second photo over at As Aventuras De Tintim, a Brazilian Tintin blog: EXCLUSIVO: Novas imagens do set de Tintim. I cannot find these images anywhere in the mainstream yet so this is a real scoop for them.

“There will be no cell phones, no TV sets, no modern cars. Just timeless Europe.” – Steven Spielberg

Le Monde magazine interviewed Steven Spielberg about his work on Tintin. The interview was presumably done in English and translated to French for publication and I’m translating it back into English via Google so the wording may not be spot on. However, the meaning is clear, the Tintin movie will not be some hideously re-imagining of Tintin. Spielberg goes on to say.

“Peter Jackson and I have the opportunity to honor the art of Hergé, his tone, his palette, his characters.” He denies [The translation is garbled here, possibly "to amend the famous Tintin tuft"?] He added: “The body language is very important. There is no question of touching it. We religiously respect the art of Hergé.”

From this interview, it certainly sounds like the Tintin movie will stick closely to the classic Tintin look-and-feel though they have previously described it as “film noir”. We may have a better idea in the new year as Peter Jackson has previously indicated that the first images of the CGI will be released in January.

Also due in January is an announcement on Peter Jackson’s choice of books for his film or films. The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun are widely tipped as favourites.

Source: Steven Spielberg révèle ses secrets pour adapter Tintin au cinéma (via Spielberg, Jackson Talk More “Tintin”).

Peter Jackson is in London for the opening of The Lovely Bones and mentioned Tintin at a press conference:

“Tintin is great. It’s made. The movie is cut together and now [we] are turning it into a fully-rendered film”.

That is it for Tintin news but for more on the Hobbit and The Lovely Bones see: Peter Jackson says Tintin film is ‘finished’

Nick Frost, who is playing Thomson against Simon Pegg’s Thompson, has been talking about filming Tintin. No major revaluations but some interesting comment.

Peter kind of re-wrote the scripts most evenings because he was in New Zealand, and so you would go in, in the morning with three or four pages of new dialogue and they were like “we are shooting this in 30 minutes, so GET READY!”

… [We] all had those terrible tight fitting black motion capture suits. Which is fine if you’re Daniel Craig, cause I’m sure his was handmade and looked beautiful but I looked like a big Tyrannosaurus Rex’s egg.

… I went out to W.H. Smiths and bought all the books and I was surprised at how adult they were. I read one where Tintin and Haddock were on a plane and Haddock gets drunk and hits Tintin on the head with the bottle…

Snowy was an odd little thing on set, because he was just a wire frame dog with a broomstick sticking out of him and someone would follow us around, moving him on set.

Source: Nick Frost Talks Tintin Effects and Directing Duo

Jamie Bell (Tintin) is currently filming The Eagle Of The Ninth in Scotland. The film is about a Roman legion that went missing in 2AD. Currently there is a dispute because local builders are being snubbed in favour of Hungarian builders. And where is all this taking place? On the shores of Loch Lomond, source of Captain Haddock’s favourite tipple UPDATE: See comments below.

Gad Elmaleh, the Moroccan actor and performer, who is appearing in Tintin:Secret of the Unicorn as Omar Ben Salaad, talks about Tintin and Spielberg.

I have to confess that my French is almost non-existent so I have no idea what he is saying. So here is a sample of Gad Elmaleh in English.

A new photo of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson on the set of Tintin.

Photo from Estrenos deCine.

John Williams is composing the soundtrack for the first Tintin movie, Secret of the Unicorn but putting together a full orchestral score is not the work of one man. Conrad Pope, a long time collaborator with Williams is working on the orchestration of the score and spoke to the John William Fan Network.

I’m currently orchestrating a large piece with a number of ideas. The main theme is highly energetic, filled with great tonal twists and turns, reflecting, I suspect, Tintin’s heroic energy. It will become a classic, I think. To give more information would be to reveal things that I don’t think JW would want to say.


We are at the beginning of the process. The main scoring sessions are off in February.

Source: Williams Orchestrator Talks ‘Tintin’ Score via Trilha sonora de Tintim pode se tornar um clássico and La musique du prochain film Tintin.

Movieline has an interview with Garrett Warren, a stunt choreographer, who worked on Tintin, Secret of the Unicorn. He has a few interesting things to say about the film.

We did a test for it two years before we shot it, and when we did the test it was fun and interesting. But oh my gosh — when we finally saw the movie, it was amazing. The stuff that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson came up with, the performances of Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell, Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis — oh my goodness. You cannot imagine what those guys can do to words on a page. It’s one of the better movies that people are going to see…


Can you describe the look of it at all?

It looks an awful lot like the cartoon. They really wanted to bring the cartoon to life. So if you know the cartoon, or have seen the books, that’s what it looks like. It’s beautiful. You would have thought to yourself that they would have tried to go for a more realistic look, but they’re actually trying to preserve the look and essence of the original Tintin characters.

Read the full interview, with a lot about his work on Iron Man 2 in Stunt Choreographer of the Year Garrett Warren: ‘It’s About the Emotion of the Action’