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Long journey to the Sun(shine) + Boyle's talk at LAFF + Top 5 summer vacation
01 July 2007 at 12:34 PM | by Melty_Girl
The L.A. Times on the challenges of making Sunshine
Tonight is the American premiere of Sunshine at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and today's Los Angeles Times features a provocative article about the delays and difficulties Danny Boyle faced in making Sunshine. Always frank, the director admits,
"No director, unless they are contractually obligated, will ever go back and do a sequel set in space... When I finished it in January, I would have said no, it wasn't worth it. Because I fell out with everybody. To make these movies, you have to be so uncompromising and scorch all of the ground in front of you. But now, especially talking about it, you realize what you've learned from it."
About the production delays and so-so box office reception internationally, L.A. Times writer John Horn notes,
Instead of the industry norm of farming out visual effects to a dozen vendors, Boyle essentially used one effects house (London's Moving Picture Co.) for almost all of the film's 750 effects shots. (Producer Andrew) Macdonald said Boyle preferred working that way because it gave him the greatest level of quality control. Yet it also slowed the post-production to a crawl. Sunshine was supposed to be completed a year ago, with a planned theatrical release in October 2006, which was then moved to March 2007. Sunshine eventually opened in Britain, and most other foreign territories, in April. The reception, like the movie's global weather, was cool.
Horn also confronts the thorny issue of marketing Sunshine:
If Boyle faced a difficult test in [production], distributor Fox Searchlight now is confronted with an equally daunting trial. In a season filled with big-budget blockbusters on the high end and smaller, personal films on the low, the studio somehow must fit Sunshine in between. Neither a glossy popcorn movie nor an intimate art film, Sunshine ... occupies dangerous territory: it's a thinking-person's save-the-world film. Imagine Armageddon—with good reviews.
The article covers Sunshine's challenges—which of course we hope it surmounts—but it also has some fascinating details about the filmmaking process:
One of the things Boyle tried to do better was to create a believable Sunshine world. To that end, the film's 2057 looks and feels a lot like 2007—Star Trek's skin-tight Lycra thankfully hasn't replaced T-shirts.
"My problem with science fiction is when you try to invent too much," Boyle said. "A phone looks like a banana and not a phone, and that doesn't make any sense. You don't have to have everything reinvented. Look around today. You can have an iPod on a Victorian desk."
A blogger's in-depth report on Boyle's talk at LAFF
Horn was also the moderator at yesterday's Los Angeles Film Festival Director Lunch with Danny Boyle. Filmmaker/musician Christopher John Stack wrote up a full account of the event for his blog. Stack describes Boyle as, "down-to-earth, charming, funny and instantly likable," and retells many of Boyle's stories, including an explanation for why Boyle bucked tradition and used only one effects house:
They just used one VFX house for Sunshine, because then they feel an ownership in the film and will end up doing more for you. The VFX in the film were worth ten times what they paid for them. You have to seduce them into being in bed with you and being part of the film—otherwise it's simply a cost/benefit business relationship. But it does take a long time to do visual FX movies.
The CillianSite Top 5's summer vacation
We're giving our Top 5 fan listmaking feature the summer off. In the meantime, if you have any pet ideas for Top 5 topics, please !
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Reply #1 on : Thu July 19, 2007, 21:35:38