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Peter Sciretta, /Film: "I'm a huge sci-fi geek, so I guess I'm predisposed to like a film like 'Moon'. The film is a throw back to the old space sci-fi films of the 1970's, and even borrows heavily from Kubrick's '2001'. But at its core, the story is 'WALL-E' meets 'The Island' with' Twilight Zone' undertones. It's a film filled with interesting ideas — big ideas, like any great sci-fi film. Charlie Kaufman was unable to construct a better horror film about death with last year's 'Synecdoche, New York'"
Devin Faraci, CHUD.com: "The film is also starkly beautiful. The design of the moonbase and the lunar rovers are realistic, believable but also reminiscent of great scifi movies like '2001' and 'Silent Running' (both of which 'Moon' shares a very, very close bloodline. If you wanted to do a trilogy of hard scifi films, you could do a lot worse than these three, which shares themes and visuals). The world in which Sam lives has been thought out and makes sense, even though it doesn't quite click at first (the reveals cleared up lots of niggling technical questions I had during the first act). The effects work seamlessly - some that I can't reveal are so good as to be nearly baffling, especially at the limited budget level at which 'Moon' was made. And the score by Clint Mansell is gorgeous, spare and haunting."
James Rocchi, Cinematical: "'Moon' evokes many things -- the nature of the human experience, the nature of employee-management relations, how the odds are fairly good that the future will be exactly like today, but more so. With of its far-flung inventions, impeccable visual design and Clint Mansell's eerie score, 'Moon' boils down to a single man having a long conversation in isolation, telling himself a few lies and opening his own eyes to a few truths; Rockwell, playing the only person for tens of thousands of miles, has no one else to act against, and much of his plight has to be conveyed through special effects that gave him little or nothing to work with on-set."
Cady Heron, Collider: "The film explores what it means to be human as well as the importance of self: how we define ourselves, how we are seen by others, what are our essential needs. It's filmed beautifully and the effects look great, especially for an independent film. The production design is remarkable, too; the lunar station feels like a real, lived-in place, obviously not of our time yet not too glossy, either. The combined result is moody yet hopeful--a futuristic thriller with existential underpinnings."
5 Clips here: http://www.collider.com/entertainment/news/article.asp/aid/10483/tcid/1
emoticon Spacey machine is awesome. this will be awesome.
They were talking about this on the IFC podcast. I'm a sucker for contemporary sci-fi. I think I'm the only one in the world who lists Soderbergh's Solaris and Spielberg's A.I. as two of my favorite films of the decade. The Jews got this niche genre on lock down.
Quote from: modage on January 19, 2009, 03:20:14 PM
5 Clips here: http://www.collider.com/entertainment/news/article.asp/aid/10483/tcid/1
Maybe they were removed because the links don't work, not the link above but in that page, where it says clip 1-2-etc.
Anyway, this
looks sounds pretty good, count me in.
hmm, they still work for me. should start w/a Mark Payne advertisement.
Don't watch clip 3! seems spoilerish... :ponder:
Sundance EXL: Duncan Jones & Sam Rockwell on Moon
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon
One of the movies that has generated a lot of early interest at this year's Sundance Film Festival is director Duncan Jones' Moon, a character-driven piece set on the lunar land mass in a future where it's being mined for resources to provide energy back to Earth. The movie stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, the lone astronaut living on the moon, maintaining a mining camp with the help of a sentient computer named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey). With only a few more days left in his three-year contract, Sam gets into an accident and suddenly discovers he's no longer alone on the moon, leading to him having to find out exactly what is going on as a rescue ship approaches.
It's a fairly brilliant piece of sci-fi, one that gives Rockwell a chance to shine as an actor, but also showing off the amazing special FX and production design work by the first-time director Duncan Jones and his team. (It's interesting to note that Jones is also the son of rocker David Bowie, who has had his own brush with space travel over the course of his career.)
ComingSoon.net sat down with Jones last weekend to talk about the movie.
ComingSoon.net: So I'm sure you know the movie has a lot of buzz going into it, both before and after people see it, which is always good. So what's it been like the last 24 hours?
Duncan Jones: So terrifying. I can't tell you, I mean, I've never been to Sundance, but I've never been to any film festival before. I always wanted to wait until I had my own feature film before I went.
CS: Oh, really? Wow, but that makes sense.
Jones: So, yeah, it's quite a trip. (laughs)
CS: I know you did a short film before this. What's been the evolution of this project? Is it something that you've been developing for a long time or something that came to you which you've been able to get produced fairly quickly?
Jones: "Moon" is an actual project. It's been written specifically for Sam. I was working on another project because I was wanting to do my first feature film. I knew I wanted to work with Sam Rockwell. He had read the script for this project and we met up to discuss it, and he was very keen on playing the lead role and I was very keen on him playing a different role. So we were trying to sort of convince each other that, you know, he wanted to play the lead, I wanted him to play this other role, and we just knew that it wasn't going to work out, but we got on very well and he loved the script. And we were just talking about projects, and he said that he really wanted to do science fiction, and I said, "I'm going to write you a science fiction film." (laughs) So I wrote "Moon" for Sam.
CS: So you gave him all the roles basically.
Jones: I gave him all the roles. I said, "Listen. I'm going to make you a project that's just for you." (laughs)
CS: That's great. It's good that he was already on board because it's not always the case when you're writing a script for a certain actor; you have to hope that they're flattered enough to do it.
Jones: Well, I mean, obviously it was very nerve-racking because even though I'd said that, and even though he was interested, I didn't know for sure that he was going to do it until he read it.
CS: Knowing you wanted to do a project for him, what was the first idea that came to you - just him on a mining station on the moon?
Jones: As you know, I mean, this is an indie budget film, and it's science fiction which is pretty unusual because the production values, it's difficult to do at an indie budget. So we very much came up with a list of almost rules as to what we wanted the project to be and how it was going to work. And we knew that we needed to keep the cast down to a minimum, we knew that we wanted to keep it – have a completely controlled shooting environment, so I wanted to shoot it in studio. And sort of by creating this list of rules, it gave me a focus on what I needed to write as a story. So the idea of it being on the moon, in the moon base, and using model miniatures, and using my effects background for commercials, and very specific effects, ones that I knew we could achieve at the budget. It just kind of gave me a set of commandments.
CS: So shooting on the moon was never an option?
Jones: (laughs) On the moon, no. Not on this budget... or any budget.
CS: I don't even know what would be involved with getting permits to shoot on the moon.
Jones: It's funny actually, I was doing this commercial I was going to do a year or two ago where we were going to shoot – you know the Vomit Comet? It's that plane that flies, it does these big ups and downs. It simulates zero gravity. Yeah, we were going to shoot a commercial in there with the money that they throw at commercials and we could afford to do it, but no, we didn't have any of those kinds of luxuries. I've always wanted to do feature films and the reason I did commercials was because I was a big admirer of Tony Scott and Ridley Scott as well. But I worked briefly with Tony Scott as a wildcam operator on something. He was very generous with his time, and we had a lot of time to talk, and he was telling me that his route into doing feature films was doing commercials because it's kind of like a film school and you get to learn, and you get to meet people, and you get to use all of the latest equipment. So, that's very much what I wanted to do and I went into commercials for the same reason.
CS: And you also don't spend a year having to work on a single commercial.
Jones: Exactly, yeah. At the most maybe six weeks.
CS: Once you figured out the script and what you were going to do, did you do a lot of storyboarding, a lot of animatics and things like that just to figure out exactly how you were pull it off?
Jones: Yeah, quite a few animatics. I mean, I have a kind of eclectic background. I worked in the computer games industry for a while and a really excellent computer graphics artist who I used to work with in the games industry left the games industry at the same time as me and we'd worked on commercials together. We'd been buddies for years – a guy called Gavin Rothery. He became my concept artist on this film, and between the two of us, we created animatics for a lot of the more special effects heavy scenes and we built the entire interior of the base as a 3D model.
CS: Beforehand?
Jones: Yeah, beforehand, and then we built it and it looks very, very similar to what the 3D model looked like.
CS: How big was the actual finished interior when you built it on the stage?
Jones: I think the length of the base – because it was a full 360 (degree) set. The crew went in there in the morning, got locked in, and then they were there the rest of the day, and then we let them out at the end. (laughs) It was a proper intense environment, but I think it was probably about 85 - 90 foot long and then maybe 70 foot wide. So it was, you know, a big space. It felt real, it worked.
CS: Did you have removable walls so you could shoot from various angles?
Jones: No, we had a couple of camera tracks, but on the whole we were kind of restricted by the shape of the environment we created for ourselves. But that was a sacrifice that we kind of knew we were going to have to make because moving walls, although it's incredibly useful, it is time consuming. And because we had a 33 day shoot, we knew that we were going to have to pick and choose our moments when we were going to spend some extra time on shots, we just had to keep moving through it.
CS: You talked a little bit about the design, as far as technology, there are things in the movie like the computer Gerty that could very well be real technology. How much research did you do to figure out exactly what's possible and can you talk about the design of the technology and how to accomplish it?
Jones: On the design side, it was basically me and Gavin just came up with ideas of things that we thought would be cool or interesting. We knew that we wanted a robot which was gonna be physically stuck in the base because storywise that was important. So the fact that Gerty runs on a rail was an immediate solution to that problem. But also, on a design point, I just thought it was kind of interesting that the arms could move around independently so that there would be only certain points in the film where you see the body and the arms at the same time. And then all of a sudden it takes on a more anthropomorphic, you know, it has a human quality. Otherwise it's kind of all these different pieces of machinery and it's more like a construction robot at a car plant or something like that.
CS: It's a really interesting concept. I don't even think I realized that the computer was on rails.
Jones: No, we built a rail and there was a prop version of the railroad that we used for a lot of the close-ups and mid-shots and things – basically when it wasn't moving. And then there was occasional scenes where we needed to go to to do other things, we would have a CG version. So again, it was this idea of having a hybrid of live action shooting, and then CG when you need it, and then kind of on top of the live action.
CS: There was a lot of CG involved. Did you do a lot of green screens and stuff like that?
Jones: Less CG than you'd probably think, but yes, there is CG involved.
CS: You'd think all the stuff outside would be CG pretty much.
Jones: No, no, model miniatures and old-fashioned technology. We really went for it. We wanted to do it the same way they did the old films. So the rover he's driving around on the surface of the moon, that's all model miniatures. There's some set extension, yeah, we put some extra mountains in the background just to make the landscape a little bigger. But yeah, that's old fashioned techniques.
CS: Of course, I don't know if you remember the show "Space: 1999," but the look kinda reminded me of that.
Jones: Oh yes. (laughs)
CS: It was cool, because it made everything seem more physical and tactile, and I couldn't figure out how you did that with CG.
Jones: One day we'll bring out all the props and all the miniatures somewhere and show them all off 'cause they look fantastic. The Harvester's like this huge thing, this big beast of a machine.
CS: Did you do it in the same kind of stages?
Jones: No, we did all the interior in one soundstage, and while we were finishing off the shooting with that, they started building the lunar landscape and the soundstage next door. So yeah, we were all at Shepperton.
CS: One of the things obviously is the influence of "2001" and "Alien" on this film and you even shot on the same soundstages. When you have similar elements such as the sentient computer, do you have to say, "Okay, we've got to go a completely different direction now."?
Jones: Yeah, I mean, there was certainly a conscious decision there that it would nice to go against people's expectations at times. For instance, the evil corporate robot, which I imagine in any science fiction is a stereotype, but we thought it would be nice to, you know, play with people's expectations. Gerty – as you know – is not like that. He's got a very different character.
CS: And of course, there's a huge plot twist involved halfway through the movie which makes it very hard to even talk about the movie, but it's obvious something very big which has Sam playing...
Jones: Lots of roles.
CS: Lots of roles. Exactly, yeah. How did you work out with Sam exactly how you were going to do that?
Jones: Again, it was very technical. Sam's an incredible actor and I knew he was beforehand, but getting the opportunity to work with him, I really got to see a side of him – he's phenomenal, very talented, very technical. There was an awful lot of rehearsals that he would have to do on the fly where we would record one side of any given conversation and he would basically be rehearsing to a playback of our chosen take. So we'd have to choose our take on the day of the shoot in order to record the other side of the conversation.
CS: Was he able to at least stay in one role for a good amount of time? I actually talked to an actress who was doing a dual role in the movie and she had to keep running back and forth, changing, in order to make it work.
Jones: We tried everything we could, again on our short schedule, we tried everything we could to make it as easy as possible on Sam, but, you know, it didn't always work out like that. So just about any of the days where we were doing the two Sam work, there would be a makeup change at least once during the day.
CS: You do see this as a science fiction movie. I thought it was interesting that you could take this movie off the moon and put it in another setting, so why was it important to set this story on the moon?
Jones: Well, my generation of geek (laughs) was a big fan of films like "Outland" and "Silent Running" and the original "Alien." Those kinds of science fiction movies were more about the character and sort of human qualities than about the technology. I love those films and I miss those films in some ways, and we wanted to create something which felt comfortable within that canon of those science fiction films from the sort of late seventies to early eighties.
CS: "Outland" is a great example. That's almost become a forgotten movie compared to some of the others.
Jones: Yeah, it really has.
CS: "Alien," they kind of kept it going because they already have these new movies coming out, but this reminds me more of something like "Outland." Now that you've done your first movie, are you going to continue with commercial work?
Jones: No, we've got another project in the works, and there's lots of other things bubbling up, so we're kind of seeing what our options are. I'll probably keep my hand in commercials anyway just 'cause it interests me, and like you were mentioning, the turn over of being able to work on something for a short period of time and then get away from it – with "Moon" obviously we've been on it for a year and a half, nearly two years. It's a big investment of time and thoughts and it's nice to take those little breaks and do other things once in a while.
CS: What do you want people to get out of this movie, especially younger people, who might not expect a science fiction movie to be a slower character thing? This doesn't seem like a Friday night popcorn movie as such.
Jones: (laughs) I don't know, you know, it's pretty funny, there's some action in it.
CS: Would you hope they'd see this and go, "Oh this is pretty cool, maybe I'll go look at some older science fiction movies"?
Jones: Oh, that would be fantastic. There's two crowds out there, there's the guys and ladies who could understand the references where it's coming from, and then there's people like you say who are younger. It would be great if they saw our film and they wanted to look at "Outland" and "Silent Running" and "Alien" 'cause those films are wonderful and they still stand up. At the same time, I think there's enough in this film as it is that you can appreciate. There's some very human questions in it like, "What would it be like to meet yourself? Would you necessarily like you if you met you in person or would you only see the faults?" I think that was an original idea for when I was writing the story.
CS: That's certainly one of the aspects of the movie that people are going to want to talk about. Do you think when they market it, they'll want to incorporate that as part of the trailers and commercials, or do you think they'll try to avoid that and surprise people?
Jones: (laughs) I don't know how they're going to market the film. It's the first feature film for me, so I don't know how that works as far as how they decide what to market it on. I think there's a lot of options – a lot of directions they can take, but I hope they do choose something as universal as the human quality of the film, the human aspects of the story.
CS: I think Sam Rockwell fans, they should really see it.
Jones: This is a bible for Sam Rockwell fans. (laughs)
CS: Do you think you'll continue in sci-fi after this?
Jones: Yeah, definitely. There's some more science fiction to come and hopefully there's some more working with Sam to come.
Speaking of Sam Rockwell, here's a brief interview we did with the actor a few minutes later:
ComingSoon.net: At this point, I think Sundance is your festival and they should have some sort of retrospective of your movies in 20 years. When I spoke to Duncan, he said you guys were working on another project but knowing you wanted to do sci-fi, he wrote something specific for you. Did you have conversations about what kind of sci-fi movie or what you were interested in doing?
Sam Rockwell: I think we talked about a lot of different sci-fi movies that we liked: "Blade Runner," "Outland" and "2001" and "Alien," so there was a lot of stuff that we had in common, we really liked a lot of these films. Those were sort of the prototypes and we just talked about that at a meeting. We both liked sci-fi and then he wrote this sci-fi movie, and the character's name was Sam and he sent it to me, so I jumped on board.
CS: Were you at all worried about the challenges of doing so many scenes by yourself and playing multiple characters at the same time?
Rockwell: Yeah, that was all sort of there in the script. It seemed pretty daunting to take on that task, but we talked about "what would it be like to meet yourself and would you like yourself if you met yourself?" That was an interesting theme to explore and then the loneliness of being isolated like that. That was kind of the story we were interested in telling, then we added humor to it and our homage to sci-fi movies.
CS: At this point, do you get involved in the development of the script?
Rockwell: Well, we improvised and then Duncan would incorporate the improvisations and my friend Yul Vazquez and I got together and we read scenes, and we would switch parts. There was a guy named Gary in London who read stuff, and then Duncan would watch the rehearsals and he would take some of the improvisations and incorporate them into the scene.
CS: It was pretty cool that he built that entire set and that you were able to do all your stuff there. Most of the time, they'd just do green screen and add it via CG. What was it like being in that environment by yourself, basically in the same situation as your character? Did you feel a similar amount of isolation or was there enough crew around?
Rockwell: Well, yeah. What was kind of lonely was not having other actors on board, because usually, even when there's a lot of crew around on a film set, you tend to hang out with the other actors, because you have a lot more in common with them. You do bond with them. Not having another actor was kind of a lonely experience. I had Robin Chaulk, who was a young British actor, but he didn't have a lot of experience. He was also a body double, so I really had to kind of do it on my own a lot. Robin was very helpful, but at a certain point, I'm the one who's going to get in front of the camera and I've gotta make it my own. That was lonely and that, in addition to the way the set looked, added to the loneliness of the character I think.
CS: Besides that, how was this experience different from your last sci-fi movie, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? Could you enjoy this as much as that?
Rockwell: Yeah, it was different. "Hitchhiker's" there was a lot of technical challenges on that too, prosthetics and CGI stuff, but this was more emotionally draining.
CS: What about interacting with the computer because you don't have Kevin Spacey doing the voice on set? Did Duncan just have someone else reading his lines?
Rockwell: Yeah, script supervisor for the lines and I interacted like I would with an actor.
CS: And others would play the other roles you play?
Rockwell: Well, Robin would play the other part, depending on which (role) I was playing at that particular moment, but it was a lot of reading with the script supervisor and stuff.
CS: Having talked to you a lot over the years, you seem like a very collaborative actor and tend to work with filmmakers who allow that collaboration. What is it like working with newer directors and figuring out whether you can work with them?
Rockwell: Yeah, yeah. You don't really know if it's a first-time person, you're taking a chance, and you do the best you can. Sometimes, it's hard.
CS: But you've done that a lot.
Rockwell: I have. Sometimes it's tricky.
CS: I'm sure a lot of people have been asking you about being in the "Iron Man" sequel. Last time we talked, it was you and Clark and we had this funny riff on you possibly being in it.
Rockwell: Is Clark in it, too?
CS: I don't know. I think you'll know before I do. Have they handed you the big stack of comics to read to prepare the character?
Rockwell: No, you know I wish they would actually. I need to check up on this character, yeah.
CS: For one thing, the character is British.
Rockwell: That character is British, really?
CS: Sure, in the comics and I think in the cartoons he had a British accent.
Rockwell: Is that right? I didn't know that, I didn't know that. Wow.
CS: So you've just signed on and you haven't actually read a script and they're going to work these things out like they did the last movie.
Rockwell: Yeah, yeah. Wow, I didn't know he was British. They're developing it, so we're just going to kind of do whatever we do.
CS: Is there anything you're really excited about in doing a movie like this? You've done big movies before but is there anything specifically about playing a bad guy in this kind of comic book mythos?
Rockwell: I did "Charlie's Angels" and yeah, that was practice for this. It should be interesting, it should be fun.
CS: Have you ever worked with Robert Downey Jr. before?
Rockwell: I just had dinner with him, he was a really nice guy. Obviously, a very talented guy, it'll be fun.
CS: Do you have any idea what's going on with George Ratliff's movie "End Zone"? Do you know if that's still going to happen?
Rockwell: Oh, I don't know if that's happening or not. I'm not sure about that one.
Moon premieres tonight, February 23, at the Eccles Theater as part of the Sundance Film Festival. It will be released by Sony Pictures Classics in June.
I saw this last night and it was pretty awesome. Rockwell does an amazing job. It feels like a sci-fi flick from the 70s, which is exactly what they want to accomplish I guess so pretty cool stuff.
Trailer here (http://movies.ign.com/dor/objects/14313551/moon/videos/moon_trl_040909.html)
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that. is. orgasmic. :bravo:
2010 Xixax Awards Winner for Best Movie Poster
It's very pretty. Does anyone else get a late 60's/early 70's aesthetic from this?
for the film, maybe too much so. but the poster is perfect.
don't watch this trailer: MAJOR SPOILS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhIB0mqbPiE
Quote from: modage on April 10, 2009, 10:27:46 AM
don't watch this trailer: MAJOR SPOILS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhIB0mqbPiE
Damn it! I clicked on the trailer from another site before I saw that it would spoil me. It sucks, because I was hoping to go into this one as much of a blank slate as possible.
Quote from: modage on April 10, 2009, 09:52:48 AM
2010 Xixax Awards Winner for Best Movie Poster
Between this and Girlfriend Experience, 2009 is looking to be for movie posters what 1999 was for movies.
i'm really looking forward to this. looks like glorious sci-fi.. not to mention a return to form for Rockwell, whose performance in Frost/Nixon was one of the worst pieces of shit i've ever seen.
as everyones mentionede-thi dlooks phenomenal! im ready for another brilliant sci fi film to stand beside the hilgly underrrated solaris (soderb) and sunshine
I loved Both of those as well....we are kindrid spirits PM
Quote from: SiliasRuby on April 13, 2009, 10:25:27 PM
I loved Both of those as well....we are kindrid spirits PM
it s atements like these that i wish we had the oft rumored xixax out door grill party at RK's house and chill w/each other, i think hes in texas and thats a good central meeting spot
Quote from: pyramid machine on April 13, 2009, 10:35:36 PM
Quote from: SiliasRuby on April 13, 2009, 10:25:27 PM
I loved Both of those as well....we are kindrid spirits PM
it s atements like these that i wish we had the oft rumored xixax out door grill party at RK's house and chill w/each other, i think hes in texas and thats a good central meeting spot
I'd totally be down. But also Like I have said before if you are ever in LA, for the little one to see universal Studios or disneyland, let me know, I can show you the sights and sounds of the real los angeles.
fucking brilliant movie. hoooly shit. I saw this and the entire time I kept on thinking, don't let the ending suck. and it didn't suck. I saw a japanese movie called departures yesterday, also at the SF international film festival, and this today, and you know what? sometimes we forget how much we love movies!
pete, my film is playing these days over there. you planning to see it? i'm not able to come up but the director is there.
kal, I really wanna see you and have some fun with you live and show you my movie after watching your movie. I work on Tuesday so I don't think I can make it to the remaining screening. I thought my week was going to be free but turned out to be really crazy. I kissed a supertall girl last night but then found out today she was a man...nah found out she has a man, but it was still a fun afternoon spent, but had I known maybe I woulda gone to see your movie instead this afternoon. Sorry dude I'm sleep deprived and I probably should be sending this via the PM...unless this is PM and I just can't tell anymore.
about the movie. has anyone else seen it? I have a question that's kinda a spoiler. hook me up.
Jones dives from 'Moon' into 'Deep'
Submarine drama based on true story
Source: Variety
"Moon" helmer Duncan Jones is swapping outer space for the underwater with "Escape from the Deep."
Project is an adaptation of Alex Kershaw's book about the real-life WW2 story of the U.S. Navy submarine USS Tang, which was hit by one of its own torpedoes and sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The crew members then had to escape from their iron coffin while enemy depth charges were being dropped from above and swim 180 feet to the surface.
Kershaw is penning the screenplay, which Jones will direct. U.K.-based shingle Brilliant Films' Joe Abrams and Rory Gilmartin will produce. Brilliant is funding the project's development from its in-house fund.
"Having been fascinated by submarine films like 'Das Boot' and 'Crimson Tide,' it's a really unique opportunity to tell an amazing story like this that is actually true," Duncan Jones told Variety.
Project is set to go into production sometime next year.
Jones is also looking to start work on his next project "Mute," which is described as the flip side to the Sam Rockwell starrer "Moon," about a lonely astronaut nearing the end of a three-year stint spent mining helium.
"This is a bigger, more commercial film than 'Moon,' although it is another science fiction project," commented Jones. "It's a thriller set in Berlin in the future."
Jones is currently out to cast on "Mute," which he also scripted.
I really can't wait to see this. I hope it opens semi-wide and plays near me.
How David Bowie's son wound up making an indie movie about the Moon
Source: SciFi Wire
Duncan Jones, director of the upcoming sci-fi drama Moon, told SCI FI Wire that he welcomed the challenge of directing the ambitious film on its very modest $5 million budget and revealed some of the old-school tricks he employed to pull it off.
Moon stars Sam Rockwell (Galaxy Quest) as Sam Bell, who's approaching the end of his three-year contract to mine the power source Helium-3 on the moon. He's lived and worked alone on a lunar base there, with only the computer Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) keeping him company. Now, just as he's preparing for a return home to his wife and daughter on Earth, Bell begins to fall apart, physically and emotionally. And then he meets another Sam Bell, who's angry, younger and in far better shape.
SCI FI Wire spoke to Jones—the 38-year-old son of David Bowie—by telephone last week. Moon opens in a platform release starting on June 12, and the following are edited excerpts from our exclusive interview with Jones. (Possible spoilers ahead!)
You shot Moon on a budget of just $5 million. What were some of the tricks you used to stretch your bucks?
Jones: Up front, we decided that we weren't going to go on any location shoots. We wanted to have completely controlled shooting environments, so we did everything on soundstages. We basically had two soundstages, one which was for the interior of the moon base, which we built in its entirety and which was another attempt to create a believable location space and also to save us some space, since a lot of our lighting was pre-existing within the set build. So our cinematographer only had a very small lighting kit that he had to carry around with him around the base. Most of the lighting was actually built into the base.
And for the exteriors?
Jones: For the exteriors, we built this chunk of lunar terrain, about 30 foot by 40 foot, and were pulling around model miniatures. So we went with a very retro technique for doing those effects. Obviously, we had the benefit of having the backup of a post-production company like Cinesite, who sort of beautified and fixed all the obvious problems, like being able to see fishing line when we were pulling trucks across the lunar landscape and digitally expanding the landscape. But we tried to capture as much as possible in-camera in order to save ourselves money and to give the film a different, hybrid look that just felt more real.
If someone had walked in the door a few weeks before filming commenced and doubled your budget, how different might Moon look?
Jones: That money would have been spent on giving me more time, I think, during the actual shoot. I would have taken a few extra days to build the actual interior of the lunar base. I would have put more detail in that. I would have maybe spent a little more money on a couple of effects shots. But, really, the majority of it would have been spent on giving me and the crew and Sam more to have more camera coverage and more takes. So it wouldn't have been a hugely different film, I don't think. The story was largely contained anyway. There wasn't a natural way to expand it just by throwing money at it. It was what it was. More money just would have given more time.
Sam Rockwell acts opposite himself for much of the movie. How did he pull off the technical aspects of that without losing the humanity of either version of Sam?
Jones: It was an incredibly hard thing for Sam, because he's trained in this acting technique called Meisner, which is very much a reactionary form of acting where you use the actors you're working with to spur you to do improv back at them. It's a very collaborative way of working, which, obviously, completely had no bearing on what we were doing.
As an independent [film], we were very fortunate in that my producer was able to put aside enough money for me to spend a week doing rehearsals with Sam in New York. Sam brought along a friend of his, Yul Vasquez, who's another actor, and we basically broke down the script and worked through it. So Sam had the opportunity to try things out in that week's rehearsals and build up differentiations between the various versions of Sam that appear in the film. So we got a good 80 percent of the way there just in rehearsals.
How did that carry over to the set?
Jones: When it got to the actual shoot, and it became very, very technical, at least we had that [rehearsal period] to rely on, to give Sam some sense that, as an actor, he was still given the opportunity to put his spin on it. And it was very technical when we were shooting, but we made some discoveries along the way about how we could do things in such a way that Sam could be fairly improvisational at times. So it was a balance between what Sam needed and what I needed in order to feel like he could be organic with the process of acting.
Your father has been a public figure for many years and is an entertainment legend as well. What do you think, directly and indirectly, his influence on you has been?
Jones: My parents divorced when I was very young, and, unusually for that period of time, I was actually in the custody of my father. So I grew up around all the same things that were influencing him. If he was interested in music and playing it in the living room, I was hearing it. If he was watching movies that were giving him ideas, I was probably watching them, too. So there's that. I shared those experiences. And my father was tremendous at being able to recommend things to me while I was growing up that seemed just right for the age that I was at, that were appropriate and gave me food for thought. So I was reading George Orwell and John Wyndham and J.G. Ballard and other authors, Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, as I was growing up. It was always giving me interesting, challenging things to think about.
Exclusive: Moon director Duncan Jones on his sci-fi inspirations and how he fudged science
Source: SciFi Wire
Duncan Jones, writer-director of the indie sci-fi psychological thriller movie Moon, told SCI FI Wire that he wanted to create a film that was based in hard science, but knew he would have to fudge a few details in order to tell a better story. "There were certain things stylistically we had to make choices on," Jones said in an exclusive interview last week in Los Angeles.
"Basically there's a star field that you can see from when we're on the lunar surface," Jones said. "Obviously, the Apollo missions showed that you wouldn't actually see the stars, but we tried it without, and it just doesn't look right. It makes everything look like a model miniature, so even though it may be scientifically inaccurate—although you could say that with a certain kind of camera you might be able to capture an exposure which gave you the stars as well—but it was just one of those things where style had to take precedence over accuracy."
The film stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, who's approaching the end of his three-year contract to mine the power source Helium-3 on the moon.
He's lived and worked alone on a lunar base there, with only the computer Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) keeping him company. Now, just as he's preparing for a return home to his wife and daughter on Earth, Bell begins to fall apart, physically and emotionally.
Jones spoke exclusively to SCI FI Wire in Los Angeles. The following is an edited version of our interview. Moon opens in limited release on June 12. (Possible BIG spoilers ahead!)
One of the things that I liked most about Moon is that it shares stylistic company with movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gattaca and Contact, movies that have a sort of "science-fact" basis. Was that sort of a mandate when you were conceiving this?
Jones: Hard science, yeah. I'm seriously into my sci-fi, so for me I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to do a soft sci-fi film. I don't feel any great deal of connection to that kind of material. We put Moon together based on some personal stories and ideas, but also on the work of a scientist, a guy called Robert Zubrin, who wrote a book called Entering Space, which was about colonizing the solar system and doing it in a fiscally viable way.
One of the early chapters in that was going to the moon, mining Helium-3 and using it as a natural resource and as a raw material and fuel for fusion power. So all of that is kind of scientific backing of the story, which is quite a lot; that really justifies setting up the base, what the base does, what Sam's job is. [BIG spoiler ahead: Skip to the next question if you don't want to see it.]
So it does a lot of the work there, and then on the cloning side, to be honest, the real stretching of the truth element is not so much the science but what the company decides to do with the science. That's where you're kind of stretching credibility.
Where do you make the decision as a filmmaker to fictionalize certain elements simply because that will make for a better story? For example, inside the moon base, there's normal gravity.
Jones: That was an early call. We very briefly played around with the idea of "Right—how are we going to do one-sixth gravity? Do we use wire work?" On an independent film budget, it's just impossible. There's no way we were going to be able to do it, not to mention there's no way to hide the wire rigs if you want to have a claustrophobic shape of the base that we had built. That just wasn't going to work, and it wasn't appropriate for an indie film, so we made some compromises. But we screened the film at the NASA Space Center, and none of the NASA employees or astronaut Tom Jones had any problems, so obviously if it passed their test, we kind of felt comfortable that people would just kind of accept that. ...
Many of the movies that this film shares company with, such as 2001, have a great wealth of reference material you can drawn on for technical information, much less artistic inspiration. Did you look at the making of those films at all for any guidance?
Jones: Not really, not those science fiction films. Dead Ringers was important to us, because of the work we do with Sam and having him play multiple parts. Dead Ringers and [director David] Cronenberg, there was a Criterion version of that DVD that was very important to us, because there was a whole making-of section on that, and it's actually so good that it's actually got raw rushes from the shoot on there.
So we were really studying that as a starting point for what we wanted to do. And then I had the chance to talk to Spike Jonze, who'd done Adaptation, where they had Nicolas Cage playing multiple parts. That was really useful, and he gave me some great advice as well. Those were the two films that really informed on the technical side.
On the aesthetic side, absolutely—I mean, Outland in particular was a big one for me. The habitation zone in Alien of the Nostromo, that was another huge one. Those were basically the two main ones, sort of the work of guys like Ron Cobb and Douglas Trumbull and Peter Hyams. There was a group of people that we were very much referencing and looking at as well for the look of things, myself and my concept artist, Gavin Rothery.
that interview contained some spoilers.
SERIOUSLY just go see the movie without knowing anything about it. The Sundance links had GIANT GAPING spoilers and the interview some small ones.
lock the thread!
Quote from: pete on June 10, 2009, 01:05:19 PM
that interview contained some spoilers.
SERIOUSLY just go see the movie without knowing anything about it. The Sundance links had GIANT GAPING spoilers and the interview some small ones.
YES. When I saw it I had zero idea of what the hell I was going to see, and it made a world of difference.
dear majority of xixax
fucking stop wasting your time with all them summer movies then complaining about them afterwards and go see Moon.
and departures.
seriously.
yo, i can get behind departures, but i thought moon was just okay. it felt like a pastiche of far more subtle and thoughtful sci-fi movies. rockwell was charming, but that was it. also, i don't think i've ever liked a clint mansell score.
I'm with JG on this one.
Admirable, if not innovative - nothing in it felt like a revelation, nothing reminded me of something I'd forgotten or previously didn't love about cinema or the sci-fi genre itself.
Rockwell's performance is continually engaging and very solid... even Jone's direction is continually clever without being overly clever.
It's certainly worth your time more than, as Pete noted, the majority of these big summer films. It's also very pretty to look at. But the shit that people are giving Rian Johnson being indebted to his influences seems a more - or at least, an equally worthy accusation on Duncan Jones... there isn't much here that I haven't seen before.
I also want to throw my voice into the chorus of folks recommending Departures. See it, y'all.
ya, it's not bad but it had the potential to be so much better. It bugged me that the interaction between the characters was more to advance the story than to explore the themes it presents. *spoiler* The idea of talking to a clone of yourself, and you not knowing if you're a clone yourself is very interesting. they should've ran with that more. *end spoiler*
it also didn't as good to look at as i thought it would be. not that the visuals were bad, but for some reason i was expecting more. i blame the poster.
I liked it but I keep wanting to describe it as cute. Maybe because of the robot (Kevin SPACE-y, I GET IT NOW!) and the dorky side of Sam. I'm glad I went in not really knowing what the story was about, which is why I'm hesitant to discuss it here. I'll just say that I admired the attempt at a big idea, and that it functions better as a character study than as a philosophical anything--kinda the opposite of the way I felt about Soderbergh's Solaris. Regarding the main, er, themes of the film, I found it more clever than thoughtful, which isn't exactly a criticism because this probably wouldn't work as well as a film that took too much time to think through all the philosophical blah blah blahs.
And if you're in this thread and haven't seen the movie, get the fuck out. I say that because I love you and I don't want you to hurt yourself.
I actually liked this for how straightforward and plot-driven it is, much like Collateral. I've been back-stabbed by too many sci-fi movies and short stories that reveal the "mystery" to be some douchey psychological, or worse - philosophical illustration. fuck that man, I wanted to know why the Moon was so weird and it told me why it was so weird and I was happy with that answer because it made sense in the story and gave the characters satisfaction/ redemption or whatever. in other words, just your old school regular sci-fi movie, something much more akin to shit I was reading as a kid that pulled me into the genre for a year or two. I loved 2001, but sometimes we just need something like Moon.
Yeah I agree that philosophical/psychological illustration is often lame. But some themes/ideas are bound to be considered philosophically and this film presents a philosophically/morally difficult problem. I'm not disagreeing with you, though; I don't think the movie would have benefited from being more philosophical or less straightforward. And I liked it and I was engaged throughout.
Quote from: pete on July 29, 2009, 10:03:31 AM
I actually liked this for how straightforward and plot-driven it is, much like Collateral. I've been back-stabbed by too many sci-fi movies and short stories that reveal the "mystery" to be some douchey psychological, or worse - philosophical illustration. fuck that man, I wanted to know why the Moon was so weird and it told me why it was so weird and I was happy with that answer because it made sense in the story and gave the characters satisfaction/ redemption or whatever. in other words, just your old school regular sci-fi movie, something much more akin to shit I was reading as a kid that pulled me into the genre for a year or two. I loved 2001, but sometimes we just need something like Moon.
I agree with you in that sometimes i prefer straightforward, plot driven movies as opposed to ones that try to take some lame philosophical statement. The problem i had with moon is that it laid the groundwork for some ideas that i thought were pretty interesting and wanted answers to, then it sorta changed its mind and turned into a thriller.
Still good though, just thought it was going to be great.
I didn't notice where it turned into a "thriller" as you call it, there was no build up. I maintained curiosity, but wasn't on the brink of my seat freaking about what would happen next. The movie unfolded fine to me, i thought it was very well paced. And I personally think you guys need to calm down with all the "philosophy" talk, and how it should or shouldn't have had it. It's in there. If you think it's lame, fucking write an essay on it. I don't think there is such thing as "lame philosophy" as you put it. Maybe someone put a shoddy version of aw philosophical inquiry in a film, and it didn't work. This is not this film. If they were trying to be so deep they wouldn't let alot of the sequences that "what the fuck" you, stand alone. I do agree that there were some very interesting themes in the film that were not expanded on, but they didn't trouble me at all. The study of ones character is very much a philosophical entity. Is the mysterious part where you're dubbing "thriller?"
spoilers
I thought they were trying to build up tension during the final act, when the find all the clones and realize what's happening. I though the tone shifted into a race to see if they could get off the ship, especially with the countdown and the intercutting with the arrival of the other crew. That's what i was referring to. I guess thriller was the wrong word because it wasn't edge of your seat intense but i definitely felt a tone shift.
CONT. SPOIL
I understand that, and agree completely. The tone it set for me was more eerie, and the time between the countdown wasn't like a syncopated thing or anything like that, I didn't feel like it became a suspenseful countdown until seconds before. I think it ended perfectly with...Rush Limbaugh, bringing us back to earthly bullshit everyday issues. Pete is right, the ending doesn't suck. Personally, the film did three things which I enjoy in a sci-fi film. Toys, Taking me somewhere i've never been, and tingling Visual spider sense. and that's just visually, we won't even get into character necessities. Fucking Rockwell kills, and for those of you calling out philosophy, this movie raises plenty of philosophical questions to me, it just doesn't DWELL on them like most pretentious overindulging narcissistic works you may speak of and where it didn't focus on SUPER NEAT toys, the equipment was fun to be around for me. Great desolation for me, and whoever said they "don't like any mansel score" needs to chill the fuck out and watch the shit. It sounded fucking great to me. I mean seriously, subtract the name. The music was never, EVER overbearing, it complemented it well i thought. Very calm, and organic, with ambience, sounds like space to me. I'd just be interested to hear where it didn't work for you....I dug this.
Time-travel movie next for Bowie's director son, Duncan Jones?
Source: SciFi Wire
Fresh off his British Independent Film Award wins for Best Film and Best Debut Director this week for his low-budget mini-masterpiece Moon, Duncan Jones (formerly known as Zowie Bowie, son of rocker David Bowie) is gearing up to tackle the SF thriller Source Code. According to a Tweet from Production Weekly, Jones will start pre-production in a few weeks and will film this spring in Montreal.
Variety reports that Source Code is the story of a soldier who finds himself repeatedly placed in the body of another person just before the detonation of a bomb on a commuter train. Prince of Persia's Jake Gyllenhaal, currently starring in the drama Brothers with Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire, has been in negotiations to play the lead, replacing Topher Grace.
SF fans could say that this premise seems like a cocktail of Quantum Leap Groundhog's Day, and the time-travel show Seven Days. But if Jones showed such chops taking established SF tropes and making them seem fresh in Moon, do you think he can pull off the premise of Source Code?
Topher Grace >>>>>>>> Jake Gyllenhaal.
This premise sounds lame.
F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O NQuote from: modage on April 10, 2009, 09:52:48 AM
2010 Xixax Awards Winner for Best Movie Poster
Quote from: Gamblour. on April 10, 2009, 08:13:58 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aintitcool.com%2Fimages2009%2FMoonPosterBig.jpg&hash=3e49009efa48a0f41fae9f1811aa0096024a27e3)
Ok, so yes, it is weird to hear complains about "lame philosophy" around here. I don't really know if I get what that means, but I do like when movies aim to be philosophical rather than plot driven. Or even better, when they are both and get away with it.
I liked Moon specially at the beginning, but i gotta echo other comments about how the interesting aspect of it was just another plot advancement when it was juicier enough to be where the real interest came. Rockwell is great and the visual design is...well, there were times where I was thinking if 2001 had ruined visual design in serious science fiction movies forever, but of course it was a pleasure to look at it. i was expecting to feel more emotional with the whole thing but it never happened.
nice movie but I could sense all the time it was going to blow me away and then it didn't.
This was my favorite movie of 2OO9. I think it is OK that it didn't blow people away. Mainly, it is limited by the abstract: moon-mining, clones, human/artificial intelligence relations, outer-space -- there is little for the zeitgeist to manifest. However, this allows expansive room for theoretical analysis. Sure, theory can be dry, but it becomes meaningful when the abstract turns its mirror on the self, pandering you to question existence: your place in this world and how significant life compares to the grand scheme of things. Duncan Jones has created a movie to address these questions in a remote environment -- a clear departure from our world, and places us on the moon. Yet, it isn't a complete suspension of reality -- we can see our moon nearly every day, it is real, it is not Pandora. With this in consideration, the dry, abstract elements of isolation emphasize -- even emboldens -- the nature of these ideas. As for the criticism, it is reminiscent of last week's episode of LOST, "Across the Sea". There was so much anticipation before it aired -- "OMG! They're going back to 23 AD. Maybe we'll see Jesus! Egyptians! Ancient Astronauts!!" It wasn't so. It was a gentle tale that had subtle foreshadows of the supernatural, yet was centered on human and mortal being. Sam Bell is facing similar challenges as he discovers the twist of multiple Sam's under the manipulation of corporate enterprise and artificial intelligence. In its essence, it is a story of survival. Critics should understand that quality before stopping their analysis after judging "it had really great effects". Any film that poses these questions, demands my attention and respect. It certainly beats the majority of the movies in wide-release these days.