Production Blog

POST ON POST

February 18, 2008 10:59 AM

Dear Family—

It’s been over a month since my last entry so it’s time to catch you up on where we are.

Joel, Kelly and I continue with the editing process. The film is running 2 hours and 5 minutes long and strong and we continue to refine it in preparation for our first studio screening February 28th. Here all the Universal execs will get to see it unveiled for the first time. I have taken many of them into my confidence already showing large swaths of the movie to Marc Shmuger, the chairman, Donna Langley, the president of production and Jeff Kirschenbaum the senior v.p. Everyone has been really stoked. Whew!

I showed the entire film to marketing heads Adam Fogelson and Eddie Egan and trailer chief Frank Chiocchi because it is critical they have as much time to work on the film’s presentation to you, the audience, as possible. We should have the teaser trailer out within a month and, hopefully, you will find it as exciting as I have dreamt this year of work to be.

I will talk to Universal about premiering the teaser here on my blog so that you, who have showed so much interest in my film, will get to see it first. I’ll let you know what they say.

Jet Li came by the editing room last week. He was extremely pleased by the sections I showed him, which was personally satisfying to me as I hold him in great regard.

Saturday, I showed it to the producers: Stephen Sommers, Bob Ducsay, and Jim Jacks (Sean Daniel is in London working on “The Wolfman”) along with Vic Armstrong and many others all to great applause, so happiness reigns supreme….so far.

The visual effects work is going on apace. We have nine finals at this point out of 800 shots. Sounds dismal and hopeless, but this is how vfx work goes: the first 50% of the time on 10% of the shots and the second 50% on the 90%. There is so much R & D going in defining the visual rules for each fantasy creature, object, or landscape (what does Shangri-la look like?) that the refinement of this first 100 shots defines all the rest. Once the aesthetics and methodology are set, the production pipelines are refined and the work begins to accelerate.

So far, the Yeti (the abominable snowmen) done by Rhythm & Hues, that appear in the Himalayan sequence are my favorite achievement. They are flat out cool! Supervisor Derek Spears and team have been kicking ass on the creatures.

Meanwhile, over at Digital Domain, Co-supervisors Joel Hynek and Matthew Butler have been working with me on the terracotta Jet Li and the final battle where Michelle Yeoh’s undead square off against Jet’s terracotta army. There are 400 vfx shots in the last 25 minutes of the film, the vast majority belonging to DD.

So, that’s my post on post. To round it off, I will put on another of Todd Grossman’s excellent webisodes that take you inside the editing room.

I will get back to you on the date of the teaser. Until then, bye bye for now…

Rob

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