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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.12 - MARCH 2001
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The Technology Circle BM: Did you see that new John Travolta movie? RT: Oh yeah, Battlefield Earth. Rhythm & Hues worked on that. That's a great example of phenomenal visual effects and lots of things going on, but you can't stand the movie. BM: Do you like old movies? RT: Yes, I do. I like John Ford pictures like The Searchers, 2001, of course, and Seventh Samurai. That's just a variety of older films I think are great. Others are It's a Wonderful Life and Best Years of Our Lives. Films like that. BM: Are there some movies you can't make any better? RT: Yes, and there are a lot of remakes I'm sorry that they have remade. That has to do with that thing about a movie being a successful film. More than effects, or anything, it's the combination of script, story, actors, photography and direction. All the things that make a movie work. You can't make the same thing twice. Timing has a lot to do with things. Watch television now. If people watched Friends back in the '60s you wouldn't know what the hell they were talking about. BM: When you see an old movie do you think, "Oh man we can do that better now." RT: Well, yeah look at Tron. I look at that and say, "Boy could we do better than that now!" I could do more on my G4. The programs that I have in my Mac G4 would blow Tron away. I know what we could do now. We now have Ferraris instead of bicycles
As I left Tropix Films and Richard Taylor, I walked down toward the Third Street Promenade. He got me thinking... Would I wake up tonight in a cold sweat next to my Mac G4, screaming at it, "Where's all this technology going?!" No probably not, because I realized that, today it's a mixed media. There will always be new software, faster boxes and better tools. Historically there have been examples of companies being put out of business because of technology. Richard Edland, Boss Film and Robert Abel are good examples of pioneering companies, which spent very large amounts of money on expensive technology and hardware equipment. The next year the technology cost was cut in half and their newly sprung competitors had much lower bills. Then these pioneering giants spent years trying to pay off their bills for technology and hardware equipment that had already become obsolete. Do we have to spend more money? Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. It depends on the application. We will buy that particular plug-in for that particular job and in most cases, the old tools, the old software, will always be around just in case. Bruce Manning, a writer and filmmaker, shoots with a Mitchell 35mm film camera. In the past 10 years he has stock piled an impressive, eye-popping array of images. He edits with a Mac G4 and all the Adobe software he can jam into it. You can find Bruce on his Website at http://www.footage-now.com/
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