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Tron: one day will all films be made this way?
Posted by Patrick Burgoyne, 29 June 2010, 17:56 Permalink Comments (27)
Why the forthcoming Tron Legacy is not a film but an 'entertainment property' that has 'repurposed assets' to create its own highly lucrative 'storyworld'
This is not a trailer. Instead it is a 'prototype'. At least it is according to Ed Ulbrich of Digital Domain whose company developed it in collaboration with Disney and director Joseph Kosinksi.
Ulbrich was speaking at last week's PromaxBDA conference in Los Angeles. Tron Legacy, he seemed to be suggesting, was a blueprint for a new way of creating entertainment that would bring together film, games, theme park rides and brands. This is already happening of course, but the making of Tron reveals how the processes and thinking of Hollywood have changed.
Most films start with a script, a story someone wanted to tell. The Tron sequel, it seems, started with a business problem. The screenwriters' strike of 2007 had left studios with no new product. To fill the gap, Disney started examining its archives to see what it could remake and Tron seemed to fit the bill.
But instead of writing a script, it was decided that the first thing needed was a 'prototype' – a short film that would give potential investors and partners an idea of what the film would look like. This is what Digital Domain and its partners made (shown above).
Ulbrich described its purpose as to 'mitigate investor risk'. With a traditional screenplay you are asking potential investors to imagine what the final thing will look like based on words on a page and trust that it all turns out fine. With Tron, they could show people what they were going to get or, in Ulbrich's words, they could "assess content opportunities by viewing sample material".
The prototype was thus used to raise money, get brands involved, sign up distributors and so on. It was also the starting point for the other properties to be developed around Tron - the game and so on. No more will the game be developed in response to the film - the two can now be developed side by side.
Ulbrich sees this as a future model for Digital Domain, even creating a spin-off company, Mothership, to do handle this kind of project. Which is where things get interesting for CR readers, because this is exactly the kind of thing that ad agencies have been talking about for years - creating some kind of IP which can then be sold to investors and partners that would combine entertainment with brand messages.
Which is all very clever but is it really any way to create great films? At the risk of sounding hopelessly old fashioned, surely great films come from great stories, great direction, great acting and great editing - in that order. Yes, Hollywood has always been about making money but popular and populist films still (usually) had great stories at their heart.
After the vacuous nonsense of Transformers, the film of the toy, Tron feels like yet another step toward the hollowing out of filmmaking into a totally empty shell. Ulbrich showed a slide to illustrate the potential of this way of working on 'entertainment properties' in which an armada of brands circled a central creative concept like so many alien spaceships waiting to attack planet Earth. It all makes a lot of sense from a marketing point of view and will no doubt make a lot of people a lot of money (and bringing game designers into the process earlier will probably result in better games)...
... but I left Ulbrich's session feeling profoundly depressed.
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27 Comments
Is it me or are we entering an age of repetition? Variations on a theme? Whatever happened to originality? Have I heard that song before? Who does that person look like?
Have we been brainwashed into accepting plot extensions and remakes and reinventions of a once great idea? Has the great generation of good ideas run out of steam or are their voices being drowned out by the producers and executives hell bent on making us watch the same story with the same cast again to pay the production teams and actors ridiculous sums of money to say the same things again.
Are we a civilisation of nostalgics? Harking back to first memories? Remembering why Toy Story was magical and why having TV shows like The A-Team and other 1980s movies turn into franchising legends now available for a newer and fresher audience. We're recycling everything these days, why not ideas?
Who is to blame here? Lack of creativity or the lack of acceptance of creativity? Is this it? The start of devolution? If we upgrade our phones and fashion each season, why not demand upgrades and improvements with our entertainment?
2010-06-29 22:44:04
Soulless tripe.
2010-06-30 07:41:11
The Matrix sequels were made with the game in mind, and look how that turned out.
2010-06-30 09:06:16
Creating mock trailers for potential films is nothing new ... the Cohen Brothers have been doing this for years, and its what's happening with Robert Rodrigez latest film, Machete.
2010-06-30 09:22:22
It was always going to happen, just a shame its been through Tron. Hopefully the film will be great anyhow ... [comment deleted by moderator]
2010-06-30 09:26:00
Films as vehicles for brands seem to have been around for a while now - Castaway, James Bond and more recently Somers Town. Ironman 2 was an extended advert to sell games and fried chicken. Some are more overt than others. Maybe Tron has just taken it up a notch.
The best adverts are coming out of Hollywood, if you want great stories look elsewhere.
2010-06-30 09:34:04
Worry not! For every Ulbrich there's a Mike Leigh. :-)
In fact the Mike Leighs of the film world probably outnumber the tech-wizards. They just make less noise. And talk less nonsense - "assess content opportunities by viewing sample material" - I ask you!
I'm really looking forward to the new Tron movie, and will enjoy it for what it is - largely vacuous entertainment - with great visuals, and, hopefully, a modicum of plot. I quite enjoyed Transformers too, for that matter ;-)
Fabulous story-telling, real people and deeply meaningful human emotion will always have a place in movie-making, occasionally even when animation/CGI features heavily.
All films will be made this way? Of course not, and thank goodness - but I'm glad a few are, they make for a couple of hours of visually stimulating escapist nonsense, and I enjoy them for that.
2010-06-30 09:57:49
As Sam mentions above, the Matrix sequels were made as a cross-platform package, with huge bits of the plot making little sense unless you'd read the comics and completed the (actually not that bad) video game. The essence of the story becomes diluted and spread too thinly.
Of course for Tron (and let's remember that the original wasn't exactly Chinatown), this kind of media delivery may be appropriate. It's a 3D film made up of chase sequences and flashy lights – and that's absolutely fine. The more of these spectacle-only films that appear, the more they're starting to look like a distinct new form of cinema. Not one that'll replace ALL cinema, as the doomsayers might tell you, but one that is perfectly at home in the new digital-distribution age where the whole meaning of 'cinema' has changed radically.
At my local cinema (York's wonderful City Screen), it's possible to see classic films, new films, childen's TV shows (not that I understand the appeal of marathon In The Night Garden viewings), live theatre, music concerts, opera, and presumably in the near future, sporting events and (fingers crossed) the Oscars. Digital distribution will open up opportunities for more cinemas like this (e.g. HMV's new mini-cinema experiment), and distributors will no longer have to rely on large capacity/no choice multiplexes. 3D spectacle-films can co-exist alongside Mike Leigh films, and of course they'll be produced and marketed differently.
Cinema is no longer an art form in itself – it's a venue for a multitude of arts and entertainments.
2010-06-30 11:05:15
From what i've seen so far i quite like the look of this film. Although the suggestion and aim doesn't seem so far from the - "I want to be famous syndrome" What for? - Don't know! - I just want to be on the big screen or TV. Content and quality of story will always shine through and the drone of wannabe and the superbrands will always be left wanting you to buy their wares.
2010-06-30 11:06:58
@Hon - Wake up, "entering", hell we have been in an age of repetition for a over awhile now. Heck we don't even wait for that same old story to get nostalgic anymore. The greatest and latest regurgitated theme/story was AVATAR. It was not long removed from "Battle for Terra", nearly an identical story. Before that it was DELGO. We can go all he way back to FernGully if you really want to. And even that was regurgitated.
Cinema is no longer art, no longer story telling, definately no longer original. It's what can make big business the most money this year. And it's been that way for a long time.
2010-06-30 11:18:55
I leave it to Joss Whedon to sum it up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgYdhm_q7lg&feature=related
2010-06-30 11:37:23
From what i've seen so far i quite like the look of this film. Although the suggestion and aim doesn't seem so far from the - "I want to be famous syndrome" What for? - Don't know! - I just want to be on the big screen or TV. Content and quality of story will always shine through and the drone of wannabe and the superbrands will always be left wanting you to buy their wares.
2010-06-30 11:52:38
Tron Legacy is to the film industry as KFC is to Dining.
2010-06-30 12:50:39
Tron Legacy is to the film industry as KFC is to Dining.
2010-06-30 13:31:44
I remember being at art college in the early 80s when this first came out- it was a real milestone in computer graphics
2010-06-30 14:12:27
While the idea of manufactured films is a bit repulsive at first it has pretty much been happening for god knows how many years. Looking at every Rom-Com/ Horror/ action movie out there. They all follow a set step by step sequence of when the action/ romance should happen in the film. This has been going on for years. All in all this might not be a bad idea. It means CG/ production people get to work on the initial trailer, then on the feature, creating more work. It also means some of the ideas commited to screen in the pre-trailer might be dumped because they dont work by the time the feature is being made.
2010-06-30 14:38:34
Of course a story would be helpful to wrap flashy graphics around. Comapre Transformers and Transformers 2. The first one was still kind of OK, in a summer blockbuster sort of way. second one - not so much.
This however looks absolutely stunning. And I do enjoy just looking at pretty things now and again. Sure - it's not gonna last. But at the same time we need bright and shiny things and new inventions in production. the stories will follow.
2010-07-01 13:08:54
It’s just good old previsulization (very polished previsulization that can be flashed around at trade shows and nerd based comic conventions; but previsulization none the less)
I really can’t get my head around how cold and utterly charm-less this new film looks when compared to the original, why oh why did they not ask Roman Coppola to do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsTJ4LDFsMM
2010-07-01 14:29:03
The first Tron film was rubbish anyway, it just looked amazing. This can only be an improvement in both departments, surely.
2010-07-01 22:03:03
3 things:
1) robert rodriguez, before embarking upon sin city, did a similar thing, when he shot a treatment for the movie adaptation and showed it to frank miller
2) the nd of celluloid, a book i gladly recommend for its analysis of the new media in the film & related industries
3) this 'prototype' looks cool on a full hd monitor
2010-07-01 23:29:11
Oh god. I fear for the day that we send these 'Prototype Films' to a focus group and the life or death of a script/story/idea depends on a collective view of 12 people in a room ticking off boxes that rate 'enjoyability', 'engagement' and the likes.
I fear.
2010-07-02 05:02:53
This sounds like free pitching though? The hate phrase that runs through the design industry! Except on this level it doesn't cost a day of a designer's time, more 3 months of a team of people... risky stuff.
On the other hand, this all looks awesome, and I'm eagerly awaiting this Tron sequel!
2010-07-02 10:05:16
@Eoghan
Well, every rom-com/horror/action film coming out of HOLLYWOOD (and some international equivalents). That doesn't mean to say that there isn't still PLENTY of good cinema being made. It just doesn't hit your local cinema (you might have to travel a few miles to a smaller cinema instead).
Commercialisation never destroys an art; it just changes the mainstream perception. The stuff you want to see is still out there and pretty easy to find.
To be honest everything I've seen come out of Hollywood and the UK alternative, "anything with hugh grant in it", is normally utter shite (with hugh grant, always utter shite) - incidentally I don't always mind a bit of shite on my screen, it makes for easy watching - but I'm never starved for quality when looking elsewhere.
2010-07-02 13:42:13
It will be interesting to see how this film turns out, and I must admit it did look awesome! I know this idea of having a prototype made was used for Sin City as well and that film was pretty good. Hopefully this will be too.
2010-07-02 14:53:31
who cares...it looks pretty ;)
2010-07-02 16:18:23
Personally, I'm looking forward to this as the film of the year... roll on December!
The fact that Jeff Bridges is in it and it's the original director behind it shows it won't (hopefully) be a second rate picture.
2010-07-02 16:25:29
What a misery.
I already hated focus groups in the advertising world...
Ideas first, Stories first.
The public may follow, or not, ultimately should we care?
2010-07-04 19:51:01
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