It looks like the upcoming Wachowski-helmed Speed Racer film will take place in a CGI world. We get the news from comingsoon via Empire Online:
Empire Online talked to star Emile Hirsch, who broke the news:
“Nope, it’s all green screen,” Hirsch told us. “There were no sets, just us and the green background. I haven’t seen anything of it finished yet, there was a lot of trust [in the Wachowskis] involved. It’s going to be crazy. Was the monkey real? Yes.”
After seeing 300, I am certainly less pensive about all green screen films. It is getting harder for me to notice the difference, at least enough for me not to be distracted from the story. The Wachowskis are no stranger to the green screen, and this should be fairly straightforward for them.
The hardest part to sell when it comes to CGI backgrounds is actor interaction. I do not blame the actors for this, how hard would it be to play off of a set that doesn’t exist. You have to rely on description, and when the set is otherworldly – a point of reference would be hard to find.
With the entire Speed Racer world being animated sometimes i wonder why they just don’t make the project a cartoon. It just seems like a lot of work to have everything fake but the actors. Speed Racer was also a TV show so I don’t think that the fans would mind much if it was an animated film.
Post Beowulf I am wondering if we will see more CGI characters. WIll they ever be able to get so realistic that we do not need humans at all? Perhaps they will one day have robot actors and real backgrounds, or robot actors and fake backgrounds. One way or another the robots are coming; the Wachowskis know this and are appeasing them with servitude. Green screen is a slippery slope that ends in robocracy.
