Hey folks, Harry here... HOLLYWOOD REPORTER has an interview with Douglas Trumbull. And this genius had a lot to say. As a child that grew up paying attention to every sort of magazine that ever would have printed the name of someone like Douglas Trumbull... The sort of kid that would ask his father to take me to Trumbull experiences that he shot and presented. And for the last 16 years, I've been privileged to see the same kinds of demos that my collegues have seen, and in all that time I've yearned to see specifically what Douglas Trumbull has been talking about. Once we see THE HOBBIT at its higher frame rate and in 3D, we'll be seeing one particular vision of the future of film presentation. And still, in Trumbull I will trust. Seek out old issues of CINEFANTASTIQUE and if you read every issue of CINEFEX... You've read Trumbull talking for years about taking the audience further. Trumbull is one of the very few industry super geniuses.
When he says he is making a film like this:
" I can only say that it’s a 200-years-in-the-future science fiction space epic that’s going to address very big, lofty issues, like man’s place in the universe, and how our contact with an extraterrestrial civilizations that are so mind-bogglingly in advance of our own that it will go into some of the same territory that 2001 went into, and it’s going to do it in a very plausibly scientific way, not a fanciful way. There are no alien monsters, and the earth is not being attacked by anybody. It’s going to be a much more intelligent, what we call hard-science fiction, and I think there’s absolutely nothing out there like this. I think the studios believe that they have to dumb everything down and the audience is not scientific, not up for anything truly intelligent, but I think just the opposite. I think we’re in the most technologically advanced society of all time, and people can go with that immediately. Most people you poll would believe that there’s life in the universe, for sure, and the Kepler project and another project are showing that the likelihood of inhabitable planets in our galaxy alone is going to be in the billions, and so the whole plausibility of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations is becoming very real scientifically, very plausible. Talk to any scientist and they’ll say, absolutely, yes. But Hollywood is still in the monster phase, it’s in the b-movie monster phase. And I’m not saying how it should be, I’m just saying what I would like to do, and I’d like to make something more intelligent that I can really be proud of."
after he said this:
"I don’t expect to get traction from investors until I can show what it is. Because no one’s ever seen it before, and no one can imagine what it would be like. But I can, and I know, and so I’m comfortable with personally making the investment. I have my own studio, I work in the Berkshires, I have my own stage, my own cameras, my own lights, my own editing, my own workshop, my machine shop, and I’m trying to reinvent the movies – with no help whatsoever from Hollywood. But very good, supportive help from projector manufacturers and camera manufacturers, who are completely open to anything that’s going to invigorate their business. So I am getting support on the technical side, but I’m not getting any support on the production side – and I hope that will come."
Well, I saw SHOWSCAN demos in Dallas a long time ago and it was jaw dropping. I thought it was real. It looked real. Like you and me sitting on the same row and a guy walks in a room real. Not like a screen that had anything upon it, but a window into reality. For real. And then it was gone and nothing came of it.
Now he's talking about taking that experiment and doing something fantastic with it. Something Hard Science Fiction. Something with a brain. But something shown in a manner that none of us have ever really seen before. How much and when? Where? When do we see this? How could they not have asked? Seriously? WHEN? WHERE? You got the WHAT... I'm dying.
Read this fantastic full interview here! It is not to be missed.
