The Hollywood Byte #51: Luc Besson
Jan 29, 2007
The men who collaborated on the sci-fi action film, The Fifth Element, have quietly toiled over the past five years creating the computer-generated feature, Arthur and the Invisibles. The film, and the PlayStation 2 and PC game from Atari, are based on the children's books from producer/director/writer Luc Besson (The Messenger, Unleashed).
Besson, who is producing the videogame adaptation of Eidos' Hitman, starring Timothy Olyphant, worked with Patrice Garcia, the artist who created all of the monsters and spaceships for The Fifth Element on both the Arthur film and game.
"One day he came to me with the drawing of a Minimoy and I fell in love with it," said Besson. "He wanted to do a short film for TV, and I said are you nuts. You can do a big, long story with that. You can do everything with this character."
While Besson crafted a script that would blend live action and 3D computer animation into a story based on his first two children's books in the series, Garcia created all of the CGI for the movie, including the Minimoys and their village.
"The videogame arrived very early in the process because I met someone from Atari and he had read the books and he loved Arthur," said Besson. "He bought the rights for the game because he really believed in the books and the film. Rather than just send the elements to the videogame team, we proposed to have them with us in the factory where they were making the film. The team of the videogame and the film lived together for three years in perfect harmony. It was a big help. That's probably what makes the game so good. They were at the heart of the process."
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Besson said he was focused on the film, so he didn't interact with the videogame team except for when he might see them at lunch. He left them free to create the game, which he saw from time to time during its creation.
"When your film is a new, imaginative world, I think it's a good thing to have a game," said Besson. "It gives you an opportunity to participate and act inside of the film and continue the story. I think it's a good combination. When a film's more real, I don't think it's essential. But with Arthur, because they worked together for three years, I think it's complimentary. I usually don't play games at all, but I picked up Arthur and I was surprised because they invented so many things. They even took some of the monsters and animals that we developed, but didn't use in the film, and they put them in the game. It's good, because at least it's not lost. And I was happy to see some of these creatures in the game, because I remembered them from the beginning of the process five years ago."
Although Besson is now producing a videogame movie in Hitman and has had two of his films turned into games, Arthur and The Fifth Element, he's not interested in getting into the videogame business like Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro have.
"I respect the process and I see a lot of kids have fun with videogames and I'm happy for them and I have no problem with videogames," said Besson. "If it makes Mr. Jackson and Mr. Del Toro get into videogames, then I'm happy for them because I like them."
Besson said when he was growing up, there was no TV, no Internet and no videogames.
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"I'm not coming from that technology background," said Besson. "I'm a little old now. I was playing with rocks and pieces of wood and flowers. I was raised around the Mediterranean Sea and my relationship with nature is very important to me."
When it comes to Arthur, Besson is hopeful that a second film will be made. He said if the first film is successful, the sequel would tell the story of the second two books.
"I know that I have 700 technicians that are dying to do the sequel," said Besson.
Because of advances in technology and the vast digital back lot that Besson and his team has created for the first film, he believes a sequel would take about three years to make.
"The funny thing with technology is that when you're advanced, you're never advanced for long," said Besson. "On the one hand we're going to save time because the characters have already been created, on the other hand, there are some really difficult scenes to do."
Besson was able to get more out of his cast of actors, which included Madonna, Robert De Niro, Jimmy Fallon, Emilio Estevez and Snoop Dogg; because of new technology similar to that used in videogames like Sony's The Getaway: Black Monday.
"The thing that was very new is that when I filmed the actors, we had no wires at all," said Besson. "The Bif Company found a new motion capture technique where the actors can act in front of nine cameras without wearing any of the optical reflectors. It was much easier to direct the actors and make them move the way I wanted. I think we saved some time and got more emotion and expression from the actors."
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Besson said he likes to make movies that he wants to see, but at the same time, he hopes audiences will enjoy the adventure.
"When I make a film, I never think much about which group will like it," said Besson. "I have five kids going from 2 years old to 20. I know at least one of them will like it, but I don't know which one. Now that I've seen the film with kids, I think the ones who enjoyed the film the most are between 5 and 12 years old."
Getting back to videogames, Atari let Besson get behind the wheel of its Xbox 360 game, Test Drive Unlimited.
"I tried playing the game and drove the Ferrari, but I'm much better with the real one," said Besson, laughing.
The Hollywood Byte makes a weekly visit to the converging world of video games and traditional media.