THE WORLD OF OBLIVION Joseph Kosinski (Director): “It started as an illustrated novel and I had shown a preview of the graphic novel just had low introduction of the story and Tom called me and wanted to know more about the project, I talked him through the entire story. Tom Cruise: He truly is a visionary filmmaker and a world creator and he showed me the graphic novel and then he came back with the script, I immediately said I’m in. Joseph Kosinski (Director): So as creative as we wrote the script, half tom and mine, he’s a great creative partner behind the whole process. Tom Cruise: I’ve had the great privilege to work with artiste’s who have defined cinema and Joseph Kosinski (Director) has that kind of ability Joseph Kosinski (Director): This is an original story that is done on a big scale. The two words I had from the very beginning of the projects were BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION. Tom Cruise: It has a haunting beauty to it. Joseph Kosinski (Director): Blue skies, black sand, almost primo real earth. And then against that rugged landscape I wanted to bring a very clean, forward-looking technology, I thought their juxtaposition would create something visually that looks so unique.
“Olga Kurylenko has such a classic kind of quality that she created before this character.”
ICELAND Tom Cruise: I couldn’t have waited to get there, Iceland is an absolutely stunning country. Joseph Kosinski (Director): Shooting in Iceland is one of those experiences thought as a director going to places that most people have never seen, and getting to capture it all in camera, the landscape looks like no other place on earth. Its an volcanic island, black sands, no trees, just moss growing on the hillside, there is a beauty in the desolation, and that seemed to kind of, fit the aesthetic I wanted for oblivion. Everyday in Iceland we saw something we had never seen before; just around every corner in that country you see something spectacular. Tom Cruise: Joe’s eye and how he shot it, is just so fast and it seems to go on forever… Joseph Kosinski (Director): In Iceland, in the summer time, the sun really never sets. You know we get magic hour, which is when the sun is low in the sky, a beautiful light that lasts for about 7-8 hours and from a filmmakers point of view its an amazing opportunity
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THE SKY TOWER to just get the beautiful lights for hours in line. We went to Earl’s peak in the middle of Iceland, literally in the middle of nowhere, glaciers on one side and sand desert on the other. Tom Cruise: Everybody went around flying in helicopters which was amazing, it was really good to see so much of the country and then we landed on this lench and all the crew would just carry all the stuff up there we hiked up and then spent the afternoon on Earl’s peak which is amazing. Joseph Kosinski (Director): Tom had no problem sitting on the edge of a mountain; he has no fear of heights so we could get some beautiful scenes of him. Tom Cruise: It was really peaceful, so beautiful; that I think when you see the film it has captured that serenity that the place has. Joseph Kosinski (Director): That kinda stuff, capturing it in camera and doing it on a soundstage is what its all about when you are making movies about it.
Darren Gilford (Production designer): The sky tower is this house on top of this very delicate, fragile structure and it is intended to look that way, we wanted it to feel like a futuristic evolution of architecture and human engineering is involved based on a fact that this would be a stable structure. Joseph Kosinski (Director): The whole philosophy for the movie was to try and build everything we could to try to shoot everything in camera but the sky tower is a home built 3000ft above the ground, its yet not something you could build but I felt like we can get close by using kind of a modern take on a technique that Stanley Kubrick used on 2001: A Space Odyssey which is front projection. So rather than putting a green screen or a blue screen behind an actor and keying it out and replacing it with footage later. We went to Holyakhawa, which is a volcano in mavi 10,000ft above sea level; we set up three cameras that captured sky, clouds, sunrise, sunset, stars and then when we were shooting we had those images projected onto the screens so that was the natural lighting. It was the clouds, what is actually allowed us to do is to use the
reflective light to actually light the sets and the actors, so you end up with a all in camera visual effect, you can have things like glass and reflective surfaces. Andrea Riseborough (Actress playing “VICTORIA”): There are quiet different textures you pick up from each different surface on the camera. Tom Cruise: It was without a doubt, the most beautiful set to be shot on. Joseph Kosinski (Director): It creates a visual quality that just can’t be faked in addition for the actors when the look out of the window of the sky tower while they see clouds drift by the windows they are seeing the sunrise or sunset, so I think just from the point of performance, it gives them a cue and it even allows them to immerse themselves so deeply in the story. It is interactive so you don’t have to try to imagine something. Tom Cruise: It really makes a big difference Olga Kurylenko (Actress playing “Julia”): I can’t believe they are going to take this apart, this is an amazing piece of art, I want to stay here and live here, I want to move in.
Cinema, Music & Art with the Brew | APRIL 2013 | 29