MAKING WATCHMEN WORK: CG tech w/Zack Snyder, Des Jardin (BB Video)

Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin interviews Director Zack Snyder ("300") and visual effects guru "DJ" Des Jardin ("Matrix") about the high-tech magic behind the movie.

Boing Boing blog post:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/19/post-3.html

In today's episode of Boing Boing Video, director Zack Snyder and visual effects supervisor John "DJ" Des Jardin give us a preview of the forthcoming movie WATCHMEN. On March 6, the hallowed graphic novel deemed "unfilmable" will hit theaters.

Both Snyder and Des Jardin spoke with us about the challenges of bringing "Watchmen" from comic to CG-driven feature form. In today's episode we explore that challenge through the making of one character: Dr. Manhattan. The filmmakers contended with interesting creative and technical obstacles.

Actor Billy Crudup plays the stoic, white-eyed protagonist, and they used a sort of LED bodysuit to create the melded "real"/CG persona we see on screen.

Snyder revealed to us that a 3 hour and ten minute long director's cut of "Watchmen" will come out in July. A DVD will follow in the fall, which he described as the "Crazy Ultimate Freaky Edition" to include extras such as "Tales of the Black Freighter," the death of Hollis Mason, extra scenes with Dr. Manhattan on Mars, and more.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• wachmen
• Alan Moore
• Dave Gibbons
• John Higgins
• Nite Owl
• Doctor Manhattan
• Rorschach
• Silk Spectre
• Ozymandias
• The Comedian
• DC Comics
• Patrick Wilson
• Jackie Earle Haley
• Malin Akerman
• Billy Crudup
• Jeffrey Dean Morgan
• Matthew Goode
• Stephen McHattie
• Matt Frewer
• Carla Gugino
• boingboing
• boing boing
• xeni jardin
• xenijardin

[winki70]

the people saying this is a bad movie, are so wrong, probably they were expecting another spider-man 3. For them a boring movie is when the characters talk for more than 2 minutes. Jeeezz maybe they don't even read books with serious themes. The world is not a colorfull rainbow. I'm going to the movies to watch stories of any genre, not just happy or naive stories. people who hate this film are the usual g-force audience or transformers 2 audience.

[BankruptMonopoly]

People think anything sucks if there is more than 5 minutes of dialogue. Here in America, a movie like expendables does better than a movie like watchmen.

[Gaswalker]

Pendalf the grey.

[Teheleri]

@winki70 That's probably true for the vast majority of film goers. However, there are also those people like me who see this film as what it is: Not much. It tries so hard to build up a storyline for each character, too hard even, fumbling around trying to get a message across, and that's the biggest flaw of the movie itself. Because it fails to do exactly that. It takes the different "heroes", puts them into miniature stories and tries to explain how their lives are shit. Great concept! /irony

[15551cue]

never seen the movie but the videogame on xbla is awesome

[ronnt]

the movie is great you just must have enough intelligence to see the message

[aidenmccloskey]

it's very hard to please fanboys of any genre. i very much feel that they could not have done a better job at recreating graphic novel to movie than what they did achieve with this. it's original, it's dark. it's not the same typical superhero movie plot. in my opinion it's definetly up there with The Road to Perdition and The Dark Knight when to comes to graphic novel movies.

[HiopX]

6:56

Comedian: God, help us all!

Rorschach: *whispers* No!

[crackers62jm]

Who here does film? There are somethings that you cant replicate in film or it wouldn't be wise to, and besides this was a great movie, both Script and Visual, it made a lot of sense ah mean, transformers is Great but it only has visuals, story line is forever lacking its too detached.. all over the place.. this actually had substance and great visuals.. Those badass made this Story Look Good on the big Screen

[RokhuStar]

I knew God was a VFX director !