Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life - Page 2

There have been a great many rumors and suppositions about Terrence Malick's new film, The Tree of Life, over the past few years. We know that the core story follows two generations of a family (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, with Sean Penn playing their adult son) and takes into consideration man's place in the world, among many other things. But the film seemed to begin as a thing called Project Q, and was once said to have spawned an IMAX compation film called Voyage Through Time. The trailer for The Tree of Life suggested some of the film's depth beyond the basic family drama, but a great many things remain obscure. Now members of the effects team have talked about the movie, and their statements make a couple of details very clear. Consider anything after the break spoilerish, although the details aren't too surprising for anyone who has been following the film's development. VFX Supervisor Dan Glass talked in great detail to LittleWhiteLies [1] about The Tree of Life, saying that the creation of the film was quite unconventional. The script, if you can call it that, was really more like a set of notes that he has written and built up over some 35 years. He has been working on this project since the ’70s. And we actually have negatives that he shot in the 1970s that we incorporated into the movie. So it really becomes a lifting of notes and ideas. And the effects shots broke down into distinct categories called realms, which include the Astrophysical Realm (using "extraordinary source imagery from actual probes and telescopes"); the Microbial Realm; and the Natural History Realm, for which Mr. Glass says “I can confirm that there are dinosaurs." How does all that fit into the film? We have no idea, and hopefully will be able to see the film before all the details leak out. The interview goes into serious depth that I'm not going to recreate here, but there is confirmation that some of the film was shot in IMAX and that the effects work was all done to very high resolution: [Malick] preferred the idea of a patchwork quilt. He might shoot something on a Super 8 camera, then an IMAX camera, then on a digital camera, but in space you might have something based on magnetic resonance imaging or infrared photography from the Hubble. Each would have its own character, and that in his mind would lend to authenticity because you weren’t trying to smooth it, shape it and make it conform... ...All of the work in Tree of Life is done to 5 1/2 K resolutionâ€Â¦ There’s a genuineness to that; it’s really trying to more closely represent the photography of the real thing. And the music and sound I would say are tremendous. The sound design I was really bowled over by, in terms of how it helps emotionally taking you through the piece. There is a great deal more detail in the source interview which I encourage anyone with a scientific bent to check out, as Dan Glass says that a great deal of consultation was done to ensure that the scientific details in the film, and even the implications, are as accurate as possible. [1] http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/blo...on-quest-14358