Michel Gondry on The Green Hornet, Difficult Writers, and Why 2D is as 'Gimmicky' as 3D
What was it like to direct Jay Chou as Kato, considering that neither of you are native English speakers?
I mean, I've been here for a while, but my accent will never change! I have a terrible French accent, and people have to get used to me and when I meet someone for the first time, it's difficult. After a few weeks, they get used to it. With Jay, he is who he is. In the film, he doesn't speak pretty well -- I mean, his English is pretty awesome, but he's a foreigner in the movie, so it makes sense. A lot of the time, we'd ask him to repeat what he just said to make sure the audience understood, but I think it went pretty well.
As someone who directed my favorite Daft Punk video--
Ah!
--are you excited for one of the other big Comic-Con films, Tron Legacy, which they scored?
Yes, of course. I can't wait to see that. I was a big fan of the original Tron. It was one of the first uses of 3D, and it was totally awesome. In fact, when we did Be Kind Rewind, we had a competition for people to do their own sweded films. The best one I've seen was an homage to Tron. He did the motorbike race, and oh! It was so awesome! It just shows how great this movie was.
Tron was shot in 3D, but Green Hornet will be converted after the fact. Are you worry that audiences have been burned by too many bad conversions this year?
I think there is always something like this whenever there is a change in technique, like people shooting on video or not video. I think it's so important to the film. If anything, you're going to use the 3D as a dimension to help tell the story, and I think to me, it's as much of a gimmick to not do 3D as to say, "I'm going to do 3D." Both are gimmicks!
You believe what you want to believe. It's like when the movies became in color, you could say, "Well, I'm not going to do my next movie in color, I'm going to keep it in black-and-white," and that's an approach. I always loved 3D, since I was a kid. To me, it's magical. I dream in 3D. Sometimes I watch a movie in 2D and I close an eye and the image is like I am watching it in 3D. It's like using stereo for the sound! Maybe some people have had a bad experience, but I think the audience is really excited to see it in 3D.
[Lead Photo Credit: Jemal Countess/Wire Image]
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He didn't really answer that last question.
I'm pretty sure that when the black and white to color switch happened there weren't people shooting in black and white and then having their films rotoscoped into color.
Shooting in 3d like Avatar or Tron: Legacy is not a gimmick. Transferring a 2d shot film into 3d, hell yes that's a gimmick. And a shitty one that fucks up the movie.
Yeah, I think Gondry's ultimate stance on the 3D thing is 'who cares at this point?' Like, it's out of his hands so why be bitter about it, so he just says all this stuff about how 3D itself isn't inherently bad and leaves it at that.
I have to disagree. Post Converting is NOT a gimmick. Doing it just to do it and rushing it so you can have the movie in 3d and up the ticket price just cause, that is a gimmick.
Taking your time to do it well, assuring it looks good, is color corrected to account for the glasses and even only using it in scenes that really benefit from it. That is not a gimmick. That is using your tools. The trick is time and the willingness to say "you know what, it does look like shit. can it we aren't releasing this"
That last bit was the problem with Clash and Airbender both. They did it too fast and didn't have the guts to admit it was trash. Which really really bit M Night in the butt cause he made all those statements about how great it looked.
So much of what Gondry does could be dismissed as gimmicky, anyway (I mean, you know, if you don't have a soul). He has so many old school camera tricks up his sleeve, I would actually love to see him embrace 3D from the beginning. That said, as long as he's overseeing the conversion, I look forward to what he can offer.
Here is the sweded Tron Mr. Gondry was talking about.
http://gizmodo.com/372771/sweded-tron-movie-is-probably-best-sweded-movie-ever
So sick of 3D I could puke.
You say all that, but didn't give an example of a movie that was converted to 3d in post that actually looked good. I'm having trouble thinking of any.
So basically he didnt answer the question. The green hornet has Flop written all over it. Its some of the worse Casting I have seen for a movie in years. And the trailer just looks like some dry-humor satire of the Green Hornet. The 3D is just a way to sham people out of extra money so that when people find out how crappy it is the studio will already have most of there money. There are people like the Warner Bros President"Alan Horne" who will tell you not to look down on 3D conversions but I say how can you not?! between Clash & Airbender & the worthless Shrek forever After this has been one crap-taculer year for 3D conversions. And Harry Potter will also not work in 3D. Mainly becuase while the first 4 Harry Potter films had more flashy visuals & effects the last 2 films have had more dark & Dim Look & cinematography to go along with the darker and dreary tone the movies are taking. Therefore the 3D will most likely mak th movie look severe shades darker and the effects very flat. 3D is no longer Art, it has become a cheap, predictable gimmick and if hollywood doesn't change there ways fast moviegoesrs are gonna wake up one day and realize that every movie is in 3D and most of them arent worth it. Directors should penn the success of there movies off there films being good and not if there movies are being converted to 3D.