Steven Spielberg has spoken out about his decision to make upcoming comic adap Tintin using motion capture rather than more traditional methods.
Talking with the LA Times , the director reveals his reasoning behind the controversial approach to moviemaking, as well as his thoughts on the process.
“It was based on my respect for the art of Hergé and wanting to get as close to that art as I could,” Spielberg says. “Hergé wrote about fictional people in a real world, not in a fantasy universe.
“It was the real universe he was working with, and he used National Geographic to research his adventure stories. It just seemed that live action would be too stylised for an audience to relate to.
“You’d have to have costumes that are a little outrageous when you see actors wearing them. The costumes seem to fit better when the medium chosen is a digital one.”
Once he’d tested the method out, Spielberg knew there was no turning back – like Robert Zemeckis before him, he was in love with it.
“I just adored it,” he says. “It made me more like a painter than ever before. I got a chance to do so many jobs that I don’t often do as a director.
“You get to paint with this device that puts you into a virtual world, and allows you to make your shots and block all the actors with a small hand-held device only three times as large as an Xbox game controller.”
The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn opens 26 October.
