Resident Evil Afterlife Set Visit - Jeremy Bolt Interview, Pt 1 of 2
Resident Evil Afterlife Set Visit - Jeremy Bolt Interview, Pt 1 of 2
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Below is the transcript from our group interview with Resident Evil: Afterlife producer Jeremy Bolt from the visit to the set. For details and personal observations as to what occurred on set the impressions people made, please read our article on the Resident Evil Afterlife Set Visit by Staci Layne Wilson
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Jeremy Bolt Part One Resident Evil 11-13-2009 Transcript
Bolt: We really follow these very, very closely.
Can you talk about the decision to shoot this one in 3-D between the obvious financial and sort of...
Bolt: I really wanted Paul to come back and direct this one. And as an added excitement and challenge visually to him, going in 3-D was important. Plus, as I said, we wanted to give the fans something different. And I also think, because we are very confident in the world of Resident Evil having made three movie, we are confident enough to really experiment. But the principal reason is just to do something different. I don’t think, obviously, next year you have Piranha, but there are not that many 3-D movies. There are a lot of animation, a lot of kids. I mean, it’s a tremendous challenge. I’m very glad I’m doing it with a very experienced director. I would not do this with a first or second time director because there is no room for error. You have to have tremendous technical knowledge. It effects production design, visual effects, lighting. No one knows completely about it, so no one is 100 percent certain of anything. I think Vincent Pace’s team are very, very strong, but my other departments, everyone’s learning. For example, a simple , in stunts, a simple punch, you can’t miss, because if you miss, as stuntmen do, you’ve missed. So you have to re-conceive the fight sequences. Little small things like this mean that you have to rethink how you make the film a little bit.
I imagine when you are trying to match shots, that becomes a crucial thing too.
Bolt: Correct, yeah, I’m sure we’re going to come across all kinds of problems in post-production that we didn’t see. And then there is the cost aspect. It’s a lot more expensive, it’s about 20 percent more expensive and it takes 20 percent longer. So we added two weeks to the shoot.
How long is the shoot?
Bolt: Twelve weeks.
I’ve heard it adds like 15 percent to the budget.
Bolt: 15-20, yeah. There is another approach to 3-D, which is you shoot it in 2-D and then you dimensionalize it. And there’s some very good dimensionalizing companies. If you were doing a movie that were requiring a very tremendous amount of action, it would be very difficult to do it in 3-D because the cameras are quite unwieldy. I think then you would probably shoot some in 2-D and dimensionalize it and then some in 3-D. Perhaps that’s the future, a hybrid of both systems. Because there’s no question, some sequences in 3-D, as we’re going to obviously see from Avatar and I hope you’ll see from this, people have just never seen anything like it. It’s really a new experience.
You can’t use a lot of handheld, though, can you?
Bolt: No, Steadycam and handheld are difficult. We use a lot more light. Paul likes to use the Phantom camera. There’s a lot of high speed slow-motion. It requires a lot of light, but in 3-D, rain is amazing in 3-D. Absolutely fantastic. I mean, it’s stunningly beautiful some of the images, but of course you have to realize, you have to be careful you don’t get too seduced by the beauty and you keep the pace of the narrative.
I thought it was interesting what you said about how using 3-D returns you to a more old school form of storytelling. Can you elaborate on that?
Bolt: Well, in the sense that, when I say old school, I mean for me that’s like a David Lean approach to filmmaking where you kind of shot to cut. You didn’t have a lot of options in the cutting room. Because Paul is only able to get about 12 set-ups a day, every shot has to count, so in his mind he’s shooting really to cut and he doesn’t have the luxury of multi-camera coverages that mean he can re-conceive the whole scene in the cutting room, which is a tremendous discipline on the director in the shoot. So that’s what I meant by it.
Why did you decide to shoot in Toronto?
Bolt: We had a terrific experience shooting Resident Evil 2 here and there is a location here that we really liked. It’s a pharmaceutical part of the university. It’s called the Dan Building and it has this phenomenal architecture within it which we felt was much like the Umbrella Corporation. It has these floating pods. When you see the movie, you’ll see it. You’ll probably think that was a CG-created environment. Actually we shot it for real. So apart from liking the city, liking the tax credit, creatively it had this awesome piece of architecture that we really liked.
[end]