In the Spike Kitchen

It seems the much-discussed troubles surrounding Spike Jonze and his Where The Wild Things Are may not be so bad after all. The director talks about effects and the film-in-progress. (AICN)

Moriarty: Is it the fact that you guys came out of the commercial background and the video background and things where you’d been able to experiment that freed you up to think about effects this way? Because so often, I think guys get really rigid about, you know, you do it the ILM way, you get into the pipeline, and you do certain things a certain sort of way.


Spike Jonze: Yeah, we were talking about that recently. We’re working with this company, Framestore, it’s an effects company, and in dealing with them it’s so different from dealing with an effects company ten years ago because effects companies are so much more humble. And I think it’s partially because they used to hold the keys to the secret chest of magic or whatever, and a lot of directors who come up now through videos, it’s not as separate, doing effects; it’s just part of telling the story. And I do think with a lot of directors – and not even just like Robert Rodriguez or whoever, Fincher, Chris Cunningham, Gondry – it’s like effects are just one of the tools, as opposed to “Here’s a script that needs to be filmed, how do we execute this thing?” It’s more just one of the tools you use to create a feeling that you want the movie or story to feel like.