Indiana Jones swings into theaters on computer-generated rope Video

Indiana Jones swings into theaters on computer-generated rope Video Transcript

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>>Cara Savoy: I'm Cara Savoy, CNET News.com. This new Indiana Jones movie is without a doubt one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year. It's been 19 years since the original release and a lot has changed, especially the technology used to make the movie. ^M00:00:17 [ Music ] ^M00:00:24

>>Cara Savoy: How did it feel to be tasked with working on a classic, a fan favorite but yet to be building in all this new technology?

>> [Background Music] Well, you know, it's - it's this really iconic movie, you know that we all you know - or most of us - grew up with so it was quite a - you know really exciting to kind of bring that back to the big screen. And um you know I think we brought a lot of technology, but for the most part it was all you know in service of the story and you know a lot of it you wouldn't even know was there. And now that we've got more technology we can sort of do things that I think Steven had always wanted to do maybe or they - they could have done on those old pictures but you know they never really had the ability to do, so this . . .

>>Cara Savoy: What's a good example of that?

>>Well we - you know huge set pieces for example you know blowing them apart and you know things that you could probably never do in real life because either they would harm the actors or um there was just no way to kind of integrate that - you know that and the film together.

>>Cara Savoy: What's a scene that is a really good example of how CG [assumed spelling] enhanced this movie?

>>For example, the jungle chase sequences um you know they shot those in Hawaii and you know and there are some fairly dramatic shots of being right on a cliff edge or something like that and you know you look at the actual plates - the backgrounds they shot - and those are actual you know just them driving along a little road in a field somewhere and um you know what most people wouldn't even realize is that all the whole cliff and everything else in the background has all been replaced. Our digimat department um had a whole library of different types of plants and things like that and they would just drag them in and place them as needed to sort of give it the more sort of overgrown sort of un - you know older feel um rather than just a well-used um dirt road down - um down through the jungle, so . . .

>>Cara Savoy: Any new software or any new special tricks and techniques used in this movie for the first time?

>>There's a tool we have called Fracture [assumed spelling] which basically you know we had a lot of huge set pieces that we had to - you know had to destroy or break apart so you know a lot of that - you know lots of huge sets that had to be split into all kinds of little pieces um and then you know destroyed in certain various ways.

>>Cara Savoy: Do you ever feel like you're up against an increasingly more sophisticated audience where you really have to get your CG spot on, otherwise people aren't going to buy into the story line?

>>Yes, definitely. I mean you know one story I remember I was - I was traveling somewhere and it was right around when Jurassic Park came out and I remember going to see the movie and - and thinking, "Wow, it's so amazing," you know I mean you look at stuff that other people have done here and you're like, "How did they do that?" you know.

>>Cara Savoy: [Laughter]

>> So . . . and I remember getting in a cab afterwards and sitting there and the - and the cab driver said, "Yeah, that was great but you know this dinosaur well it didn't look quite right to me," and I was sitting there you know, "I thought it looked amazing," so I mean they get - you know people are getting so sophisticated and they - they don't - they expect things to look absolutely real.

>>Cara Savoy: Do you love it?

>>Yeah. I thought it was [Laughter] - I thought it was great you know I mean I - you know I grew with Indiana Jones and so every time you hear the "dun dun dun dun da" [assumed spelling] you know you're just kind of - you know you get all excited about it so you know even to us jaded CG professionals you go and you watch the trailer and you just - you know the little kid in you kind of comes out and you can't wait to see it, so . . .

>>Cara Savoy: Awesome. Thanks Hayden.

>>Yeah. Hope you enjoy it.

>>Cara Savoy: I do, too. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

>>Yes.

>>Cara Savoy: I'm Cara Savoy, CNET News.com. ^M00:03:50 [ Music ] ^M00:04:02