Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' and Working With 3D

We can all thank the 2011 Comic-Con for getting more info out of director Ridley Scott and his latest film Prometheus. A super-secretive and majorly buzzed about science-fiction piece from co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof, who has often cited that Prometheus is not a direct prequel to the Alien franchise, but that it share "similar strands of DNA from Alien". Luckily /Film has a description on some of the footage as well as Scott's admiration working with 3D.

Scott has adamantly said "I’ll never work without 3D again, even for small dialogue scenes." As bold of a statement as that may be, Ridley Scott was in Iceland shooting the opening of the film. Ridley Scott went on to say of his experience shooting in 3D:

3D has been a wonderful exercise but I was brought up as a camera operator so its really about lensing and all that kind of stuff. So with the help I’ve had from a wonderful cameraman and his technical team its been, for me, a pretty straight forward ride. That said I’ll never work without 3D again, even for small dialogue scenes. I love the whole process. 3D opens up the universe of even a small dialogue scene so I’ve been very impressed with that.

With Scott away, Damon Lindelof proceeded to go into more details "about Scott’s choice and how Prometheus is doing things a little different":

When Ridley decided to film in 3D, he understood [lighting] was going to be one of the profound challenges and I think one of the things that was important to him was, in terms of the constructions of the sets, that the movie was shot on sound stages in Pinewood...I’ve never been on the set of a movie that’s actually shooting 3D before. Anytime you walk into video village there are essentially five massive video screens. You walk in, get a pair of glasses and you can see the shot and suddenly you understood, even on the production design level – the movie was designed by this guy Arthur Max who did Fight Club – ‘Oh my god, they actually designed this movie for 3D.’ Ridley is a shot maker. He makes beautiful art. So the idea of going in post and putting things in there digitally is not going to happen in this movie. Therefore, I feel any movie that’s going to be in 3D has to answer the question, ‘Can you justify this being in 3D? Why should it be in 3D?’ I think the answer to that question for Prometheus is it creates a very immersive environment. The idea that you’re in sometimes very confined spaces, sometimes very wide open spaces. But the only way to trick your brain into feeling you’re in the movie, going through these experiences with these characters, is that the 3D helps bring you into that immersive environment and just based on what ive seen so far I think probably one the most visionary and visual directors in the world is finally using this medium, I think its going to be pretty special.

Quite the endorsement from co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof, don't you think? This brings me to the more interesting news, description of footage from said film. Here's what /Film had to say: "We have seen a detailed plot description which seems to spoil a great many details of the first two acts of the film, and today we just saw the first image from the film." See image below.

/Film goes on to say that "...while Ridley Scott says that the DNA ofAlien is in Prometheus and everything else will be different, that’s not what the footage says. The footage very clearly comes both from the man who made Alien and takes place very much in the same world and is connected to that tale."

What we saw wasn’t a trailer, but more like a behind the scenes featurette. Ridley Scott is seen on the massive 007 stage at Pinewood studios, with some of the veryAlien-like production design in the background... The tone of Alien was there, too — the environments we see aren’t quite as blue-collar and run down, but the feeling of dread and atmosphere is there in spades. Oh, and when the title screen came up at the end, letters in Prometheus formed in much the same way the title for Alien forms in that film.

The footage we see of Michael Fassbender seems to support the rumor that he plays a Bishop-like android. He’s got a slightly stylized look that isn’t quite human. (Ridley Scott said there might be two androids in the film.) Other elements of the design depart slightly from the core Alien template, but don’t feel out of place. Keeping with the sense that this isn’t taking place on the same sort of working-class ship seen in that film, the space suits are a little nicer and more pretty, the environments are more clean and gleaming.

But the most important piece, for myself, is this specific illustration of the films' look that truly sells the feel and hopefully the end product of Prometheus: "Some of the shots bear a rather stylized look that is somewhere between the clean, symmetrical aesthetic of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and a slightly different ‘clean space’ vision that is a little bit Blade Runner and a little bit Mass Effect."

Prometheus is directed by Ridley Scott and written by Damon Lindelof and John Spaihts. The film stars Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron. The film is slated for release 8 June 2012.

Source: /Film (3D), /Film (Footage)