[Hammock Parties]

Why Ridley Scott is still awesome:

Spoiler!

I was really impressed when I came to the set by the commitment to practical on Prometheus. While I was there they shot the scene in the lab where the head explodes and they were taking off the elephantine helmet and there’s the head in there.

I was like, "Wow, you’re not doing this CG?" And Ridley said, “No, we’re just gonna blow that fucker up.”

And I looked over and saw the 7.5ft-tall actor, who basically played the Engineer, over in make-up and I said, “Where are his mocap dots?”

“No, no, that’s what we’re gonna shoot.” There might have been some visual effects on his eyes, and obviously we did not make the actor disintegrate down to the genetic level, but I do think that very few directors will say, "What parts of it can we shoot practical?" because anybody will come forward from visual effects and say, “We can do the entire thing for you.” There’s a tremendous temptation.

But our brains are very sophisticated, and we know the difference between what’s real and what’s fake, especially if you’re doing a level of grounded science fiction about “we came from them”.

Your brain will essentially say, “But that’s a CG being, it doesn’t exist, it’s not real, there’s not a man in there, anywhere, even if it’s mocap.” And I think that those decisions, and the commitment to, “Can I make it the same way that I made it 30 years ago, just because I don’t have to any more,” I just admire it tremendously. I think it’s a huge lesson to be learned and the voracity of it bleeds through.