Cracking "Soul Code"
David Konow: Will the effects on "Soul Code" break new ground like "Tron" did?
STEVE LISBERGER: I would describe the effects as more intimate, more relationship-oriented than "whole new world." They're more character-driven, that's what I'm looking to do, rather than generate a whole landscape like we did in the "Tron" days. Effects have changed so much since the days of "Tron" that it's a different challenge than it used to be. I think that the challenge for me is to try to put the effects in a meaningful context, rather than just a spectacle.
David Konow: Will "Soul Code" be a cautionary tale against technology?
STEVE LISBERGER: Yeah, I think that's probably a reasonable way to put it. I hope it's a lot more than saying it's a cautionary tale; there's too many things in it to just call it that.
But like some people who are into technology, I'm actually fairly pessimistic about technology and more optimistic about human beings. Computers, they keep telling me that artificial intelligence is going to get to the point where it learns. One learns by making mistakes. Humans are incredibly good at making mistakes, and if you need to make mistakes to learn, we've got that covered. I don't see some singularity looming where suddenly that basic mechanism of making a mistake and correcting it is going to flow out of technology. If it does, it is not going to be the version we have.
Because we're not even sure what our real long-term evolutionary goals are. We have very little agreements as a species about where we should be in 50 years, let alone in 500. So how does one interact with artificial intelligence? Who gets to determine which future goal is the priority, that this artificial intelligence is set upon, when we can't even reach that agreement ourselves? So I don't know, I think that's the wrong place to look for a solution. It's definitely a tool, but tools, to make a bad pun, cut both ways.
IGN Weekly hostess Jessica Chobot helped inspire the idea for "Soul Code."
David Konow: How far along is "Soul Code" at this writing?
STEVE LISBERGER: There's a script, we're happy with it, but there's more tweaking being done on it.
David Konow: How much of the film will be effects and how much real people?
STEVE LISBERGER: Well, I was surprised to see "300." I was surprised to see that it was the update of the system we used where you're basically shooting actors on a blank stage for virtually the whole movie. I was very impressed with that from a production standpoint.
I think that it's interesting to see how special effects are trying to saturate the frame. Not only do you have the mountains of Kauai in the background, and then the foreground is enhanced, then you have dinosaurs and flying whatever in the frame; Every part of the frame is being addressed with CG or Matte Works. I'm not sure that's necessarily the way the human mind works. For me personally, when I see something that's really incredible, it's not just the process that that one thing is incredible, it's that there's a toning down of the rest of the environment. It's interesting to look back at "Tron" in that regard, where we had all these glowing special effects, but we also in essence degraded the environment by using black and white on the actors.
If one pictured all that glowing circuitry for instance on a full color image, and a normal everyday world background, it really isn't the same thing at all. I think maybe people are trying to figure out how to prioritize what they're looking at in terms of how the mind does it, and I think that's still an ongoing process. I think it's true in film and it's also true in videogames.
David Konow: So "Soul Code" won't be like "300"?
STEVE LISBERGER: No, it's not that kind of picture. We're still at that early point where we're still trying to figure out what the catch sentences are going to be, and so I have to be thoughtful at this point because I don't want to make a wrong first impression.
I think that some of the special effects will have to do with manifesting what people are thinking, and also what they're feeling in a person way. So that's different than the kind of environmental canvas, the total arena canvas that "300" or "Tron" had. There's not that many stories that lend themselves to the "whole new world."
