Arriving on Blu-ray and DVD January26th, Killer Film talks with the director Jonathan Mostow about technology and the film.

Technology: Surrogates

Written in 2005 by Robert Venditti, the limited comic series was a popular release for Top Shelf Productions when the series began publication in July 2006. “It was the graphic novel that inspired me to make the movie,” says director Jonathan Mostow. “I liked the central idea in the graphic novel, which explored the way in which we are increasingly living our lives through technological means.” Mostow is no stranger to robotic science-fiction stories, as his last film prior to 2009’s Surrogates was the box office hit Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. “Venditti was great,” says Mostow on the writer of the series. “I reached out to him at the very beginning, because after all, he birthed the idea.” Hollywood has had an odd love/hate relationship with writers and their work, most famously with the film adaptations of Alan Moore and his dissociative attitude towards them.  “The graphic novel was a treasure trove of ideas. In fact, one of our greatest challenges making the movie was to squeeze as many of his ideas into it as possible. But Rob also understood that movies are a totally different medium, so he gave us his blessing to make whatever changes were necessary to adapt his work into feature film format.”

“Originally, I’ll confess that we planned to set this movie in 2050, complete with flying cars and floating screens and all the gizmos one might expect to see, says Mostow. The film would now be changed to a 2017 date. “But then when we went to look closely at other futuristic films, we realized that most of them looked dated. And there was a ‘fakeness’ factor to them that distracted from the story. Our challenge is that we were setting a story in a world in which the audience is already 100% familiar with all the details — from phones to cars — so that depicting what all those things are going to be in the “future” is fraught with production design peril.”

One of the most common complaints of a film’s adaptation of a popular source, is the balance in keeping the film version as close to the original source material. As the old adage goes, “the book was better.” Mostow explains this balance: “The novel was interesting in that it was highly regarded, but not well-known outside a small community of graphic novel enthusiasts. So that meant that we weren’t necessarily beholden to elements in the graphic novel in the way that one might be if adapting a world-renowned piece of literature. Even the author of Surrogates acknowledged that changes were necessary to adapt his novel to the needs of a feature film. Certainly, I believe we preserved the central idea — which was to pose some interesting questions to the audience about how we can retain our humanity in this increasingly technological world.”

After establishing the help of the Surrogates original creator and developing the look of the film, next came casting. Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Ving Rhames, Rosemund Pike, and James Cormwell star. “I’ve been very lucky to work with some great movie stars of our time. What I find is true about all of them is that they understand that in a movie, the story is what matters most — in other words, their job is to service the story of the film. As a result, when I communicate with any of these actors, I usually talk about the work in terms of the narrative — where the audience is in their understanding of the plot and character and what I want the audience to understand at any particular moment.”

“The interesting thing about casting this movie is that for the surrogates, we needed terrific actors who also looked physically perfect. Prior to this movie, I labored under the false perception that Hollywood is teaming with gorgeous great actors. Not necessarily so. We were lucky to get folks like Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Boris Kodjoe — and we were equally fortunate to find a number of talented day players to round out the smaller roles in the cast.”

Technology: FX of Surrogates

No stranger to big special effects films, Mostow understands the nature of practical and visual FX. “My goal for the effects in this film was to make them invisible. There are over 800 VFX shots in Surrogates, but hopefully you’ll be able to identify only a few of them. A vast quantity of them were digitally making the actors look like perfected versions of themselves,” he concludes. Besides the digital effects, Mostow also used practical FX with the help of the Oscar-winning KNB Effects. “KNB is a top-flight company that specializes in prosthetic devices for movies and creature design. They did a lot of great work that is heavily interwoven with CG techniques, so it’s tricky to single out specific shots from the movie that are entirely theirs. They were great to work with.”

“It was a big challenge. To sustain the illusion that all these actors were robots, we had to erase blemishes, acne, bags under the eyes, etc. In a sense, the actors were the visual effects. As a result, there are more VFX shots than non-VFX shots in the movie.” One of the big FX shots for the film, was the fore-mentioned digital facial clean-ups. The surrogates have this wax look to their faces, which was to give off the illusion that they were robots. “For Bruce, we approached his surrogate look with a combination of traditional and digital techniques. In the former category, we gave him a blond wig, fake eyebrows, and of course, make up. In the digital arena, we smoothed his skin, removed wrinkles, facial imperfections and in some cases, actually reshaped his jaw-line to give him a more youthful appearance,” explains Mostow.

“Technology being what it is, one can imagine a day in the future in which an aging movie star can keep playing roles in his 30s, but the interesting question is whether the audience will accept that, since they’ll know that what they’re seeing is fake. In the case of Surrogates, we discovered with test audiences that if we went too far with Bruce’s look, it was too distracting, so in certain cases, we had to pull back a bit.”

Technology: Blu-ray

“I LOVE Blu-ray. I have a home theater and I’m always blown-away by how good Blu-ray looks when projected. As a filmmaker, I’m excited that consumers are adopting this high-def format,” tells Mostow. Certainly, he is right. Please reread my Blu-ray review here. One of the best things the high-def format brought to consumers was the variety of audio options, including loss less audio. “Personally, I prefer Dolby Digital, but only because my home theater is optimized for it. Obviously, DTS is also a great format. I am thrilled with all the advances in Blu-ray audio.”

“I care deeply about [sound design] and I believe that mixers I’ve worked with will probably tell you that few directors get as involved with sound as I do. Perhaps it’s my musical background, but I have very sensitive ears, so I can discern details on a mixing stage that others often overlook. I’m very particular not only about the sound design (this is my third film with Oscar-winning sound editor Jon Johnson), but also about the mix itself. I think a good soundtrack helps immerse the audience in the movie. Ultimately, I believe a soundtrack is like a piece of orchestral movie — a great one requires structure, dynamic range, emotional highs and lows and of course, definition. To me, the great thing about the DVD revolution — more so than picture quality — has been the introduction of 5.1 surround sound to the home.”

Technology: Fears

“I speak as someone who is addicted to technology,” asserts Mostow. “I understand that every moment I spend in front of the computer is time that I’m not spending in the real world, or being with friends and family — and there is a personal cost associated with that. Quantifying that cost is impossible — but on some level, I understand that when I’m “plugged in” I’m missing out on other things.”

The world and balance between real life and computer assisted becomes a lot more blurrier as we continue to have advances in technology. “People have labeled this film as anti-technology. But I don’t see it that way. In fact, I love technology. I love using computers and gadgets. I love strolling through Best Buy and the Apple Store to see what’s new. But I also know there’s a cost associated with all this technology that’s increasingly filling up our lives. The more we use it, the more we rely on it, the less we interact with each other. Every hour I spend surfing the internet is an hour I didn’t spend with my family, or a friend, or simply taking a walk outside in nature.”

“Do I believe that someday surrogate robots will exist? Yes. Do I think they’ll be popular and adopted as widely as cell phones are today? Perhaps. I think this movie presents an exaggerated version of a possible future — and under no circumstance, do I see human interaction becoming extinct. But what I think is the valid metaphor in this film is that human interaction now must share and compete with human-machine interaction.”

Time will tell. Surrogates is out January 26th on Blu-ray and DVD. Feel free to comment below on anything about the film or Jonathan Mostow.

Tags: Blu-ray, Bruce Willis, Jonathan Mostow, Surrogates, Terminator 3