MORE THAN SPACE

Tino Schaedler and Oliver Zeller in conversation with Joseph Kosinski

Joseph Kosinski, your path to Hollywood glory was steep. You studied architecture at Columbia University, made your way via digital design to short films and spots – including a major step forward when David Fincher recommended you as director for a commercial – and landed the job directing “Tron: Legacy”, the highly anticipated sequel to the 1980’s cult movie “Tron”, for Disney. What drove you to pursue this path?
I always had these odd split interests in engineering, product design, architecture, and music. At first it seemed like architecture was the perfect blend between the technical and artistic interests I had. I think film was just the extension of that. My job now requires me to be fluent in the technology, but obviously you also have to be inspired by your artistic side at every point. In some ways it was the job I was always meant to do, I just didn’t know it. I grew up in the midwest. It never seemed like something that was possible. Growing up, I never knew anyone who was a director or anyone who had ever been on a movie set. It just didn’t seem like the opportunity was available, but it was something that organically came about over time.

Your work at KDLAB, an interdisciplinary design firm you co-founded in 1999, showed a high degree of mastery over technical tools, which makes you well suited to direct a film like “Tron: Legacy”. How did that technology become so integral to your evolution as a filmmaker? Was that push of technology through Columbia’s Architecture Program or something you assumed beforehand?
I have always been interested in technology and was a mechanical engineer and product design major at Stanford, doing a lot of classes in aerospace engineering. When I was looking at architecture schools, I was really intrigued that Columbia’s architecture program was using the high-end digital tools that Hollywood was using to make feature films or Detroit was using to design cars. That’s the main reason I moved there, as well as wanting to see New York City.
When I got there I became fluent in the digital tools. For me it was a more natural style of working than sitting down with a T-Square and building physical models. I just took to it and quickly found the ability to build something and then explore it from every angle, shade it, light it and animate it. To me it seemed an amazing opportunity to conceive an idea, build it, experience it, and be able to share it with people in a short period of time. Whereas to be a real architect you need the patience to work your career to the point where you are allowed to actually design something, then the patience to actually build it, and at the end you might never be al-lowed to go in it again, which always seemed odd. Whereas film is something you can build and share with people. It seems a great alternative after going through architecture school and really loving the process. The career of an architect didn’t seem as exciting to me as the opportunity to be a filmmaker.

In late 2004, you directed the Nike/Philips Tronathlon commercial. It never aired, after Nike & Philips parted ways. Was there anything from that experience you took heading into “Tron: Legacy”?
Yes. I never want to do my own visual effects again or shoot an actor touching pure bluescreen... if possible. I think that’s where I learnt the connection to real material makes all the difference in the world. Bluescreen is great for extension, to create scale and scope, but if you have actors it’s not fair to surround them only by blue. Anything you can build, even if it’s just the chair they are sitting in; the more you can build around them, the better. That’s why I went into “Tron: Legacy” with the intent of building everything we could possibly build in this world, only using bluescreen and CG when we absolutely had to.

We noticed that you built a lot more sets for “Tron: Legacy” than we would have expected.
We built a huge amount for this movie. It was a blast, my favorite part! I actually got to finally build some of the spaces I would have had to do digitally beforehand. I mean the idea of a film is for people to never know where that line is between real and virtual, to keep that line as hidden as possible, but we built a lot more than people would expect. It was a really cool feeling to be able to walk onto one of these sets that had only existed in the computer or was something that I had drawn on a napkin two years ago. For the actors I think it was amazing to actually stand on a real set that felt like nothing they had ever seen before. That’s the way I would love to continue to work. I want to build as much as possible and only use the virtual where you absolutely have to.

What have you tried to add architecturally to this evolved world of “Tron”?
My idea for the movie was that the world of “Tron” is still frozen away on this server that is not connected to the Internet. So there is no sense of the world wide web in this movie. It’s basically more like the Galapagos Islands; this server that’s just been churning away for 20 years on its own. It’s evolved and the “Tron” simulation has become more realistic, a much better approximation of the physicality of our world. So what I introduced to “Tron”, which you see a little bit of in the trailer and the teaser, is the idea that every surface has some real world materiality to it, whether it be glass, concrete or stone. Every surface feels like something that we can relate to, there are no virtual materials. There is a physicality, weight, gravity, and momentum in this world. So it feels like a world in which we have taken in motion picture cameras and shot for real. At the same time I wanted to maintain that design style that is “Tron”, that unique fusion of two great designers, Moebius and Syd Mead, and take their seed of an idea from 1982 and imagine the evolution of that style. Going forward 20 years in our world and what we are seeing in the computer world is almost a 1,000 years. So it’s this odd combination of something that feels more tangible, yet is definitely “Tron”. The beauty of the world of “Tron” that I saw, was that the whole thing was created by Kevin Flynn, the master architect. So unlike most science fiction films where you have cities designed by hundreds of different architects and designers, the world of “Tron” is a singular vision of one man. That means that there is a cohesive design style between the vehicles, architecture, landscape and costumes. I don’t think you could really justify this in any other movie. The idea of creating a cohesive universe designed down to the atom was so exciting, but really an extraordinarily difficult way to make as a movie because you get nothing for free. There is not one location that we can go and shoot to double for the “Tron” world. Every single thing had to either be custom designed and built on a sound stage or backlot or in the computer. We had an amazing art department, but that’s why it takes three years to make a movie like this.

The “Tron: Legacy” world has many fascinating architectural concepts, transparent levels above levels, spiraling roadways, light cycles that produce a form of architecture in a sense. Can you elaborate on these?
As the design and style has evolved, so have the gladiatorial games, which are an important part of the world. I have created new versions of all the games, but one of the main evolutions of the light cycle game was the idea that it occurs on multiple levels, like three-dimensional chess. So rather than this idea of just being able to box someone in, there is a series of chutes, ramps, and jumps that allow you to work between three or four levels which make the complexity of the game that much more sophisticated. You can imagine the choreography, I mean just the previsualization and choreography of ten light cycles on a multi-layer gaming board all going 90 to 110 miles per hour with trailing light walls behind them. It was a lot of work, banging our heads against the wall trying to figure it out, keeping track of all these bikes and making every bit of action unique, exciting and unexpected; ultimately with a finale that’s inevitable. Now that I can sit and watch most of it finished, it’s exciting to see it all come to life.

In the latest trailer actress Olivia Wilde is sitting in a completely clear baroque style lounge chair. Why inject ornament into the world of “Tron”?
Yes, we CnC-milled all the furniture out of a clear acrylic plastic. The reason involves Flynn’s safehouse. The idea is that a user has been trapped in the system and wants to create a place for himself that has some familiarity of the real world, yet the materials he has available to him are “Tron”-like materials. It’s that blend of trying to create some sense of real-world artistic influences in the materiality of the “Tron” world. An aesthetic that a user would surround himself with in this world. Flynn’s safehouse is a unique space in the world of “Tron”, because it is really his home, his refuge.

While directing Keir Dullea, he mentioned that Stanley Kubrick played music on the set of “2001: A Space Odyssey” even whilst they were filming. And like Kubrick, you have a predilection toward using music that seems at odds with the visuals. You’ve talked about how you use music to set the tone for a piece while writing the treatment and you are an experienced saxophone player. Does music directly influence you in a spatial context?
It influences all parts of the process and I did play a lot of music on set. Both between setups, I had the sound department rig these giant speakers to my laptop, but also on the nightclub scene I played music while we were shooting to get the right feel in the club. Since I also knew what song was going to be played at that point in the movie I actually had the song there and had the ability to get this rhythmic synchronization of the scene and the background. Everyone was moving to the rhythm of the track that actually would end up in the final movie.

“Tron: Legacy” is a Disney Digital 3D film and seems ideally suited for stereoscopy. Furthermore, you had experience producing content for autostereoscopic screens years before this 3D renaissance hit the theatres. What has your experience with stereoscopy been like?
What intrigues me about stereoscopy is the opportunity to immerse the viewer. From the beginning I wanted the world of “Tron: Legacy” to exist behind the plane of the screen. As if you were looking through a portal into this world. There are moments in the film where objects do break the plane of the screen and come out into the audience, but those only happen when it makes sense for a scene to happen that way. For example in the test, a guy gets blown off the lightcycle, comes out of the screen and then falls back into it. I followed this strict rule where everything is behind the plane of the screen and things only come out when they do so in an unbroken way, without touching the edge, so you don’t ruin the illusion.

So you are actually using it as a tool, how one might use depth of field?
Yes. You use it as a tool. You treat it like a window. You treat it as if the edge of the screen isn’t there and things are either behind, or if they pop out, they pop out into the space in front of the audience. But you never have objects that pop out and then break the edge of the screen plane. It’s a different approach than Avatar. I love the way James Cameron used 3D in Avatar and he used it to create an immersive experience, but his technique is slightly different than mine. Where he would animate the convergence point, moving it throughout the scene to go in or out, but didn’t necessarily have an issue with foreground pieces breaking the plane of the screen as they pass by, I tried to follow a more strict rule where we never moved the convergence plane, but kept it fixed on every shot. The goal is the same, which is to immerse the viewer and not use it as a parlor trick. The idea is to pull you into the world.

Columbia University in the mid-90s was the breeding pool for concepts and techniques on how to integrate cutting edge digital technology. With rapid advance in interface and display technology it seems very likely that the virtual will soon be an interwoven spatial layer to the real world. Your studies and projects play on the verge of virtual and real. Has your definition and conception of space changed?
Truly the most important thing I learned at Columbia was the ability to be self critical. It’s not so much the tools I learned, it’s the way it taught me how to think that is really useful as a filmmaker. You are making thousands of decisions every day and you need to be critical of why you are making the decision you are, and if the choice fits in line with an overall concept you have for the film. Whether it be a detail of a door handle to the design of a city plan, or even a line in the screenplay. Architecture school taught me that a single idea or concept can help define all the details of a project from the very big to the very small. And in film, because you are dealing with narrative and character as well as all the technical aspects, being able to take these core concepts of the project and roll them out into all the different aspects was a really important skill. It’s more than just space. Space and film is everything on the screen and it’s a lot more than just architecture. It’s everything.

Space and narrative are intrinsically intertwined in your works. But what drives you from a narrative standpoint?
I am interested in big ideas. I love films that strike you emotionally, but also really inspire you to think. That’s what I love about the films of Kubrick, like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Shining”. They are intensely intellectual films. At the same time they are beautiful pieces of art and that combination to me is very interesting. I guess some people would say his stuff is a little cold, but I think it’s interested in asking questions, even if it doesn’t always answer them, and those are the kind of pictures or stories that appeal to me. The draw of “Tron” was that we had a really strong emotional core at the center of the story. Though we also have a lot of interesting ideas about artificial intelligence and our relationship with the digital world.



Joseph Kosinski, born 1974, graduated from Stanford University, Palo Alto, with a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1996 and from Columbia University, New York, with a Masters of Architecture in 1999. In the same year he co-founded KDLAB, an interdisciplinary design firm intent on exploring the blurred boundaries between architecture, graphics, and film. Based on his specific skills in computer graphics and computer generated imagery, he worked for renowned clients including Nike and Chevrolet. In 2010 Kosinski directed the film “TRON: LEGACY” (Disney), a stand-alone sequel to the 1982 film “TRON“. “TRON: LEGACY” will come to cinemas in December 2010.
www.josephkosinski.com