This week, principal photography will be done on Steven Spielberg’s Tintin. Well, to some extent. The thirty-two days of live-action stage shooting will wrap, and now it’s time to turn the footage and mocap data over to Peter Jackson and WETA for a year and a half of processing, tinkering and editing.
Which leads Variety to beg the question: who’s really directing Tintin?
The answer is Spielberg, but the question does have some merit. When WETA and Jackson will do the bulk of the daily work creating the look and composition of the film, will it really be a Spielberg movie in the final cut? Will it feel like a Spielberg film, a Jackson film, or something in between?
The Spielberg and Jackson camps have set up a video conferencing pipeline that will allow real-time display of work in progress at Spielberg’s office, so that he can monitor the work and have consistent input. But since he’s not likely to sit around waiting for WETA to IM with new shots over the next eighteen months, will Jackson’s stamp be more deep?
Variety’s article is full of early-spin quotes talking up how amazing the process is. It’s a ‘you have to see it to believe it’ thing, but we probably can’t expect to see anything at all for a while. This year’s Comic Con is the most obvious possibility for the debut of images and character designs. I’m wildly curious to see what we get, as I’m as yet unconvinced by the idea of a feature-length, all-mocap picture.
And on the subject of the second film in the potential series, Variety specifies that there is no script to date, but that Jackson is working on ideas for the follow-up. The green light for that movie may not come for some time; place your bets now as to whether the series, originally intended as a trilogy, will end up being just one film.