Earlier this year, I posted a brief Tron Legacy set visit preview, accompanied by a couple interviews we conducted on set with the cast and crew: Jeff Bridges, who reprises his role as Kevin Flynn in the Tron sequel, Steven Lisberger, the writer/director/creator of the original Tron, who is on board for Tron Legacy as a producer, writer, and actor, and Garrett Hedlund, the star of Tron Legacy, who plays Kevin Flynns son Sean, who goes into the world of Tron in search of his long lost father.
Today, Im finally able to post a 40-minute set visit video blog that Frosty from Collider and I recorded immediately after returning to the hotel from the set. As you might expect, this was recorded quite some time ago before trailers, Comic-Con, footage the movie was not yet titled Tron: Legacy, and still featured the horrible working title TR2N. But even so, we got to see a lot and learn a lot on set, and we present some information which has remained secret, lock and key, until now. Hit the jump to watch the video blog.
The day after the world learned of Michael Jacksons death, I found myself in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada revisiting my 1980s childhood. Its not what it sounds like. I was on the set of a sequel to a film I had first seen 27 years prior. If you had told me as a kid that I would someday have a chance to enter the world of Tron, I wouldnt have believed you.
But standing in a giant lounge called the End of Line club, consisting of glass floors and black and white lights, I watched Jeff Bridges reprise his role as Kevin Flynn. And while it wasnt filmed on the top floor of the highest building in the evolved world inside the computer, you certainly wouldnt know it walking around the giant and elaborate set. And that was a surprise a big surprise.
When I received the invitation to visit the set of Tron Legacy, I had assumed that most of the production was to be filmed on green screen stages using performance capture and tennis balls on sticks. I could not have been more wrong. While on set I witnessed dozens of extras, all wearing real, glowing, rubber suits. An action scene took place with actors wielding real-life glowing light discs, which look just like you would imagine them to look if they actually existed.
Im still not quite sure what happened in the action scene that played out, but I knew one thing - it looked cool. And not the fake, manufactured, trying too hard to be cool, but instead authentically cool. And not only that, I could see it in front of me, without the help of computer generated magic. And better yet, I watched it 3D. Wearing special 3D glasses, I watched playback on the big flat screen monitors on set.
