Steven Lisberger discusses CG animation in TRON: Legacy

(Steven Lisberger) There were no PC's, there were no computers, no cell phones, no users really except for a very small group of people that would fit in this room, and I was seeing the earliest CG animation coming out of test reels that I saw at MIT actually in the late 70's.  And I thought if I can put this electronic character we've designed in a world of this stuff I know we can make something great even if it's not perfected technology.  But I didn't quite know what the world would be.  I started doing research on what the actual software designers, what they were like, you know, where their heads were at.  And they really inspired me, you know these were people who were true pioneers.  They were at the frontier, and they were making a huge commitment with their lives to something that we didn't know what it was going to be, and so I thought well there are my characters, you know.  And the whole concept of Avatars, we didn't have that word back then yet.  It was like...these guys are sitting at a computer but they're in there and they're trying to make things happen, trying to find this new frontier.  And then I started playing video games and I realized well there's the arena, and then I started getting into the thematic questions of whether this technology was going to bring out something good in us or bring out something bad.

(MakingOf) What was your directing process?  Did you focus more with the actors and getting the best scenes when you were directing it?  Or were you more technical?

(SL) With this film it was approached as an animated movie and then it met live action.  And it was in some sense I think somewhat limiting for the actors because Jeff has the ability to do a million things that you'd expect but he was already locked in to some storyboard in terms of this is a partial set, this is the environment.  But it's funny, the stages were all black, they were wearing their Tron costumes.  And in a way it almost felt like Shakespearian drama to see these guys performing under these super powerful lights in these suits on an all black stage.  So I think that compensated a little bit.  I think the theatrical quality made up for some of the limitations that the actors had to endure, but it was pretty severely limiting.  We locked down the movie three weeks after principal photography to make our deadline.  On the original Tron we had 1100 special effects shots, 900 of them with composited human beings.  And we completed that whole film and all those shots in nine months using technology that had never ever been done.  And the funniest part was some people looked at the movie and actually said, 'Pretty soon all movies are going to look like this..' and that's not really true.  That's not how it went.  Tron still has a very unique look, which turns out is very appropriate for modern day CG capabilities; you know it just lends itself to that.

(MO) You know there's sequel after sequel after sequel coming out right now, but this seems like, you know, with the title, like a whole rediscovery of a project as opposed to a sequel.

(SL) That's a good way to put it, a rediscovery of a project.  It's a generational thing.  It's like what happened was you were ten years old, you went to see Tron, it blew your parents mind.  They couldn't comprehend what Disney was doing.  It was way too avant-garde.  Nobody figured that Disney was going to be this cutting edge or avant-garde.  You didn't see those words in the same sentence with Walt Disney in those days.  And the kids said 'Hey this is for me.  It's a good sign if my parents can't really deal with it.'  And they grew up with it and then it kept coming true.  And so I actually think that generational timeline had a lot to do with getting the movie made.  I think the people who were ten who saw it then had to be 35 and be in positions where they can get movies like this made to say, 'Tron, yeah I'm on board.  Let's go.'