Luckily for famed sci-fi director Neill Blomkamp, we’ve got you covered with how he adapted the legendary racing simulator, groundbreaking camerawork devised to capture all the action on the track, and racing films from the past. We were able to discuss places that inspired us from.
PlayStation Blog: The Gran Turismo movie will be very different from your previous films. It’s neither based on your script nor his dystopian sci-fi, what drew you to this project?
Neil Blomkamp: So, actually, the dystopian sci-fi script I sold to Sony started the conversation. As the pre-production process progressed, I began to become very enthusiastic about just working. something, and at that point they said, “What about Gran Turismo?” My first thought was, “Wait, how am I going to make a movie out of his racing simulator?”But I’ve read the scripts, and I personally have three. [Nissan] R35 GTR — I’m personally obsessed with the entire Nissan and Nismo lineage, so as a car buff, I was immediately intrigued.
Also, while I have been very familiar with video games in many ways throughout my career, I had never come across anything like it. Gran Turismo Where the movie itself deals with games as a gameIt’s based on the true story of Jann Mardenborough, who learned to drive by playing games before he drove professionally in real life, racing against other real drivers. It’s just a great story.
Another reason I signed up was because, like you said, my work tends to be darker and more dystopian, but this movie has been very inspiring. rice field. It never occurred to me that I would be directing a film that would leave the theater feeling elated and inspired. This really appealed to me.
Are there any creative challenges or advantages when working within IP like this?
One of the great things is that very few executives would say, this.If you’re working on another IP with a more established worldview and story, everyone has a preconceived notion of how things should be. But in Gran Turismo we have a famous IP that doesn’t have these preconceived notions of what a film adaptation should look like. This gave me a lot of creative freedom to go out and make it.
How did you pay tribute to the game without an established plot or fictional world? How did you extract the DNA of the game and make it recognizable on film?
For one thing, the film seeks to take you along the journey of someone who experienced these legendary trucks virtually for the first time and applied what he learned in the simulation to a real-life scenario. So I tried to visually connect these two points of his using many images from GT games. For example, lines to use when driving a truck, markers, checkpoints, rewards for leveling up, etc. Or
And lots of little Easter eggs. Small moments like recreating some of the in-game victory poses you had the actors perform in the movie. There are also lots of cool cars gearheads can find. We did our best to drop interesting cars here and there.
By the way, what is your favorite car to appear?
So at the beginning of the movie we have a first generation NSX, which is a big deal to me. i love that car
We also wanted some really fancy options on the other end of the spectrum that would be true Easter eggs for car enthusiasts, such as the Koenigsegg Gemera, a yet-to-be-released 1700-horsepower four-seat car. It’s like a Bugatti Rolls-Royce.
From the limited clips we’ve seen so far, it looks like some of the cinematography is directly referencing the in-game Chase camera. We also get a glimpse of a pretty serious rig for filming cars at high speeds. Could you please explain the process here?
We ended up creating something cool just to watch on a big cinema screen. That’s why we’ve doubled down on our FPV drone and equipped it with an IMAX sensor certified camera. There was a lot of high-speed drone work in the air in the film, which utilized tracked arms attached to high-speed vehicles. In this case, he actually installed it on an R35 GTR, but could (mostly) keep pace with many of his GT3 cars in the film.
There are already some cool dynamic angles between that car and drone work. But I was also obsessed with recreating his camera angles that players know in the game. So for third-person tracking, he built the R1 rig, which allowed the camera to be positioned so that the entire car was in frame.
To capture the POV (cockpit view) of the driver, the stunt driver was able to lie on his back and mount a camera where his head should be. I loved including nods to the game in this way.
Films depicting the on-track and off-track drama of motorsports have a rich history. Le Mans and Grand Prix more recently Ford vs Ferrari. Can you tell us about any genre films that you used as inspiration?
The only movie I can really point to is Gran Turismo It’s from Steve McQueen Le Mans. That movie is insane. You can see how fast they are going. I know how dangerous it can be.can also tell you how pollution The car is very.
At the beginning of that movie, they spend a lot of time pushing into each character (hero, villain, clock) before the race, and then rapidly start cross-cutting between them. Our film has a very similar sequence with the main character and his enemies, directly inspired by the McQueen classics.
Usually in my films, someone explodes or a genetically mutated creature goes on a rampage. For a trillion years, I never thought I’d make a movie about racing or sports. I’m still surprised when I say that.
Gran Turismo 7 is now available for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4and PlayStation VR2 after a free update earlier this year.
Gran Turismo will appear exclusively in theaters this August.
