Terry Gilliam has agreed to act as a creative advisor on a new film by British digital animation specialist, Tim Ollive. 1884 will be set in the titular year, but with Europe at war, the sky filled with steam-powered flying cars and man having landed on the moon.
Director Ollive collaborated with Gilliam on the SFX for everything from Life of Brian, through Brazil and Twelve Monkeys up to the more recent The Brothers Grimm. The screenplay is by Ollive and Dennis de Groot, who also has a long history with Gilliam, having worked on Life of Brian and Time Bandits. Gilliam and the other producers showed a four-minute teaser to an FX forum in Paris last week and apparently a number of the former members of Monty Python will be on board the film as part of the voice cast. Gilliam has said of what he has seen so far:-
“The quality of the work is amazing: It’s not slick and sleek CG work, such as studios in L.A. particularly produce. It looks crafted by an artisan, and the scale and design are spectacular.”
Apparently the film will look like animation, but will mix live-action puppetry with CGI heads and actors’ filmed eyes and mouths. The backgrounds will feature collages of miniatures, film, graphics and period photography.
Frankly that sounds like a pretty bonkers mix and it remains to be seen what the final effect will be. Certainly the work of Nick Park and films such as A Town Called Panic and Fantastic Mr Fox have shown that retro animation techniques still have something to offer in these times of CG-animation ubiquity. Maybe this will prove to be something very different but in a very good way.
Source: Variety.
