Attack The Block Director Stays Mum On Monster Alien Effects
- Details
- Category: Interviews
- Created: Monday, 25 July 2011 23:26
- Published: Monday, 25 July 2011 23:26
- Written by Lupe Haas
When aliens from outer space crash land in a rough neighborhood in South London, the street kids take on the hairy ape-like creatures with glowing blue teeth in ATTACK THE BLOCK. At a recent press day in Los Angeles with the British writer and director, Cornish told CineMovie he would rather not say whether the creatures were animatronics, a man in a suit and/or CGI.
"I don't want to go to far in how we did it because I like that people can't quite tell."What he will reveal is that he definitely used CGI a "tiny bit," but to remove details from the movie rather than adding to it. The writer behind Ant-Man (2014) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011), the Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg collaboration, finds the current "obsession" of CGI boring in that the "creatures in movies are a bit same-y." From a movie-goers perspective, he believes CGI has been overused to make everything photorealistic. As a fan of classic monster movies like Gremlins, ET, and Ghostbusters, he wanted to return to that "style, character" and more human aspects of those movies.
The ATTACK THE BLOCK aliens have a much more natural movement than CGI-created characters, but he stayed mum on whether he used a man in a suit trick like the old days. He did let on that he hired world-class quadrapedalist and movement coach Terry Notary, as a consultant on film festival favorite. Joe met Notary on The Adventures of Tintin when he was brought in to coach Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. "He's brilliant in the way animals move and getting that stuff right," said Cornish who moonlights as an actor (Hot Fuzz). Notary's previous work includes the viper wolves in Avatar, the Silver Surfer in the Fantastic Four sequel, and The Hulk.
That leaves us really wondering how Cornish did it since all those films relied heavily on CGI. What is your guess on how he created the alien monsters?
ATTACK THE BLOCK opens in movie theaters July 29th.