Three Precogs can tell a crime before it happens. If all three agree, it will happen. But what if they don’t? In Minority Report, one of them casts a dissenting vote. Therefore, the system cannot be perfect. And with such a debatable issue as foreseeing the future, no society can embody it. At least for now…
“Who is guilty without having done anything yet?”
Pre-crime saves lives, but…
“What about the 0.02 per cent who change their mind and do not do something after all?”
These questions form the theme of Minority Report. How do Visual Effects help the theme and message of this film? Do they help at all? In other words, does using Digital Visual Effects undermine the storytelling or help it move forward? I certainly think it is the latter.
The Setup
How does one design the world as we know it almost half a century into the future? Writer and researcher Shilo T. McClean argues, “In narrative filmmaking the development of DVFx arises out of narrative demands.”
In Minority Report, architecture varies. Classical Greek motifs, on one hand, signify the beauty and status of the city.
On the other hand, futuristic monuments and edifices surrounding the aforementioned buildings add scope, providing innovative, imaginable technological ideas.
Last but not least, the dark and wet alleys denote that some things will never change, even if they are polished with holographic advertisements.
Dana Friedman and Mat Beck, ILM Visual Effects Producers, once commented that the tools are not the main point, just “pipelines to our imaginations,” and that the best images are “lyrically and emotionally real.”
Producer Bonnie Curtis emphasises the contradiction between current and futuristic elements, saying, “The opening scene is somewhere in Georgetown, and while everything looks ordinary, we enter ‘The Temple,’ which looks like a whole different world.”
So, are the DVFx in the first act necessary? Andre Bazin is in favor of the Visual Effects and states that a script can be weak by itself, it doesn’t need the DVFx to ruin it. He sees the opening scene as “…A total cinema that is to provide that complete illusion of life which is still a long way away.”
The Confrontation
People often accuse Visual Effects of ruining the storytelling, saying that they are more important than the actual film or that they are impressive and the story is lost. Shilo T. McClean, as Bazin mentioned earlier, references the reasons that a script can be lacklustre with or without DVFx: poor structure, massive changes to fundamental plot details in the adaptation from an original source, poor premises and reliance upon spectacle as a substitute for action, character development and thematic resonance.
In Minority Report, we have an exceedingly strong plot without the futuristic elements: powerful, relatable characters, edge-of-your-seat action sequences, intricate riddles, nail-biting suspense, and tension already built into the setup.
“Because it is a science fiction film and a science fiction film is based on future facts mostly,” Janusz Kaminski, the Director of Photography, says. He adds, “Steven Spielberg makes us imagine facts from the past, the present and the future and decided to depict a science fiction noir film where there is a lot of story, mystery, and clues, and requires attention in order to put everything together”. And to top it all off, Spielberg approached Kaminski telling him that he wants “the ugliest, dirtiest movie” either of them had ever made.
DVFx are added to the already existing characteristics only to “transfer” us to the future. Helicopters without propellers, sonic oscillator weapons, flying police officers, cars made by themselves within two minutes, cameras that can read your eyes from two hundred yards, and holograms are not just baseless predictions or random speculations.
Three years prior to starting filming, Steven Spielberg gathered the producers, the art director, and the visual effects supervisor along with a sixteen-member future experts team consisting of scientists, philosophers, and historians. The reason? To think about and design buildings, machines, cars, advertisements, and equipment as it could potentially be in the year 2054.
Minority Report is a science fiction/action/thriller, so everything counts—from the believability of the story to the believability of DVFx. Anderton (played by Tom Cruise) is hunted down for something he hasn’t done yet, that is, he becomes the victim of the system he so passionately supported for years. DVFx just add to this premise!
The Surroundings
Scott Frankel, Compositing Supervisor of ILM, discusses the alley chase, describing it as one of the central sequences of the film. He mentions how they “extended” the height of the buildings or how walls were added and the skies replaced so that no wire was visible. The camera makes the four-story building look like a twelve-story one. Numerous “Photographic elements shot in the Blue Screen” were added “in post” so the hover pack flames look real in motion, like “Genuine Hot Exhaust.”
Author Albert J. LaValley stresses that “Special Effects have to be more narratively integrated and convincing representations of a realistic fictional world here for the audience to believe in them sufficiently and engage with the resulting dilemmas posed for the film’s characters.”
The Spiders
Machines that easily violate private lives have been created, and no one can do anything about it. As the spiders look for Anderton, they invade people’s lives who just stop doing whatever they are doing and wait for the spiders to identify them, taking it as a matter of course.
Spielberg said, “George Orwell’s prophecy really comes true not in the 20th but in the 21st century. Big Brother already watches and that little privacy we have now will be completely evaporated within twenty or thirty years, because technology will be able to see through walls, through rooftops, into the very privacy of our personal lives, into the sanctuary of our families, and these violations will be a detriment of society.”
The Holograms
We see these often in Minority Report. Here is the interesting thing about them: their construction. Very heart-warming is the moment when Anderton loads the holograms of his wife and son. Barry Armour, ILM Computer Graphics Supervisor, claims they wanted them to look “semi-amateurish” from the viewer’s point of view but perfect from Anderton’s.
Steve Braggs, ILM Sequence Supervisor, talks about how these holograms’ motion was achieved and why they used “Image-Based Modeling and Rendering.” They wanted a “rough shape” in their projections, to be “realistic yet not photo-real.” Rob Legato, the VFX Supervisor in Titanic, stated once that visual effects should be used as a tool for the storytelling process and that if the result looks real, the audience will accept it despite knowing it isn’t. I guess the people we love will always seem perfect to us, whether real or not.
The Maglevs
Alexander Laurant, ILM Art Director, says they used traditional media like physical models, apart from the 3D effects. The idea was to make them look like they were made of cement and steel. The Maglevs sequence where the police pursue Anderton is entirely shot using a blue screen, but to get it right, they used basic Animatics to see how the traffic would flow. Tom Cruise was framed against the blue screen, jumping to and hanging from one of the car replicas, which were then replaced by “computer-generated vehicles.”
The Hoverships
They were made and painted to the detail in the studio. Dana Friedman says that they looked exactly the same as they appear on the screen, except, of course, they couldn’t fly.
So CGI is not everything, is it? Piers Bizony, a science journalist, once said: “One of the greatest misconceptions about modern films is that visual effects are generated by computers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Human inventiveness is the most important ingredient, and it always will be.”
The Visions
Steven Spielberg wanted the Precogs to see everything in a circular manner, as the human eye sees circles and not squares. To make these visions look like the thoughts we have in our heads, a team called “Imaginary Forces” was recruited to animate them so that they didn’t look static.
This brings us back to storytelling. How much the VFX for the Precogs’ thoughts would cost didn’t matter. The number one priority was: Is it going to look real? Will people believe? John Dykstra, one of the Star Wars VFX Supervisors, once stated that someone has to be adaptable to storytelling no matter how sophisticated their equipment is.
The Resolution
No effects! The third act of Minority Report has no DVFx. Why? No need! Justice has been served and everyone got what they deserved (?). No fancy equipment, no need for impressions, not an end that someone would expect from “a cinema of attractions” film. Voiceover and photographic lens are what the story needs to move from here on.
Andre Bazin stated “Only a photographic lens can give us the kind of image of the object that is capable of satisfying the deep need man has to substitute for it something more than a mere approximation, a kind of decal or transfer. The photographic image is the object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and space that govern it.”
Later in his book, he returns to this point and emphasises the mesmerising effects the photographic lens can have on the screen, which doesn’t undermine the reality of the image but, on the contrary, justifies it.
Conclusion
Minority Report expresses many ideas, beliefs, and debates. It is a matter of time until we see holograms on the streets or encounter a situation where our eyes are scanned and read from a long distance. More and more moral issues will be raised in the future, leaving the previous ones unanswered, especially the one that has been debated from the birth of politics to this very day. How much government do we want… How much government do we need? “The Future Of Policing Using Pre-Crime Technology”, published in 2018 by Forbes, may shed some light regarding the current status of predictive policing.
I would like to leave you with a quote by Sid Ganis(former president of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) that I believe represents the relationship between VFx and storytelling, “With all the magical technological advances that have brought films where they are today, everything we do on film is the most human of arts, and it’s the art of storytelling. In every culture all around the world, storytelling is how people connect with one another. State-of-the-art technology will change, but state-of-the-heart storytelling will always be the same.”
Bibliography & References
[1] Bazin, A. (2005), “What is Cinema?” Vol. 1, University Of California Press.
[2] Bizony P. (2001), “The Leading Edge of Visual Effects”, London: Autumn Press Ltd.
[3] The Future Of Policing Using Pre-Crime Technology 2018, accessed 23 December 2018, available here.
[4] Goulekas K. E. (2001), “Visual Effects in a Digital World”, Academic Press.
[5] La Valley, A. (1985), “Traditions of Trickery: The Role of Special Effects in the Science Fiction Film”, Southern Illinois University Press.
[6] McClean S. T. (2007), “Digital Storytelling”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[7] Minority Report (2002), Directed by Steven Spielberg, [DVD], additional features on DVD.
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