You don’t have to wait for the home video version of ‘Tomorrowland’ to get some behind the scenes goodness as we have this footage of director Brad Bird giving his commentary of a scene from the film.
Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the film yet as the scene involved is one that we’ve seen in the trailer and pretty much sets up the entire film. Here, Casey Newton (played by Britt Robertson) is gathering her personal belongings after getting arrested. As she goes through the items, she sees a pin that doesn’t belong to her and soon realizes that the pin with its special powers can take her to a new world where anything is possible.
It’s interesting to note that Bird (who also co-wrote the film), really wanted to write the pin scenes as he was fascinated with the idea that there was another reality that was parallel to ours which was accessible just by touching an object.
While he is reluctant to explain the special effects of the scene where Casey finds herself in the fields of Tomorrowland, he does say that it wasn’t filmed in a standard blue-screen way:
“If much of what’s in a frame is real, then there’s an extra layer that the audience can feel… I think people get dazzled by visual effects because they’re so sophisticated now. And certainly, I love them and love the ability to use them. That said, I feel that a lot of filmmakers freely too much on them. And there magic to be had in simply doing the kind of filmmaking they did in the ‘20s, where you just put on image” against another. Filmmaking itself is a magic trick, and you don’t need to have every digital trick in the book to have something have power.”
(One can definitely not argue with that logic!)
You can watch the scene without commentary in the teaser below.
‘Tomorrowland’ reaches theaters everywhere on May 22.
