The first look of an actor in an iconic role is always a hugely anticipated event and few cinematic characters are as instantly recognisable as Superman.

Today Warner Bros have come up with the goods, giving us our first look at British actor Henry Cavill in Zack Snyder’s Superman movie Man of Steel and as you’d expect it’s a typically unsubtle debut for Snyder’s film.

Days after we learned that Laurence Fishburne was to join Snyder’s film as Perry White comes this image of Cavill very much the man of steel and what we have here is our first real look at the Snyder Superman suit. When the first picture of Brandon Routh as Superman appeared there was huge debate over the minutiae of the suit and this is sure to be no exception.

The production is being overseen by Christopher Nolan and stars Amy Adams, Diane Lane and Kevin Costner as well as Michael Shannon as General Zod who will no doubt be demanding some kneeling over the course of the film. It’s a great pic, a good debut for the new version of the character.

Man, it’s going to be a long wait until the Summer of 2013…

Click it – go on, it’ll get bigger.

Although I miss it as often as I catch it, I am a big fan of CSI in all its incarnations, though I must confess to becoming a little concerned by the increasingly rapid cast turnover in the original Vegas-set series.

No sooner had Laurence “I used to be Morpheus you know” Fishburne bedded himself in than he announced he was off and Ted Danson (Damage, Cheers, Three Men and a Baby) was pretty swiftly drafted in to take his place.

Now, I have nothing against Danson at all, I’ve seen some fine work from him and he is likely to be effortlessly at home on the show. But it would be good to have a little more continuity from the cast. We’ll see how it all goes. In the meantime, we have a shot of Danson on set with Jorja Fox (as Sara Sidle) and Marg Helgenberger (as Catherine Willows). It looks like he’s settling in nicely.

Many thanks to Television Blend for this.

We’ve already had the trailer for new movie Contagion and all we needed was a poster.

Well, Warner Bros have graciously given us an exclusive look at the new UK poster, and it’s a simple and effective image of Soderbergh’s eagerly anticipated film.

Contagion seems to be a 21st Century version of Outbreak and since I love that movie, I’m hoping for good things from this. Have to admit I rather like this poster although I think it’s funny they had to find such a short word with a C in it to begin the cities and Macau won the vote! Nice to see London make the cut for being infected too!

“Contagion” follows the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days.  As the fast-moving epidemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than the virus itself.  At the same time, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.

Contagion has a great cast which includes Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, John Hawkes and is directed by the awesome Steven Soderbergh.

Click the poster below to enlarge. It infects the UK on the 21st of October this year.

CBS executives must have raised a glass and said “Cheers” when the news of Laurence Fishburne’s replacement for their long-running TV show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, was announced.

That’s right, none other than famed Bostonian bartender Sam Malone (Mr. Ted Danson) will join the series for the 12th-season premiere which is due for transmission on September 21st in the US. Danson (currently winning plaudits for his turn as an eccentric, pot-smoking magazine magnate in the quirky HBO comedy, Bored to Death) will take over from Fishburne, who has just finished a four-year stint on the show.

The much underrated Danson is certainly an interesting choice, and as one of our fellow HeyUGuys tweeted earlier, here’s hoping they do an episode where he has to investigate a triple homicide involving a postman, accountant and a barmaid.

News via The Wrap

Death and taxes* abound in this first look trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s airborne toxic event movie – Contagion.

In truth I’d rather he had decided to adapt DeLillo’s White Noise instead, however with Barry Sonnenfeld the last name attached to that project (gathering dust as we speak) we have Contagion to look forward to.

It’s a common story of families and lives torn apart by some catastrophic event, in this case an airborne disease and, as the trailer shows, there’s plenty of tension and paranoia as the various sides of science and superstition play out.

Strange then that it should look so ordinary. That said Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Gould, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle make up a pretty outstanding cast with a sizable number of Oscars between them and it’s Soderbegh behind the camera so there must be more to it than meets the eye.

There is an air of Wolfgang Petersen’s 1995 movie Outbreak about this one, not least the impressive cast – Petersen had Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman fighting off bad spored – but Contagion looks to go one further and have the outbreak… well, see for yourself below.

Be warned that one of the (supposedly) main characters snuffs it in the trailer – given that its a story about the end of the world that’s probably not too shocking an event but if you don’t want to know the score look away now.

Catch Contagion  21st October!

*not taxes – just death.

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is moving towards the end of its international shooting schedule, with an almost absurdly deep and rich cast (Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Gould, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne) now shooting the final leg of the production in San Francisco.

Of course, any film about a lethal air-borne virus is likely to cut a swathe through such a cast, so perhaps some of them have concluded their shooting schedules with suitably dramatic death scenes? Surely they can’t all make it to the final curtain?

Anyhoo, we now have a fantastic looking set of on-set stills showing clothes, personal effects and rubbish piled up, pictures of (presumably) missing loved ones on notice boards and Jude Law safely(?) sealed in a bio-suit. Scroll down, enjoy and then comment on the bottom to let us know whether you’re looking forward to this one.

Source: Laughing Squid & Just Jared via Coming Soon.

CSI: Las Vegas is still the most watched TV programme in the world and it’s no wonder when you look at the awesome storylines they keep churning out. It’s amazing to think that it’s been going for such a long time but personally I still find it fresh and compelling viewing.

Season 10 is no different. It’s the first season where Gil Grissom (William Petersen) doesn’t appear but to my surprise however, his now wife, Sara Suidle  (Jorja Fox) is back for some more crime fighting action while Grissom apparently attends various bug conferences around the world. She comes into replace Riley Adams (Lauren Lee Smith) who left at the end of the last season. Laurence Fishburne is back as Dr. Raymond Langston alongside those we’ve come accustomed to, Marg Helgenberger, Paul Guilfoyle, George Eads, Eric Szmanda and Robert David Hall as Dr. Al Robbins.

I think what keeps me coming back to CSI are the storylines. You think they would find it hard to keep coming up with new and original storylines for a series which has now been going for 252 episodes (including season 11) but every episode is completely different to the last. It’s also completely ridiculous that even though they’re  not cops, they do all the investigation but you simply don’t care.

The series merges clever CG, good acting, a great locations and fantastic storylines which are often completely stupid and unrealistic but you forget that fact and immerse yourself in the programme. I’ve been known to watch four episodes back to back just because I’ve enjoyed them so much!

CSI Season 10 is awesome, I love it just as much as I’ve loved the previous 9 seasons and as long as the storylines keep on coming, I see now reason why it won’t keep going for an awful lot longer.

****~ (4/5)

Last week, HeyUGuys were invited along to Robert Rodriguez Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas by Twentieth Century Fox for a very special trip to find out how their latest home entertainment release, Predators was created. We got to chat with the awesome production team at Troublemaker Studios, looking at everything from how they made the posters to how they created a real life alien planet out in the back lot – and all this in a little over a year.

We’ve already posted the video Q&A with special effects legend, Greg Nicotero, a video interview with the production team and all these along with my studio visit report and today, we get to find out more from the main man himself, Producer Robert Rodruiguez who talks us through what exactly we can expect to see on the Blu-ray.

Read on to find out how all this was done and come back every day this week for another feature on the movie. You’ll be able to keep track of all our features from the movie here.

Predators is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 1st November 2010. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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Last week, HeyUGuys were invited along to Robert Rodriguez Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas by Twentieth Century Fox for a very special trip to find out how their latest home entertainment release, Predators was created. We got to chat with the awesome production team at Troublemaker Studios, looking at everything from how they made the posters to how they created a real life alien planet out in the back lot – and all this in a little over a year.

We’ve already posted the video Q&A with special effects legend, Greg Nicotero along with my studio visit report and today, we have a very cool interview with the Production Design heads, Steve Joyner and Caylah Eddleblute who tell us what we can expect from the Blu-ray. They also tell us how they managed to create such an amazing set within their own studio.

Read on to find out how all this was done and come back every day this week for another feature on the movie. You’ll be able to keep track of all our features from the movie here.

Predators is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 1st November 2010. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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Last week, HeyUGuys were invited along to Robert Rodriguez Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas by Twentieth Century Fox for a very special trip to find out how their latest home entertainment release, Predators was created. We got to chat with the awesome production team at Troublemaker Studios, looking at everything from how they made the posters to how they created a real life alien planet out in the back lot – and all this in a little over a year.

In this interview you can find out all there is to know about the special effects legend that is, Greg Nicotero who has worked with Robert Rodriguez on all his movies + Steven Spielberg & Quentin Tarantino to name but a few. I contemplated editing this video down into a 5 minute vid but the man is so interesting that I thought you might as well have the whole thing. If you’d rather read what he said rather than watching it, the transcription is below or you can read my full report from the studio visit here.

Read on to find out how all this was done and come back every day this week for another feature on the movie. You’ll be able to keep track of all our features from the movie here.

Predators is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 1st November 2010. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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Q&A: Greg Nicotero, Predators

You’ve got to create a whole new breed of Predator. After you’ve stopped jumping up and down and celebrating, what’s the first step?

Ironically, I found out that we were doing this project via an interview Robert did on Ain’t It Cool News. When we were doing From Dusk ‘Till Dawn, Robert had said, ‘Oh, man! I wrote this treatment for this Predator movie…’ And that was 1995, so Robert and I have been partners for 15 years and literally he just called and said, ‘Hey, remember when I was telling you about Predators, that treatment?’ I told him I remembered, but vaguely because it was a long time ago. He said, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re gonna do it.’ I said, ‘Oh, great. Keep me posted.’ Then someone literally called and said, ‘Robert said you’re building all the Predators for the new movie.’ And it was on Ain’t It Cool. So I haven’t even read the script, we hadn’t even signed a deal and Robert was, like, ‘Oh yeah, Nicotero’s building all my creatures.’ And I went, ‘I am? Woohoo! Yay!’ It was great. When you see a movie where a character comes back after 20 years, all of a sudden the guy looks 20 years older, and it’s the Sean Connery in Dr No versus the Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again and you kind of go, “Aww…” But he’s still James Bond. So with our film, we were able to recreate the classic Predator from the original movie, which had never been done before. The designs had changed a little bit through each subsequent project so we were able to actually go back to the original Predator. We matched the armour, the laser cannon… We really literally matched everything. He’s not supposed to be the same guy, but he kind of looks identical to the original Predator.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1985, I had worked on a couple of movies – Evil Dead II and stuff like that, and then I got a job for two weeks working on reshoots for Predator and so when I was on set, I was taking pictures. That was back when nobody really cared if you took photos of anything, so I had pictures of Kevin Peter Hall and pictures with Arnold, I was shooting every single aspect of what the heads looked like, so when Predators came up, the first thing I did was pulled all those photos out and said, ‘Listen, we get to recreate this character.’ So my first meeting with Robert and Nimrod we were talking a little bit about it and Robert said, ‘Okay, well the new Predators… If this (motions to the classic head) was the cassette tape, the new Predators (points to the new head) are the iPod version. And for some reason his description called into my head the idea of elongating the face and sweeping the dreads back and making the head a little thinner. The way the classic Predator works, and the way the dreadlocks are flaring outward and the armour’s real big and bulky, so he looks really massive and he looks powerful, so what we wanted to do with the new Predator was make him more like a black widow. He’s sleek and he’s elegant and you get the idea that he’s much more efficient and more advanced, so we had not a lot of time to build everything, not a lot of time to design everything. This was probably the 12th concept that we had had and the idea that, you know, with the classic Predator, Derek Mears wore this, it had contact lenses in and we had to blend off the eye because we used his real eyes. With this one we went a little bit different because we’re actually using radio controlled eyes and blinks, that are being operated by my two colleagues, Beth Hathaway and Jeff Edwards over there. So it was a dream project. Next project, I’ll get to build the shark from Jaws and then I can die, I will be happy. So it was fun. It’s interesting because I’ve worked do closely with Robert and over the last 15 years, watched… We’ve sort of grown together as filmmakers. He saw an article that was written about KNB and it listed a bunch of our titles and he sent me a really touching email that said, ‘Hey, when we were doing From Dusk ‘Till Dawn, if some guy had come back from the future and handed you this article and we would have been able to look into the future to see where our careers had taken us, how would you have reacted? It was just a really touching thought of, ‘wow, look what we’ve done!’

Walking through this studio and having worked here for 12 years, my first film here was The Faculty and then we did all the Spy Kids movies and this stage was where we shot 90% of Sin City, so I walk in here and I keep thinking I’m going to see Mickey Rourke walking around or Benecio or Bruce Willis. It’s exciting. Being able to work hand in hand with Robert and watch his empire grow and with KNB, Howard and I have been fortunate enough to have our fingers in most of the modern genre movies. I got to conventions every once in a while, a little 12-year-old kid will come up and want me to sign his copy of Evil Dead 2 and I’ll tell him I was that little kid when I first met Tom Savini and George Romero, I was the little geeky kid who had my Famous Monsters magazine and love Ray Harryhausen and watched Dawn of the Dead 500 times, so the reason that movies like this continue to get made and continue to be exciting is because you have guys like Robert and Nimrod that just have such a love for the genre and such an affection for it.

We were shooting the scene where the two Predators were fighting and at one point, their blades lock in the middle and they’re struggling and the gag in the script is that the blade snaps and it gives one Predator the advantage over the other. And Nimrod yelled cut and we went to replace the blade for take 2 and I saw him walk over, kick the dirt around a little bit and he picked up the broken blade and stuck it in his pocket. And that was such a great moment for me, because then he went back over and he sat down and he kind of had this really great child-like grin on his face and I walked over and said, ‘I saw what you did!’ And he went, ‘Dude, I have a Predator blade! How great is that?!’ He was so excited. I kind of wanted to take it and put it in a little shadow box for him, just to frame it, but he was, like, ‘No, no, man… This is my little piece of movie history.’ It was a dream project. We had 62 of the most talented special effects makeup technicians, sculptors, fabricators, and mechanical designers. My company has been around for more than 22 years and I couldn’t be more proud of the people. I could never say that if it wasn’t for the people that make me look good, two of which are sitting over there right now. So to get a chance to recreate this character, and do it with Robert and do it with Nimrod and guys that are my friends. You spend your whole career wanting to get a chance to work with your buddies and between Quentin and Frank Darabont I get to go and hang out with my friends and say, ‘Let’s make a Predator today…’ ‘Okay!’ ‘Let’s make zombies for The Walking Dead…’ ‘Really? Okay! Great!’ I’m really lucky and it’s exciting.

Thanks everybody, I’ll see you guys later… (Mock gets up to walk out.) I don’t know what else to say.

From the time you were that kid to the time you were a pro, was there anyone you looked up to?

I was always inspired when I was younger by movies. And even still today, when we wrapped Predators I got on the plane and flew home and wrote a short film that I directed and I was so inspired. I’ve had a 25-year film school that nobody could… You couldn’t pay. I got to work next to Steven Spielberg and Tarantino and to be able to say I was there when they blew Marvin’s head off in the back seat of the car for Pulp Fiction? I mean, to me those are… to be able to be part of those moments and then have the kid come over to me and say, ‘I loved the scene in Pulp Fiction when they shot the guy in the head…’ or whatever and just to think that maybe the work we’re doing is inspiring a whole future generation of filmmakers. And there was one kid in particular who had a little portfolio and he had a zombie makeup and it was funny, when you have people who are just learning, they take pictures of everything and he obviously took his sister and poured blood all over her and then took a bunch of pictures of her and I’m looking at his book and there was a zombie makeup and I said, ‘is that your sister?’ He asked me how I knew and I said, ‘Cos that’s what I would’ve done!’ That’s what you do. You do a gorilla, you do a zombie, you do Dracula with the one little bit of blood and the widows’ peak and you go through these stages of what floats your boat and what inspires you and for me it’s exciting to know there are young filmmakers out there watching the work that we’ve done and then they will become the next Robert Rodriguez or they’ll be the next Greg Nicotero. It’s exciting to do that.

What are the bigger teeth of the Predator for? How does it eat? They look like additional fingers, not like teeth.

The idea is that they’re for ripping flesh and wrenching and then it grabs it, tears the meat and puts it into the mouth. If I put my finger in here, it’ll eat my finger right off. (He does). But what’s interesting is that in the new film, this is sort of an iconic, classic look for the Predator, so for the new one, we kept that look, but wanted it to be a little bit more crab-like, so you can see we added an extra digit and we made the fingers or I mean, the teeth, a lot more threatening and more menacing looking. But you look at the designs and, like, the dogs, the Predator hounds, you look at them and you think, ‘well how would they ever eat anything?’ Because they have these big giant horns, so they could never actually eat any food. And then we were talking about it with the Troublemaker VFX guys who worked really closely with us in terms of coming up with some of the concepts, we had designed the head and they did the Predator dog and then we threw everything on the table and said, ‘listen guys… We have no time to design all this stuff, we’re really up against a wall, so…’ Everyone threw their ideas in. It was a really big great melting pot of collaboration and Chris Olivia, who designed the dogs, we were talking about it one day and I said, ‘Well, maybe that’s why they’re so fucking pissed! They’re so pissed because they can’t eat anything.’ I had this idea at one point that maybe the Predators actually bred them that way so that they could be used only for hunting, they could never eat anything that they catch. So for this project we were able to come up with a lot of different creatures and characters, so everything we designed or built ended up in the movie. There was one other creature that’s chasing Topher through the woods and in the script it’s referred to as a Ram runner and we used Carey Jones, who was one of the Predator performers, we built this really elegant suit that he wore that had these weird kind of bony shoulders and stuff on it, so that was one of the few creatures that was digitally augmented because one of the things that I really liked about the design in the concept was that it had this really thin waist and it was very alien-looking and very strange. So what we did was, we shot Carey in the suit so we had the practical element of it, and then the VFX guys kind of made his body a little thinner and more insect looking. Predators was a fantastic example of prosthetic practical effects and visual effects working in conjunction to come up with the best look. If the director is the painter, our job is to give him the different colours he needs. So VFX is a colour and makeup effects is a colour, costume design and stunts and everything. So I always felt like every tool has its use. If you use a prosthetic or an animatronic and you hold on it just a little bit too long then all of a sudden maybe it doesn’t quite look so real, or with a CG character, you hold on it a little bit too long… It’s a really delicate balance and I think because of the relationship I have with Robert and Nimrod and the studio and their visual effects department that we had a great balance. Aside from the fact that I think Robert just wanted Predators walking around the parking lot here at the studio! One day, he was, like, ‘Dude, there’s Predators in the parking lot!’ I was, like, ‘yeah, I know, he doesn’t have his shoes on…’ I was always looking at that stuff.

Can the Anamatronic faces move quickly if required?

They can, it’s just a matter of, for us, it takes three people to operate this head and then we have the suit performer. The thing that a lot of people don’t realise is, it’s a really delicate art form to wear these suits. You’re basically put in a neoprene wet suit with a 30 pound head put on your head with servos, you can’t see, you’re sweating, you can’t go to the bathroom… And then you’re expected to perform. ‘Okay, now you have to run 200 feet at another guy in the exact same suit and smash into each other.’ So I give a lot of credit to the performers that wear these suits. Derek Mears and Jeremy Fitzgerald played the classic Predator and Carey Jones and Brian Steele traded off performances in the different Predator suits, because there were three – the one we called the Dog Handler, The Falconer and then Mr Black. So the other ones you never really saw their faces, this was the one that was revealed.

What was the biggest challenge?

There was a lot of pressure because of the fact that I’d never really doubted the designs or the concepts that we’ done but it was a challenge because we had a lot of work to be done in a very short time period, so just the idea of casting the actors to play in the suits was the first thing out of the gate. And they relied on me to pick the performers, so I chose the guys to wear the suits so we could get body casts on ‘em and start manufacturing. And we started building at the end of July and by October 4th we were filming, so there was not a lot of time to make mistakes. So I felt like on that movie I never stopped moving. In the studio, we have our mold-making department, our sculpting department and our suit builders and everything, and what I ended up doing… What I felt like I did for 10 weeks was circle the shop. I felt like I was a shark and that I was just going round and round and just watching everything that was happening on each table and making sure that everything got done to my specifications. I had a guy named Shannon Shea who was sort of running the shop with me at the time and we kind of circled each other. We never stopped. Robert always throws the gauntlet. All the projects that we’ve done with him, all his movies since 1995 and he knows that I’ll never let him down. That’s a lot of pressure on me! You spend your career wanting to get a chance to work with your buddies and you also want to do the best job that you can. So I think Robert knows that I put 150% effort into everything. This is the first time I’d ever worked with Nimrod and Nimrod just said, ‘I know you’ve got my back on this show…’ You want to keep the director’s field of vision clear to direct the movie, you don’t want to have to have him worry about little details about hiding a zipper or whatever. I spent a lot of the time standing right next to the guys in the suits, and then Nimrod would give his directions and I’d transfer that to the guys, because it’s challenging to direct a guy wearing a suit, because he can’t really hear and his vision is impaired and stuff like that. I feel like my job is really to do what I can to give the director everything he wants and with Robert, he and I have developed a very similar language. When we met on from Dusk ‘Till Dawn, we talked about Jaws and we talked about Escape From New York and we talked about The Thing and Blade Runner and we kind of realised that we shared this similar love for everything. We were kin of separated at birth, even though he’s a little younger than me. We both play guitar and we both love Stevie Ray Vaughn and so we share the same language. And it makes it a delight to work with someone like that – it’s your little brother who’s taller than you.

Do you think about how much material is going to be on the Blu-Ray?

The interesting thing is that my first job was Day of the Dead in 1984, so it was George Romero and Tom Savini and I was handed the video camera quite often during that shoot to document the making of the movie, so I always sort of thought that that’s what you just did. So most of the movies that are out on DVD, such as Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, that’s all footage that I shot on set, I never shot it for the DVD, because I didn’t know then that DVDs… Even with VHS tapes, it was just I documented it for myself, because I thought, ‘Wow, this is kind of an exciting time…’ And I have hundreds and hundreds of tapes of every movie we’ve ever done and even when you’re on set… Because Robert and Quentin and those guys, they let me shoot video on set because they know it’s just for me and it’s never going to end up on YouTube, it’s something I do. So at the end of Inglourious Basterds, when they machine gun Hitler, I’m standing right next to Quentin and I tilt up to him and he’s, like, ‘Gnarly! It’s so great!’ I love that little clip.

It’s such a great way to preserve those moments. The fact that there have been a lot of moments in my career that I had no idea at the time were going to be so iconic or memorable, like stabbing Uma Thurman in the chest with the syringe in Pulp Fiction and I have video of us shooting all that stuff. It’s strange, because film fans are so rabid for knowledge and information about how their favourite movie was done. You can go to the Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh where they shot Dawn of the Dead and still people walk around there’s this weird reverence about it. You can go to Martha’s Vineyard where Jaws was shot and people actually go to the location. The prison where Shawshank was shot has tours now. Somebody was saying to me why that was and I said, ‘It’s a way for the audience to identify with a film that they love so much, that they can put themselves in that spot and say, “I stood right here and that’s where Andy Dufresne was in his jail cell…”‘ And it just binds people to the film. Horror movies for some reason have that. Anybody that’s here that’s been to Washington DC and hasn’t been to the Exorcist steps is a big liar, because everybody goes to the bottom of the steps and goes, ‘That’s where he was thrown down the steps and he rolls down…’ There’s just a weird fascination with it. So for me, being able to document being on those movie sets. I have footage of me and Wes Craven and John Carpenter, guys that not only inspired me when I was younger, but then I can say I was standing right next to them. So nowadays, having people be able to share that experience, you watch the behind-the-scenes thing on a Blu-Ray DVD it’s almost like you were there. You wish you were on a certain set, or think one looks cold, or would have hated to be on another because everyone looks miserable. It’s a shared experience, and by watching the DVD, you can put yourself in that position.

You’ve been involved in this industry for a while now and you’ve got 3D printer tech now. What are some of the tech leaps that have helped you in your craft?

Actually, 3D printing is an amazing technological leap, because you can actually design things in the computer and then print them out. It’s certainly a new step in the design process of creature design. I personally like having sculptors working with clay, because that to me is more about sculpting than it is about computer programming to me, and with creature design it’s a very organic thing. But the idea that we can do a body scan of an actor and recreate his… Even when we did Sin City with Mickey Rourke, we scanned his head and then cleaned up the scan. A lot of times you’ll have an actor that maybe is a little claustrophobic or they’ll have three minutes off before they have to run – you scan them and then you have three dimensional information on them and then you can output it and make a head, do design busts on it and all of that. So to me, I think one of the greatest advances in technology is just the fact that we have the ability, with VFX to accent things that we’ve done, and vice versa. The first time we took the classic Predator on set… There’s always a policy now where you’re not supposed to take pictures because they don’t want them on the Internet, you have to be really cautious about that because some idiot with a phone will do it and it’s not shot in the right light and maybe the head’s not on. You want your work to be displayed in the best possible light… But when we walked on set with the first Predator, every single person was, like, ‘I really want to get a picture with that… I want to pose.’ One guy was a big fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, which I am of course, and said, ‘Do you mind?’ So one day we took a photo of him with his Terrible Towel, which is a Steelers thing. I said, ‘If that ends up on the Internet, I will get fired, and so will you. So don’t!’

But it’s interesting because you walk on set and sometimes when you’re shooting a CGI character you just shoot an empty plate. The crew’s there and they’re kind of like, ‘Whatever….’ But when you go in with a creature, it’s suddenly, ‘Okay, I know what the creature looks like, I know that the creature’s going to go from there to there, going to grab that guy and rip his spine out, eat his brain…’ So it makes the shoot move very smoothly because the entire crew is involved in the process. And I think that’s the advantage of practical effects. If you go in and accent it and work your thing with the guys here at Troublemaker, we’ve all worked together for years, so again with the guys, we all jump into it together. It’s a very deep swimming pool, but it’s also one where we’ll go through the storyboards and decide what will be VFX and what will be us. You divvy up the work, we’ll concentrate on our strengths and it benefits the movie. The benefit is having a good mix of both. The audience knows when it’s really there or not.

Nimrod took a blade home. What did you take home?

I have these! (Points to heads). At my studio in LA. I have a really neat collection, I’m a collector too, I love props. I have one of the ears from Reservoir Dogs in a case in my house and I have the Mr Jingles from the Green Mile. So of course every once in a while I run through and terrorise my kids. I have one of the Michael Myers masks from one of the Halloween movies and my eight-year-old son almost had a heart attack one day because I came out of the garage with it. My kids – I have a five-year-old and an eight-year-old and they come to my studio and they run around and none of this phases them. It’s interesting that none of this phases them. They’re so used to it. So when they see something scary, my five-year-old daughter has the best zombie walk on the planet. I’ve asked her to be in The Walking Dead and she’s, like, ‘Ah… I dunno.’ She’s five… My son wants to be in Spy Kids 4. To them, it’s Halloween every day at my work. My daughter told me she wants me to be a vampire for Halloween, but she couldn’t pronounce the word. She had a kids’ Halloween book and pointed at it. I had my guys make fangs for me and I went home and put them in. She went, ‘Can I have some?’ “You’re five. I don’t think they’d fit.’

How many of the suits do you make?

We had three suits for each character, one for Carey Jones and one for Brian Steele and a backup. Because the last thing in the world you would ever want to do is put on somebody else’s sweaty monster suit and I feel for them, trust me. I’ve been in zombie makeup before, I did a couple of things in Walking Dead. But lunchtime comes for these guys and you take the suit off and then right after lunch, they put them right back in and you’ve got that cold, clammy, wet thing you’ve got to put your arm in. Hats off to those guys because it takes a lot of dedication to be able to do that and these suit performers… It’s challenging. They do it, they know how to do it well and that’s why they do it over and over again. I directed a little short film in March and Carey played the Creature from the Black Lagoon and he was so excited about it. ‘Put me in, coach!’ It’s that mentality.

Last week, HeyUGuys were invited along to Robert Rodriguez Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas by Twentieth Century Fox for a very special trip to find out how their latest home entertainment release, Predators was created. We got to chat with the awesome production team at Troublemaker Studios, looking at everything from how they made the posters to how they created a real life alien planet out in the back lot – and all this in a little over a year.

Read on to find out how all this was done and come back every day this week for another feature on the movie. You’ll be able to keep track of all our features from the movie here.

Predators is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 1st November 2010. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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Robert Rodriguez - Producer of Predators

Back in 1995, Robert Rodriguez was given the task by Fox to create a script for a Predators movie that followed on directly from the original Predator movie which starred action hero turned Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Back then, Rodriguez was yet to direct his first movie and was a script writer for Hollywood. Now, 15 years later, Rodriguez has directed 15 movies, Produced numerous more and has created his own mini Hollywood just outside Austin in Texas know as Troublemaker Studios (TMS).

Troublemaker itself is located on the former Austin Airport and has now been running for 10 years. The first movie to shoot there was The Faculty and although in its infancy TMS has developed into a fully kitted out studio with 2 stages, one of which can be rigged completely as a green screen stage and is 100% soundproof – this is where 90% of Sin City was shot.

15 years after his original script, Rodriguez was asked by Fox to direct the movie he had originally scripted all those years ago. The script had been reworked by Alex Litvak & Michael Finch but still contained elements from his original script.

The problems came when he wanted to direct but he was already committed to shooting Machete with Danny Trejo. The opportunity was too good to turn down so managed to compromise and take on the role as Producer, handing the directorial reigns over to Nimrod Antal who had not previously worked on a major Hollywood motion picture.

With his producing hat on, Troublemaker were able to shoot both Predators and Machete at the same time all within the confines of their studio in Austin, Texas using many of the same production materials including a lot of fake blood!

Dave Geeking Out at Troublemaker Studios

We arrived at Troublemaker Studios to the main office where Robert Rodriguez and his admin team all have their offices. After the obligatory photo obligatory photos underneath the TMS logo, the tour began starting with a look at the actually costumes that were used in the movie. We got to chat with Nina Proctor who talked us through the creation of the costumes and how they went about their research looking specifically at African Tribes for the likes of Mombasa and the Russian Military for Nikolai

TMS is an amazing place with everything they might need on site. This cuts time and cost down by having all they need available for example, if a car breaks down, they have mechanics on set, if a set needs some work or a prop needs an alteration, they can use their foundry or on-site mill to make the changes for them. It really is a little community of craftsmen all in the same place. This differs to Hollywood where a lot of what may be required is held offsite and contracted in.

Costume Designer - Nina Proctor

We then moved into a tour round studio A where Robert has posters from all his movies, many signed by the cast of the movies. The one that caught my attention was a Desperado poster that had been shot multiple times (with a gun!) with all the shell casings resting in the frame for prosperity!

Moving through what I guess you could call, ‘The Poster Room’ we go into the Green Screen stage or Stage A. This is the first time I’d seen a Green Screen properly set up and it was very interesting to discover how it all pieces together, especially after I look across the room to see part of the Predators set erected for the junket interviews that were scheduled to take place later on in the day!

Everything about TMS is efficiency. If the actors have some down time, they utilize this rather than having the actor sit in their trailer. At the very edge of the Green Screen stage is an out-of-the-way section of screen which the team use to rake photos of the cast in complete uniform. These promotional shots are then used later on for posters of promotional material rather than having to get the actors back another day, get them in make up and costume just to reshoot some photos. It makes complete sense and is another money saving technique that works very well.

Troublemaker Studios Production Designers Steve Joyner and Caylah Eddleblute

After leaving the green screen room, we moved into a corridor where there are montage photos along the walls reminiscent of school photos that you might see with pupils from the last 50 years all collected together. Only this is much cooler than a school photos, these were all the members of the crew together when the movie has wrapped. Montages of all the cast were on the opposite wall and both sets of photos captured so much history from a studio which really is still in its infancy.

After our tour of the studio finished, we had the chance to chat with production designers Steve Joyner and Caylah Eddleblute. Steve was able to tell us in detail about about how they filmed in Hawaii,  building roads for the crew to get deep into the jungle while Caylah was back at Troublemaker building the set for what became one of the pinnacle locations in the movie, the Hunting Camp.  The most interesting fact that I took away was if you look on Google Earth now at Troublemaker Studios, you can see them filming Predators when the photo was taken! Click here to view.

Next was the part I’d secretly been waiting for, my first chance to meet the legend that is Robert Rodriguez! When he first walked in the room, I thought he was the coolest guy on the planet. Skipping ahead an hour and as I was leaving, my thoughts had been confirmed in the affirmative – he IS the coolest guy on the planet!

Trouble Maker Studios - Stage A

After introducing himself, he talked us through some of the blu ray extras and deleted scenes from the blu ray. I loved seeing his passion come through for the movie although you could tell that standing in front of a group of press didn’t come amazingly naturally to him. He’s a very humble, clever and proud man who oozes talent (and cool!) in so many forms. Between each clip, he’d sit on the floor with his production assistant who’d tell him which part we’d be looking at next. Watching the man who produced Predators effectively give us a live directors commentary after each was just awesome and I wish it could have gone on longer!

Back to TMS and after a lunch that consisted of meat, meat, meat and some more meat (and some chocolate brownies that were amazing), we moved back into interview mode with a Q&A with Rodriguez who’s interview you can see in the coming days. Again, his passion for this movie and for films in general shone through. Look out in the interview for the part about meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger 15 years ago when he attempted to pitch the script he originally wrote for Fox all that time ago. The interview was worth it just for that!

Troublemaker Studios Concept Artists (L-R) Drew De La Cruz, Alex Toader, Chris Olivier, Rodney Brunet, Kurt Volk

After this interview we moved into a Q&A with the concept designers, poster artists who talked us through how they made their way from not having an idea of what the new Predators would look like to completing a feature length movie in little over a year. Again, you can look out for the interviews for this Q&A which will also follow in the coming days. For me personally, I find the way in which the concept becomes a reality fascinating so I was eager to know more from these guys.

The final presentation was given by Greg Nicotero who was the Special Makeup and Creature Effects Designer on Predators. Nicotero ‘s body of work is extensive and has been developing over the last 25  years and includes work on movies such as Vanilla Sky,

Special Makeup and Creature Effects - Greg Nicotero

Unbreakable, The Green Mile, From Dusk Till Dawn and Scream to name but a few. Again, his interview will be posted on the site in the coming days and is well worth a watch, especially if you’re interested in special effects, make-up or animatronics.

After being given a rather cool Troublemaker Studios hat, that concluded our press trip to what can only be described as a mini Hollywood. The experience was wonderful and will remain in my memory for years to come.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this report from TMS and make sure you keep checking back all this week for a different Predators featurette to coincide with the release of the DVD and Blu-ray next week

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Predators is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 1st November 2010. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

After perhaps one or two Oceans too many, Steven Soderbergh is now crossing the Pacific to begin shooting his new infection thriller “Contagion” in Hong Kong.

THR reports that Soderbergh has added Josie Ho to the cast of his thriller about a casino worker who spreads a virus among the passengers on an aeroplane leaving Hong Kong bound for the United States.

Ho, who has previously appeared in a wealth of films in her native Hong Kong, will play the sister of the casino worker who spreads the virus, among an otherwise thoroughly western cast, including Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Marion Cotillard.

Ho told THR that she would draw on her memories and experiences of the SARS outbreak in China in 2003 for her role and was really excited about and looking forward to working with the rest of the cast.

After shooting in Hong Kong, Contagion is also due to film in Minneapolis, Dubai, Japan, Switzerland, The United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, and Malaysia before its release in October 2011. This must surely mean an intended scope for the film far beyond (for example) the solitary town in jeopardy plot of “Outbreak”, cranking things up instead to the scale of a global crisis.

There is no word yet on the Asian actor to be cast as “Patient Zero”, the casino worker who starts the spread of the infection. We will keep you posted.