“There’s AI — the film has no AI,” says director-writer Duncan Jones emphatically about his newest characteristic, “Rogue Trooper.”
The topic comes up as producer Stuart Fennegan talks about how they bought the stellar voice solid for the movie: Aneurin Barnard, Jack Lowden, Hayley Atwell, Daryl McCormack, Reece Shearsmith, Sean Bean, Diane Morgan, Matt Berry and Jemaine Clement.
“We were actually really fortunate, for want of a better word, that when we were shooting, it was at the time when the SAG strike was happening, and obviously a big point of contention at that point was concerns for actors about AI,” says Fenegan. “Obviously, being a British movie, we were able to shoot under Equity, and contractually no AI performances in our movie at all.”
He provides: “We were really fortunate that lots of lots of actors that would have been booked up and on other shows weren’t working, so it was like, ‘Hey, have a look at this animatic. Do you want to come and play in this crazy different way of doing an animated movie with Duncan Jones?’ And pretty much everyone was like, ‘Hell yes.’”
An adaptation of the comedian ebook sequence “2000 AD” created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons, “Rogue Trooper” is produced by Rise up and Liberty Movies. It makes its world premiere at Annecy on June 22.
Jones and Fenegan discovered loads from their expertise of creating “Warcraft,” and wished to make a CGI animated movie at a British indie value level. They took classes discovered and constructed on that – Jones wrote the script and “recorded every line of dialog for every character, and then worked with the team to put an animatic together for that for the whole project. So we were kind of able to kind of iterate and figure out how to make it as we go, and I think that was why we were in the end able to kind of end up with a bespoke, more indie pipeline, and bring what would be, you know, a 60 million plus studio movie down to a much indie budget,” says Fenegan. “We were fortunate with our contacts and our partners at Rebellion, we all kind of held hands and said we think we will be able to figure this out as we go, and we did.”
Jones notes: “That old triangle of speed, quality, and cost, we kind of knew that we could afford, we could afford to give up on speed, so it took us a long time to make it, but we were able to maintain the quality and keep the cost down.”
Some 4 years within the making, “Rogue Trooper” tells the story of 19, a genetic infantryman who’s the only real survivor (in corporal kind) of an invasion pressure ordered to battle the Norts on a distant small planet. He wants to trace down the traitor who offered him and his fellow band of brothers out, and is accompanied by three killed-in-action squad mates, whose personalities have been saved in 19’s gun, helmet and backpack.
Hayley Atwell and Duncan Jones
SUSIE ALLNUTT
It’s photorealistic, however Jones says they used animation “more than you think.” He had two weeks with the actors rotating out and in of what was mainly a black field studio, capturing 16 pages a day. The unique animatic was the touchstone for the venture.
“We weren’t recording mo-cap of their bodies, we were only recording their faces and their voices,” Jones says. “We would have an area blocked out, so we kind of knew what the what the environment was supposed to be, where a scene would take place, but we were only using that as a reference for witness cameras, and then the actual animation we would do later on, after we’d actually already kind of cut the film.”
Jones continues: “There was actually quite a lot of the film where the animation is done by hand, so it’s a real hybrid and way of working where we didn’t have to worry about setting up all of the motion capture for the for the actors.”
It was additionally cost-saving. “The sheer cost of processing all of that data is prohibitive, so being able to just strike that from that from our production pipeline, focus just on the human performance of the face and the voice, and then you’re only working on animating the bit that you need” with out having to course of “all that data was an efficiency that we found,” says Fenegan.
As for translating the comics to the display, superfan Jones was very enthusiastic, evaluating “2000 AD” to Marvel and DC in its world-building and storytelling.
“One of the interesting things about ‘2000 AD’ is they were very brave, with the artists that they used and the styles that they were willing to engage in, and allowing their artists to really experiment with the different characters that they had in the environments and really push things in interesting and artistic ways.,” Joens says.
He says that Gibbons’ “War Machine” was very a lot a touchstone for the visible look of “Rogue Trooper.” “I think it might even have been watercolor the way that they actually did the artwork in the book, and it was beautiful,” he says, including “but we were kind of magpie-ing and picking from all of the different ideas that came up over the years that the comic book was made.”
Jones says that “Warcraft” — though lower than a success adaptation of IP with a passionate fan base — did have one factor going for it: the those that made it cherished the IP. He says it’s the identical with “Rogue Trooper.” “Artists like Steve Trumble, who was the production designer on the film, loved ‘Rogue Trooper.’ And we were bringing in artists who had actually worked on [the comic books] to come and do their concept artwork and design work. So I think the fidelity of it came from the fact that everyone who was doing the artistic [work] on it had a real, had a real love of the material.”
As for mounting an indie animated characteristic that appears costly, there have been concerns to make. “We set out with the idea of making a theatrical quality animated movie in Unreal Engine, and what we realized, probably like two years into the process, is that it’s an amazing tool, but it isn’t actually at the level at the moment — in version 5.3 which is what we were kind of locked in on for our film,” says Fenegan.
They discovered it didn’t have the instruments to ship the look they wished. So two years into the manufacturing, they “migrated out of Unreal” and used conventional animation software program like Maya, “then a final re-render back in Unreal Engine. So, I think the biggest obstacle was literally just us realizing, ‘Hang on a minute, the original plan to make this movie isn’t going to get us where we need to be,’” says Fenegan.
They don’t have a gross sales firm but — they’re working with CAA — and are in search of distribution.
“Couldn’t be more excited to premiere at Annecy, which obviously is the most amazing animation festival,” says Fenegan.
It looks as if it’s a pure for a sequel or perhaps a sequence.
Jones is targeted on the right here and now. “We’ve put so much effort into this and spent so much time on it,we really just want to make sure that we get this film in front of an audience. As an indie film, that’s the scary thing because you don’t have a studio that’s there to make sure that the film gets out there. We’re at the point now where we just need to find a way to make sure that this film gets as many eyeballs as possible.”
