Folks, Harry here with some real nitty gritty A.I. set report action here. Kate Nei, who designs amazing intelligent homes, saw that we linked to her site here at AICN, and decided to grace me with a set report of hers! Now... before you just start wading into this, let me say... UP FRONT.... This report contains spoilers... not of a maybe true front, but of a really true front. If you don't want to know any major details about A.I. then I wholeheartedly recommend that you click on your back button. In fact, I have comments about this news that could also be deemed spoilerish, so GO AWAY NOW LEST YE BE SPOILED!!!!!!
As of right now... I'm jazzed in a way I didn't think was possible for A.I. Right now, this doesn't sound like PINNOCHIO.... it sounds closer to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or DAWN OF THE DEAD... Now I know, you are going to read the below and wonder where I'm coming from... but think about this.... First, the killing of Zombies in Romero's films were almost always.... easy for the audience to handle... The exceptions were when the zombies were of characters we already knew... and then seeing them become zombies was painful, but their deaths became an act of mercy... Well, from the scenes described below... I began getting flashes to the end of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD where the dead were strung up in trees and shot repeatedly by rednecks... or of the Savini Biker Gangs regard for Zombie unlife in DAWN OF THE DEAD.... except... instead of it being the killing of unthinking, unfeeling, reanimated corpses... In A.I. it will be the deaths of thinking, feeling, human looking machines... And right now, given that Robot Gladiator show on Comedy Central... and the info below... Well, I don't think it is very far off. I believe this movie is far more complicated than anything we have previously given it credit for... Read on... only if you care to know....
Dear Harry,
Call me Kate Nei (blush), I had access to the A.I. set for part of this whole thing. I don't know a ton, but I do know what I saw. This is pretty spoilerish so tell the babies to cover their eyes and change their panties! Hee!
I suppose I'll start with the most cool part of all. There was the band Ministry there. Lead guitarist had a metallic skull suit and a cowboy hat. His guitar was pretty cool. It had a monitor on the guitar. Alain Jourgensen was his name. He had a doohicky that would wrap around his neck. Same thing that holds harmonicas to a person's face instead it was a mini camera. So you could see Alain's face in the guitar monitor. Everybody in the Ministry band was like really tight.
Anyway on to the meat of the stuff.
The movie starts off with a couple who can't have a child. So they decide to buy a robot boy. Haley Joel Osment. The couple later on do conceive a child so they abandon the robot boy in a forest. This is common practice to abandon robots in a forest apparently in the future. So he meets a lot of other robots.
One of them is Jude Law. The Gigolo robot. He can transform his hair in to any hairstyle. He basically looks like a Las Vegas Gigolo. His face is painted with makeup like the energizer robots. His hair is slick and plastic-y. It will later on be CG'ed, I believe to transform into any hairstyle, how convenient would that be? All of this in the forest stuff is rather an eerie coincidence after hearing that phone message talking about a forest or it could be on purpose.
Most of the scenes were shot in the Spruce Goose dome in Long Beach, CA. The setting is like a carnival/monster truck rally in the middle of the forest.
There is a stage where the band Ministry plays. There are bleachers too. Imagine a big 'C'. In the middle of the open 'C' is the stage where the band Ministry plays.
Underneath the stage are jail cells where they keep the robots. If you were on top of the stage you could see the robots underneath you because the floor was transparent. The stage itself is pretty cool. It had a moving fog machine where they can display images. This device is standard in most concert tour bands. They use this moving fog machine to display the US flag in the "National Anthem" scene described below. To the left and right of the stage were big LED monitors. Then one in the middle could be pivoted down. Behind the stage to the left was a tent/control room where there was a 42" plasma monitor and several 17" Samsung flat screen monitors inside. An a/v control panel and a couple of chairs. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a tech diva!
Directly behind the stage was a cage that was suppose to float in the air via a jet propulsions anti-gravity doohicky above all the action. Haley is in this cage at first with Jude Law. They then get transferred to the cells directly below the stage.
These are the types of robots you saw underneath the stage.
Cook robot. Half of his face was blue-screened with reference dots to be enhanced latter.
Lots of real amputees that had robot legs put on them.
Special Effects genius Stan Winston was there. His work on the robots were awesome. I saw one robot that was huge. Looked like the robot from Lost in Space, but metallic grey. For a face, it had a monitor with a Max Headroom like dude in it. The look of the robots in the jail cells were run down and exposed. I imagine that completed robots had the same look Jude Law's character had, where they look like robots from West World or those old Energizer commercials. Except Haley, he had no visible make-up enhancers to make him look robotic.
Directly to the right of the stage in the back is a MechDonalds. There is a Teddy bear that walks and talks that's going to be completely CG'ed. There is a little girl involved that looks like a Dorothy type girl. She's friend's with the bear. Her dad/step dad has a few words in the computer/control room tent. He plays a technician that is a part of this circus.
The circus is run by this ring leader dude that had a blue LED Bob Barker-style stick as a microphone. His voice was projected everywhere. His beef is that he has a real hatred for robots. He doesn't believe robots can be real or show real human emotion. That's the jist I got out of his speech. The event was called FLESH FAIR. The ring leader wore a brown trench coat and a fedora like Indiana Jones. He had an Australian or English accent. They pulled Haley Joel Osment out on this mini stage with blinking lights behind it. Jude Law was tied up as well on the same stage clutching Haley. The mini stages looked like something you'd see out of a mini carnival. Like those games desgined to lure customers in to win that stuffed animals. They are about to be pelted with bean bags which will later on be CG'ed to be acid sacks in post.
There were several scenes shot of robots being destroyed. One was a robot being strapped to the back of a rocket. Then shot up into the skies. Another was a robot getting chopped in half by those dragon head motorcycles. The riders wear metallic Stormtrooper type outfits, but their black undersuit glows. The motorcycles have a dragon or wolfhead that chomps through walls. Anyways one of these motorcycle dudes made a lap around the coliseum and chops a robot in half with a chain saw. The crowd goes wild. Another more prominent scene is a robot that is in the likeness of a famous comedian. It's his/her face but on a robot. With pre-recorded lines from him/her. He/She is shot out of a cannon then flies through a ring of fire then is mulched in these rotating blades.
Another big scene was done by Kathryn Morris. You can find pictures of her on IMDB.com She is playing a patriotic sex goddess. Her suit is bitchin. It has Red Blue and White fiber optic/LED's all over it. Imagine an American flag with lights up and being made into a skin tight dress. That's what she wore. Even her cowboy boots lit up. She was to get the crowd pumped. She screamed out, "What do we want!" Then she had a line like, "I don't want just a vacuum cleaner. I want a vacuum cleaner that not only vacuums, but can detect the skins mites on me. That knows when to vacuum." Then she says very seductively, "I want a vacuum cleaner that VACUUMS me!" Then the crowd goes wild. Later on she gets the crowd going to sing the National Anthem with this little girl dressed just like her. This little girl was basically a mini-me version of her with the same dress and everything. Oh yeah. Something you'll notice about the US flag. It's in a circle. So it's suppose to be in the future.
There was a lot of other crazy stuff that went on. Spielberg was really cool. Kathryn Morris was really nice too. So was the whole Ministry band.
Well that's my time for now, I have to go design a thinking house. Hope this is useful...
Keep in touch baby,
Kate Nei
