Does the alien technology adhere to the laws of physics as we understand them?
Doug Chiang – It adheres to a high technology that we may not quite understand. So things perhaps might not move the way we would normally understand it. It’s that quasi-fine line where when you actually have technology that’s so advanced, we just don’t quite understand it. So we see things that are fantastic but they have a sense of reality. We know that they can be created. It’s not like magic, it’s not literally magic. Things don’t disappear or reappear or stuff like that.
There is a real visceral quality to what we’re seeing. So in that respect it sort of, I think, it makes it very real. We just don’t quite know what it is. It’s a different culture, of course. They are far more advanced than we are. But what that technology is and how we see it… We only see the end result of it. We don’t see how they’re actually doing it. We try to portray it in such a way that it’s very believable so that when we see them, we don’t think of it as a visual effect. We’re trying to treat it very real and very gritty.
Is this a re-imagining of “War of the Worlds?” How is it classified?
Doug Chiang – A re-adaptation?
Rick Carter – An imaginative re-adaptation.
Will there be the big cylinder opening bit that’s a staple in “War of the Worlds” films and knock-offs?
Rick Carter – A version of it. It’s not been lost. That moment that you think that you want because you saw it that way is not lost in this new, imaginative, re-adaptation.
How long did you have to get this all together, to prepare for making “War of the Worlds?”
Rick Carter - It was 11 weeks by the time I got on the plane to go back East to the time we were shooting. But see that’s where, because Doug and I have designed a whole movie together and we’ve worked with ILM – both of us – we were able to do things, I think, that allowed the production to proceed much more quickly than normally. I mean, literally, I went out and I went to Newark and the first intersection I saw was the intersection we used. I looked at others but I saw this one. We got it into the computer. Steven was working with it, Doug was working with it, and we’ve been able to develop an ability to collaborate that allows the three primary aesthetic design forces to all jump into it together. There’s no egos. There’s no protocol. It’s just everybody and it’s all hands on deck. What was good was to actually have that urgency.
