In this month's Empire magazine, we interviewed effects guru Mike Fink, an Oscar winner for The Golden Compass, and he told us a little bit about the work he's doing for Terrence Malick on Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. We didn't have room for the whole interview in the magazine, so here are a few more snippets.
"We’re just starting work on a project for Terrence Malick, which is actually 3 films. There’s going to be a 35mm release, a shorter IMAX version, and then they’re talking about another shorter 35mm version which isn’t quite the Imax version but not the feature length one either."
"We’re animating dinosaurs, but it’s not Jurassic Park. The attempt is to treat it as if somehow a camera wound up in the middle of these periods when dinosaurs roamed the earth and creatures first started to emerge from the sea onto the land. The first mammals appearing. We’re doing a number of creatures all seriously scientifically based."
"I think when it’s finished it’ll be something that’s referred to for years."
Over at AICN, they reckon the whole thing is a reworking of Malick's Q, an abandoned project he was working on in the 1970s, but it remains to be seen how it's all going to fit together. In any case, colour us excited.