," he explains. But even Dobrowolski seems to realize there's a certain been there, done that quality to the film. "I hope [SuperNova] will be different," he says, "I won't say significantly different, but I hope it will be different."
Visual effects supervisor Mark Stetson shows a little more confidence that SuperNova will have its own identity. "We discussed the Alien films and the other end of that spectrum, the Star Trek and Lost in Space sort of design," he says. "This is not either one of those. This is
a balance point, somewhere in between. It's sort of a retro-style, but not a retro-technology." Stetson and Dobrowolski point to their use of holograms as one of the ways they departed from the cliches of futuristic films. "We wanted to get away fromt he standard, monitor look of spaceships and
we came up with the idea of using holograms," says Dobrowolski.
So instead of staring at computer screens like your everyday Spock or Ripley, the characters in SuperNova will interact with holographic projections. Sounds like a pretty minor detail, but it should prove impressive on the big screen: "The holograms, as well as the rest of the film's effects are being
created by FX powerhouse Digital Domain. Stetson promises that the film's CG effects-particularly the climactic supernova-will blow audiences away. "It's going to be the biggest explosion in the universe," Stetson says. "It'll be entirely CG. I don't want to give you the shot count on it, but it involves events
that take place inside the ship as well as outside the ship. I think we'll see the event take place on an ever-expanding scale."
Not only will the big bang be cool, it will also have an extra bonus quality most FX extravaganzas don't aspire to: realism. Jacklyn Green, an astronomer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was brought aboard the project as an advisor to the creative staff. Green worked closely with Dobrowolski, costume
designer Bob Ringwood, art director Bruce Robert Hill and the visual effects department as a consultant on surface materials, color schemes and atmospheric conditions that would be prevalent on a moon hovering near a giant star. The filmmakers also had to know what could or couldn't be achieved in zero gravity. Green
also assisted the filmmakers in creating a moon mining operation and projecting where technology might be in 150 years or so.
"We tried to base [everything in the film] on reality," Dobrowolski says, "I believe that once you lay out the possibilities, then you can design the action and make it much more dramatic and much more real. Whatever happens is happening for real. If this is pure fantasy and anything goes, the audience is not really interested
because it doesn't really exist." But making the action and danger seem real to audiences wasn't the biggest challenge the SuperNova crew faced. They faced a certain, very Hollywood kind of danger themselves: The film has had to run a gauntlet of script rewrites, budget wrangling and creative squabbles to make it into
production. Hill is the third director on the pricey project, replacing Austrailian director Geoffrey Wright (Romper Stomper), who was brought in after MGM/UA fired first-time director Joe Nimziki.
Nimziki set up the original script, written by Dan Chuba and Jamie Dixon, when he was the studio's executive vice president of worldwide advertising. In an unusual move, the studio told Nimziki that if he stayed in his job long enough to help market such films as Leaving Las Vegas, he would get the oppurtunity to direct
his first film. But Nimziki was replaced just weeks after he left his studio job when the $15 million film became a $50 million film and hence was too much of a gamble for the studio to take with a novice director. David Campbell Wilson (Tomorrow Never Dies) was brought in to rewrite the script, and Wright was hired to replace Nimziki and direct his first feature for an American studio. But it was only months later that Wright was ousted from the director's chair, reportedly over creative differences with the studio.
Despite the musical chairs, production wrapped in Los Angeles in July after a 12-week shoot. The project is now well into the post-production process, which means SuperNova should blast into theaters as expected this November.
Cinescape Article: Black Hole Sun
September/October 1998
By: Beth Laski
