LOS ANGELES – Back when he was a kid in the 1970s, Robert Rodriguez tried making films using 8-mm film, just like a lot of the aspiring Steven Spielbergs of his time. It was a frustrating experience: He couldn't see what the finished product looked like until the film was developed, and film was expensive.
Then his father bought one of the first VCRs, which had a primitive camera "tethered to it like an umbilical cord." Suddenly, he could review what he was doing in real time on tape that cost next to nothing.
"That's how I really started making movies," Rodriguez recalled. "I could really crank out films."
That's how filmmaker Rodriguez explains his decision to abandon 35-mm film entirely and shoot two films – Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (hitting theaters July 25) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (coming Sept. 12) – on high-definition digital tape.
His high-profile decision is groundbreaking for a simple reason: He spent a fraction of the money studios usually spend on films. Spy Kids 3-D cost $29 million – less than the $37 million he spent on the original Spy Kids– despite the fact that it had 1,400 effects shots and 90 percent of it was shot in 3-D, something never before attempted on a major-release film. To see it, you'll have to don special glasses handed out at theaters.
Mexico cost about the same and was shot in just five weeks – an unheard of time frame for shooting an epic film.
The average Hollywood film costs as much as $60 million to make. Terminator 3 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger cost $175 million. It will likely make a handy profit – domestic box office is $118 million so far, and that's not counting sizable foreign sales, TV rights, DVDs and video – but Warner Bros. would have taken a bath if it had flopped. And many big-budget films do.
You'd think that would make Hollywood rethink the way it makes movies. Don't count on it.
"The Hollywood system has a blockbuster mentality," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a box office research service. "The idea is: Spend a lot to make a lot. Maybe after enough years of getting burned on this philosophy, they'll change."
In the meantime, Rodriguez says he'll never go back to film, a medium he likens to "painting with the lights off."
"The only reason you would shoot on film would be for nostalgia reasons," he said during a preview of his two latest films at Sony Pictures Entertainment in Los Angeles. "It's embarrassing. We're still dragging that same film corpse around after 100 years."
Saving money is secondary, he says – although he cherishes the carte blanche he gets from studio execs to make movies they see as way, way under budget.
The real reason he loves high-definition tape is the creative freedom it gives him. Since he can see how a shot looks in real time, rather than waiting for the film to be developed, he can dispense with re-shoots or shooting a scene 17 times to make sure he nails it. Tape is so cheap he doesn't have to yell "Action!" He can just keep the camera rolling and let actors feel natural.
Best of all, the digital medium allows him to easily get involved in every aspect of production. That's not lip service: Rodriguez is his own film editor, visual-effects supervisor, score composer and mixer, director and production designer. He edits everything in his garage in Austin, Texas – sometimes right up to the last minute.
In the case of Spy Kids 3-D, "I called up (Miramax co-founder) Bob Weinstein, and he said, 'Why so soon? The premiere's three days away!'" Disney-controlled Miramax's Dimension Films is releasing the movie.
Spy Kids is a movie born for digital movie making. Much of the action takes place in a virtual "game" world: surreal, computer-generated scenes into which the actors are inserted. Most of the movie was shot in front of "green screens" – backdrops that visual-effects artists use to superimpose images. To complicate matters, Rodriguez had to capture every scene simultaneously with two high-definition cameras to create 3-D effects.
Despite the complexity, Rodriguez sketched what he wanted on each scene on scraps of paper, sometimes just seconds before he shot them. Most big-budget films rely on elaborate diagrams called "storyboards" – usually created weeks in advance – to lay out the action.
For all his speed, Rodriguez swears the high-definition product is better than anything he could have produced on film. For Mexico, he says, he could never have caught every scar and pockmark of actor Danny Trejo, captured the harsh Mexican landscape with such detail you could see wet paint glistening on buildings, or zoomed instantly from across the room to an eyeball shot of actor Johnny Depp, without using high-def digital tape.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico is the final film in a trilogy that began with El Mariachi – the movie that brought Rodriguez to prominence a decade ago – and continued with Desperado. El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is a guitar-strumming hero who hounds Barrillo (Willem Dafoe), a drug kingpin who wants to overthrow the Mexican president.
Rodriguez can't wait for the next generation of high-definition cameras to come out so he can strut their stuff in new movies. As one of the most prominent directors to shoot in high definition, he has a big say in what Sony builds into its next generation of cameras. What features does he want most? "A drink holder and a hot dog stand," he said.
