Interviews

Clash Of the Titans Interview

• 14th Jul 2010

Kevin De La Noy (Producer) DVD Q&A

Yes earlier this year the silver screen saw those Titans clash, and then so did the fan boys over what version they preffered. Thos that loved or even missed the film this spring can get themselves ready for the disc release on 26th july

In the meantime we managed to get hold of an interview with the new films producer KEVIN DE LA NOY for you to check out!

Were you a fan of the original Clash of the Titans and if so, what were your biggest fears about remaking the film?
I remember it from school days, but my memory of it when I first got the call to meet with Louis [Leterrier] and Basil [Iwanyk] was really the Medusa. It was the Medusa scene. I remember the crackling and the head around when it came but those are my two memories. The abiding one was obviously the Medusa so that was really what I remember. That was it.

Why do you think now is the right time for this to be remade and what does it have to offer movie-goers today?
Well, there were two signages coming together. One was visual effects against the claymation which was in its time applauded from the [Ray] Harryhausen period, and was absolutely fantastic in its time. But we've now got such better effects and such better technology that it was worth a revisit. The other thing was the take that Louis had on it. I was listening to Sam [Worthington] earlier taking about the troubled youth side of it, which, is a far more contemporary take and more in keeping with what's happening today in the world. So, those two things coming together really–it was its time and off we went, you know.

If you had to put his view into a nutshell how would you describe Louis Leterrier’s initial take on the film?
He wanted high energy. It was very, very clear that he wanted high energy and we wanted to steer away from the green screen world which has been achieved and accomplished in other films. He wanted this gritty, he wanted it grounded and that drew me into the project because my background from production has been in locations and working the floor and going out to places and finding something unique.
The great thing is that Clash of the Titans is set in B.C. and Greek mythology. There for me was a great challenge; how do you give this thing scope, scale, show the audience another world and at the same time ground it and make it gritty and not go where there's a piece of gaffer tape from another film unit. So those were our challenges and that drew me in because they wanted epic and we hope that's what we got.

This is a very international production in terms of cast and all locations. Can you talk about your principle cast members?
Well, when Louis pulled the cast together the great thing there was he was going for characters because all of the people on the journey and the people we travel with have a character. It's a great team of actors and they do become a team because all films are a journey. A whole group of people are thrust together for the duration of filming and capture everything all in one illogical order because of the schedule and then we part. The family parts and we reunite at the moments of premiers and things like that. Decisions were made in that casting process to get a diversity so that on the journey the audience could readily identify with all the characters rather than it being a homogeneous whole. That was a really good inspired casting across the board.

Can you talk about the collaborations in terms of the heads of departments and the key roles played in the crew?
Yeah, the heads of department were really important to me into molding the film and working with Louis and seeing his vision to achieve that. Most of them I've worked with before in other movies. You’ve got a mix here of The Dark Knight and Blood Diamond in heads of department, Peter Menzies (cinematography) who I didn't know and got to know very well over the course of this film and worked with Louis before.
So it was a melding of all that, and great thing with directors is they use their heads of department and the talent around them and bring out a greater sum than the whole and this is what we very much saw here. Louis was very eliciting of information from people saying well how would you do that, how did that happen, how did that happen before?
We pulled together a sensational group of department heads, all of which were encouraged to give and encouraged to push the envelop and that's what you now see on the screen.

There's a nice quote from Costume Designer, Lindy Hemming. She said that you did a lot of research on the time period and ended up throwing the book out the window and going with your gut. Would you describe that as the approach that was taken?
Well, I would say this is a contemporary take on a historical mythology. Which, is really where we ended up because going back into mythology is always difficult to research. So the departments of weapons and the departments of costume design, department production design and architecture had something to hang on to but it was very clear very early on that there was going to be a twist to it.
We didn't want to follow down the path of absolute every other historical epic that has followed that verisimilitude. It is Clash of the Titans after all. It is meant to be enormous fun and I think the right decisions were made there. We gave a twist. We're not profoundly out of the period but we've given it excitement and that's what the film's about – scope, scale and excitement.

What do you think fans can look forward to on the Clash of the Titans Blu-ray?
Obviously with Blu-ray you're getting that high quality, and the quality of the visual effects is really high on this. Also we shot in real locations and I think that's the other thing. A lot of times you get a Blu-ray disc and it's a Blu-ray of a green screen and the quality is lost there. Our photography varied from sub aqua to 10,000 feet up on a volcano. We were flying helicopters over the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, 320 feet below sea level and all of that is real. That is the real world. They're all parts of our planet and that on Blu-ray is absolutely going to kick because it's not something that we've put together then interjected the monsters. So I think the depth of field, the quality of it on Blu-ray should be sensational.

link!/ClashOfTheTitansMovieUK