Excellent Production Feature for 'Terminator Salvation'

From cinematography to robot design theory

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Friday, January 30th 2009 at 8:42 PM

New types of killer robots and a science-inspired conception of post-apocalyptic Earth are helping McG turn Terminator Salvation into an eye-scorching sci-fi flick.
Photo: Warner Bros. courtesy of Wired.com

Wired is running a mini making-of/pre-production/concept art feature based on McG's Terminator Salvation and it has quite a bit of interesting little nuggets about how McG approached the project and his understanding of what exactly he was taking on from a discussion with James Cameron to decisions on effects and cinematography and how he managed to nail down Christian Bale for the film.

The piece opens referencing a screening of the film for fans and journalists at the Directors Guild of America screening room saying, "The scenes showed new Terminator models and bleak vistas from a nuke-ravaged Earth destroyed by sentient computer network Skynet. Work-in–progress action sequences looked impressive enough to suggest that McG and his collaborators might just restore the franchise to its former glory."

From there you get several pieces of concept art and 14 individual topical responses relating to the film. Above is a picture of the Terminator models showing from left to right the T600, T700, Marcus (played be Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation) and the T800 which was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator films.

Below is a look at what the article refers to as a Matrix-y looking "Hydrabot," designed to seek and destroy humans trying to swim to safety and after that are a few choice excerpts from the piece which can be found in full right here and includes a look at the motorcycle robots dispatched by Skynet to destroy Marcus and his protege, Kyle Reese (played by Anton Yelchin), concept art of a post-Judgment Day planet and the devastation wreaked by Skynet in 2028 includes Hollywood's landmark Capital Records building, which lay in ruins.

Skynet's arsenal includes the "Hydrabot," designed to seek and destroy humans trying to swim to safety.
Photo: Warner Bros. courtesy of Wired.com

Getting the Robots Right: "The first film shows Schwarzenegger's T-800 coming from 2029 back in time," McG said. "Salvation takes place in 2018, so you see the R&D that went into the T-800. It's like the polio vaccine: You've got to go through a lot of lab rats to get to vaccine. In this film, humans are the lab rats. Skynet is testing on us to figure out how to make a photorealistic, leaner, smaller, more capable machine — the T-800."

The devastation wreaked by Skynet in 2028 includes Hollywood's landmark Capital Records building, which lay in ruins.
Photo: Warner Bros. courtesy of Wired.com

Post-Apocalyptic Cinematography: "We talked to the people who monitored Chernobyl about what the world would sound and look and taste and feel like after the bombs have gone off," said McG. "Then we got a dead Kodak stock. We baked it in the sun a little bit too long to damage the film, and then we shot on uncorrected Panavision lenses that flare more easily and aren't quite as sharp as Primo lenses but have an interesting patina. Most importantly we added three times as much silver in the processing than one traditionally would to a color stock. Add it all up and you get this otherworldly, desolate feeling."

Bale Just Says No: "I met Bale at a pub in England while he was shooting Dark Knight," McG said. "He said, "I'm not interested in action, I'm not interested in pyrotechnics, I'm interested in story. If you can get the script to a place where actors on stage could just read it, naked, and it would be compelling for two hours because the characters change and evolve, then we'd have something to talk about." We had a respectful conversation, I gave him Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to read but his answer was: "Until it's on the page, I'm not doing it."

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