Film Production NotesFinal Fantasy: The Spirits Within emerges from its successful interactive game roots to deliver an exciting new breed of motion picture adventure. A fresh, provocative take on the sci-fi genre, the film blends spiritual underpinnings and the universal concerns of man versus nature with the energy of the digital gaming medium and the scope of the motion picture environment.Final Fantasy game creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s ...
more
Film Production Notes
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within emerges from its successful interactive game roots to deliver an exciting new breed of motion picture adventure. A fresh, provocative take on the sci-fi genre, the film blends spiritual underpinnings and the universal concerns of man versus nature with the energy of the digital gaming medium and the scope of the motion picture environment.
Final Fantasy game creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s vision to take the latest in computer graphic technology and the best artists in the world to create a brand new form of entertainment now comes to the big screen—a visual feast of concept, motion, design and imagination with all-new, hyperReal characters embarking on an all-new adventure.
“I have always wanted to create a new form of entertainment that fuses the technical wizardry of interactive games with the sensational visual effects of motion pictures,” says Sakaguchi. “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within takes us one step closer to that dream.
“With the flexibility of these hyperReal characters,” Sakaguchi continues, “it really opens up new doors and a whole new level of ideas and possibilities for feature films and entertainment.”
Adds Chris Lee, one of the film’s producers, “We have created technology to expand the envelope of what is possible for computer-generated human characters.”
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within represents the continuing evolution of the synergy between video gaming and cinema. It is the next creative step from the trendsetting Final Fantasy game series, which has sold more than 33 million units worldwide and ranks as one of the most popular interactive game franchises of all time.
Each game and the film are originated from Final Fantasy’s rich storytelling tradition and underlying themes of love, friendship, dreams, epic adventure, life and death with a spiritual backdrop. The game series is renowned for creating genuinely touching characters and relationships and for always leaving players wanting more. Each installment has started anew with fresh characters and storylines in order to present a self-contained story. “That’s the philosophy that Sakaguchi brought to the movie as well,” says Chris Lee.
“This is the first time that a film inspired by a video game has been directed by the creator of the game, in the medium of the game,” he continues. “What gamers have come to love about Final Fantasy is that Sakaguchi always raises the bar in terms of the images he produces and the storylines he creates. Those are the same standards that were applied to making this movie.
“This is a chance to tell a great human story in a completely different medium. Only Sakaguchi would have the vision to take what he had learned in gaming and apply it to the motion picture process,” says Lee. Yet while capturing the kind of excitement, energy and integrity presented in the phenomenally successful game series, “the film’s subject matter and plot appeals not just to gamers but to a wide audience of moviegoers.”
Columbia Pictures and Square Pictures present Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Hironobu Sakaguchi directs from an original screenplay written by Al Reinert and Jeff Vintar. Story by Sakaguchi. Motonori Sakakibara co-directs. The film features the voices of actors Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Ming-Na, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland and James Woods, among others. Sakaguchi, Jun Aida and Chris Lee are producers.
The film’s creative team includes director of photography Motonori Sakakibara, animation director Andy Jones, conceptual director Tani Kunitake, character technical director Kevin Ochs, senior animator Roy Sato, VFX supervisor Remo Balcells and composer Elliot Goldenthal.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for sci-fi action violence.
Final Fantasy: Synopsis
Prepare to Embark on an Epic Adventure
In the not too distant future, the earth is invaded by aliens. Great cities are deserted, populations are decimated, alien beings have taken over the planet. Precious few humans remain; those that do must find a way to survive the invasion and reclaim the earth.
Two of these humans, Aki Ross (voiced by Ming-Na) and her mentor, Dr. Sid (voiced by Donald Sutherland), are determined to think differently. They are developing an organic solution to what most believe is a problem only the military should handle. Building on his ‘wave theory,’ Sid is developing an antidote to counteract the alien force. They believe all life forms are characterized by signature spirit waves which can be identified and contained. Indeed, they have observed the alien invaders feeding on the spirits of the dead. Aki and Dr. Sid collect a series of organic specimens whose spirit signatures combined will form a wave of equal and opposite intensity to the spirit wave of the alien force. The waves will, in effect, cancel each other out and disarm the foreign contagion. They have collected six of the eight key spirits needed to complete their wave. They are on a desperate hunt to find the remaining two spirits before their time runs out.
Aki’s time is limited. She is infected with the alien force. Normally fatal to humans, Aki manages to survive the infection through a crude encapsulation and containment procedure, an actual breastplate through which the contagion is visible. Her unique condition allows her to communicate with the aliens through a series of dreams which carry her across time to the aliens’ home planet. She begins to understand their nature and the crisis which brought them to earth. Yet the alien within her is fatal and, unless the wave is completed soon, her prognosis is grim.
She is aided in her quest by the rugged and capable Captain Gray Edwards (voiced by Alec Baldwin) and his elite band of renegades known as The Deep Eyes. This highly trained and dedicated force is undaunted by the desperate odds against them as they venture into the restricted wasteland, overrun with alien contagion. Their journey brings them to the deepest heart of the alien invasion—the site of the meteor crash which brought the aliens to earth.
Meanwhile, a military strategist, General Hein (voiced by James Woods), proposes the use of the Zeus Cannon, a massive, highly destructive space-mounted weapon. He hopes to bombard the planet with a bio-etheric energy force. On a smaller scale, weapons of this nature were effective in containing the aliens. Dr. Sid and Aki oppose Hein’s method. They argue that the ecological effect on the planet is unknown and the ultimate effectiveness of the weapon is misunderstood; Dr. Sid even suggests that the cannon might actually give birth to new aliens. A council is established to weigh the options and protect the interests of the surviving population. Impatient for results and hungry for revenge, Hein, whose family was lost to the alien invaders, manipulates his forces, sabotages Aki, and recklessly endangers the planet.
Aki’s final confrontation with the alien comes at a great cost. She finds the last key and releases the wave, and discovers the true nature of the aliens.
Fighting both the enemy within and the scheming General Hein, who would destroy the Earth in order to save it, Aki valiantly pursues her final fantasy.
Final Fantasy: Concept
The Film Born from a Video Game
The Final Fantasy game series’ international blockbuster success continued with its ninth title released in November 2000. Hironobu Sakaguchi conceived the project and watched over every stage of the development of the game series. His Final Fantasy is a leader among interactive role-playing games and is arguably responsible for the tremendous growth of RPG titles.
The first game in the series was introduced in 1987 and instantly appealed to game enthusiasts because of its high production values and the sheer joy of playing the game. Square then produced and released six more versions during the decade that followed, but it was the release of Final Fantasy VIII for the Sony PlayStation system in 1999 that achieved a new high level of animation and graphics sophistication. A record 2 million units sold on the first day of release in Japan and eventually an amazing 6.5 million units sold worldwide. Total sales of Final Fantasy to date exceed 33 million units.
The level of CG animation in these games is already extremely sophisticated; recent releases have provided the most competitive and most innovative period in the entire history of 3-D graphics and animation software.
“It’s a natural progression to bring this style of animation to a feature-length motion picture,” says Chris Lee. “Final Fantasy, as the first film with an entire cast of hyperRealistic, computer-generated human characters, is the ultimate integration of real-world images, human characters and fantasies into a complex 3-D space on the screen.”
As a century of filmmaking via traditional techniques drew to a close, it was inevitable that new, innovative methods of motion picture production would emerge, propelled by freshly imaginative screenwriting and direction, blazing-fast computer technology and brilliant computer graphic artists. It was the goal of the filmmakers for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within to harness this lightning in a bottle.
“Most people don’t realize the power and impact of videogaming on popular culture, and on moviemaking,” says Lee. “Video games have affected three aspects of moviemaking—structure (time shifts, levels, parallel worlds), aesthetic (CGI) and storytelling (collecting).
“We owe the unconventional storytelling of films like The Matrix and The Mummy as much to video games as we do to conventional moviemaking,” says Lee. “Digital characters abound in films now, and they are very lifelike. Today’s kids are really past flat animation, and I think that has to do with the fact that they’re brought up not just with movies, not just with television, but with video games. The synergies are already there.
“This film is quite revolutionary in both its execution and its appearance,” continues Lee. “None of us is saying that we’re making photo-real people. But here, there’s no disconnect between reality and the computer-generated images. Here, the characters and the world all inhabit the same reality.”
Years ago, when the motion picture project was just in its infancy, few except gaming industry insiders knew about Square Pictures. Recalls screenwriter Al Reinert, “My friends thought I was crazy for taking this job. They didn’t know who these people were. They had never heard of them. And I didn’t have anything that I could show them to say, ‘look how cool it’s gonna look!’”
“There were a lot of complications,” explains Aida, “and you could ask if it wouldn’t have been easier to shoot this film as live-action. But we tried to set new standards and establish a new genre of feature films—it is not our intention to compete with live-action films.”
Final Fantasy: Story
Universal Themes Meet a New Kind of Storytelling
Like much of classic science-fiction, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within explores the universal concerns of man vs. nature and examines strong mythological themes. In this case, the story revolves around ‘Gaia’—the idea that the Earth, humans and all living beings have a spirit, which can be injured or destroyed.
Ming-Na explains the story this way: “It’s fantasy mixed with an amazing storyline of life, love and adventure.”
“What is fantasy?” says Sakaguchi, posing one of the questions that serves as a linchpin of his story. “Is it a genre, a structure, a state of mind or a technique? Fantasy invokes wonder by making the impossible seem familiar and the familiar seem new and strange. Experiencing fantasy, we explore the unknown. Fantasy gives a comprehensible form to the basic questions around life and death, good and evil, mystery and magic.
“In Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” he continues, “the stage is Earth in the future, where scientific advances during the second millennium have allowed the mysteries of life and death to be analyzed as never before. In order to express these subjects to the audience, we took a different approach in depicting ‘life,’ using a virtual platform.”
In developing the screenplay, blending the American screenwriters’ sensibility with Sakaguchi’s Japanese approach to storytelling presented challenges. “We had to fit these two philosophies together,” says screenwriter Al Reinert. “Sakaguchi would stand at a blackboard and draw pictures; he’s a very visual guy. It wasn’t like writing any other movie I’ve ever worked on.”
“It’s a very emotional story. It’s about how we’re all part of a whole. It’s very much in keeping with Sakaguchi’s philosophy, which is really a strong part of the success of the Final Fantasy game series,” says Chris Lee. “The games already employ a cinematic way of telling a story.”
Says Sakaguchi: “I wanted to create a visual story about the emotion of the ‘heart’ and its existence at life’s most basic level—survival. This film will set the viewer on an exciting voyage of personal discovery, focusing on the spiritual and philosophical aspect of ‘life.’”
Final Fantasy: Characters
The story of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within revolves around an ensemble of seven key characters:
AKI ROSS
The heroine of this digital journey is the beautiful Aki Ross (voiced by Ming Na). A brilliant scientist and compassionate physician, she is sensitive, intuitive, articulate, as well as focused and driven. When she is infested with one of the alien creatures, she becomes somewhat mysterious and withdrawn as she struggles to comprehend and overcome the alien torment within her. Resolute and cautiously optimistic, she searches for solutions.
GRAY EDWARDS
Gray Edwards (voiced by Alec Baldwin) is a military Captain and leader of the elite Deep Eyes Squadron which patrols the vast restricted wasteland overrun by alien creatures. He is determined, focused, intrepid and valiant. A loyal soldier, effective leader, and trustworthy friend, he lets his conscience guide him.
DOCTOR SID
The brains behind the wave theory, Dr. Sid (voiced by Donald Sutherland) is a scientific genius. Balanced and wise, he doesn’t let his ego into the lab. He is a dedicated and imaginative thinker. His relationship to Aki is that of a collaborator, mentor, and father figure. Sid is confident, adept, an authentic visionary with a sense of humor.
GENERAL HEIN
The hawkish General Hein (voiced by James Woods) is afflicted with hubris and a firm belief in the rightness of his cause. Intelligent and single-minded, he is partly fueled by a thirst for revenge. His family was lost when the San Francisco barrier city was defeated by the aliens. He is, first and foremost, a soldier. He is arrogant and stubborn, skilled and driven.
RYAN WHITTAKER
Second in command to Captain Edwards, Master Sergeant Ryan Whittaker (voiced by Ving Rhames) is the glue that holds the Deep Eyes squad together. He is nothing if not loyal. Gray Edwards’ best friend, Whittaker is accessible, brave, and true.
JANE PROUDFOOT
An integral member of the Deep Eyes force, Jane Proudfoot (voiced by Peri Gilpin) is determined and intelligent. She is quick to action, quick to anger, but ready to play. She is proud and principled and when the circumstances require it, she makes the ultimate sacrifice for her compatriots.
NEIL FLEMING
Neil Fleming (voiced by Steve Buscemi) is The Deep Eyes’ pilot and resident cynic. He’s the one with the brainpower and the dexterity to muscle out of most jams. He’s also sarcastic and potentially pessimistic. Ultimately, he is reliable and dedicated, an integral member of the team.
Final Fantasy: Production
The World’s Top Artists and Animators Converge on Honolulu
Nearly four years was spent researching, developing and creating Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Once production was up and running, the speed, flexibility and quality of content creation quickly reached new levels.
For Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the digital backlot was not in Hollywood, but in Hawaii. Square’s Honolulu-based studio was where 200 of the world’s top graphic artists and exceptionally creative animators worked on the hottest SGI (Silicon Graphic Ink) machines and CG software available to forge new frontiers in digital content creation.
“Square selected Honolulu because of its centralized location in the Pacific,” explains Jun Aida. “This enabled us to maximize the most creative and experienced talent from all over the world.”
The studio gathered its prestigious talent from Hollywood, Tokyo, Europe—22 different countries in all. There were artists who worked on Godzilla(R), Titanic and Toy Story, some former Disney animators, and a conceptual director who labored on The Matrix, among other films. Security cameras mounted next to doors that opened only by coded electronic key protected the top-secret project during production.
Next to the beautiful Pacific Ocean, with palm trees rustling in the tropical breezes and a 180-degree view of sea and surf that stretches all the way from Honolulu International Airport to Diamond Head, the studio where Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came to life occupied several floors of Harbor Court, in downtown Honolulu. Specializing in film production, the studio came well-equipped with state-of-the-art computers and software.
Another part of the Square studio was located in the shadow of the familiar Honolulu landmark known as Diamond Head. Here, at the Hawaii Film Studio’s production facility, specially trained staff members spent hours working in customized body suits, bringing a unique physical personality to the series of complicated and realistic action sequences in the film.
Final Fantasy: Visual Effects
The Alchemy of Art and High-Tech
Times Square crumbles in the dark, burnt to near extinction, but elsewhere huge force barriers hold back the alien army. As death lies in ambush like a shadow, Aki searches for the miraculous, believing that human values of courage, dedication and love can ultimately save our planet Earth…
This isn’t taking place on a soundstage. Welcome to today’s digital backlot, where computer graphics and animation have reached the point of creating motion picture imagery that enables viewers to experience the excitement of fantasy filmmaking like never before.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within draws upon many traditional cinematic strong points—a compelling science-fiction story, attractive heroes, adrenaline-pumping action, exotic settings and myths, even a love story. But it is the development of new computer graphic techniques and technology that allows the artists to achieve the highest degree of unprecedented realism.
“By using CGI in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, we were able to be innovative in using various camera angles, lighting and special effects in the action scenes. But most important, we were able to create a computer-generated human character. That’s the CG artist’s dream,” says Sakaguchi.
The filmmakers and artists put extensive effort into developing their own, one-of-a-kind software to bring the film to life. “Since this is something no one had ever done before, I couldn’t just hire people to show us how to do it. We had to create the software,” says Jun Aida. “Other studios have never done hyperRealistic human actors, so there was no ‘right’ approach. So again, we had to set those new standards.”
“In the case of Final Fantasy, we had to do everything from scratch,” adds Chris Lee. “That’s one of the things that sets this film apart from other attempts to do this kind of computer animation.”
First, dialogue was recorded at a Los Angeles studio by Alec Baldwin, Ming-Na, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Peri Gilpin and the other voice talent in the film.
“Without the best possible actors to provide the voices, there wouldn’t be any emotional resonance for the audience,” says Chris Lee. “Also, animators have nothing to animate to until they have a voice. So we were thrilled to have people like Alec Baldwin, Ming-Na, James Woods, Steve Buscemi and Ving Rhames to power our characters.”
The actors were excited to be involved with such a groundbreaking project. “I was just thrilled with the idea of making a film where the people were being digitally created. It’s exciting to be on the forefront of it,” says James Woods. Woods was particularly pleased with General Hein’s rendering: “I look so handsome in the computer! It’s a completely different character, just with my voice. I don’t have to work out anymore!”
“I’m friends with Jun Aida, and he approached me about the project. It sounded fantastic,” says Ming-Na. “These people are not just technical people sitting in front of a computer—they’re truly artists.”
Alec Baldwin admits he’s “not a video game person in any way, shape or form. But when they showed me what they were doing and they showed me the footage, I was blown away. There’s a great style to this. It’s very unique.”
Veteran actor Donald Sutherland, who voices the character of Dr. Sid, was attracted to the spiritual themes of the story. “It’s about purity of the spirit. It’s about Gaia,” the actor says. “It’s about the ability to go beyond yourself, to go beyond the mundane.”
Peri Gilpin puts it more simply: “It’s cool! This is such a great story to tell, and I think it’s the right way to tell it. These characters really have personality quirks—needs, goals, self-confidence, little neuroses. You can see it in their faces and in their muscles. You just can’t take your eyes off it.”
After the dialogue was recorded, the scenes were then played out at the Diamond Head studio during the process known as motion capture.
During motion capture, a staff member wearing a skin-tight black costume laced with 37 reflective markers simulated true-to-life human motions in the scenes. Sixteen specialized cameras, each silently and rapidly blinking a red light, were connected to computer screens for motion capture. Huge speakers played a pre-recorded voice track.
The capture—each and every bit of action recorded—was electronically sent back to the programmers at Harbor Court. The result of the scene is a 3-D stick figure that matches the staff members’ movements. This is just one of a series of complex computer graphic procedures that the artists reference to create the finished feature film.
The heroine of the story, Aki, like all characters, was entirely built from scratch in the computer. Aki has since taken on a life of her own, even gracing a photo spread in an issue of Maxim and appearing in Entertainment Weekly’s “It” issue, which hit newsstands on June 25.
“Aki is feisty. She’s single-minded in her quest to find the cure to dealing with the aliens,” says Ming-Na. The realism of the animation helped the actress’ performance. “There is a person there. It’s not animation anymore. It’s a human being.”
No reference models were used or digitizing of real humans done to create the characters in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. “The Character Group created the look of the character,” explains Chris Lee. “Then the Animation Group animates the character. Then the character goes back to the Character Group for the details.”
The most time-consuming and render-intensive part of Aki is her hair; 20 percent of total production time was spent on it. There are 60,000 hairs on Aki’s head, each of which have to be manipulated by the animator. The software to create Aki’s hair, which also determines how the hair looks and moves, was written in-house because existing software to create long hair was inadequate. Lights are then positioned in the computer to allow the hair to interact with it.
An artist first sculpted Aki’s face in three dimensions. She is then rendered in ‘wire frame mode,’ in which a three-dimensional wire frame is superimposed over a sketched drawing of the character. The wire frame becomes the character’s skeleton and allows animators to give it lifelike movement and form. Aki has a ‘spine’ which simulates real bone and moves like real bone.
Second, the frame is given a skin, which is known as ‘shaded mode.’ In the third step, texture mapping adds lighting, texture, shadow, reflections in the eyes, imperfections and other details. Freckles and pores are then added by handpainting on the computer. No digitizing of a real person or scanning of human skin was done to create these authentic human characteristics—it was all made from scratch in the computer.
A costume is separately rendered and layered on top of the form. Technical directors spent months ripping up clothes and learning to sew in order to faithfully render the behavior of fabric in motion.
Most of the film’s designers worked in high-ceilinged rooms behind windows that had been draped in black cloth to prevent glare on the two or three monitors crowded before them. On any given day in the studio, one might see hundreds of hand-drawn storyboards taped to walls everywhere, workstation screens abuzz, some designers handpainting fine details—such as skin textures and hair for the human characters—others building vehicles, battlefields and futuristic weapons in cyberspace.
The accurate rendering of skin colors and textures and facial expressions, as well as hair details and clothing wrinkles as each character moves about, presented enormous challenges which needed to be answered by special solutions. Again, the programmers at Square wrote their own software tools. Artists often went through hundreds of transformations and refinements as they labored on renderings for the film’s many characters, each of which has a full range of motion and rich facial expressions.
“Technically, the natural human facial expressions were the most difficult aspect,” explains Sakaguchi. “Unlike bringing inanimate objects to life, it is an extreme challenge to simulate human movement, hair and clothing, because our eyes are naturally critical toward human movements—we observe them everyday.”
“An audience knows when it’s false,” adds Chris Lee. “That was the challenge for our artists, to be able to replicate that on a computer.”
“Those little details are extremely difficult to animate because if they’re done wrong, they look really weird and automatically pop out as something strange. It’s important to get the timing of the word being said and the expression on the face right,” says animation director Andy Jones.
“We had to pay attention to miniscule details like the transparency of the teeth and the pocket of the eye,” says Sakaguchi. “There are a multitude of muscles that create the most subtle movements of the human face.”
Sakaguchi points out one advantage of using computer-generated performers: “Our ‘actors,’” he says with a smile, “are always willing to work on time and take direction.
“My goal was to create a film in which each scene embodies our artists’ spirit,” says Sakaguchi. “To express a human’s spirit is expressing life itself.”
Screenwriter Al Reinert puts it more simply: “It’s gonna look like no movie you ever saw before.”
Final Fantasy: Filmmakers
HIRONOBU SAKAGUCHI (director) has led the development division since joining Square Co. Ltd. in l986. He has produced more than 40 million units of computer game software worldwide, with his smash hit Final Fantasy series selling more than 33 million units.
At Square, Sakaguchi was promoted to executive vice president in 1991. He recently entered into an exclusive production arrangement with Square where he plans to oversee the development of Square’s future games as well as producing other feature film projects.
MOTONORI SAKAKIBARA (co-director) was born in Tokyo and earned his BS in Architecture from Musashino Art University in Japan. As an animator and modeler, he has created various television programs and commercials while working for Japan Computer Graphics Lab (J.C.G.L.), Namco Ltd. and HD/CG New York, Kaufman Astoria Studios. He joined Square in 1995 to work on Final Fantasy VII, first as a chief 3D animator and modeler and later as a director. Sakakibara is the winner of the ARTFOLIO International Art Competition (1993) and the Japan Graphic Exhibition (1989), among other honors.
JUN AIDA (producer) serves as president and C.O.O. of Square’s Honolulu Studio.
In 1994, he produced the film Street Fighter, the live-action box-office hit which grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Aida joined Square USA in 1997 as vice president of film and entertainment and in 1999 was promoted to president to oversee the Honolulu studio’s entire CG production efforts.
Aida has also produced successful animated TV series such as Street Fighter, MegaMan and DarkStalkers for the U.S. market.
CHRIS LEE (producer) is the founder of Chris Lee Productions Inc., a multi-media entertainment and management company with a first-look deal at Columbia Pictures.
Lee is the former president of motion picture production for Columbia/TriStar Pictures. Under his tenure, an impressive series of films were released, including the Academy Award(R)-winning As Good As It Gets, Jerry Maguire and Philadelphia, as well as My Best Friend’s Wedding, Jumanji, Legends of the Fall, Sleepless in Seattle, Starship Troopers and Godzilla(R).
Based on the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot, Lee’s current company is involved in a wide range of content creation: the production of motion pictures, television, internet programming, music videos, commercials and computer video games.
Lee began at TriStar Pictures as a freelance script analyst and worked with acclaimed director Wayne Wang on his film Dim Sum.
Originally from Hawaii, Lee is a graduate of Yale University.
AL REINERT (screenwriter) was born in Tokyo, Japan, where his father, a United States Army officer, was stationed.
After a career as a newspaper journalist and magazine writer, Reinert made the successful jump to writing for feature films. For All Mankind, which he produced, won the Audience Award at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival.
In 1995, Reinert was nominated for an Academy Award(R) for his screenplay for Ron Howard’s Apollo 13.
JEFF VINTAR (screenwriter) is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop.
He has written screenplays for 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Warner Bros. and Columbia. His original script, The Long Hello and Short Good-bye, was produced for German Cinema in 1999. His writing credits include an English-language version of Long Hello, produced by John Woo and Terence Chang, and I, Robot, directed by Alex Proyas.
ANDY JONES (animation director) was born in California and earned his BA in Design and Graphic Arts from UCLA, where he studied both traditional animation and computer-generated animation. Employed by Digital Domain as a character animator, Jones served as a lead animator on three projects before becoming an animation supervisor for Titanic (1997). For Titanic, he was responsible for much of the animation during the “sinking sequence,” including the “propeller guy.” Before joining Square, Jones worked for Centropolis Entertainment as an animation supervisor on Godzilla(R) (1998).
TANI KUNITAKE (conceptual director) was born in Detroit, Michigan. In 1993, he worked as a storyboard artist for Industrial Light and Magic and Digital Domain. His talent has also led him to illustrate for David Fincher’s Fight Club and storyboard for the Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix. He has also worked as a conceptual illustrator for directors such as Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, Michael Bay, Vincent Ward and Steve Norington. Kunitake joined Square in April 1999 as a staging director.
KEVIN OCHS (character technical director) was born in Illinois. Ochs began his career in 1997 at Windlight Studios. His previous projects included several commercial spots, including Mattel's “Barbie” and the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Kevin has been a Character Technical Director with Square USA since 1998. His primary focus on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was working on the technical design of the skin as well as cloth simulation.
ROY SATO (senior animator) was born in Honolulu. Sato attended Hawaii Baptist Academy where he graduated in 1986. He entered the University of Hawaii at Manoa, majoring in graphic design. Continuing his studies at the Yoyogi Animation Institute in Tokyo, Japan, Roy received training in animation. After working for Disney Animation studios in Japan for five years, Roy returned to Hawaii where he worked at Computer Visualizations, Inc. for one year before joining Square in 1998.
REMO BALCELLS (VFX supervisor) was born in Turin, Italy. Balcells was one of the key figures in the development of computer graphics in Spain during the early ’80s and ’90s. After working as an instructor as well as for such companies as Animatica, Remo worked as a senior Digital Artist for Digital Domain. His previous credits include Titanic and The Fifth Element. Remo joined Square in 1998 as VFX Supervisor.
ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL (composer) most recently completed the scores for Titus and In Dreams, and won the LAFCA Award for Best Original Score for his music for The Butcher Boy. Previously, Goldenthal was nominated for both the Oscar(R) and the Golden Globe for Best Original Score for his work on the films Michael Collins and Interview with the Vampire. His other film credits include A Time to Kill, Batman Forever, Heat, Alien 3, Sphere and Cobb.
Final Fantasy: Cast
ALEC BALDWIN’s (Captain Gray Edwards) Broadway stage credits include A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Gregory Mosher (Tony nomination); Joe Orton’s Loot, directed by John Tillinger (Theatre World Award); and Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money. His other theater credits include Prelude to a Kiss at Circle Rep, directed by Norman Rene (Obie Award); David Mamet’s Life in the Theatre at the Hartman, directed by A.J. Antoon; and the title role of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the New York Shakespeare Festival, directed by George C. Wolfe.
Baldwin was most recently seen in David Mamet’s feature film State & Main for Fine Line Pictures opposite William H. Macy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Sarah Jessica Parker. Baldwin starred as a famous Hollywood actor who, along with a film crew, take over a small town in New England to shoot a movie.
Baldwin also executive produced and starred in the TNT Original Film Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial. He was nominated for a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for his performance as Justice Robert Jackson. The four-hour miniseries documented the true story of the trial of 21 members of the Nazi high command for the horrific war crimes committed under their leadership during World War II.
Currently, Baldwin portrays Jimmy Doolittle in Disney’s Pearl Harbor, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Michael Bay. The film, which also stars Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Cuba Gooding, Jr., follows the story of two soldiers stationed in Pearl Harbor during World War II who fall in love with the same woman.
Last year, Baldwin also starred opposite Peter Fonda and Mara Wilson in the live-action Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Baldwin portrayed “Mr. Conductor” in the children’s story of a young girl who leaves the city to visit her grandfather in the countryside.
On film, Baldwin has appeared in Outside Providence, The Edge, Mercury Rising, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Juror, Heaven’s Prisoners, The Shadow, The Getaway, Malice, Glengarry Glen Ross, Prelude to a Kiss, The Hunt for Red October, Great Balls of Fire, Alice, Miami Blues, Working Girl, Talk Radio, Married to the Mob, Beetlejuice and She’s Having a Baby.
Baldwin began his career in daytime television on the NBC series The Doctors. He went on to roles in such TV shows as Knot’s Landing on CBS and the NBC miniseries Dress Grey.
Baldwin is involved in several causes related to public policy. He is a board member of People for the American Way and the Standing For Truth About Radiation (STAR) Foundation of East Hampton, Long Island. He is also a past president of The Creative Coalition.
In an era where actors search desperately for that one perfect role, STEVE BUSCEMI (Neil Fleming) has built his career by portraying a variety of remarkable characters. He brings them to the screen with such uniqueness that each and every role is unforgettable.
Most recently, Buscemi’s second feature film as a director, Animal Factory, was released in theatres to critical acclaim. It is a story about a young man sent to prison for an unjustly harsh sentence who becomes a product of that rough environment. The film stars Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong.
He recently finished filming Paramount’s Domestic Disturbance, opposite John Travolta and Vince Vaughn. Other recently completed projects include MGM’s Ghost World, directed by Terry Zwigoff and co-starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson and Brad Renfro; The Grey Zone, Double Whammy, 13 Moons, Deeds, Nine Scenes About Love, and the HBO telefilm The Laramie Project. He has also provided the voices for characters in the upcoming animated feature Monsters, Inc.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Buscemi began to show an interest in drama while in his last year of high school. Soon after, he moved to Manhattan to study acting with John Strasberg. There, he and fellow actor/writer Mark Boone Junior began writing and performing their own theatre pieces in performance spaces and downtown theatres. This soon led to his being cast in his first lead role in Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances as a musician with AIDS.
Since then, he has become the actor of choice for many of the best directors in the business. His resume includes Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, for which he received an IFP Spirit Award Nomination; Alexandre Rockwell’s 1992 Sundance Film Festival Jury Award winner In The Soup, Martin Scorsese’s New York Stories, the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, the Academy Award(R)-winning Fargo and The Big Lebowski; Stanley Tucci’s The Imposters, the Jerry Bruckheimer productions Con Air and Armageddon, Tom DiCillo’s Sundance Film Festival Award-winning Living in Oblivion, with Dermot Mulroney and James LeGros; Twenty Bucks, John Carpenter’s Escape From L.A., Desperado, Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Alexandre Rockwell’s Somebody to Love, an IFP Spirit Award-winning performance as Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Robert Altman’s Kansas City. He has had numerous cameo appearances in films such as Rising Sun, The Hudsucker Proxy, Big Daddy and The Wedding Singer.
In addition to his talents as an actor, Buscemi has proven to be a respected writer and director. His first project was the short film What Happened To Pete, which was featured at several film festivals, including Rotterdam and LoCarno, and aired on the Bravo Network.
He marked his full-length feature film directorial debut with Trees Lounge, which he also wrote and starred in. The film, which co-starred Chloe Sevigny, Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony LaPaglia, made its debut in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival and was released domestically in fall 1996.
PERI GILPIN (Jane Proudfoot) stars as 'Roz Doyle', the producer of 'Dr. Frasier Crane's' talk radio show on NBC's Frasier. Additionally, Gilpin appears in Neil Simon's latest project, Laughter On the 23rd Floor, starring opposite Nathan Lane. The film premiered on Showtime in May.
Recently, Gilpin starred alongside Liev Schreiber, Ned Beatty, Campbell Scott, and Lili Taylor in the independent film Spring Forward, released late last year. She can also be seen in How To Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog, opposite Kenneth Branagh and Robin Wright Penn, which had its world premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.
From the age of eight, Gilpin knew that she wanted to pursue acting and was enrolled in the Dallas Theater Center. Gilpin attended the University of Texas in Austin where she studied Drama, as well as the British-American Academy in London. She set off for Williamstown, where she entered the apprenticeship program and was later invited back for three consecutive summers as a non-equity actor. While there, she appeared in productions of The Crucible, Hawthorne Country and Peer Gynt. She landed a part in the off-off-Broadway production of Lucky Lucy and The Fortune Man. More recently, she has appeared in east coast productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream as 'Helena', at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, as well as in As Bees in Honey Drown, playing 'Alexa Ver de Ver', at the Lucille Lortell Theatre.
Gilpin relocated to Los Angeles and landed roles on such television shows as Cheers, Wings and Designing Women. Gilpin's first venture into series television was Flesh 'N' Blood, starring alongside David Keith, which led to her subsequent casting alongside Keith in Local Heroes. Her additional television credits include the NBC film The Secret She Carried, opposite D.W. Moffett and Jere Burns, and the NBC
film Fight for Justice: The Nancy Conn Story, opposite Marilu Henner. She also starred in an episode of the wildly popular series The Outer Limits entitled "Etherically Yours."
On the Los Angeles stage, Gilpin appeared in The Maderati at the Tiffany Theater while also serving as Associate Producer. As well, Gilpin performed in the Ensemble Theater Production of Women of Manhattan.
Gilpin currently resides in Los Angeles.
MING-NA (Dr. Aki Ross) first garnered attention with her critically acclaimed and touching performance as the gentle ‘June’ in Wayne Wang’s film version of Amy Tan’s best-selling novel, The Joy Luck Club.
Born in Macau, China, Ming-Na moved with her family to New York City when she was four years old. Five years later, they moved to Pittsburgh to open their family restaurant, The Chinatown Inn. She attended college in her hometown at Carnegie-Mellon University and graduated with honors and a BFA in Theater before moving back to New York.
While performing off-Broadway, she was given the first contract role in daytime television history for an Asian actor on As The World Turns. As her first love is the theater, she continued working on the New York stage during her tenure on the soap, including in the premiere production of Tony Award winner Lanford Wilson’s Redwood Curtain.
After she finished shooting The Joy Luck Club, she was inspired to travel throughout China to meet all of her family for the first time. Upon her return, Tony Award-winner James Lapine cast her in the world premiere of his Luck, Pluck & Virtue at the renowned La Jolla Playhouse.
After traveling to Europe to promote The Joy Luck Club, she returned to Los Angeles and was cast as the female lead opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia in the international hit Streetfighter.
Named as one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, she landed the highly coveted role of the ambitious medical student, ‘Deb Chen’, on the first season of NBC’s smash hit, ER. She then played ‘Trudy,’ the hip SoHo gallery owner on NBC’s The Single Guy for the series’ two-season run. Ming-Na received rave reviews for her performance starring opposite Wesley Snipes in director Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas follow-up, One Night Stand.
Ming-Na made her Broadway debut last year starring in David Henry Hwang’s Best Play Tony nominee Golden Child and was heard as the voice of the title character in Disney’s animated musical Mulan. It was her work in this film for which Ming-Na received the inaugural Annie Award for best lead vocal performance in a feature length animated film. She then worked with acclaimed director Robert Altman on the television pilot Killer App.
Ming-Na was recently named by A Magazine as one of the 100 most influential Asian-Americans of the past decade.
Ming-Na lives in Los Angeles with her husband, actor/writer Eric Michael Zee, and returned this winter to ER, reprising her role of Deb Chen as a series regular.
At the 1998 Golden Globe Awards, people were shocked when VING RHAMES (Ryan Whittaker) bestowed his newly won trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon. Those who really knew Rhames were not surprised at all. Rhames has an imposing physical presence, but he is remarkably sensitive and kind—your typical "friendly giant." Despite this, he was able to pull off villainous turns in Pulp Fiction and Con Air with aplomb.
He can currently be seen in John Singleton’s Baby Boy.
Two years after graduating from the renowned Julliard School of Drama, he made his Broadway debut opposite Matt Dillon in The Winter Boys, after which he worked on a variety of off-Broadway productions. He also worked in television, with recurring roles on the daytime soaps Another World and Guiding Light and guest appearances on shows like Miami Vice.
In the early 1990s, Rhames garnered roles in films like Casualties of War, Jacob's Ladder, Mission: Impossible and Rosewood, which helped to increase his profile. It wasn’t until 1994 that Ving Rhames would explode onto the Hollywood scene after the release of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which launched his career.
Since then, Rhames has done Striptease with Demi Moore, Out of Sight with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta- Jones, and Mission: Impossible II with Tom Cruise.
Rhames also won a ShoWest Best Supporting Actor Award for his role in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead.
Veteran actor DONALD SUTHERLAND (Dr. Sid) is one of the most prolific and versatile of motion picture actors, whose offbeat elegance is evident in an astonishing array of more than 100 films. These films range from the biting political satire of Robert Altman's M.A.S.H. to the intimate drama of Robert Redford's Ordinary People to the subtle intricacy of Alan Pakula's Klute to the eccentric romanticism of Fellini's Casanova.
Sutherland just completed a sold-out, critically-praised engagement at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre of Lincoln Center in Jon Robin Baitz’s Ten Unknowns. The play co-starred Julianna Margulies and Justin Kirk, was directed by Daniel Sullivan and has earned Sutherland an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for “Best Actor.”
On the big screen, Sutherland most recently starred in Space Cowboys with Clint Eastwood, James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones. His other notable film credits over the past decade include Disclosure, Without Limits, Outbreak, A Time To Kill, Six Degrees of Separation, JFK and Backdraft.
Sutherland won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his supporting performance in the 1995 HBO telefilm Citizen X. He was also nominated for his acclaimed performances in the films Without Limits, Ordinary People and M.A.S.H.
Trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Sutherland has starred in nearly 100 films, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Day of the Locust, Klute and The Dirty Dozen.
JAMES WOODS (General Hein) will next be seen in this summer’s Scary Movie 2 and Penny Marshall’s Riding in Cars With Boys.
His exceptional career continues to build in power and range with each performance he offers. Selected as one of Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Greatest Actors of the ’90s, Woods’ recent roles include a chillingly uncompromising Academy Award®-nominated portrait of civil rights activist Medgar Evers’ assassin, Byron De la Beckwith, in Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi; the comic voice of Hades in Disney’s Hercules; and an impressive turn opposite Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey in Robert Zemeckis’ Contact.
His recent work has garnered a shower of honors, including the Golden Satellite Award for his lead performance in the independent feature Killer—A Journal of Murder and Golden Globe nominations for both the Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie The Summer of Ben Tyler and Ghosts of Mississippi.
The caliber of his work has attracted a number of the world’s finest directors. For Martin Scorsese, he appeared in Casino and Kicked in the Head and for Oliver Stone he starred in Nixon and the film that landed him his first Academy Award® nomination, Salvador.
Woods’ versatility and range is reflected in his roles as White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in Nixon, a sleazy Las Vegas pimp in Casino, comedic performances in The Hard Way with Michael J. Fox and Immediate Family opposite Glenn Close, as well as his acclaimed television performances in Indictment—The McMartin Trial and HBO’s Citizen Cohn.
Woods’ portraits of controversial real-life figures began with his portrayal of cop killer Gregory Powell in Harold Becker’s 1977 film The Onion Field and has continued with his roles as Haldeman, Beckwith, Cohn and serial killer Carl Panzram in Killer. His performance in Citizen Cohn remains one of the most enthusiastically reviewed performances in the medium’s history, earning him the first American Television Award Best Actor Trophy (voted by the nation’s critics), the Peabody Award and nominations for virtually every other relevant award.
Woods received his first Academy Award® nomination and the Independent Film Project’s Spirit Award as Best Actor for Oliver Stone’s Salvador. During that same year, he received the Golden Globe Award, the Golden Apple Award and an Emmy for his performance in the Hallmark Hall of fame production of Promise. He received another Golden Globe nomination for NBC’s In Love and War. His films that year also included The Boost and Best Seller.
Woods won an Emmy for his portrayal of the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in My Name is Bill W. Woods made his Broadway debut in Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy, and followed with a lead performance in the off-Broadway production Saved, for which he received the Obie Award and the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Actor. Other theater credits include The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Finishing Touches, Green Julia and Michael Weller’s Moonchildren, for which he won the Theatre World Award.
His film work includes The Visitors, The Way We Were, Once Upon a Time in America, Eyewitness, The Getaway, Curse of the Starving Class, Videodrome, Joshua Then and Now, Split Image, Against All Odds, True Believer, Any Given Sunday, True Crime and The General’s Daughter.
# # #
“Academy Award(s) ®” and “Oscar(s) ®” are registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Godzilla and the Godzilla character and design are marks of Toho Co., Ltd. The Godzilla character and design are copyrighted works of Toho Co., Ltd. All are used with permission.
7/11/01
less
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within emerges from its successful interactive game roots to deliver an exciting new breed of motion picture adventure. A fresh, provocative take on the sci-fi genre, the film blends spiritual underpinnings and the universal concerns of man versus nature with the energy of the digital gaming medium and the scope of the motion picture environment.
Final Fantasy game creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s vision to take the latest in computer graphic technology and the best artists in the world to create a brand new form of entertainment now comes to the big screen—a visual feast of concept, motion, design and imagination with all-new, hyperReal characters embarking on an all-new adventure.
“I have always wanted to create a new form of entertainment that fuses the technical wizardry of interactive games with the sensational visual effects of motion pictures,” says Sakaguchi. “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within takes us one step closer to that dream.
“With the flexibility of these hyperReal characters,” Sakaguchi continues, “it really opens up new doors and a whole new level of ideas and possibilities for feature films and entertainment.”
Adds Chris Lee, one of the film’s producers, “We have created technology to expand the envelope of what is possible for computer-generated human characters.”
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within represents the continuing evolution of the synergy between video gaming and cinema. It is the next creative step from the trendsetting Final Fantasy game series, which has sold more than 33 million units worldwide and ranks as one of the most popular interactive game franchises of all time.
Each game and the film are originated from Final Fantasy’s rich storytelling tradition and underlying themes of love, friendship, dreams, epic adventure, life and death with a spiritual backdrop. The game series is renowned for creating genuinely touching characters and relationships and for always leaving players wanting more. Each installment has started anew with fresh characters and storylines in order to present a self-contained story. “That’s the philosophy that Sakaguchi brought to the movie as well,” says Chris Lee.
“This is the first time that a film inspired by a video game has been directed by the creator of the game, in the medium of the game,” he continues. “What gamers have come to love about Final Fantasy is that Sakaguchi always raises the bar in terms of the images he produces and the storylines he creates. Those are the same standards that were applied to making this movie.
“This is a chance to tell a great human story in a completely different medium. Only Sakaguchi would have the vision to take what he had learned in gaming and apply it to the motion picture process,” says Lee. Yet while capturing the kind of excitement, energy and integrity presented in the phenomenally successful game series, “the film’s subject matter and plot appeals not just to gamers but to a wide audience of moviegoers.”
Columbia Pictures and Square Pictures present Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Hironobu Sakaguchi directs from an original screenplay written by Al Reinert and Jeff Vintar. Story by Sakaguchi. Motonori Sakakibara co-directs. The film features the voices of actors Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Ming-Na, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland and James Woods, among others. Sakaguchi, Jun Aida and Chris Lee are producers.
The film’s creative team includes director of photography Motonori Sakakibara, animation director Andy Jones, conceptual director Tani Kunitake, character technical director Kevin Ochs, senior animator Roy Sato, VFX supervisor Remo Balcells and composer Elliot Goldenthal.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA for sci-fi action violence.
Final Fantasy: Synopsis
Prepare to Embark on an Epic Adventure
In the not too distant future, the earth is invaded by aliens. Great cities are deserted, populations are decimated, alien beings have taken over the planet. Precious few humans remain; those that do must find a way to survive the invasion and reclaim the earth.
Two of these humans, Aki Ross (voiced by Ming-Na) and her mentor, Dr. Sid (voiced by Donald Sutherland), are determined to think differently. They are developing an organic solution to what most believe is a problem only the military should handle. Building on his ‘wave theory,’ Sid is developing an antidote to counteract the alien force. They believe all life forms are characterized by signature spirit waves which can be identified and contained. Indeed, they have observed the alien invaders feeding on the spirits of the dead. Aki and Dr. Sid collect a series of organic specimens whose spirit signatures combined will form a wave of equal and opposite intensity to the spirit wave of the alien force. The waves will, in effect, cancel each other out and disarm the foreign contagion. They have collected six of the eight key spirits needed to complete their wave. They are on a desperate hunt to find the remaining two spirits before their time runs out.
Aki’s time is limited. She is infected with the alien force. Normally fatal to humans, Aki manages to survive the infection through a crude encapsulation and containment procedure, an actual breastplate through which the contagion is visible. Her unique condition allows her to communicate with the aliens through a series of dreams which carry her across time to the aliens’ home planet. She begins to understand their nature and the crisis which brought them to earth. Yet the alien within her is fatal and, unless the wave is completed soon, her prognosis is grim.
She is aided in her quest by the rugged and capable Captain Gray Edwards (voiced by Alec Baldwin) and his elite band of renegades known as The Deep Eyes. This highly trained and dedicated force is undaunted by the desperate odds against them as they venture into the restricted wasteland, overrun with alien contagion. Their journey brings them to the deepest heart of the alien invasion—the site of the meteor crash which brought the aliens to earth.
Meanwhile, a military strategist, General Hein (voiced by James Woods), proposes the use of the Zeus Cannon, a massive, highly destructive space-mounted weapon. He hopes to bombard the planet with a bio-etheric energy force. On a smaller scale, weapons of this nature were effective in containing the aliens. Dr. Sid and Aki oppose Hein’s method. They argue that the ecological effect on the planet is unknown and the ultimate effectiveness of the weapon is misunderstood; Dr. Sid even suggests that the cannon might actually give birth to new aliens. A council is established to weigh the options and protect the interests of the surviving population. Impatient for results and hungry for revenge, Hein, whose family was lost to the alien invaders, manipulates his forces, sabotages Aki, and recklessly endangers the planet.
Aki’s final confrontation with the alien comes at a great cost. She finds the last key and releases the wave, and discovers the true nature of the aliens.
Fighting both the enemy within and the scheming General Hein, who would destroy the Earth in order to save it, Aki valiantly pursues her final fantasy.
Final Fantasy: Concept
The Film Born from a Video Game
The Final Fantasy game series’ international blockbuster success continued with its ninth title released in November 2000. Hironobu Sakaguchi conceived the project and watched over every stage of the development of the game series. His Final Fantasy is a leader among interactive role-playing games and is arguably responsible for the tremendous growth of RPG titles.
The first game in the series was introduced in 1987 and instantly appealed to game enthusiasts because of its high production values and the sheer joy of playing the game. Square then produced and released six more versions during the decade that followed, but it was the release of Final Fantasy VIII for the Sony PlayStation system in 1999 that achieved a new high level of animation and graphics sophistication. A record 2 million units sold on the first day of release in Japan and eventually an amazing 6.5 million units sold worldwide. Total sales of Final Fantasy to date exceed 33 million units.
The level of CG animation in these games is already extremely sophisticated; recent releases have provided the most competitive and most innovative period in the entire history of 3-D graphics and animation software.
“It’s a natural progression to bring this style of animation to a feature-length motion picture,” says Chris Lee. “Final Fantasy, as the first film with an entire cast of hyperRealistic, computer-generated human characters, is the ultimate integration of real-world images, human characters and fantasies into a complex 3-D space on the screen.”
As a century of filmmaking via traditional techniques drew to a close, it was inevitable that new, innovative methods of motion picture production would emerge, propelled by freshly imaginative screenwriting and direction, blazing-fast computer technology and brilliant computer graphic artists. It was the goal of the filmmakers for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within to harness this lightning in a bottle.
“Most people don’t realize the power and impact of videogaming on popular culture, and on moviemaking,” says Lee. “Video games have affected three aspects of moviemaking—structure (time shifts, levels, parallel worlds), aesthetic (CGI) and storytelling (collecting).
“We owe the unconventional storytelling of films like The Matrix and The Mummy as much to video games as we do to conventional moviemaking,” says Lee. “Digital characters abound in films now, and they are very lifelike. Today’s kids are really past flat animation, and I think that has to do with the fact that they’re brought up not just with movies, not just with television, but with video games. The synergies are already there.
“This film is quite revolutionary in both its execution and its appearance,” continues Lee. “None of us is saying that we’re making photo-real people. But here, there’s no disconnect between reality and the computer-generated images. Here, the characters and the world all inhabit the same reality.”
Years ago, when the motion picture project was just in its infancy, few except gaming industry insiders knew about Square Pictures. Recalls screenwriter Al Reinert, “My friends thought I was crazy for taking this job. They didn’t know who these people were. They had never heard of them. And I didn’t have anything that I could show them to say, ‘look how cool it’s gonna look!’”
“There were a lot of complications,” explains Aida, “and you could ask if it wouldn’t have been easier to shoot this film as live-action. But we tried to set new standards and establish a new genre of feature films—it is not our intention to compete with live-action films.”
Final Fantasy: Story
Universal Themes Meet a New Kind of Storytelling
Like much of classic science-fiction, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within explores the universal concerns of man vs. nature and examines strong mythological themes. In this case, the story revolves around ‘Gaia’—the idea that the Earth, humans and all living beings have a spirit, which can be injured or destroyed.
Ming-Na explains the story this way: “It’s fantasy mixed with an amazing storyline of life, love and adventure.”
“What is fantasy?” says Sakaguchi, posing one of the questions that serves as a linchpin of his story. “Is it a genre, a structure, a state of mind or a technique? Fantasy invokes wonder by making the impossible seem familiar and the familiar seem new and strange. Experiencing fantasy, we explore the unknown. Fantasy gives a comprehensible form to the basic questions around life and death, good and evil, mystery and magic.
“In Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” he continues, “the stage is Earth in the future, where scientific advances during the second millennium have allowed the mysteries of life and death to be analyzed as never before. In order to express these subjects to the audience, we took a different approach in depicting ‘life,’ using a virtual platform.”
In developing the screenplay, blending the American screenwriters’ sensibility with Sakaguchi’s Japanese approach to storytelling presented challenges. “We had to fit these two philosophies together,” says screenwriter Al Reinert. “Sakaguchi would stand at a blackboard and draw pictures; he’s a very visual guy. It wasn’t like writing any other movie I’ve ever worked on.”
“It’s a very emotional story. It’s about how we’re all part of a whole. It’s very much in keeping with Sakaguchi’s philosophy, which is really a strong part of the success of the Final Fantasy game series,” says Chris Lee. “The games already employ a cinematic way of telling a story.”
Says Sakaguchi: “I wanted to create a visual story about the emotion of the ‘heart’ and its existence at life’s most basic level—survival. This film will set the viewer on an exciting voyage of personal discovery, focusing on the spiritual and philosophical aspect of ‘life.’”
Final Fantasy: Characters
The story of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within revolves around an ensemble of seven key characters:
AKI ROSS
The heroine of this digital journey is the beautiful Aki Ross (voiced by Ming Na). A brilliant scientist and compassionate physician, she is sensitive, intuitive, articulate, as well as focused and driven. When she is infested with one of the alien creatures, she becomes somewhat mysterious and withdrawn as she struggles to comprehend and overcome the alien torment within her. Resolute and cautiously optimistic, she searches for solutions.
GRAY EDWARDS
Gray Edwards (voiced by Alec Baldwin) is a military Captain and leader of the elite Deep Eyes Squadron which patrols the vast restricted wasteland overrun by alien creatures. He is determined, focused, intrepid and valiant. A loyal soldier, effective leader, and trustworthy friend, he lets his conscience guide him.
DOCTOR SID
The brains behind the wave theory, Dr. Sid (voiced by Donald Sutherland) is a scientific genius. Balanced and wise, he doesn’t let his ego into the lab. He is a dedicated and imaginative thinker. His relationship to Aki is that of a collaborator, mentor, and father figure. Sid is confident, adept, an authentic visionary with a sense of humor.
GENERAL HEIN
The hawkish General Hein (voiced by James Woods) is afflicted with hubris and a firm belief in the rightness of his cause. Intelligent and single-minded, he is partly fueled by a thirst for revenge. His family was lost when the San Francisco barrier city was defeated by the aliens. He is, first and foremost, a soldier. He is arrogant and stubborn, skilled and driven.
RYAN WHITTAKER
Second in command to Captain Edwards, Master Sergeant Ryan Whittaker (voiced by Ving Rhames) is the glue that holds the Deep Eyes squad together. He is nothing if not loyal. Gray Edwards’ best friend, Whittaker is accessible, brave, and true.
JANE PROUDFOOT
An integral member of the Deep Eyes force, Jane Proudfoot (voiced by Peri Gilpin) is determined and intelligent. She is quick to action, quick to anger, but ready to play. She is proud and principled and when the circumstances require it, she makes the ultimate sacrifice for her compatriots.
NEIL FLEMING
Neil Fleming (voiced by Steve Buscemi) is The Deep Eyes’ pilot and resident cynic. He’s the one with the brainpower and the dexterity to muscle out of most jams. He’s also sarcastic and potentially pessimistic. Ultimately, he is reliable and dedicated, an integral member of the team.
Final Fantasy: Production
The World’s Top Artists and Animators Converge on Honolulu
Nearly four years was spent researching, developing and creating Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Once production was up and running, the speed, flexibility and quality of content creation quickly reached new levels.
For Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the digital backlot was not in Hollywood, but in Hawaii. Square’s Honolulu-based studio was where 200 of the world’s top graphic artists and exceptionally creative animators worked on the hottest SGI (Silicon Graphic Ink) machines and CG software available to forge new frontiers in digital content creation.
“Square selected Honolulu because of its centralized location in the Pacific,” explains Jun Aida. “This enabled us to maximize the most creative and experienced talent from all over the world.”
The studio gathered its prestigious talent from Hollywood, Tokyo, Europe—22 different countries in all. There were artists who worked on Godzilla(R), Titanic and Toy Story, some former Disney animators, and a conceptual director who labored on The Matrix, among other films. Security cameras mounted next to doors that opened only by coded electronic key protected the top-secret project during production.
Next to the beautiful Pacific Ocean, with palm trees rustling in the tropical breezes and a 180-degree view of sea and surf that stretches all the way from Honolulu International Airport to Diamond Head, the studio where Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came to life occupied several floors of Harbor Court, in downtown Honolulu. Specializing in film production, the studio came well-equipped with state-of-the-art computers and software.
Another part of the Square studio was located in the shadow of the familiar Honolulu landmark known as Diamond Head. Here, at the Hawaii Film Studio’s production facility, specially trained staff members spent hours working in customized body suits, bringing a unique physical personality to the series of complicated and realistic action sequences in the film.
Final Fantasy: Visual Effects
The Alchemy of Art and High-Tech
Times Square crumbles in the dark, burnt to near extinction, but elsewhere huge force barriers hold back the alien army. As death lies in ambush like a shadow, Aki searches for the miraculous, believing that human values of courage, dedication and love can ultimately save our planet Earth…
This isn’t taking place on a soundstage. Welcome to today’s digital backlot, where computer graphics and animation have reached the point of creating motion picture imagery that enables viewers to experience the excitement of fantasy filmmaking like never before.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within draws upon many traditional cinematic strong points—a compelling science-fiction story, attractive heroes, adrenaline-pumping action, exotic settings and myths, even a love story. But it is the development of new computer graphic techniques and technology that allows the artists to achieve the highest degree of unprecedented realism.
“By using CGI in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, we were able to be innovative in using various camera angles, lighting and special effects in the action scenes. But most important, we were able to create a computer-generated human character. That’s the CG artist’s dream,” says Sakaguchi.
The filmmakers and artists put extensive effort into developing their own, one-of-a-kind software to bring the film to life. “Since this is something no one had ever done before, I couldn’t just hire people to show us how to do it. We had to create the software,” says Jun Aida. “Other studios have never done hyperRealistic human actors, so there was no ‘right’ approach. So again, we had to set those new standards.”
“In the case of Final Fantasy, we had to do everything from scratch,” adds Chris Lee. “That’s one of the things that sets this film apart from other attempts to do this kind of computer animation.”
First, dialogue was recorded at a Los Angeles studio by Alec Baldwin, Ming-Na, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Peri Gilpin and the other voice talent in the film.
“Without the best possible actors to provide the voices, there wouldn’t be any emotional resonance for the audience,” says Chris Lee. “Also, animators have nothing to animate to until they have a voice. So we were thrilled to have people like Alec Baldwin, Ming-Na, James Woods, Steve Buscemi and Ving Rhames to power our characters.”
The actors were excited to be involved with such a groundbreaking project. “I was just thrilled with the idea of making a film where the people were being digitally created. It’s exciting to be on the forefront of it,” says James Woods. Woods was particularly pleased with General Hein’s rendering: “I look so handsome in the computer! It’s a completely different character, just with my voice. I don’t have to work out anymore!”
“I’m friends with Jun Aida, and he approached me about the project. It sounded fantastic,” says Ming-Na. “These people are not just technical people sitting in front of a computer—they’re truly artists.”
Alec Baldwin admits he’s “not a video game person in any way, shape or form. But when they showed me what they were doing and they showed me the footage, I was blown away. There’s a great style to this. It’s very unique.”
Veteran actor Donald Sutherland, who voices the character of Dr. Sid, was attracted to the spiritual themes of the story. “It’s about purity of the spirit. It’s about Gaia,” the actor says. “It’s about the ability to go beyond yourself, to go beyond the mundane.”
Peri Gilpin puts it more simply: “It’s cool! This is such a great story to tell, and I think it’s the right way to tell it. These characters really have personality quirks—needs, goals, self-confidence, little neuroses. You can see it in their faces and in their muscles. You just can’t take your eyes off it.”
After the dialogue was recorded, the scenes were then played out at the Diamond Head studio during the process known as motion capture.
During motion capture, a staff member wearing a skin-tight black costume laced with 37 reflective markers simulated true-to-life human motions in the scenes. Sixteen specialized cameras, each silently and rapidly blinking a red light, were connected to computer screens for motion capture. Huge speakers played a pre-recorded voice track.
The capture—each and every bit of action recorded—was electronically sent back to the programmers at Harbor Court. The result of the scene is a 3-D stick figure that matches the staff members’ movements. This is just one of a series of complex computer graphic procedures that the artists reference to create the finished feature film.
The heroine of the story, Aki, like all characters, was entirely built from scratch in the computer. Aki has since taken on a life of her own, even gracing a photo spread in an issue of Maxim and appearing in Entertainment Weekly’s “It” issue, which hit newsstands on June 25.
“Aki is feisty. She’s single-minded in her quest to find the cure to dealing with the aliens,” says Ming-Na. The realism of the animation helped the actress’ performance. “There is a person there. It’s not animation anymore. It’s a human being.”
No reference models were used or digitizing of real humans done to create the characters in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. “The Character Group created the look of the character,” explains Chris Lee. “Then the Animation Group animates the character. Then the character goes back to the Character Group for the details.”
The most time-consuming and render-intensive part of Aki is her hair; 20 percent of total production time was spent on it. There are 60,000 hairs on Aki’s head, each of which have to be manipulated by the animator. The software to create Aki’s hair, which also determines how the hair looks and moves, was written in-house because existing software to create long hair was inadequate. Lights are then positioned in the computer to allow the hair to interact with it.
An artist first sculpted Aki’s face in three dimensions. She is then rendered in ‘wire frame mode,’ in which a three-dimensional wire frame is superimposed over a sketched drawing of the character. The wire frame becomes the character’s skeleton and allows animators to give it lifelike movement and form. Aki has a ‘spine’ which simulates real bone and moves like real bone.
Second, the frame is given a skin, which is known as ‘shaded mode.’ In the third step, texture mapping adds lighting, texture, shadow, reflections in the eyes, imperfections and other details. Freckles and pores are then added by handpainting on the computer. No digitizing of a real person or scanning of human skin was done to create these authentic human characteristics—it was all made from scratch in the computer.
A costume is separately rendered and layered on top of the form. Technical directors spent months ripping up clothes and learning to sew in order to faithfully render the behavior of fabric in motion.
Most of the film’s designers worked in high-ceilinged rooms behind windows that had been draped in black cloth to prevent glare on the two or three monitors crowded before them. On any given day in the studio, one might see hundreds of hand-drawn storyboards taped to walls everywhere, workstation screens abuzz, some designers handpainting fine details—such as skin textures and hair for the human characters—others building vehicles, battlefields and futuristic weapons in cyberspace.
The accurate rendering of skin colors and textures and facial expressions, as well as hair details and clothing wrinkles as each character moves about, presented enormous challenges which needed to be answered by special solutions. Again, the programmers at Square wrote their own software tools. Artists often went through hundreds of transformations and refinements as they labored on renderings for the film’s many characters, each of which has a full range of motion and rich facial expressions.
“Technically, the natural human facial expressions were the most difficult aspect,” explains Sakaguchi. “Unlike bringing inanimate objects to life, it is an extreme challenge to simulate human movement, hair and clothing, because our eyes are naturally critical toward human movements—we observe them everyday.”
“An audience knows when it’s false,” adds Chris Lee. “That was the challenge for our artists, to be able to replicate that on a computer.”
“Those little details are extremely difficult to animate because if they’re done wrong, they look really weird and automatically pop out as something strange. It’s important to get the timing of the word being said and the expression on the face right,” says animation director Andy Jones.
“We had to pay attention to miniscule details like the transparency of the teeth and the pocket of the eye,” says Sakaguchi. “There are a multitude of muscles that create the most subtle movements of the human face.”
Sakaguchi points out one advantage of using computer-generated performers: “Our ‘actors,’” he says with a smile, “are always willing to work on time and take direction.
“My goal was to create a film in which each scene embodies our artists’ spirit,” says Sakaguchi. “To express a human’s spirit is expressing life itself.”
Screenwriter Al Reinert puts it more simply: “It’s gonna look like no movie you ever saw before.”
Final Fantasy: Filmmakers
HIRONOBU SAKAGUCHI (director) has led the development division since joining Square Co. Ltd. in l986. He has produced more than 40 million units of computer game software worldwide, with his smash hit Final Fantasy series selling more than 33 million units.
At Square, Sakaguchi was promoted to executive vice president in 1991. He recently entered into an exclusive production arrangement with Square where he plans to oversee the development of Square’s future games as well as producing other feature film projects.
MOTONORI SAKAKIBARA (co-director) was born in Tokyo and earned his BS in Architecture from Musashino Art University in Japan. As an animator and modeler, he has created various television programs and commercials while working for Japan Computer Graphics Lab (J.C.G.L.), Namco Ltd. and HD/CG New York, Kaufman Astoria Studios. He joined Square in 1995 to work on Final Fantasy VII, first as a chief 3D animator and modeler and later as a director. Sakakibara is the winner of the ARTFOLIO International Art Competition (1993) and the Japan Graphic Exhibition (1989), among other honors.
JUN AIDA (producer) serves as president and C.O.O. of Square’s Honolulu Studio.
In 1994, he produced the film Street Fighter, the live-action box-office hit which grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Aida joined Square USA in 1997 as vice president of film and entertainment and in 1999 was promoted to president to oversee the Honolulu studio’s entire CG production efforts.
Aida has also produced successful animated TV series such as Street Fighter, MegaMan and DarkStalkers for the U.S. market.
CHRIS LEE (producer) is the founder of Chris Lee Productions Inc., a multi-media entertainment and management company with a first-look deal at Columbia Pictures.
Lee is the former president of motion picture production for Columbia/TriStar Pictures. Under his tenure, an impressive series of films were released, including the Academy Award(R)-winning As Good As It Gets, Jerry Maguire and Philadelphia, as well as My Best Friend’s Wedding, Jumanji, Legends of the Fall, Sleepless in Seattle, Starship Troopers and Godzilla(R).
Based on the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot, Lee’s current company is involved in a wide range of content creation: the production of motion pictures, television, internet programming, music videos, commercials and computer video games.
Lee began at TriStar Pictures as a freelance script analyst and worked with acclaimed director Wayne Wang on his film Dim Sum.
Originally from Hawaii, Lee is a graduate of Yale University.
AL REINERT (screenwriter) was born in Tokyo, Japan, where his father, a United States Army officer, was stationed.
After a career as a newspaper journalist and magazine writer, Reinert made the successful jump to writing for feature films. For All Mankind, which he produced, won the Audience Award at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival.
In 1995, Reinert was nominated for an Academy Award(R) for his screenplay for Ron Howard’s Apollo 13.
JEFF VINTAR (screenwriter) is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop.
He has written screenplays for 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Warner Bros. and Columbia. His original script, The Long Hello and Short Good-bye, was produced for German Cinema in 1999. His writing credits include an English-language version of Long Hello, produced by John Woo and Terence Chang, and I, Robot, directed by Alex Proyas.
ANDY JONES (animation director) was born in California and earned his BA in Design and Graphic Arts from UCLA, where he studied both traditional animation and computer-generated animation. Employed by Digital Domain as a character animator, Jones served as a lead animator on three projects before becoming an animation supervisor for Titanic (1997). For Titanic, he was responsible for much of the animation during the “sinking sequence,” including the “propeller guy.” Before joining Square, Jones worked for Centropolis Entertainment as an animation supervisor on Godzilla(R) (1998).
TANI KUNITAKE (conceptual director) was born in Detroit, Michigan. In 1993, he worked as a storyboard artist for Industrial Light and Magic and Digital Domain. His talent has also led him to illustrate for David Fincher’s Fight Club and storyboard for the Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix. He has also worked as a conceptual illustrator for directors such as Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, Michael Bay, Vincent Ward and Steve Norington. Kunitake joined Square in April 1999 as a staging director.
KEVIN OCHS (character technical director) was born in Illinois. Ochs began his career in 1997 at Windlight Studios. His previous projects included several commercial spots, including Mattel's “Barbie” and the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Kevin has been a Character Technical Director with Square USA since 1998. His primary focus on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was working on the technical design of the skin as well as cloth simulation.
ROY SATO (senior animator) was born in Honolulu. Sato attended Hawaii Baptist Academy where he graduated in 1986. He entered the University of Hawaii at Manoa, majoring in graphic design. Continuing his studies at the Yoyogi Animation Institute in Tokyo, Japan, Roy received training in animation. After working for Disney Animation studios in Japan for five years, Roy returned to Hawaii where he worked at Computer Visualizations, Inc. for one year before joining Square in 1998.
REMO BALCELLS (VFX supervisor) was born in Turin, Italy. Balcells was one of the key figures in the development of computer graphics in Spain during the early ’80s and ’90s. After working as an instructor as well as for such companies as Animatica, Remo worked as a senior Digital Artist for Digital Domain. His previous credits include Titanic and The Fifth Element. Remo joined Square in 1998 as VFX Supervisor.
ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL (composer) most recently completed the scores for Titus and In Dreams, and won the LAFCA Award for Best Original Score for his music for The Butcher Boy. Previously, Goldenthal was nominated for both the Oscar(R) and the Golden Globe for Best Original Score for his work on the films Michael Collins and Interview with the Vampire. His other film credits include A Time to Kill, Batman Forever, Heat, Alien 3, Sphere and Cobb.
Final Fantasy: Cast
ALEC BALDWIN’s (Captain Gray Edwards) Broadway stage credits include A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Gregory Mosher (Tony nomination); Joe Orton’s Loot, directed by John Tillinger (Theatre World Award); and Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money. His other theater credits include Prelude to a Kiss at Circle Rep, directed by Norman Rene (Obie Award); David Mamet’s Life in the Theatre at the Hartman, directed by A.J. Antoon; and the title role of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the New York Shakespeare Festival, directed by George C. Wolfe.
Baldwin was most recently seen in David Mamet’s feature film State & Main for Fine Line Pictures opposite William H. Macy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Sarah Jessica Parker. Baldwin starred as a famous Hollywood actor who, along with a film crew, take over a small town in New England to shoot a movie.
Baldwin also executive produced and starred in the TNT Original Film Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial. He was nominated for a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for his performance as Justice Robert Jackson. The four-hour miniseries documented the true story of the trial of 21 members of the Nazi high command for the horrific war crimes committed under their leadership during World War II.
Currently, Baldwin portrays Jimmy Doolittle in Disney’s Pearl Harbor, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Michael Bay. The film, which also stars Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Cuba Gooding, Jr., follows the story of two soldiers stationed in Pearl Harbor during World War II who fall in love with the same woman.
Last year, Baldwin also starred opposite Peter Fonda and Mara Wilson in the live-action Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Baldwin portrayed “Mr. Conductor” in the children’s story of a young girl who leaves the city to visit her grandfather in the countryside.
On film, Baldwin has appeared in Outside Providence, The Edge, Mercury Rising, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Juror, Heaven’s Prisoners, The Shadow, The Getaway, Malice, Glengarry Glen Ross, Prelude to a Kiss, The Hunt for Red October, Great Balls of Fire, Alice, Miami Blues, Working Girl, Talk Radio, Married to the Mob, Beetlejuice and She’s Having a Baby.
Baldwin began his career in daytime television on the NBC series The Doctors. He went on to roles in such TV shows as Knot’s Landing on CBS and the NBC miniseries Dress Grey.
Baldwin is involved in several causes related to public policy. He is a board member of People for the American Way and the Standing For Truth About Radiation (STAR) Foundation of East Hampton, Long Island. He is also a past president of The Creative Coalition.
In an era where actors search desperately for that one perfect role, STEVE BUSCEMI (Neil Fleming) has built his career by portraying a variety of remarkable characters. He brings them to the screen with such uniqueness that each and every role is unforgettable.
Most recently, Buscemi’s second feature film as a director, Animal Factory, was released in theatres to critical acclaim. It is a story about a young man sent to prison for an unjustly harsh sentence who becomes a product of that rough environment. The film stars Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong.
He recently finished filming Paramount’s Domestic Disturbance, opposite John Travolta and Vince Vaughn. Other recently completed projects include MGM’s Ghost World, directed by Terry Zwigoff and co-starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson and Brad Renfro; The Grey Zone, Double Whammy, 13 Moons, Deeds, Nine Scenes About Love, and the HBO telefilm The Laramie Project. He has also provided the voices for characters in the upcoming animated feature Monsters, Inc.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Buscemi began to show an interest in drama while in his last year of high school. Soon after, he moved to Manhattan to study acting with John Strasberg. There, he and fellow actor/writer Mark Boone Junior began writing and performing their own theatre pieces in performance spaces and downtown theatres. This soon led to his being cast in his first lead role in Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances as a musician with AIDS.
Since then, he has become the actor of choice for many of the best directors in the business. His resume includes Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, for which he received an IFP Spirit Award Nomination; Alexandre Rockwell’s 1992 Sundance Film Festival Jury Award winner In The Soup, Martin Scorsese’s New York Stories, the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, the Academy Award(R)-winning Fargo and The Big Lebowski; Stanley Tucci’s The Imposters, the Jerry Bruckheimer productions Con Air and Armageddon, Tom DiCillo’s Sundance Film Festival Award-winning Living in Oblivion, with Dermot Mulroney and James LeGros; Twenty Bucks, John Carpenter’s Escape From L.A., Desperado, Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Alexandre Rockwell’s Somebody to Love, an IFP Spirit Award-winning performance as Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Robert Altman’s Kansas City. He has had numerous cameo appearances in films such as Rising Sun, The Hudsucker Proxy, Big Daddy and The Wedding Singer.
In addition to his talents as an actor, Buscemi has proven to be a respected writer and director. His first project was the short film What Happened To Pete, which was featured at several film festivals, including Rotterdam and LoCarno, and aired on the Bravo Network.
He marked his full-length feature film directorial debut with Trees Lounge, which he also wrote and starred in. The film, which co-starred Chloe Sevigny, Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony LaPaglia, made its debut in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival and was released domestically in fall 1996.
PERI GILPIN (Jane Proudfoot) stars as 'Roz Doyle', the producer of 'Dr. Frasier Crane's' talk radio show on NBC's Frasier. Additionally, Gilpin appears in Neil Simon's latest project, Laughter On the 23rd Floor, starring opposite Nathan Lane. The film premiered on Showtime in May.
Recently, Gilpin starred alongside Liev Schreiber, Ned Beatty, Campbell Scott, and Lili Taylor in the independent film Spring Forward, released late last year. She can also be seen in How To Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog, opposite Kenneth Branagh and Robin Wright Penn, which had its world premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.
From the age of eight, Gilpin knew that she wanted to pursue acting and was enrolled in the Dallas Theater Center. Gilpin attended the University of Texas in Austin where she studied Drama, as well as the British-American Academy in London. She set off for Williamstown, where she entered the apprenticeship program and was later invited back for three consecutive summers as a non-equity actor. While there, she appeared in productions of The Crucible, Hawthorne Country and Peer Gynt. She landed a part in the off-off-Broadway production of Lucky Lucy and The Fortune Man. More recently, she has appeared in east coast productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream as 'Helena', at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, as well as in As Bees in Honey Drown, playing 'Alexa Ver de Ver', at the Lucille Lortell Theatre.
Gilpin relocated to Los Angeles and landed roles on such television shows as Cheers, Wings and Designing Women. Gilpin's first venture into series television was Flesh 'N' Blood, starring alongside David Keith, which led to her subsequent casting alongside Keith in Local Heroes. Her additional television credits include the NBC film The Secret She Carried, opposite D.W. Moffett and Jere Burns, and the NBC
film Fight for Justice: The Nancy Conn Story, opposite Marilu Henner. She also starred in an episode of the wildly popular series The Outer Limits entitled "Etherically Yours."
On the Los Angeles stage, Gilpin appeared in The Maderati at the Tiffany Theater while also serving as Associate Producer. As well, Gilpin performed in the Ensemble Theater Production of Women of Manhattan.
Gilpin currently resides in Los Angeles.
MING-NA (Dr. Aki Ross) first garnered attention with her critically acclaimed and touching performance as the gentle ‘June’ in Wayne Wang’s film version of Amy Tan’s best-selling novel, The Joy Luck Club.
Born in Macau, China, Ming-Na moved with her family to New York City when she was four years old. Five years later, they moved to Pittsburgh to open their family restaurant, The Chinatown Inn. She attended college in her hometown at Carnegie-Mellon University and graduated with honors and a BFA in Theater before moving back to New York.
While performing off-Broadway, she was given the first contract role in daytime television history for an Asian actor on As The World Turns. As her first love is the theater, she continued working on the New York stage during her tenure on the soap, including in the premiere production of Tony Award winner Lanford Wilson’s Redwood Curtain.
After she finished shooting The Joy Luck Club, she was inspired to travel throughout China to meet all of her family for the first time. Upon her return, Tony Award-winner James Lapine cast her in the world premiere of his Luck, Pluck & Virtue at the renowned La Jolla Playhouse.
After traveling to Europe to promote The Joy Luck Club, she returned to Los Angeles and was cast as the female lead opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia in the international hit Streetfighter.
Named as one of People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, she landed the highly coveted role of the ambitious medical student, ‘Deb Chen’, on the first season of NBC’s smash hit, ER. She then played ‘Trudy,’ the hip SoHo gallery owner on NBC’s The Single Guy for the series’ two-season run. Ming-Na received rave reviews for her performance starring opposite Wesley Snipes in director Mike Figgis’ Leaving Las Vegas follow-up, One Night Stand.
Ming-Na made her Broadway debut last year starring in David Henry Hwang’s Best Play Tony nominee Golden Child and was heard as the voice of the title character in Disney’s animated musical Mulan. It was her work in this film for which Ming-Na received the inaugural Annie Award for best lead vocal performance in a feature length animated film. She then worked with acclaimed director Robert Altman on the television pilot Killer App.
Ming-Na was recently named by A Magazine as one of the 100 most influential Asian-Americans of the past decade.
Ming-Na lives in Los Angeles with her husband, actor/writer Eric Michael Zee, and returned this winter to ER, reprising her role of Deb Chen as a series regular.
At the 1998 Golden Globe Awards, people were shocked when VING RHAMES (Ryan Whittaker) bestowed his newly won trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon. Those who really knew Rhames were not surprised at all. Rhames has an imposing physical presence, but he is remarkably sensitive and kind—your typical "friendly giant." Despite this, he was able to pull off villainous turns in Pulp Fiction and Con Air with aplomb.
He can currently be seen in John Singleton’s Baby Boy.
Two years after graduating from the renowned Julliard School of Drama, he made his Broadway debut opposite Matt Dillon in The Winter Boys, after which he worked on a variety of off-Broadway productions. He also worked in television, with recurring roles on the daytime soaps Another World and Guiding Light and guest appearances on shows like Miami Vice.
In the early 1990s, Rhames garnered roles in films like Casualties of War, Jacob's Ladder, Mission: Impossible and Rosewood, which helped to increase his profile. It wasn’t until 1994 that Ving Rhames would explode onto the Hollywood scene after the release of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which launched his career.
Since then, Rhames has done Striptease with Demi Moore, Out of Sight with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta- Jones, and Mission: Impossible II with Tom Cruise.
Rhames also won a ShoWest Best Supporting Actor Award for his role in Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead.
Veteran actor DONALD SUTHERLAND (Dr. Sid) is one of the most prolific and versatile of motion picture actors, whose offbeat elegance is evident in an astonishing array of more than 100 films. These films range from the biting political satire of Robert Altman's M.A.S.H. to the intimate drama of Robert Redford's Ordinary People to the subtle intricacy of Alan Pakula's Klute to the eccentric romanticism of Fellini's Casanova.
Sutherland just completed a sold-out, critically-praised engagement at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre of Lincoln Center in Jon Robin Baitz’s Ten Unknowns. The play co-starred Julianna Margulies and Justin Kirk, was directed by Daniel Sullivan and has earned Sutherland an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for “Best Actor.”
On the big screen, Sutherland most recently starred in Space Cowboys with Clint Eastwood, James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones. His other notable film credits over the past decade include Disclosure, Without Limits, Outbreak, A Time To Kill, Six Degrees of Separation, JFK and Backdraft.
Sutherland won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his supporting performance in the 1995 HBO telefilm Citizen X. He was also nominated for his acclaimed performances in the films Without Limits, Ordinary People and M.A.S.H.
Trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Sutherland has starred in nearly 100 films, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Day of the Locust, Klute and The Dirty Dozen.
JAMES WOODS (General Hein) will next be seen in this summer’s Scary Movie 2 and Penny Marshall’s Riding in Cars With Boys.
His exceptional career continues to build in power and range with each performance he offers. Selected as one of Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Greatest Actors of the ’90s, Woods’ recent roles include a chillingly uncompromising Academy Award®-nominated portrait of civil rights activist Medgar Evers’ assassin, Byron De la Beckwith, in Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi; the comic voice of Hades in Disney’s Hercules; and an impressive turn opposite Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey in Robert Zemeckis’ Contact.
His recent work has garnered a shower of honors, including the Golden Satellite Award for his lead performance in the independent feature Killer—A Journal of Murder and Golden Globe nominations for both the Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie The Summer of Ben Tyler and Ghosts of Mississippi.
The caliber of his work has attracted a number of the world’s finest directors. For Martin Scorsese, he appeared in Casino and Kicked in the Head and for Oliver Stone he starred in Nixon and the film that landed him his first Academy Award® nomination, Salvador.
Woods’ versatility and range is reflected in his roles as White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in Nixon, a sleazy Las Vegas pimp in Casino, comedic performances in The Hard Way with Michael J. Fox and Immediate Family opposite Glenn Close, as well as his acclaimed television performances in Indictment—The McMartin Trial and HBO’s Citizen Cohn.
Woods’ portraits of controversial real-life figures began with his portrayal of cop killer Gregory Powell in Harold Becker’s 1977 film The Onion Field and has continued with his roles as Haldeman, Beckwith, Cohn and serial killer Carl Panzram in Killer. His performance in Citizen Cohn remains one of the most enthusiastically reviewed performances in the medium’s history, earning him the first American Television Award Best Actor Trophy (voted by the nation’s critics), the Peabody Award and nominations for virtually every other relevant award.
Woods received his first Academy Award® nomination and the Independent Film Project’s Spirit Award as Best Actor for Oliver Stone’s Salvador. During that same year, he received the Golden Globe Award, the Golden Apple Award and an Emmy for his performance in the Hallmark Hall of fame production of Promise. He received another Golden Globe nomination for NBC’s In Love and War. His films that year also included The Boost and Best Seller.
Woods won an Emmy for his portrayal of the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in My Name is Bill W. Woods made his Broadway debut in Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy, and followed with a lead performance in the off-Broadway production Saved, for which he received the Obie Award and the Clarence Derwent Award for Most Promising Actor. Other theater credits include The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Finishing Touches, Green Julia and Michael Weller’s Moonchildren, for which he won the Theatre World Award.
His film work includes The Visitors, The Way We Were, Once Upon a Time in America, Eyewitness, The Getaway, Curse of the Starving Class, Videodrome, Joshua Then and Now, Split Image, Against All Odds, True Believer, Any Given Sunday, True Crime and The General’s Daughter.
# # #
“Academy Award(s) ®” and “Oscar(s) ®” are registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Godzilla and the Godzilla character and design are marks of Toho Co., Ltd. The Godzilla character and design are copyrighted works of Toho Co., Ltd. All are used with permission.
7/11/01
less
Initial release date:
- Jul 13, 2001
Directed by:
Rating:
PG-13 (USA)Runtime:
- 106 min (63.6 hs )
Estimated budget:
- 137,000,000 (US$)
Produced by:
View Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within: Producer »- Scroll to:
- Film
- Work of Fiction
- Musical Album
