Ender’s Game was my very first experience on the red carpet, so there was a lot of confusion on my part, but overall it was an amazing learning experience and a great time to see cast members we’d met before and meet ones we hadn’t had the chance to talk to before.
Here are photos we took while there. Sadly, we didn’t get to meet everyone since we were in the latter half of the carpet, but we still have some fun photos. Sorry they’re so late, but it’s been a crazy two weeks!
Last week, Kelly and I rang in NovEnder on EnderCast, talking about our trip to the Los Angeles premiere, our thoughts on the movie, and more! Other discussion topics:
Listen to the episode at EnderCast.
Tyranny of Style talked with Ender’s Game costume designer Christine Bieselin-Clark and she talked about some interesting things such as the budget for the film, which was around $4 million. We already know how complicated the flash suits and helmets were, but still, wow!
The level of responsibility and accountability that comes with heading a department is gargantuan. You’re talking millions of dollars. Our costume budget on Tron was over $10 million, for the costume department. The costume budget on Ender’s Game was close to $4 million. The level of stress that you have for being accountable for not only bringing something visionary and interesting- a design that the director, producer, and the studio are jazzed about, but then executing it on time and on budget that’s what the designer wears. As the assistant designer, though you’re fully invested and responsible for those things as well, it’s not your plan, really. It’s not your designs. There is a level where you can just kind of take a step back and be a worker bee. Whereas going in and being the designer you really have got to be on your toes 24/7.
She also talked a bit about why she chose Valentine’s outfit, something I found particularly interesting because I felt like Valentine’s clothing contributed a lot to the character Abigail brought out in the film.
[M]y future is an amalgamation of some iconic things from different time periods. Like I have a Peter Pan collar on Valentine and this Mandarin kind of stand collar on things. You take kind of things that our mind’s eye will recognize from other times and you put them all together and you make a new time. That’s sort of what we did aesthetically. And there are other reasons behind those things. You want to create an innocent childlike feeling to Valentine, so that’s why you give her the Peter Pan collar. I don’t really have one thing, because it was such an amalgamation, a mish-mosh of all kinds of different time periods.
Clark describes in detail how technologically advanced the costume design was for Tron and that this actually prompted her to go the other way for Ender’s.
[W]hen we went into Ender’s Game I didn’t want to use foam latex. I didn’t want to sculpt anything. I wanted to go the other way. So on Ender’s Game, the suits that we made are actually fabricated with normal pattern making and draping. The materials we used were technologically advanced. And we made materials, but the suits them self are patterned, drafted, cut, and stitched.
We did most of it in our department. The department started in Los Angeles and then we migrated to New Orleans. So we had a lot of in house people doing the pattern making and drafting. And then Quantum, the company I had worked with on Tron, mass-produced the suits for us. So we did a prototype in house and then they did the mass-production. There are some sculptural elements like the body armor pieces on the shoulders and the helmets- they did all of that stuff for me also. The helmets we did do exactly like Tron. We did sculpt them digitally and grow them. It’s easy to do with hard stuff. The hard parts are easier to grow and 3D print than anything else, I have to say.
I have to admit, even with the Sandboxr ship sample I got, I still don’t know what 3D printing is or how you “grow” a helmet. I’m going to have to go find a video with the process.
Read the full interview at Tyranny of Style.
11 entries came in for our Ender’s Game Pumpkin Carving contest and after looking through and examining each pumpkin, here are the results!
In First Place, winning the Grand Prize packet, is this Ender’s Game poster pumpkin by Emma! Amazing job, Emma!
In second place is this Dragon Army/Ender’s Game logo pumpkin by Dustin. Nice job! I can feel the pain of that logo carving. 🙂
In Third Place, we have this Salamander Army logo pumpkin by Andrew. Bonzo would be proud!
And finally, we have this Griffin Army logo pumpkin by Natalie. I’d have ranked this higher, but sadly I had to penalize for lack of a lit in the dark photo.
Thanks to everyone who participated! I will be in touch soon!
In closing, here’s the full image of my own Ender’s Game pumpkin, which I never did post because I was too busy…
Last week at the Ender’s Game premiere in LA, Kelly and I got to talk to Ender’s Game composer Steve Jablonsky. Listen to him talk about how he came to be on the project, his reaction to his first time watching the film, and his hopes for our reaction to the film.
My own video had terrible audio, so I grabbed the embed from Ender News. Thank you Kelly and Aidan!
At the press junket for Ender’s Game last month, Asa Butterfield answered questions at a press conference, talking about youth and technology and some additional details about his audition for the role of Ender.
We heard that you are a gamer. What was it like to be in this ultimate gamers’ movie and how much do you feel your generation has been influenced by technology?
Asa Butterfield: That’s a good point I think. One of the really important discussions even in today’s society is how children of my generation are growing up around this technology. It has shaped their lives. My little sister who is four can work my mom’s iPhone better than she can. It’s crazy how much has changed in the last five or 10 years, and then imagine 50 years from now how that’s going to become an even bigger part of our lives. So to take that idea and making it such an important part of the story was really exciting because I do enjoy computer games. Being able to take some of that knowledge of mine and put it into my performance was something new.
Can you tell us about your audition for the movie and what you had to do?
Asa Butterfield: Well I first got the script in the summer of 2011 I think, and it really stood out to me. I’m a huge fan of science fiction so this is definitely one of my favorite scripts. I was flying around in zero gravity shooting laser guns. What more could you want? Then when I found that there was a book, I read the book and I loved that. When I Skyped with Gavin the director, we talked about the character, his view of him and where I wanted to take it. It was very interesting for me to be able to have that much of a discussion about such a complex character, and I ended up flying here to LA to audition in front of Gavin and just after that I got the role.
The full transcript can be found at We Got This Covered.
PopSugar sat down to interview Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld, talking to Asa about why he chose Ender’s Game, what part of Ender he wishes he could be like, and what he thought when he first saw the film.
With Hailee, they asked what Hailee’s relationship was like with Asa offscreen, whether it was hard for her to be the only female main character, and why she loves young adult adaptations.
Source: BuzzSugar
The LA Times interviewed Ender’s Game costume designer Christine Bieselin-Clark and talked to her about the construction of the flash suits and the helmets.
Bieselin Clark designed the helmets in three parts connected by strong magnets: the main helmet, the mandible that comes around the front of the chin, and the visor. “We knew that we might get into a place where that visor and the reflections would be compromising for filming,” she said. “So that visor could come away if we needed it to not be in the shot. It’s very cool. They also had to be light enough. And we had to put little fans in them so people could breathe.”
Since the film is set in the future, no present-day fabric felt quite right. “The predominant fabric in the Flash Suit is one that we made,” Bieselin Clark said. Using spandex or leather as a base fabric, she layered other fabrics on top using glue, solvents and heat-fusible webbings and overlaid these with thin laminates. “It was like a crazy science experiment to combine certain ingredients to make specific fabrics for specific places on the suit,” she said. “[We also did] screen printing with rubberized inks in different colors to create surface texture.”
To construct the helmets, Bieselin Clark and her team took a digital scan of each actor and fed it into a computer program, which overlaid the helmet design onto the scanned head shape. They then created an output of that by using a rapid prototyping machine that lays down thin layers of resin and shapes them with lasers. “So you’re basically growing with lasers a part that perfectly fits the head of the person you’ve scanned,” Bieselin Clark said. “It’s super crazy.”
They also talk to Christine about how she got into the business. You can read the full interview at the LA Times and also visit her website at www.christineclarkdesign.com.
Ender’s Game has only hit theaters a few days ago and Amazon has already opened pre-orders for the DVD and Blu-ray discs.
The DVD, which includes an UltraViolet Digital copy, is selling for $20.97 while the Blu-ray, which also comes with an UltraViolet digital copy, sells for $27.99. There are no details yet on special features or a release date. The DVD is currently #8 on Amazon’s Science Fiction DVDs and #7 in Science Fiction Blu-rays.
Pre-order it on Amazon HERE.
HitFix interviewed Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford in anticipation of the Ender’s Game’s opening today. Watch the videos below.
Asa Butterfield:
Harrison Ford:
In the last video, Ford talks about seeing several cuts of the film. Perhaps… one that was longer?
Ender’s Game launched the International Fleet’s forces last night on All Hallow’s Eve and Variety is reporting a solid $1.4M in the box office, placing it third for the night behind Gravity at $1.6M and Bad Grandpa at $1.4M.
Paramount’s “Bad Grandpa” posted a similar late-night launch of $1.4 million a week ago and has topped $40 million in its first week. “Gravity” also took in $1.4 million from its first late-night shows while “Oblivion” and “After Earth” both grossed $1 million in their respective preview shows; “Pacific Rim” grossed an impressive $3.6 million in previews while “Carrie” took in $725,000.
I actually find it encouraging and impressive that Ender’s Game is doing better on its Thursday than Oblivion, even though Oblivion didn’t impress at the box office much domestically in the end. I wasn’t sure how Halloween would affect things since teens and parents alike would presumably be busy spending time with friends and family doing Halloween activities rather than going to see the movie. We’ll just have to wait and see how the movie does over the coming weekend!
If you saw the movie last night and are feeling a mixture of emotions ranging from disappointed to thrilled, be sure to go see Ender’s Game again. Despite the common complaint that the film is terribly paced, you may just find that a second viewing will let you enjoy the film for what it is. Happy NovEnder 1st!
It’s NovEnder 1st, which means that you can now get the Ender’s Game Opening Weekend sticker on GetGlue!
There are three Limited Edition stickers available for Ender’s Game so far. Do you have them all?