You may not know the name, but you have seen the work of Neville Page in films like Avatar, Cloverfield, Watchmen, Star Trek and others. Neville is a concept designer and has worked as an art director, character designer and costume designer. We talked about his work as the lead concept artist on Tron Legacy,Page and lead creature designer on the upcoming Green Lantern adaptation.
CraveOnline: Could you talk about your memories of seeing the original Tron?
Neville Page: Yes. It's important to make the distinction of memories of it [laughs] versus when I saw it [recently]. It was a huge film for me in that it was groundbreaking and such a unique world being that it wasn't outer space [but] inner space. So I was blown away--the light cycle costumes and the crazy visual effects that went with the whole disk game. It was part of the fabric that made me want to be a designer, quite frankly. There was Tron; there was Star Wars; there was the other Disney film, The Black Hole; and a whole bunch of others. When I saw it years later, of course my brain had expanded on it. [I] had imagined it being a little more polished than it was, but for the time and the technology it was as polished as it could be--nothing like Tron today.
CraveOnline: You have said that in the early stages everybody did a little of everything. Could you talk about that time period some more?
Neville Page: At the very, very beginning of the official production, we were all kind of playing with everything from the environments to vehicles to characters. There were those of us like myself and Ed Natividad who were even more broad than, say, the vehicle designers. Harald Belker was one of the first vehicle designers on the project, and he was focused purely on vehicle. I had the opportunity, along with Ed, to do the sirens, robotic characters, various props. The whole point of this was that we, with the guidance of [director] Joe Kosinski, were collectively looking for what the aesthetic would be. The road map was, of course, laid down by the teaser that Joe did a couple years ago for Comic-Con. That really did establish a very, very specific look that he wanted, although there was a lot of worlds that had to be figured out, and vehicles, and costumes. We kind of knew what we were doing. So it wasn't like shooting in the dark in the early phases--for me it was trying to hone in on the characters than anything else.
CraveOnline: Also, to some degree, you were taking the world of the original Tron and moving it a quarter-of-a-century into the future, reflecting our current technology.
Neville Page: Yes, it really is, and going with Joe's aesthetic propensities as an architect. He has a very clean aesthetic, so it meant that the things we were designing were not going to be surfaced in such a way that they were fussy or visually very busy. It sounds like it might be easier because you don't have as much to design--it's real simple, clean surfaces--but when it's that clean, it reveals very clearly the purity of the design. So a clean [design] is almost a more difficult one because you have to be really, really mindful of form language and graphic design--the graphic design is a big part of Tron.
CraveOnline: Did you feel at all daunted by taking on a world that has involved Syd Mead, Moebius, and other highly-talented designers, or were you taking it in a new direction?
Neville Page: Well, I'm a huge fan of Syd in particular, and if I was to have consciously thought, “I'm having to follow in his footsteps,” that would have been daunting. Quite frankly, I don't think I can--Syd's got such a strong aesthetic, and he's such a powerful designer. It was more about really doing Joe's new vision of it, knowing that we'd need to have a whole design language as consistent as what Syd and Moebius had achieved.
But I think the most interesting day was when Syd Mead actually came by the art department to just take a look at what we were up to. A few of us know him pretty well from just having been in the same circle of designers over the years, but I was very happy to know that I was doing costume and helmet design at that point and not vehicles [laughter]. I'm sure he was visually critical of everything, but he was probably more critical of sets and vehicles than of costumes, so I didn't feel as much pressure.
CraveOnline: One of his ideas for the original Tron which wasn't used, is being used in this one: the idea of the light cycle being part of a costume.
Neville Page: Well there's the original light cycle Syd did that ended up in the movie Tron. They resurrect that in this film, which is cool--you're inside of it. But in this Tron, yeah, they--Joe and Disney--wanted to do a version were the rider's exposed, and it kind of made sense for the rider to have some kind of a fairing that connects body to the motorcycle. Even though Syd had come up with it, we came up with it for the same reasons: which was it just made the most sense. However, we ended up looking at Syd's stuff, of course, and going, “Hey, he kind of figured that one out, too!” Then we just had to make it work thoroughly so that doubleheaders could move, the costume aesthetic would integrate well with the vehicle aesthetic, the graphics, the lighting has to work independently but connect to the bikes. It was a lot of back-and-forth.
CraveOnline: Regarding Green Lantern, one thing that intrigued me about it growing up was vast images of the Green Lantern Corps and the variety of life forms: some of them looked really bizarre, like something you might see in Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials and other less so, more like humanoids from classic Star Trek so it was quite a mix. Was that your approach, or did you have a different influences?
Neville Page: Well we had to be true to the franchise and fair to the fan base. If you're given some of these crazy characters, they need to be recognizable as that character as much as you can. It's funny that you bring up Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials because I've always considered Wayne to be one of the most creative designers out there in the creature world. I mean he does some really crazy, abstract stuff. But when I was looking at some of the Corps characters from Green Lantern, I thought some of the creatures made Wayne Barlow look conservative. They're so nutty. It was an inspiration, of course, because you're seeing these ideas that are just so creative, but sometimes they are so creative that it really poses a challenge of how to make this viable and plausible and real on camera. When you have some wacky thing standing next to Ryan Reynolds for example, that's when you really balance the expectation of the franchise with infusing the character with a sense of life that is plausible.
CraveOnline: Are you working on anything at the moment, or are you taking a rest?
Neville Page: Tron is mostly just publicity and so on. I'm just wrapping up stuff on Super 8. I've had so many productions lately that I'm almost disoriented, but I am going to be taking some time to just enjoy the holidays, which is a rare thing for me.
CraveOnline: That's good. I imagine you like to spend time seeing what other people in the industry are doing, whether it's the Clone Wars series, Harry Potter, or whatever.
Neville Page: Oh yeah. I hardly get to the movies. Like most of us who are working as much as we do in film,
It’s really hard to get out there and see films. Quite honestly, thank God for the iPad because that has been so useful--being at airports, or waiting at the DMV, or whenever I have any down time. I will put on my headphones and pop in some Netflix or go online and buy a few films and try and catch up and see the contemporary stuff. Yeah, that's what I'm doing as soon as I'm done today, actually. I've got the weekend free, and I'm going to go to the movies! My first stop will be Tron.
