“AFTER EARTH”
RELEASING ON 7TH JUNE
ABOUT THE FILM
After
Earth begins more than one thousand years in the future – in fact, one
thousand years after humanity was forced to abandon the only home they had ever
known. “Earth just gave up on humans,”
says Jaden Smith, who stars as Kitai Raige, a young man forced to navigate the
harsh terrain left behind when his spacecraft crashes on the forbidden planet. “Tsunamis, toxic air, toxic water, toxic
food, extreme weather – it was like Earth said, ‘You have to get off of me,’
and that’s what humans did.”
Their new home would be the planet
Nova Prime, and Nova Prime would know no greater family than the Raiges. Kitai’s father, Cypher Raige – played by
Jaden Smith’s father, Will Smith – became a legendary general in the United
Ranger Corps, creating a legacy that Kitai is determined to emulate… but all is
not going as planned. “Kitai feels a lot
of pressure to step into his father’s shoes,” says Jaden Smith. “Also, Kitai blames himself for his sister’s
death – she died years ago in an attack that Kitai thinks he should have done
something to stop – and he thinks his dad blames him, too. So the relationship between Kitai and his
father is broken, and Kitai is trying to fix it; he’s trying too hard to get
his father’s respect and approval.”
Cypher returns home from another
long stint of service to learn that Kitai’s intense desire to succeed has led
to recklessness, causing him to fail his first attempt to become a Ranger. In an attempt to bridge the rift between
father and son, says Will Smith, “Kitai’s mother suggests that Cypher take him
on a trip – spend some time together, bonding.
But our ship crash-lands in the most inhospitable place in the universe
for human beings – which is Earth.”
In the film, everything on Earth has
evolved to kill human beings. With his
father trapped in the wrecked ship, Kitai will have to brave these elements –
and numerous highly evolved species – if he and his father are to have any
chance of returning home.
“What I thought was really
interesting about this film was that it’s huge in scope, but it comes down to a
simple idea that every person in the audience can relate to: it’s a father and
son story,” says Will Smith. “I think
that’s what audiences will really connect with – seeing the father try to
connect with the son, to teach him, with life-or-death consequences.”
The lesson the father must teach
his son is to conquer his fear. “Every
parent knows when his or her child is lying to them because they’re scared of
something,” says Will Smith. “And every
parent has a different way of dealing with that. In After
Earth, we have a father trying to command and control his son from a
distance, but at the end of the day, once your child goes out of the house,
you’ve taught them all you can – they have to learn the rest on their own. For me, in this movie, the extreme landscape
makes these parent-and-child relationships huge, life-threatening.”
“That’s what we really responded to
about this story,” says Caleeb Pinkett, also a producer of the film. “It’s exciting – set a thousand years in the
future – but the real thing we responded to was that emotional core, the
universal idea.”
Jaden Smith, now just 14 years old,
has already made his mark as a leading man.
He first starred on screen opposite his father in The Pursuit of Happyness, receiving acclaim for his
performance. He would follow that with a
supporting role in The Day the Earth Stood Still and a leading role
opposite Jackie Chan in the worldwide hit The
Karate Kid. With the release of that film, it was clear
that the younger Smith had the talent, the skill, and the charisma to take on
such a leading role.
Jaden Smith says that his character
is one that any young teen – or anybody who’s been a young teen – can relate
to. “Kitai is supposed to be the best of
the best – and he is, physically, in what he can do – but he’s reckless,” he
says. “He feels he has something to
prove, because of who his father is and because of things that have happened in
the past. It’s hard for him to control
his emotions. So when they crash on
Earth, if he is going to survive, he has to put that aside, stop caring about
whether or not he impresses his dad. He
has to grow up and become a warrior.”
“At the beginning of the movie,
Kitai is a little brash, but it’s only from being so scared,” says Caleeb
Pinkett. “He’s afraid, so he acts like
he’s not. The crash strips away all of
that bravado, and you see a scared little boy.
The only way he’ll get back home is if he can gain the confidence to
face his fears – not in a hubristic way, but a humble way of understanding that
yes, he is good enough.”
The father also has to learn to
trust the son. “That’s hard for Cypher,
but it’s something we all have to do as parents – our children succeed or fail
on their own, and all we can do as parents is watch,” says Will Smith. “It’s very much a coming-of-age story for
both parent and child.”
The origins of the project began
with an ordinary evening at home. After
making The Karate Kid, as Jaden and
his parents were considering the teen’s next project, it was important to both
Smiths to work together again. “Jaden
and I were sitting around one night, watching TV and talking about how we’d
liked working together on Pursuit of
Happyness, and that we might want to do that again,” says Will Smith. “As we’re talking about looking for that
story, with the news on in the background, Jaden says, ‘Maybe I’m your son, I’m
in trouble, and you have to come home from war.’ That turned into an idea of a
father and son who go off on a bonding trip to Alaska, and they have to get
through the wilderness. It was just fun,
an interesting conversation until we juxtaposed the idea of setting the story a
thousand years in the future – and then the whole concept of After Earth started to explode in our
minds.”
Will Smith would write the story
for the film, but that was just the beginning – the filmmakers envisioned a
very rich universe encompassing various arenas outside of the film
itself. In fact, they would create 1,000 years of back story – resulting
in a 300-page bible covering the history of mankind from the decision to leave
Earth up to the events in the film, prepared by Eisner Award-winning comic
writer Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger. The bible would serve as a resource for all
kinds of ancillary materials in the After Earth franchise. “The
thing that struck me about it was not just how detailed it was, but how oddly
prescient,” says Pinkett. “Peter drew up
the history of an entire universe, which was impressive enough, but then in our
world, things started happening that mirrored his universe. Like that
Russian meteor a few months ago – Peter had described a remarkably similar
event. I think that shows a verisimilitude to Peter’s approach that grounds
the universe of After Earth – even though we enter a realm of sci-fi.”
“This world is so thoroughly
thought out,” says Will Smith. “The history for these characters was laid
out beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. Just as an example, for me,
playing Cypher – a general with the Rangers – it was fantastic to know that my
character’s grandmother was head of the Rangers, and it was during her tenure
that she united the government under the Rangers. What that meant was
that her son, my character’s father, never got a chance to head the Rangers
until he was almost 50 years old – he missed his prime. That’s the kind
of history Peter explored – while details like that aren’t a part of this
movie, they help us with our characters and to understand this world as a distinct
place, and give us a rich environment.”
* * *
THE WORLD… AFTER EARTH
Kitai Raige lives on Nova Prime, mankind’s new home. One day, he
will be – he must be – a great
Ranger, like his father before him.
Cypher Raige, Kitai’s father, is the Prime Commander of the United
Ranger Corps and one of the greatest leaders in the history of Nova Prime. He
is widely credited with saving the humans of Nova Prime from the planet’s fiercest
alien threats: The Skrel and their vicious creations, the Ursa.
Starting in the 21st
Century, Earth’s environment became increasingly uninhabitable. Massive seismic activity caused frequent
earthquakes of alarming intensity; tectonic plates shifted, creating enormous
volcanoes and violent collisions between continents; clean water became scarce
and the atmospheric composition changed, resulting in deadly temperature
fluctuations and air too toxic for human lungs to breathe.
By 2025 AD, it was clear that
mankind would need to leave Earth, if there were any chance of survival. The
governments of the world convened and mandated the construction of 10
spaceships, or “arks,” that could
sustain human life on a quest to find a new inhabitable planet in another
galaxy. The destruction of Earth came faster than any had imagined, however,
and only six arks were completed in time for launch. Each ark could house only 125,000 – just
.0000625% of the human population – but enough to start a new society. Upon
leaving Earth, calendars were changed from AD to AE, reflecting our new life
“After Earth.”
Before leaving for good, a message
was set up for any future visitors expecting to find suitable resources on the
planet – letting them know that they are approaching the most dangerous place
in the universe: Earth.
A NEW LIFE ON NOVA PRIME
When forced to leave Earth, the
last of the human race embarked on a journey through space. After 100 years of
travel at speeds faster than light, they arrived at Nova Prime and built a new civilization from the ground up.
In the year 222 AE, humans on Nova
Prime formed a tripartite government composed of three branches: The United
Ranger Corps, The Primus, and The Savant. Without a balance between these
representatives, society would crumble.
The Primus is a philosophical leader who sees the downfall of Earth
as proof of the evils of technology and rejects science, advising instead based
on the deep, spiritual links that bind all on Nova Prime. The Savant, on the other hand, leads through the promotion of
scientific discovery, believing that technology and human achievement are the
keys to humanity’s survival.
The United Ranger Corps was formed with a single mission: Preserve
Humanity. In the last days of humanity’s
eviction from Earth, the governments of every nation selected 1,000 of their
best and brightest—tacticians, pilots, soldiers and the like—to form a
first-response team capable of keeping order through the growing number of
natural disasters and international catastrophes. The U.N.-sanctioned group was
titled The United Ranger Corps, or “Rangers” for short. The Rangers quickly
became the new standard for military service, saving countless lives in the
process.
Aspiring Rangers like Kitai must
undergo intense training to prove themselves both physically and mentally. For
Kitai, becoming a Ranger would prove his worth—not only to himself, but to his
father.
The cutlass is a Ranger’s greatest weapon; an extension of the
strength that comes from within. Lightweight and handheld, the cutlass is both
versatile and elegant, and blends seamlessly into a Ranger’s lifesuit, making
it essential for attack, self-defense and survival conditions. Every Ranger
memorizes the series of quick finger inputs necessary to activate the hundreds
of smart fibers that form numerous weapon configurations from both ends of the
handle. The C-40 combat model has a total of 22 configurations, including short
blade, spear, long blade, sickle, dagger and more.
THE THREATS
Our peaceful existence was a brief
one. Now, threats loom over us, every single day of our lives.
Just 143 years after landing on
Nova Prime (in 243 AE), humanity weathered an attack from The Skrel: an
alien species that had long considered Nova Prime their holy ground. To them,
humans are vermin infesting their sacred land. We endured this first onslaught;
we won—but this was only the beginning.
The Skrel had underestimated
mankind in their early attacks. But, through the centuries, the enemy’s weapons
became more advanced. In the war of 576AE, they finally released their ultimate
weapon: The Ursa. A nightmare of a creature—bred
for warfare, and genetically engineered for one reason: to hunt and kill
humans. Ursa prey on the pheromones humans secrete when they’re scared. They
can sense humans’ fear. Many thought the Ursa unbeatable and awaited mankind’s
inevitable demise—but a solution arose, and brought them hope.
Just as it seemed nothing could
stop the Ursa, Cypher Raige inadvertently uncovered their weakness: without
fear, humans are invisible to the Ursa. In an unprecedented show of
self-control and discipline, Raige eliminated his fear and defeated the Ursa.
This act of restraint became known as “Ghosting,”
and lifted Raige to new heights of fame. There are only seven Ghosts in
existence. They are anomalies.
* * *
After writing the story for the
film, Will Smith – also a producer of the film – would turn over the writing
reins to Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan.
Shyamalan would also direct the movie.
Smith called Shyamalan on his birthday, and Shyamalan told Smith how
great Jaden Smith was in The Karate Kid. Will Smith said, “Well, we do have a movie
idea in the works…” and they took off from there.
“Night is a master of building
suspense and fear,” he says, explaining why Shyamalan was the perfect choice
for After Earth. “If there were a single thing that I would
say is clearly Night’s genius, it’s how to take a single, still image and
terrify you with it. There can be no
movement – nothing happening, really – and still, you’re riveted. He is so good at setting the shot, setting
the lighting, and setting the moment.”
“I’m fascinated by the question of
why human beings fear the unknown,” says Shyamalan. “In our earliest days as cave-people, that
was really important – fear could keep us safe.
Fear could keep you alive. But
now, we’ll fear a new job or a new relationship, because we don’t know what’s
going to happen – and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Playing with that in a movie is a fun thing,
and in this movie, it’s about a father teaching a son how to overcome
that. It’s a wonderful lesson, because
if you can learn how to control your fear of the unknown, you can do anything.”
The concept of fear is expressed
literally, as the alien planet has bred a dangerous species – the Ursa – that
can sense humans’ fear and use that to track and kill its prey. The only way to kill the beasts is not to
fear them, as Shyamalan explains. “It
becomes very metaphorical,” says Shyamalan.
“In the movie, we have a young man whose fear is chasing him – and when
he can overcome his fear, he becomes invisible to the Ursa. The Ursa can be in the same room, but it’s no
threat because it cannot sense his fear.”
“Night puts everything into the movie,”
says Jaden Smith, noting that Shyamalan’s style of direction is, often, sleight
of hand: “He’ll get you caught up in the story – you’ll be invested in the
relationship between this father and his son – and then – bam! Something pops
up. I love the way he shoots – the long
shots, not too many cuts, capturing the emotion of the scene without saying
what’s really going on, and leaving you in the audience time to wonder.”
Jaden Smith’s experience with
physical training goes back years, to the days before the filming of The Karate Kid, but he says it took on a
new dimension as he prepared to play Kitai Raige, training two hours each day,
five days a week, for nearly a year. “I
did a lot of work – I had to change,” he says.
“I had to get a lot bigger and put on weight so I could look a bit
older. I did a lot of parkour and running
and training, so I’d be ready to run through the forest and on rocks.”
“Jaden is very serious about his
training and his physicality – he’d do it during his down time. We didn’t push him at all,” says Will Smith.
ABOUT THE SUPPORTING CAST
Sophie Okonedo and Zoë Isabella
Kravitz round out the supporting cast of the film. Okonedo plays Faia Raige, the wife of Cypher
Raige and the mother of Kitai. Kravitz
plays Senshi Raige, the eldest daughter of the Raige family.
Of her character, Okonedo says,
“She’s very earthy, open, and emotional – she talks from the heart. In some ways, that’s the opposite of her
husband – he’s military, so even though he’s feeling all of the same emotions,
he keeps it all inside. But that’s what
makes them a good match for each other – they each bring out what the other
needs.”
Kravitz says she was excited to
join the cast of After Earth because it represented a reunion of sorts for the
young actress. “My mom was in Enemy of the State with Will,” she
remembers. “I went to the set and he was
just so kind to me. I’ve seen him a few
times over the years, and he’s just the nicest guy. So now, to be able to work with him, is
amazing – he’s so playful and genuine.
He’s a superstar, but he treats everybody the same, no matter their role
on the cast or crew.”
“AFTER EARTH” – HERE ON EARTH
For the look of the film, Will
Smith says that the filmmakers came up with an original solution for what an
Earth, ruined and abandoned by humans, might look like. “Night had an idea: it’s a thousand years in
future, so there are no remnants left of man’s design. It’s completely back to nature,” he says. “It’s the Earth the way the Earth would be
without man’s hand. I think that gives
the film a very eerie, beautiful texture of sparseness and danger.”
With that in mind, the filmmakers
sought locations with lush overgrowth.
Production for the parts of the film set on a rejuvenated Earth would
take place in two major locations: Humboldt Redwoods State Park in northern
California and the Central American country of Costa Rica, where the filmmakers
shot near the Arenal Volcano and the part of the Sarapiqui River that runs
through the La Selva Biological Research Station. Other major locations included the desert
near Moab, Utah, which would stand in for the humans’ new home planet, Nova
Prime, and soundstages in Philadelphia, where interior sets were built. In
addition, the film’s second unit shot glaciers in Iceland and filmed the Eiger
in Switzerland.
“In some ways, it was like shooting
four mini-movies – it gives four different flavors,” says Shyamalan. “The wonderful thing is, I think you feel it
in the movie, because the movie keeps opening up for you, keeps it fresh.”
Of course, finding locations on
Earth in the 21st Century that seem untouched by human beings, but
could also accommodate a film crew of more than 200, is not so easy. Production designer Tom Sanders hiked and
drove for a period of several weeks, seeking out the specific areas that would
work.
The result is that the locations
are as much a part of the film as any other element. That was important for Will Smith. “When we shot Ali in Mozambique, I learned the value of actually going to a place
and being submerged into the environment,” says the producer. “There’s a certain energy and attitude that
gets set into your gut when you are in the actual environment, and I wanted
Jaden to experience that.”
One example – one scene, shot in
Costa Rica, required Jaden Smith to climb down out of a tree. “Well, Jaden is coming down the tree and he
looks over and there’s a monkey, a real monkey, sitting in the tree, watching
him – it startled Jaden a little, and they caught his reaction on camera,” says
Will Smith.
Filming near the Arenal Volcano was
another way to get a sincere reaction out of Jaden Smith. “They put me next to a volcano and said,
‘Don’t worry, it stopped being active fourteen months ago. I was like, that didn’t really take away the
worry,” he remembers. “It was fun, but
it was hard to run up it, considering the fact that I thought it was going to
erupt any second.”
ABOUT THE DESIGN
In setting the film more than 1,000
years in the future, the filmmakers sought a distinct look for the humans’ new
home of Nova Prime in After Earth. “Of course, in a film set a thousand years in
the future, you need to design everything,” says executive producer E. Bennett
Walsh. From the largest sets down to the
hand props, nothing can be bought off the rack, he says. “Each department has to think through what
will appear on screen and how it will all work together.”
At the same time, the film’s
production designer, Tom Sanders, says, “We didn’t want ‘The Jetsons.’ It couldn’t be too different – people are
still using their hands, people still cook their own meals.”
Sanders started the ball rolling
with conceptual models for the sets on Nova Prime. He says that the 1,000-year-old human
civilization on Nova Prime has learned its lesson. “After trashing the Earth, they decided to do
it right on the new planet, and studied how life began on Earth as the basis
for everything,” he says. That is expressed two ways in Sanders’ sets: the
design and the construction.
For the design, Sanders called on
the shapes and geometry of nature. “It
was always a fine line between form and function,” says Sanders. “I wanted form and function to be equal,
rather than taking one way or another.”
By calling on shapes from nature, Sanders was able to express visually
how human ideas had developed after they left Earth. One example, he notes: “the design of the
spacecraft has no straight lines – everything has beautiful, geometric curves,”
he says. To realize that, Sanders was setting himself a challenge of one of the
most difficult sets the veteran designer has ever built, but the result is a
unique and beautiful ship.
The other way Sanders’ sets show
the change in humanity is in their construction: Sanders wanted to show that
humans embraced the idea of “green buildings” in their new home. “We tried to invent everything with nature and
the environment in mind. ‘Green building’
isn’t just about buying sustainable lumber; it’s also using less of
everything. The floor of an apartment is
the ceiling of the apartment beneath it.
The piping and everything else a building needs is part of the
structure. We imagined that the people
of Nova Prime were able to find minerals that fossilize like coral – we built
those, imagining that these would grow and solidify into the structure of the
building.”
The film’s futuristic setting also
required the costume designer, Amy Westcott, to create every costume in the
film – “Every stitch, except for underwear,” she says.
Just as it did for Sanders, the
futuristic setting both opened up the possibilities for Westcott and proved a
challenge. “It’s not like a historical
film, where you can just look up what was done at the time. It’s up to your imagination. That’s fun, but it’s also challenging. Fortunately, we could do some research – what
scientists and researchers are working on in fabrics. We were also influenced by the environment of
Nova Prime.”
The Ranger cadets (including Kitai,
played by Jaden Smith) wear a uniform that not only matched well against the
Utah backdrop, but was made of a fabric that could withstand the
rough-and-tumble training regimen seen in the movie.
Westcott worked closely with
Sanders, embracing the overall design imperative of creating an organic
look. For example, “There isn’t a lot of
jewelry – in fact, there are only two pieces of jewelry in the entire film. People don’t wear a lot of makeup.”
Jaden Smith’s main costume is the lifesuit,
which he wears as he takes his journey on the harsh, unforgiving planet Earth. “The idea is that the suit is intelligent,”
says producer Caleeb Pinkett. “It’s his
protection. It’s supposed to be
everything that will allow him to survive being on a contaminated planet. It
has a naviband on the arm, where you can scan through and get information about
the terrain, your vitals, communicate with others. You wear this suit and it tells you
everything you need to know – all of your vitals.”
One way it does that is by changing
color. “It’s a detection device,” says
Pinkett. Normally, the suit is rust-colored. If something hostile approaches you, it turns
black and armors up. If you’re sick,
injured, or dying, the suit turns to a pale yellow.”
Once again, the designers turned to
nature for their inspiration. “In our
research, we found a beetle, the Tortoise Beetle, that changes colors – when it
dies, it turns pale yellow, and that’s the yellow color of the lifesuit when
its wearer is dying.”
Though the suit’s transformations
would be achieved in visual effects, the suits themselves were costumes, and
naturally, Westcott’s team created suits in all three colors. But that was just the beginning – different
suits were required for different aspects of filming. “The suit takes a beating – it goes in water,
it gets scraped up against trees, it gets burnt, it has to take a harness. We had to determine how many different suits
to design for all of the different utilities.
Not only that – one of the challenges was that Jaden was 13 when we were
filming – he’s still growing. And
because we had a six-month shoot, we had to make bigger suits to fit his
growing body.”
For Jaden Smith, the suit had one
more distinct advantage: the teenager could show off the results of his
impressive training: “If you’re gonna put it on,” he says, “you have to be ultra ripped!”
ABOUT THE VISUAL EFFECTS
The film’s 750 visual effects shots
were overseen by Visual Effects Supervisor Jonathan Rothbart, who describes his
job on After Earth as “being like a
kid in a visual candy shop” due to the wide variety of different kinds of
effects on the project. "We have such a broad range of effects in
the film. There is an opportunity to create creatures that have to
interact in all sorts of environments and situations. We have fully
digital environments as we fly through an asteroid storm in space. We
have to create other worlds that we shot on location and lastly we have to
create an evolved look to our current earth. It’s just a cornucopia of
different types of effects, which gives us a chance to be really creative and
have lots of fun with it.”
Rothbart says that imagining the
highly evolved creatures of Earth a thousand years hence was “an interesting
challenge, in that we’re only a thousand years forward – which is not very
significant, evolutionarily speaking.” he notes. “We really tried to say,
that because of the extreme changes that occurred to the Earth itself
forced a more rapid evolutionary shift. Due to this climatic
change, the creatures needed to adapt quicker, to enable them to inhabit the
planet. We tried to create an interesting change in evolution in the
various creatures we were working with, but not so extreme where it seems out
of place for the time that has passed. It was a constant design challenge
to find that balance.”
In some cases, these creatures
became characters with their own character arc – for example, a large bird at
first seems to hunt Kitai, then, later, clearly tries to protect him. “We
had to give the bird as much personality as we could, but obviously, it’s just
a bird – this isn’t an animated film. That was a fun challenge – to give
the bird personality without turning it into a caricature,” says
Rothbart. “And then, of course, there is the whole technical side of
making it real. Birds are particularly difficult. There is such
subtlety when dealing with the details of feathers and how they look.”
The CG animators were also
responsible for creating the baboon attack – one of the film’s central action
sequences. Rothbart says, “When we originally read that sequence in the
script, we got very excited and started storyboarding what the sequence might
look like. It is its own little action vignette that gave us freedom to
try some things. They have a pretty straightforward role, but they also
represent Kitai’s first interaction with the inhabitants of Earth, so it’s an
important moment in the movie. Jaden did a lot of great work to make his
character both stoic and fearful in that moment – we had to live up to that in
the performance our animators created out of the CG character. Night
wanted to make sure that they started out scary. We found that making our
first baboon very quiet and still was the best way to play it, that also gave
us the opportunity to build into something much more frenetic and violent as
his interaction evolves. It was definitely a fun character challenge to
solve.”
Generally speaking, there are two
ways to create a sequence like that one: either the human characters react to
nothing, pantomiming their reaction, or human stuntmen and actors stand in for
the digital characters, to be painted out later. On After Earth, the filmmakers opted for
the latter. “We had stuntmen in gray suits chasing Jaden at all
times. Turns out, when you have a bunch of big stuntmen bearing down on
you at top speed, your reaction is a bit different than when you’re running on
your own! Having the stuntmen in there brought more intensity to the
scene.”
Rothbart was also responsible for
creating the alien planet of Nova Prime. Taking his cues from the
production designer, Tom Sanders, Rothbart says that the focus was in creating
an environment in which human beings seem to have learned their lesson and
exist in harmony with their environment. Again, only 1000 years have
passed, so the goal was “to make it familiar and real enough so that people
would recognize it was a real place. The city was very complicated, from
a design standpoint, to make it feel believable while maintaining that
futuristic feel that had been set during the production. We wanted to
make sure that you would look at this world and believe that people could live
here.”
In creating the transformations of
the lifesuit, Rothbart notes that the goal of keeping the suit looking as
organic and natural as possible was an interesting counterpoint to the “very
technical, almost mechanical” way that the suit transforms.
The visual effects team was also
responsible for creating the Ranger’s weapon of choice: the cutlass, a staff
with two blades that protrude in a number of different configurations on
command. “The cutlass is one of the ways you show your level of experience
as a warrior,” says Rothbart. “There’s a
junior level – that’s where Kitai begins – with the blades taking simplistic
shapes and doing simple things. By the end of the movie, as Kitai is
using his father’s more advanced cutlass and becoming a true warrior, it takes
on its most elaborate look and design.”
The crash of the ship, Rothbart
says, provided “a nice moment of synergy between the practical and visual
effects in the film. We had the ship set on a huge gimbal – the entire set
was moving around with all of the actors and stuntmen in it, and practical
effects were blowing things through the set. Later, we were able to marry
that with green-screen stuntmen and CG people coming out of the ship, which we
did as visual effects. I love that kind of marriage, because it’s one
more trick you have to try to make the film feel real.”
Finally, Rothbart and his team were
also responsible for creating the Ursa. As the creature’s presence looms
over the entire film, it was important for the visual effects team to keep with
the overall design of the film: to design a creature that was unique in both
look and feel, but also to make it an organic, living creature, with skin and
bone structure that resembled a realistic animal.
“When you start doing that kind of
work, you really try to take the time to look at various animals that exist
here on Earth, and decide which pieces you want to borrow to create a new
species,” says Rothbart. “You want it to have a texture and a sensibility
that is something you’d see as a hunter. At the same time, you want it to
be unique – it’s an alien species, so it shouldn’t be exactly like an animal
here on Earth. That was the push-and-pull – how to make it familiar
enough that it seemed real, but original enough that it seemed alien.”
Part of the effect came through in
the way Shyamalan structured the film. “Aside from a flashback, we never
see the Ursa until very late in the film,” says Rothbart. “It’s always
out there and is a constant threat to Kitai, but it’s not 100 percent
known. I like the way the tension is built by not allowing us to see the
creature until the last act of the film. It lets the audience
experience the journey with Kitai – it’s the fear of the unknown.”
SHOOTING WITH THE SONY 4K CAMERA
After
Earth is the first feature to be shot with the Sony F65 4K digital camera, a
state-of-the-art motion picture camera. The
F65 camera’s unprecedented 8K image sensor, with approximately 20 total
megapixels, offers higher image fidelity than any other digital cinema
production camera. With 16-bit Linear RAW File output capability, the F65
creates the gateway to an end-to-end 4K file-based mastering workflow.
“Before this movie, I was one of
the staunchest advocates for film cameras,” says Shyamalan, “but this
particular camera, when we tested it, I thought it had a kind of integrity
about it – and by integrity, I mean a vocabulary. It was able to turn its technical prowess
into an artistic point-of-view, without giving the image any of the ‘coolness’
or ‘detachment’ that I was expecting from digital – it has a great ability to
capture colors and convey rich colors in a way that’s pleasing to the
eye. It also had a lot of practical positives, in that I could shoot in
very low light – which was critical on this movie, because we were in the
canopies underneath redwood trees and in the rainforest, and there simply isn’t
enough light early in the morning or late in the afternoon in those locations
if you’re not using this camera. To have
the richness of the vocabulary and the extension of the practical limitations
felt too good to be true.”
“The location in the jungle of
Costa Rica was so dark, that if we’d been shooting on film, we would have been
struggling,” says After Earth’s
director of photography, Peter Suschitzky. “The best digital cameras today are,
I feel, superior to film cameras in the amount of detail recorded and in the
contrast range which they give. The
Sony camera is a step forward. In any
case, however beautiful the image which film can give, one of the realities of
today is that film is rarely projected on film.
Film is digitized and then digitally projected, and there is a loss of
image quality in doing this. I prefer to
start with a digital image.”
ABOUT THE CAST
JADEN SMITH
(Kitai Raige) has been creating quite the buzz in Hollywood since he started
acting. He was presented with the 2010
ShoWest Breakthrough Male Star of the Year Award for his performance in the
retelling of the 1984 cult classic The
Karate Kid, in which he played the title role opposite Jackie Chan and
Taraji P. Henson. The film took in over
$350 million worldwide.
Prior to that, in 2008, starring opposite Keanu
Reeves and Jennifer Connelly in the highly anticipated remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, the young
Smith won the 2009 Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Young Actor for his
role in the science fiction film. He
first wowed audiences with his heartfelt interpretation of a young Chris
Gardner, Jr. in Columbia Pictures’ The
Pursuit of Happyness. This dynamic
performance garnered Smith an MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Performance, a
Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Performance by a Youth in a Lead or
Supporting Role – Male, a Black Reel Award, and nominations by the Broadcast
Film Critics Association, the NAACP Image Awards and the Teen Choice Awards.
Between films, Smith has appeared on the Disney smash
hit TV series “The Suite Life of Zach and Cody.” He debuted on television in the Smith family
produced series “All of Us” at the age of five.
Smith is not only a talented young actor; he is also
a philanthropist serving as a youth ambassador, alongside his sister Willow
Smith, for the organization Project Zambi in conjunction with the Hasbro, Inc
and the Hasbro Children’s Fund. Project Zambi helps children orphaned by
AIDS in Africa.
Two-time Academy Award® nominee WILL SMITH (Cypher Raige / Story by / Producer) has enjoyed
unprecedented success in a career encompassing films, television, and
multi-platinum records. For his
memorable portrayal of Muhammad Ali in Michael Mann’s Ali, he received his first Academy Award® nomination. That was followed by his second nomination,
for his performance in the true-life drama The
Pursuit of Happyness.
Smith is currently producing Annie with James Lassiter and Jada Pinkett Smith for Overbrook
Entertainment. Directed by Will Gluck, the film will serve as Overbrook’s first
joint film with Jay Z’s Marcy Media.
Smith’s extraordinary list of blockbusters includes
the most recent Men In Black 3, I Am Legend,
and Hancock. He also thrilled audiences in such huge hits
as I, Robot, Independence Day, Men in
Black, and Men in Black II.
Smith does not limit his work to acting and, along
with partner James Lassiter of Overbrook Entertainment, produced Hitch, The Pursuit of Happyness, The
Secret Life of Bees, Seven Pounds, Lakeview Terrace and The
Human Contract, which marked the feature directorial debut of Jada Pinkett
Smith. Smith is also credited as Executive Producer on Columbia Pictures’
blockbuster hit The Karate Kid.
Smith won 4 esteemed titles at the 11th World Music
Awards in Monte Carlo and an NAACP Image Award for Best Actor for his
performance in Seven Pounds in 2009.
Smith has also earned several Kids’ Choice Awards for movies such as Independence Day, Wild Wild West, Shark Tale,
Hitch, and Hancock. Smith received the first ever Grammy Award for Best Rap
Performance in 1989 for “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and has also won three
additional Grammys for “Summertime,” “Men In Black,” and “Getting Jiggy
Wit It.”
Smith has made it a mission to help others through
his humanitarian efforts. Among the issues most important to Smith are
children’s education and outreach; in many and varied ways, Smith has long
supported schools across the country.
Smith has focused his efforts to make a difference through the Will and
Jada Smith Family Foundation, which Smith and his wife founded in 1997. In 2009, the Smiths founded the New Village
Leadership Academy in Calabasas, a nonprofit school promoting diversity and a
progressive curriculum.
Also through the Family Foundation, Smith is part of
the Kanimambo Foundation, a non-profit organization that implements innovative
programs in Mozambique to improve the state of education, orphan care, and
HIV/AIDS education and medical assistance.
Among his many accomplishments, Smith was honored by
the Museum of the Moving Image in 2006, and received the Simon Wiesenthal
Humanitarian Award in 2009. He was given the prestigious Simon Wiesenthal award
based on his “commitment to education, cultural diversity, and social
responsibility.”
Smith serves as an ambassador for
Nelson Mandela’s 46664 Foundation, the African response to the global HIV/AIDS
epidemic. In 2009, Smith became a National Board Member for Malaria No
More, a foundation with a simple goal: to end malarial deaths everywhere.
Smith has also long been active in the Make a Wish campaign, granting
wishes and supporting the foundation’s efforts to better the lives of children
with life-threatening conditions for over a decade and a half.
SOPHIE OKONEDO (Faia Raige)
is a multi-faceted actress who continues to expand her repertoire of characters
by working in feature films, television and theater in both the United States
and Great Britain.
Born in London and a graduate of
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the talented actress earned her first Oscar®
nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role in Hotel Rwanda. She
has since starred in such films as Dirty Pretty Things, Aeon Flux,
opposite Charlize Theron, Stormbreaker, Martian Child, Scenes
Of A Sexual Nature, and the highly acclaimed The Secret Life of
Bees with Dakota Fanning which won the Hollywood Film Award for Best
Ensemble Acting in 2008. More recently, she was in the British
independent feature Skin, where she was nominated by BAFTA for her
performance, and played the title role in the BBC’s Mrs. Mandela, where
she earned another BAFTA nomination as Best Actress. Some of her other
features include This Year’s Love, The Jackal, Go Now,
and Young Soul Rebels.
On the small screen, Okonedo has
starred in many television productions, including “Tsunami: The
Aftermath,” where she won the NAACP Image Award as Outstanding Actress and was
honored with a Golden Globe nomination, “Criminal Justice” where she earned a
BAFTA nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and “Never Never,” among others.
On stage, Okonedo has worked
closely with the Royal Court Theater, where she has worked with some of the
most well-known contemporary writers, including Caryl Churchill, Joe Penhall,
and Martin Crimp. She has also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company,
including productions of “A Jovial Crew,” “The Odyssey,” “Tamburlaine The
Great,” and “The Changeling,” and The National Theatre, where she starred as
Cressida in Trevor Nunn’s production of “Troilus and Cressida.”
ZOË ISABELLA KRAVITZ (Senshi Raige) developed a love for acting at
a young age. Wasting little time, she started working on two films during her
senior year in high school: No
Reservations, where she worked alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron
Eckhart, and The Brave One, directed
by Neil Jordan and starring Jodie Foster.
More recently, she co-starred as Angel Salvadore in last summer’s
blockbuster hit, X-Men: First Class alongside January Jones,
James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon.
Kravitz’s first lead roles were in It’s Kind of a Funny Story, based on the
novel by Ned Vizzini, co-starring Zack Galifianakis, Lauren Graham and Emma
Roberts, and Yelling to The Sky, which debuted at the Berlin
Film Festival and the SXSW Film Festival in 2011. She also starred in Beware of the Gonzo, opposite Amy
Sedaris, Campbell Scott and Ezra Miller, and the Joel Schumacher film Twelve, co-starring Kiefer Sutherland,
50 Cent, Chase Crawford and Emma Roberts. Next up, Kravitz is co-starring alongside
Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road.
In addition to her film endeavors,
Kravitz is currently the lead singer and co-writer for her band, Elevator
Fight. Some of her other music credits
include starring in Jay-Z’s video for his single “I Know” off his “American
Gangster” album. She was also featured
with Jessica Alba, Ryan Phillippe, Tyrese Gibson, George Lopez, and John
Leguizamo, among others, in Will.I.Am’s “We Are the Ones” music video, which
launched during Obama’s campaign in 2008. Kravitz is also the face of Vera
Wang’s Princess perfume.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN (Director / Co-Screenwriter / Producer) has
captured the attention of audiences around the world for almost two
decades. With his cutting edge
direction, sharp screenplays, depth of character development and ability to
extract the best performances from his cast, Shyamalan is widely regarded as
one of the most influential filmmakers of our time.
Shyamalan
began making films at a young age in his hometown near Philadelphia, and by
sixteen, he had completed forty-five short films. Upon finishing high school he informed his
parents, both doctors, that although he had graduated cum laude and received
academic scholarships to several prestigious medical programs, he had instead
decided to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to study
filmmaking.
During
his final year at NYU, Shyamalan wrote Praying
with Anger, a semiautobiographical screenplay about a student from the U.S.
who goes to India and finds himself a stranger in his homeland. Shyamalan shot
the story on location in India in 1992, serving as the film's writer, director,
producer and star. The film was screened
at the Toronto International Film Festival alongside Reservoir Dogs and Strictly
Ballroom.
In the years that followed,
Shyamalan co-wrote the screenplay for Stuart
Little for Columbia Pictures and completed his first main stream feature, Wide Awake, a film that explored a boy’s
search to discover his faith.
In 1999, The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis,
catapulted Shyamalan into stardom and he became one of the most sought after
young filmmakers in Hollywood. One of the highest grossing films of all time, The Sixth Sense received a total of six
Academy Award® nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and Best
Original Screenplay.
Shyamalan collaborated with Willis
again in 2000, on the film Unbreakable,
also starring Samuel L. Jackson. A film
ahead of its time, Unbreakable has
become an underground hit in the years since its release. Shyamalan once again
explored the idea of a man questioning his faith in the 2002 box office success
Signs, starring Mel Gibson and
Joaquin Phoenix.
In 2004, Shyamalan released The Village, starring Bryce Dallas
Howard and Joaquin Phoenix. The film
explores an isolated community and the treaty they hold with the mysterious
creatures living in the surrounding forest.
In his next film, Lady in the Water, Shyamalan explored the
supernatural world of a dark bedtime story.
In 2008, Shyamalan wrote, directed and produced The Happening, a film that follows a man and his family as they try
to escape from an inexplicable natural disaster.
His most recent box office success
was The Last Airbender, an adaptation
of the Nickelodeon series and Shyamalan’s first foray into family
entertainment. The film found huge
success both domestically and internationally and continues to be a popular
film around the world. Shyamalan also produces a series of
supernatural thrillers under the banner “The Night Chronicles.” The series began with the film Devil, which opened in September 2010,
and will continue with the thriller Reincarnate.
Shyamalan’s production company, Blinding
Edge Pictures, is located near Philadelphia, where the majority of his films
take place.
In 2001, Shyamalan and his wife,
Dr. Bhavna Shyamalan, co-founded the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation, a family
foundation dedicated to helping empower individuals around the world to live a
life of dignity. Shyamalan envisions a
world where every human being has an ability to thrive and is given the
opportunity to reach their potential. He has personally funded over $1.7
million in grants to help provide life’s basic amenities such as food, water,
education, livelihood, and shelter to those without access. Recently, concerned
with the state of public education in Pennsylvania and throughout the country,
Shyamalan has begun to focus the efforts and resources of
his foundation on educational reform in Philadelphia. This has lead to the publication of Schooled,
a book that focuses on the five keys to closing the education gap. The book, published by Simon and Schuster,
releases this September.
GARY WHITTA (Co-Screenwriter)
worked as a video game journalist prior to his career in film, including spells
as Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer and Next Generation
magazines. He is best known as the
writer of the post-apocalyptic thriller The
Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington.
Released in 2010, the movie made more than $150 million at the box office and
received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Science Fiction Film. The script
itself appeared on the prestigious Hollywood Black List of the industry's
most-liked screenplays. Since then, he
has worked on a number of high-profile feature film projects, including the
live-action adaptations of Akira and Warcraft.
Whitta
has an original television series in development at ABC Studios, and most
recently served as a writer and story consultant on the videogame adaptation of
“The Walking Dead.” He is currently
working on his first novel as well as an original comic-book series co-created
with Darick Robertson (“Transmetropolitan,” “The Boys”) to be published in 2013
by Image Comics.
CALEEB PINKETT (Producer) is an actor, writer and producer. He began in the entertainment business as an
actor, appearing in the hit television series “Charmed,” and went on to star in
the indie drama In Your Eyes. In
2006, Pinkett landed a recurring role as Kenny on the CW hit series “All Of Us”
for two seasons.
In feature films, he played supporting roles in Lakeview Terrace, starring Samuel L.
Jackson, and The Human Contract, his
sister Jada Pinkett Smith’s directorial debut. More recently, he appeared on
the small screen in the recurring role of Detective Antoine Ajayi during the
last season of the critically acclaimed medical drama “Hawthorne.”
As a writer, Pinkett penned the short The 7th Commandment and created and
co-wrote The Redemption of Cain,
which Will Smith will topline and produce. Pinkett also co-produced several
episodes of “Hawthorne.
After Earth
is an idea that he and Will Smith developed as a starring vehicle for his
nephew, Jaden Smith. Pinkett shepherded After Earth from concept to paper and
finally to the big screen. This is his
first feature film producing credit.
A talented actress, producer, director, author,
singer-songwriter, and businesswoman, JADA PINKETT SMITH (Producer) has approached her career with the utmost poise and
versatility, capturing the hearts of fans and colleagues in the industry with
every new project. Born and raised in Maryland, Jada studied dance and acting
at Baltimore School of the Arts and North Carolina School of the Arts. Her resourcefulness and determination led her
to a variety of professional opportunities, most notably NBC’s long-running
series “A Different World,” which launched a successful acting career in
television. In 1993, she landed her first feature film role, playing that of a
single mother in Menace II Society,
opposite Samuel L. Jackson. Following this was a role in Jason’s Lyric, opposite
Allen Payne, and The Nutty Professor,
with comedian Eddie Murphy, making her a household name in film.
In 1997, she married rapper and actor Will Smith, with whom
she has two children: Jaden and Willow. She earned a global praise for writing
the children’s book “Girls Hold Up The World,” which landed on the New York
Times best seller list. She and Will founded The Smith Family Foundation,
dedicating their organization to urban inner-city youth and family support as a
way to give back to the community. Jada’s acting careers continue with her
participation in The Matrix: Reloaded
and The Matrix Revolutions in 2003,
sequels to 1999’s critically acclaimed film The
Matrix. In 2004, she won the Interactive Achievement Award for Outstanding
Achievement in a Female Character Performance in the video game “Enter: The
Matrix.” In 2008, as a star studded collaboration, Jada joined forces with
Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning and Alicia Keys to produce the film adaptation of
The Secret Life of Bees, a New
York Times-bestselling novel. She both produced and starred in TNT’s “HawthoRNe,”
a medical drama series in which she played the role of full-time mother and
chief nursing officer Christina Hawthorne. This successful, three-season long
stint landed her a NAACP Image Award for Best Actress in a dramatic series.
Beyond the medium of TV and Film, Jada and husband Will
Smith collaborated with record industry mogul Jay-Z to produce the Broadway
musical hit “Fela,” which earned seven Accolades and three Tony Awards and was
recognized by USA Today as the “decade’s most exhilarating musical.”
Focusing on her musical talent, Jada became the lead singer of formally known
the rock band Wicked Wisdom, now known as Wicked Evolution, as they opened for
Britney Spears during her Onyx Hotel Tour. Her most recent musical project, a
sensual ballad entitled “Burn,” was released in iTunes on Valentine’s Day in
dedication to her husband, Will.
In 2010, Jada confidently took on the role as Executive
Producer for the feature film The Karate Kid, starring her son Jaden
Smith. Following this, she made her directorial and screen-writing debut in the
dramatic film The Human Contract. In 2012, Jada released the first installment
of her new web series, “Red Table Talks,” an intimate look at family, love and
relationships. Then, in June 2012, she featured in DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar 3: Return to Europe, as the
voice for Gloria the Hippo, which follows her earlier roles in the first two Madagascar films alongside the voices of
Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer and Chris Rock. Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa was awarded Favorite Animated Movie
at the 2009 Nickelodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards.
Also in 2012, Pinkett Smith executive produced Codeblack
Films/Lionsgate’s documentary Free Angela
and All Political Prisoners, hailed in the Toronto International Film Festival
as "a fascinating chronicle of justice and strength.” Jada, joining forces with Overbrook
Entertainment and Roc Nation for the BET Networks presentation about social
activism icon Angela Davis, which debuted on April 5, 2013. Currently, Jada has
teamed up with Queen Latifah to executive produce the CBS daytime syndicated
talk show that will premiere this fall.
An activist, Jada Pinkett Smith contributes her time to
humanitarian efforts taking a stand to raise awareness on the modern-day
slavery. Jada advocates for tougher human trafficking legislation urging
Congress to step up the fight against human trafficking in the U.S. and abroad.
Inspired by her own daughter, Willow, Jada founded “Don’t Sell Bodies,” a
campaign to stop human trafficking worldwide, supporting the importance of
Voting YES on Proposition 35.
WILL SMITH (Producer / Story by).
See biography in About the Cast.
JAMES LASSITER (Producer) joined forces with entertainment
powerhouse Will Smith in 1998, to create the production and management company,
Overbrook Entertainment, named after the Philadelphia high school they both
attended. Lassiter, who began his career in the music industry, guides
Overbrook’s films and television projects from development through production
and has successfully managed to incorporate a global scope into every project.
Lassiter is currently producing Annie, directed by Will Gluck, which will
serve as Overbrook’s first joint film with Jay Z’s Marcy Media. On the small
screen, Lassiter and Overbrook are teaming up with Sony Pictures Television on
Queen Latifah’s daytime talk show, slated to air in 2013.
Some of Lassiter’s recent successes
include the 2010 hit The Karate Kid, starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan,
which made over $340 million worldwide; the 2008 blockbuster Hancock, starring Will Smith and
Charlize Theron, which grossed $624 million worldwide; the 2007 box-office
smash I Am Legend, which took in over
$580 million worldwide; and the 2006 hit The
Pursuit Of Happyness, which resonated with audiences around the world,
earning Smith an Oscar® nomination for his performance and grossing over $300
million at the box office. In 2005,
Lassiter produced the romantic comedy Hitch,
also a global hit, earning over $360 million, as well as the award winning film
Saving Face, starring Joan Chen. In 2001, he was a producer on the critically
acclaimed Ali, for which Smith earned
his first Academy Award® nomination,
Other projects include This Means War, starring Reese
Witherspoon, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy; Screen Gems’ Lakeview Terrace, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Kerry Washington;
Fox Searchlight’s The Secret Life Of Bees,
starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson and Queen Latifah, and Sony’s Seven Pounds, which reunited Will Smith
with director Gabriele Muccino, as well as the entire producing team from The Pursuit Of Happyness. In addition,
Lassiter served as a producer on Atl,
starring platinum recording artist T.I., and on the sci-fi thriller I, Robot.
He was also an executive producer on the television series “All of Us,” which aired on the CW
network from 2003-2007.
Other notable achievements include
his work as executive producer on the soundtracks for Wild, Wild West and Men In
Black, both of which won the American Music Award for favorite soundtracks,
as well as the 2001 Outer Critics Circle Award for “Jitney”, an off-Broadway play written by August Wilson.
E. BENNETT WALSH (Executive Producer) has executive produced
numerous feature films, including Quentin Tarantino’s epic Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill:
Volume 2, which earned Uma Thurman a Golden Globe nomination as Best
Actress; Kevin MacDonald’s crime thriller State
of Play, starring Russell Crowe; and Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson. He also produced Marc Forster’s
critically acclaimed drama The Kite
Runner, which earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Foreign
Language film, and the hit thriller Disturbia,
starring Shia LaBeouf.
Some of Walsh’s other executive
producing credits include Ghost Rider
and the sequel, Ghost Rider Spirit of
Vengeance, the action adventure film Stealth
and Michael Apted’s thriller Enough.
As co-producer, Walsh worked on many productions out of New York, including Glitter, starring Mariah Carey, and Boiler Room.
A graduate of Boston’s Emerson
College with a B.A. in Film Studies, Walsh became involved in independent
filmmaking, working initially as an art director and cinematographer, then
segueing into producing. Among his
earliest credits was A Brother’s Kiss,
which he was credited as producer/unit production manager alongside veteran
producer Norman Jewison.
PETER SUSCHITZKY, ASC (Director of
Photography) took up photography at a very young age,
inspired by his father, cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky. He studied
cinematography at IDHEC in Paris, and served as an assistant cameraman before
landing a job at twenty-one years old as a director of photography for a series
of documentaries. From the next year
onwards, he was working on films as a cinematographer, with his first feature
being It Happened Here.
Since that time, Suschitzky has a large body of work to his
credit, including The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Empire
Strikes Back, Falling In Love, and Mars Attacks. In
addition, he has a longstanding collaboration with director David Cronenberg,
having filmed Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash, A
History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method,
and, most recently, Cosmopolis.
Currently, Suschitzky is putting together a book of his
still photography.
TOM SANDERS (Production Designer) has earned two Academy Award®
nominations, for his art direction on Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and on Steven
Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. More
recently, Sanders designed the sets for Randall Wallace’s critically acclaimed Secretariat.
Some of his other key production
design credits include Martin Campbell’s Edge
of Darkness, We Were Soldiers, Braveheart,
Maverick, Apocalypto, and John Woo’s Mission:
Impossible 2.
STEVEN ROSENBLUM, A. C. E. (Editor) began his career at the
American Film Institute as a cinematographer. He realized that his abilities
lay more in the realities of story and storytelling than in the abstractions of
shadow and light. He shifted his attention to film editing with the opportunity
to work on Edward Zwick’s AFI thesis film. This working relationship became the
start of a long friendship and collaboration beginning with the television
series “thirtysomething.” Rosenblum received an Emmy Award
and the American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Award for Best Editing on the pilot of
that series.
His first feature film with Edward
Zwick was the Civil War drama Glory,
which brought Rosenblum his first Academy Award® nomination for Film Editing
and earned him his second Eddie. While working with Mel Gibson, he earned his
second Oscar® nomination (and third Eddie) for the Academy Award®-winning Best
Picture Braveheart, and in 2006,
received a third Oscar® nomination for his work on Zwick’s Blood Diamond.
Along the way Rosenblum has had
notable film collaborations with other directors, including Shekhar Kapur’s The Four Feathers, Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, and Bryan Singer's X-Men. His most recent efforts include
his first 3-D project, Eric Brevig’s Journey
to the Center of the Earth, the George Tillman-directed musical biopic Notorious about the rapper Notorious
B.I.G., and Adrien Grunberg’s directorial debut, Get The Gringo.
Among other films Rosenblum has
edited are Legends of the Fall, Courage Under Fire, Dangerous Beauty,
The Siege, The Last Samurai, Failure to
Launch, Defiance, and Love and Other Drugs.
JONATHAN ROTHBART (Visual Effects Supervisor) is an award winning
VFX Supervisor who has created effects for many of the biggest blockbuster
films of recent years. He was the lead supervisor on Priest and supervised the design of all of the interface graphics
for Jim Cameron’s groundbreaking film Avatar.
Rothbart was co-founder of The
Orphanage, Inc., where he supervised the creation of hundreds of visual effects
for such features as Hellboy, The Day After Tomorrow, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Superman Returns, Live Free or Die Hard, and Iron
Man. In Iron Man, he led a team
of artists to create the look for the HUD environment in Tony Stark’s helmet.
Additionally, he designed and supervised the iconic tank explosion sequence in
the film.
Rothbart has been nominated and won
numerous awards for his VFX work in feature films, television and commercials,
including winning the Hong Kong Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for the
period action film Hero.
Rothbart began his film career
working in the Art Department at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic,
where he helped build the pre-visualization department and create concept designs
for many films, including 101 Dalmatians,
Twister and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Rothbart had a childhood dream come
true when he was asked to animate the Millennium Falcon flying through Cloud
City for Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes
Back (special edition).
In 1996, Rothbart helped to start
ILM’s industry-changing Rebel Mac Group, where he created shots for such films
as Star Trek: First Contact, Men In Black, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Sleepy Hollow.
Rothbart has been a technical
advisor and developer of several visual-effects and digital filmmaking software
packages, including Final Cut Pro (Apple), Commotion (Pinnacle Systems), and
After Effects (Adobe). He is a contributor to several industry magazines.
Rothbart graduated from the
University of Arizona in 1993, with a Masters degree in English Literature.
AMY WESTCOTT (Costume Designer) previously designed the costumes for Black Swan, The Wrestler, The Squid and the Whale, and HBO’s hit
series “Entourage.” Honored by the Costume Designers Guild with nominations for
her work on The Wrestler and on three
seasons of “Entourage,” she went on to win the prestigious award given by her
peers for her designs on Black Swan.
Some of
Westcott’s other credits include Roger
Dodger and P.S., both directed by
Dylan Kidd, The Secret Lives Of Dentists
for director Alan Rudolph, Off The Map
for director Campbell Scott, and Smart
People for director Noam Murro.
A
resident of both coasts, Westcott, a Philadelphia area native, is a graduate of
Syracuse University, where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in Fashion Design.
Her first foray into film was as a wardrobe assistant on James Mangold's Copland; she went on to receive her
first design credit on the graphic novel-inspired horror film Campfire Stories.
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD is
one of the most versatile and respected composers currently working in films.
To date, Howard has received eight
Oscar® nominations, including six for Best Original Score for his
work on Defiance, Michael Clayton,
The Village, The Fugitive, The Prince of Tides, and My Best Friend’s Wedding. He was also nominated for Best Original Song for the films Junior and One Fine Day.
Howard, along with Hans Zimmer, won
the 2009 Grammy Award for the score for The
Dark Knight. He has also received Grammy Award nominations
for music from Blood Diamond, Dinosaur, Signs and the song from One
Fine Day. In addition, he won an
Emmy Award for the theme to the Andre Braugher series Gideon’s Crossing,
and received two additional Emmy nominations for the themes to the long-running
Warner Bros. series ER and the Ving
Rhames series Men. Howard has also been nominated four times for
Golden Globe Awards for his massive orchestral score for Peter Jackson’s
blockbuster remake of King Kong; for
the songs from Junior and One Fine Day; and for his provocative
symphonic score for Defiance.
He received the 2008 World
Soundtrack Award for Film Composer of the Year for his work on the films Charlie Wilson’s War, Michael
Clayton and I Am Legend. He has received the Soundtrack of the Year
Award from the Classical BRIT Awards for The
Dark Knight (2009) and Blood Diamond
(2008). In 2009 he received the Special 5th Anniversary GoldSpirit
Award for Best Composer of the Last 5 years (2004-2008) from the Úbeda Film
Music Conference in Spain. In February 2009, Howard had his first concert
piece, entitled “I Would Plant a Tree,” performed by the Pacific Symphony as
part of their American Composers Festival.
Howard, who has been honored
with ASCAP’s prestigious Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement, now has
more than 100 films to his credit. Among
them are all of M. Night Shyamalan’s films (The
Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The
Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last
Airbender), six films for
director Lawrence Kasdan (Darling
Companion, Grand Canyon, Wyatt Earp, French Kiss, Mumford
and Dreamcatcher), seven Julia Roberts films (Pretty
Woman, Runaway Bride, My Best Friend’s Wedding, America’s
Sweethearts, Duplicity, Charlie
Wilson’s War, and Larry Crowne) and three animated films for Walt Disney Studios (Dinosaur, Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire).
His other wide-ranging credits
include The Hunger Games, Snow White and
the Huntsman, The Bourne Legacy, Salt, Water For Elephants, Gnomeo &
Juliet, Green Lantern, The Green Hornet, Love and Other Drugs, The Great
Debaters (with Peter Golub), Batman Begins, Collateral, Snow Falling on Cedars, Outbreak, Hidalgo, Peter Pan,
Freedomland, Falling Down, Primal Fear, Glengarry Glen Ross, Waterworld, The
Devil’s Advocate and Dave, among others.
Howard’s success reflects
the experiences of a rich musical past.
Inspired by his grandmother, a classical violinist who played in the
Pittsburgh Symphony in the ’30s and ’40s, he began his studies on the piano at
age four. After studying at the Music
Academy of the West, in Santa Barbara, and at the USC Thornton School of Music,
as a piano major, he completed his formal education with orchestration study
under legendary arranger Marty Paich.
Though his training was classical,
he maintained an interest in rock and pop music, and it was his early work in
the pop arena that allowed him to hone his talents as a musician, arranger,
songwriter and producer. He racked up a
string of collaborations in the studio with some of pop’s biggest names,
including Barbra Streisand; Earth, Wind and Fire; Bob Seger; Rod Stewart; Toto;
Glenn Frey; Diana Ross; Carly Simon; Olivia Newton-John; Randy Newman; Rickie
Lee Jones; Cher; and Chaka Khan. In
1975, he joined pop superstar Elton John’s band on the road and in the studio.
Howard left the band in 1976 to do
more record production. He would rejoin
the band in 1980 for another tour and again in 1986 to conduct the Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra for John’s “Live in Australia” tour, which later became a
platinum-selling album.
When he was offered his first film
in 1985, he never looked back. As a
change of pace, Howard reunited with Elton John for a multi-city tour in the
summer of 2004, which included sold-out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in
London and Radio City Music Hall in New York.
His upcoming films include Francis
Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Catching
Fire and Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent.
“Academy Award®” and “Oscar®” are the
registered trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences.
Production Information
A crash landing leaves teenager Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his legendary father Cypher (Will Smith) stranded on Earth, 1,000 years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape. With Cypher critically injured, Kitai must embark on a perilous journey to signal for help, facing uncharted terrain, evolved animal species that now rule the planet, and an unstoppable alien creature that escaped during the crash. Father and son must learn to work together and trust one another if they want any chance of returning home.
Columbia Pictures presents an Overbrook Entertainment / Blinding Edge Pictures production, a film by M. Night Shyamalan, After Earth. Starring Jaden Smith and Will Smith. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Produced by Caleeb Pinkett, Jada Pinkett Smith & Will Smith, James Lassiter, and M. Night Shyamalan. Story by Will Smith. Screenplay by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan. Executive Producer is E. Bennett Walsh. Director of Photography is Peter Suschitzky, ASC. Production Designer is Tom Sanders. Editor is Steven Rosenblum, A. C. E. Visual Effects Supervisor is Jonathan Rothbart. Costume Designer is Amy Westcott. Music by James Newton Howard. Co-Producers are Ashwin Rajan and John Rusk.
