15-year-old quizzes George Clooney

Jack: Hi. I’m Jack and this is the Into Film channel. Today I’m in a central London hotel to come and meet the cast of the new film Tomorrowland, and I’ve just come back from the press conference and I was lucky enough to give the first question to Mr George Clooney.

(at the press conference) Hi, I’m Jack and I’m 15 from Into Film. George, I wondered how important it is to make socially conscious films that appeal to my generation.

George: Well, it’s a good question, actually. That’s a very good question. You guys … are you a little embarrassed right now? I think it is important to do that. When I was your age, I’d grown up in a period of time where the idea was that your voice could change the world. Could. And we saw it happen. We saw things change. I think over time we’ve lost sight of that and I think it’s really important to make a film like this that gets to say the future is not inevitable. We created it, we can change it. And it doesn’t have to just be the people in the greatest amount of power. It can be, you know, a 15-year-old young reporter. So, I think it’s important to make them but I’m glad that you got to ask that question.

Jack: In the film, the characters are transported into Tomorrowland. During the press conference, the cast were asked where they would love to go to. Personally, I’d love to go to Greece as it’s sunny and it’s near the sea. Who doesn’t love the sun? Anyway, let’s find out what the filmmakers chose.

Raffey: I’d go to a forest that was filled with trees and wolves, so then I could become like a wolf-lady. Oh, with jetpacks. It had to have jetpacks in.

Brad: I want to know more about, do we give the jetpacks to the wolves, or what exactly is happening here?

Raffey: I think that maybe we could create an animal that was mixed with the jetpack so it’s like a wolf that could …

Brad: Wolfpack!

George: Wolfpack! Very good, yeah!

Jack: Famous for his family films, today in the press conference Brad Bird was asked, what is the secret to making films that appeal to all audiences? Do you want to know? Do you really want to know? Do you want to know? Do you really want to know? Shall I tell you? I’ll tell you now.

Brad: I have no idea. I’m just, like, ‘That seems like a good idea’. It’s not a very intellectual process. The only way that’s ever made any sense to me is make a movie that I would want to see and just hope that other people would connect with that.

Jack: There you go, I just can’t please everyone! But I really think the audience are going to love this film as much as I did. So, with so many amazing stunts in the film, from fighting to the girls being thrown about, today we wanted to find out how they prepared for it.

Raffey: I trained for quite a while on martial arts.

Jack: And how did George get on?

George: I trained for minutes!

Jack: With green screen, anything is possible. You can place anything in a shot and make it seem realistic. However, with some films it’s good to use reality as the buildings and objects are already there.

George: The fun part for us is that often times when you do, when you work on a film that’s of a large scale, it’s all just green screen and you don’t really get any idea of the scope. And we were in places that either we had these giant, beautiful sets that we got to actually see, or we were in, you know, Valencia in that insane building that … I’ve never seen anything like it.

Jack: Until today I didn’t know what pre-visualisation was, but it’s basically storyboarding for the filmmakers so they know how every shot turns out and how it should look like in the film. Anyway, I’ll let the experienced Brad Bird tell you about this now.

Brad: It helps to be able to draw things to show people what you’re doing, so in this film the sequence where Britt touches the pin and spends several minutes in Tomorrowland, we had to know everything that was there because the camera is constantly moving from something that’s there to something that’s not, and following something that’s not there, and that leads you to something that is there, and animation helped with that, definitely.

Jack: So, which of these transportation devices would George Clooney like the most? Teleportation …

George: Jetpack.

Jack: … rockets …

George: Jetpack.

Jack: … jetpacks.

George: I’d do a jetpack.

Jack: Got it. If you want to go and see the future, go and see Tomorrowland but we’d love to find out what you think about the technology and what you’d love to see in the future. Please comment below using your phone, computer or iPad, or typewriter. Send us a letter, or send us smoke signals. Either way, we’d love to find out what you think. Bye!