„Things Are Going to Change.” Steven Spielberg Has Warned Antonio Banderas That The Mask of Zorro Will Be One of The Last Movies to Resist CGI
Years ago, Steven Spielberg predicted the direction in which cinematography would develop. So he mentioned to Antonio Banderas to be proud of his participation in the film, which he said was to be one of the last to fully rely on practical effects.
Steven Spielberg is a veteran of the film industry who understands it very well. So he knew as early as 1997 that they were at the threshold of changes that would significantly affect how movies are made and what audiences expect from them. He told Antonio Banderas about this when he visited the set of The Mask of Zorro, in which the Spanish actor starred.
Banderas told about this conversation with the director during an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment. He confessed that Spielberg, who is the producer of The Mask of Zorro, came to the set and then a conversation took place between the men that the actor remembers to this day.
Steven Spielberg said to me once when we were shooting, “This is probably going to be one of the last Westerns shot in the way the Westerns were shot in the old days, with real scenes with real horses, where everything is real, [real] sword fighting, no CGI.” Everything was [practical].
And he said, “But things are going to change. they’re going to change and they’re gonna change fast. And so you should be proud of this movie.” And I am, probably even more now than at the time that I was doing it. I don’t know if I was absolutely conscious when I was doing Zorro that it was going to have an impact. The impact that it’s had, and especially after 25 years. It was a very beautiful adventure movie with a lot of ingredients that made it shine in a very beautiful way. I have nothing but good memories.
Both men, as you can see, were proud to be involved in a project that still relied entirely on practical effects. Later on, indeed, CGI became more and more common, which many films today can no longer do without. CGI has become a permanent fixture in cinematography, which is already being reached for very often, in many situations putting it above practical effects.
So, as you can see, Spielberg has indeed succeeded in predicting what modern cinematography looks like.
