New Speed Racer Sharp Images

    Another fresh package of images, this time being from what we think will be one of the summer’s biggest hits, Speed Racer. We can honestly tell our self that Speed Racer will be a blockbuster favorite because of what we seen so far, and a bonus that includes the magic touch of The Wachowski Brothers. Luckily our hands got some of the few new images, as well as some of the quotes, including detailed explanations behind the visual style straight from multiple visual effects supervisors.
source: Entertainment WeeklyAll excerpts below come from the Entertainment Weekly preview of Speed Racer.

“The Wachowsk Brothers realized that real racing was not what they were after,” says Muhen Leo, an effects supervisor. “So the idea of cars fighting one another came about early on. The idea is that drivers have such elaborate control over the cars that they could do kicks and spins and hit each other.”  

“Working almost exclusively with green-screen sets was challenging,” says Christina Ricci, who plays Speed’s sidekick/girlfriend Trixie, “…but “everybody had a really great sense of humor about the whole thing. The brothers were just like, ‘Okay! Yes. You can’t see it, but, um, today you’ll be in the snow.”  

Because the actors were not really racing, they were plopped instead into hydraulically-controlled cockpits that would bob and weave in real time along with what the cars were supposed to be doing on screen. “We gave the directors a joystick that would allow them to simulate other cars bumping into them,” says Leo.  

Matthew Fox spent two months working on Racer X’s distinctive voice in the movie. “I was sweating it pretty hard,” says Fox. “Those blade glasses are very dark and without the use of your eyes, you’re finding other ways of making the audience want to find who this person is.”  

The Wachowskis “wanted to incorporate some of the limitations of ’60s cell animation in the movie,” says Leo. Explains fellow effects supervisor Kim Libreri: “The backgrounds are mostly from photographic elements that have been shot from locations around the world [and then] intensely processed to be super-colorful and super-contrast.””Do you remember the 1980s video game Outrun,” asks Libreri, “with the palm trees flying past? A lot of the movie looks like that. But instead of using painted elements that they used the early days [of anime]. There are actually photographic elements flying past the road.”  

Speed Racer hits theaters May 9th, 2008 (wide).