Sunday April 1, 2007
Tech talk
MASI Oka is becoming a recognisable face in Hollywood and around the world. But there is another interesting facet of this actor – he is just as scientifically brilliant as he is artistic. Here are some questions that brought out the non-actor – oh, okay, the geeky – side of Oka.
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Oka with George Lucas at the ICG Publicists Awards in Beverly Hills, California, on Feb 7. The actor used to work for Lucas’ special effects company. – Reuters |
Right now it’s getting increasingly difficult because of my schedule as well as doing publicity. But I still do consult with them. I try that at least one day a week, but it has become less and less, unfortunately.
Are you going to continue in that field?
I do make it a point to try to keep my involvement with special effects because I think it’s really important to use both sides (left and right) of the brain. It also keeps me grounded, reminding myself this is where I came from.
I see many actors who forget there are people behind the scenes that make it all happen. And I think it’s really important for me to stay connected to that ... and to have appreciation and respect for the crew.
Some extremists are saying that special effects are destroying film. What do you think?
I’m not sure if it’s really destroying film. The best special effects are meant to be completely invisible while an actor’s job is to be visible. So right there you’ll have a conflict of interests. My former boss, George Lucas, would prefer to work with just synthetic actors if he could, because there’s a lot more control to that.
But I don’t think it’s ever going to destroy it because we connect with humans. One of the holy grails of special effects these days is to be able to replicate human behaviour. But that’s really difficult and near impossible to replicate because we, the audience members, are masters of human behaviour, whether the way our skin wrinkles when we are grinning or the subtle expression in our eyes. Those are really, really difficult to recapitulate with the use of special effects or any kind of character animation.
Do you have any favourite movies with CGI (computer-generated imagery) characters ... like King Kong, perhaps?
King Kong was wonderful. I actually gave a lot more credit to the actors. They had to play against a blue screen with an invisible King Kong and that’s kind of more impressive to me. But in terms of special effects, I prefer the old school like Forrest Gump – the subtle digital composite they brought to put forth iconic historic moments and events. You didn’t realise it but when you looked at it, it was like, wow, wait a minute. That’s where these special effects come in, they assist in the storytelling rather than become the forefront of storytelling.
Are you a Star Trek fan, like Hiro Nakamura is, or are you a Star Wars fan?
I work for ILM, I’m a Star Wars fan.
What would you do if you had Hiro’s powers (to time-travel and bend time) in real life?
Wow, there are just so many great things; I love to explore history and maybe look at the oldest civilisations – whether it’s feudal Japan or England or the Mayans – or the discovery of certain technology. And if I could, it would be great to like be able to teleport to Mars or Saturn or wherever that hopefully has oxygen....
In terms of bending time, it all kind of works in more of a dimensional shift.
You know, I talked about time-travel or whatever teleportation as a six-dimensional travelling. That’s the analogy used in Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland – if you’re living in a two-dimensional world, in order to get to another place, you go up to a third dimension.
And I believe we live in a six-dimensional world. So if we can find a way to jump into a six-dimensional world, we get to teleport or time-travel.
How do we do that? ... You know, maybe in a couple thousand years we’ll find out. – MUMTAJ BEGUM
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