Even though Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn isn’t due to hit cinemas until December 23rd of 2011, that hasn’t stopped Senor Spielbergo from talking about the movie and frankly getting me, if not exactly excited about it, at least paying attention to it… somewhat…

A lot has been made of the Beard’s decision to use the same motion capture technology that James Cameron used for Avatar but Spielberg is keen to explain that it isn’t a case of him simply trying to ride on the hype of Avatar by using the same tools…

“It was based on my respect for the art of Hergé and wanting to get as close to that art as I could. Hergé wrote about fictional people in a real world, not in a fantasy universe, It was the real universe he was working with, and he used National Geographic to research his adventure stories. It just seemed that live action would be too stylized for an audience to relate to. You’d have to have costumes that are a little outrageous when you see actors wearing them. The costumes seem to fit better when the medium chosen is a digital one.”

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn has a stellar cast of actors which includes such names as Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Mackenzie Crook and let us not forget that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is producing with the movie’s animation being looked after by his Weta Workshop.

When I first heard about the Tintin project I shuddered and wondered what Spielberg was doing as personally I’ve never held any love for the franchise and if I’m honest, I’m still not what you could call super-excited about the movie, yeah it’s on my radar but truth be told, I’m hardly paying the Tintin blip any attention.

Anyway, back to Spielberg. It seems that he had an amazing time shooting the movie (yep, it’s already in the can)…

“I just adored it. It made me more like a painter than ever before. I got a chance to do so many jobs that I don’t often do as a director. You get to paint with this device that puts you into a virtual world, and allows you to make your shots and block all the actors with a small hand-held device only three times as large as an Xbox game controller.”

The device that Spielberg was referring to is an amazing piece of kit. Essentially it would allow Spielberg to view his actors, who were on the blue-screen stage in real-life, magically run around within his CGI universe on the magic box…

“When Captain Haddock runs across the volume, the cameras capture all the information of his physical and emotional moves. So as Andy Serkis runs across the stage, there’s Captain Haddock on the monitor, in full anime, running along the streets of Belgium. Not only are the actors represented in real time, they enter into a three-dimensional world.”

Sounds like witchcraft to me. Man, I have to get me one of those…

So, to finish off, I figured I’d share with you all the plot summary that I lifted from Superherohype…

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn stars Jamie Bell as Tintin, the intrepid young reporter whose relentless pursuit of a good story thrusts him into a world of high adventure, and Daniel Craig as the nefarious Red Rackham. Bell and Craig are joined by an international cast that includes Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook.

Related posts:

1. Spielberg To Direct Halo Movie?
2. Steven Spielberg Game Still In Development!
3. Wolverine Star Hugh Jackman To Star In Steven Spielberg’s New Sci-Fi Movie
4. Spielberg Thinks Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen Is Awesome!
5. Ewan McGregor In Talks To Star In Steven Soderbergh’s Knockout