life :: articles | biography | essays | media | questions
 |
 |
Posted: May, 2000
Click here to view images from this event.
Recently, Jet, along with his entourage, was invited to attend a personal tour of Sony Imageworks. An interested Jet decided to accept the invitation, and yesterday morning, he arrived at Imageworks to see what went on behind the visual effects production of some Hollywood's biggest movies.
When Jet first walked into the lobby, he was greeted by the studio's digital producer, Audrea, and its head of publicity, Don. After an exchange of introductory greetings, Jet was ushered to the third-floor, where he visited the company's president. Then he proceeded into a different building to attend the "dailies," where the special effects crew was in the midst of analyzing and pinpointing problems with their special effects creations.
The special effects crew, which had worked on the upcoming Hollow Man movie starring Kevin Bacon, was very familiar with the name of Jet Li. Audrea, the digital producer who had presided over this crew during the making of Hollow Man, had shown a different Jet Li movie to them every day while they worked on the movie. As a result, they became fans of Jet, and some had even memorized the special moves and stances in his movies. When Jet walked into the room, eyebrows were raised and the crew greeted him with considerable warmth.
In his next stop, Jet sat down with Audrea, Don, and his entourage in a screening room where he was shown a film montage of some of the special effects Sony Imageworks had designed and constructed over the years. Among the various finished products screened, Jet saw the mouse from Stuart Little, the snake from Anaconda, and the lizard monster from Godzilla.
After the screening ended, Jet toured the vast floors of Imageworks to greet staff members, many of whom had seen his movies and were impressed by his past work. Autograph signing was requested at every corner. Jet smiled and shook hands with staff members, and took pictures with them. One of the bosses at the company even greeted Jet Li with a martial arts move.
In the second half of the tour, Jet visited the drawing board area and admired the slick and intricate sketches of movie props and characters penned by company artists. He visited a classroom where company employees were in the middle of a training session. He watched a sequence of special effects inflicted on the writhing anatomy of Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man. He was also given an exciting demonstration of how the mouse in Stuart Little was transformed, through the skill of animators, from a mere robotic outline into a fluidly gesturing mouse with realistic fur and a believable character.
In one of the highlights of the tour, Jet actually walked through the computer room where the hard drives of every computer in the company are stored and secured. Only that it was not so much a room as it was an endless yawning corridor of computer banks. Very exciting equipment.
Jet stayed at Imageworks for over two hours. All in all, he enjoyed the visit, and appreciates the incredible hospitality of staff members. The trip was a learning experience for him, as he saw how animation and special effects were created, and the fact that so many company employees were fans of his movies made his visit all the more worthwhile.
