Robert Zemeckis Breaks Down the Cutting Edge Tech That Powered ‘Here’: ‘We Could Not Have Made This Movie Five Years Ago’

variety.com:

Carolyn Giardina Three decades after making “Forrest Gump,” director Robert Zemeckis is once again looking back in time and pushing filmmaking boundaries as he reteams with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright for his latest effort, “Here.” Hanks and Wright play a married couple who are seen at many ages and life stages in the film, thanks to Zemeckis’ deft use of bleeding edge techniques including an AI-assisted aging and de-aging process to convey a lifetime.

That meant paying meticulous attention to the specificity of a person’s body movements at a given age. To cite but one example, how one bounces off a couch as a nimble teenager is very different from how that same person gets up from a couch as a 60-something. “You had to gear up for, in the morning you’re going to be 17, and in the afternoon you’re going to be 22,” Hanks tells Variety.

Hanks prepared for his role as Richard by exploring how a person’s mental acuity changes over time. “At the age of 17, you do not realize you’re living in your past.

And at the age of 22, you do not realize that you’re making decisions that are going to be signposts for what your future is,” Hanks observes. “Between having to be agile and clueless, that’s the magic recipe of approaching the scenes.” Based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, “Here” is a unique story that Zemeckis describes as a “meditation on life.” The story unfolds in a single spot from a single camera position, from dinosaurs roaming the ground where a home is later constructed and where families spend decades of their lives.