Thursday 25 September 2008

The Road Pictures

Here below some pictures from The Road, upcoming post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee:
(Click on a picture to enlarge it.)

The movie was mainly filmed in Pennsylvania. It was chosen for its tax breaks and its abundance of locations that looked post-apocalyptic: coalfields, dunes, and run-down parts of Pittsburgh. Some scenes have also been shot in parts of New Orleans that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and on Mount St. Helens in Washington. Filming on days with bad weather and using some minors digital enhancements (to take away any greenery) the result is a really bleak atmosphere that looks so real!
:)

31 comments:

Unknown said...

Some of the scenes look promising, but the roving bands look way too healthy. The costume design seems like they walked right out of Home Depot. Looking forward to the film; hope that McCarthy's vision was given its full due.

The Road Movie said...

@matt:"the roving bands look way too healthy"


I agree with this. But that's true for most movies: it seems hard for the cinema industry to make dirty clothes that look real and even more difficult to mimic starvelings.

For the clothes no excuse.
For the starving characters: well I suppose the actors are not that eager at impersonating their roles to such an extreme, "unfortunately".

:)

floor9 said...

FYI, a lot of scenes were filmed along the abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike. It's a 13-mile stretch of abandoned 4-lane superhighway near Breezewood, PA that's been sitting unused since the mid-1960s. The tunnel you see in one of the pictures is the eastern entrance to the Rays Hill tunnel. It's all open to the public.

Anonymous said...

when will the trailer be out? the book was incredible and i really want to see howit was adapted to film.

j

Anonymous said...

Great news floor9. I love the area and pass threw often on business. I"ve read the book as well and believe the novel to film adaption has nailed it pretty much. Can't wait for the trailer either..

Anonymous said...

Honestly, the book sucked. I assume the movie will too. After reading the book, I thought, "heck, if a movie can be created out of this junk, I need to start writing books immediately."

Anonymous said...

Can anyone say, Michael Haneke's Time of the Wolf?

storykay said...

The Road was such a great read and I cannot wait to see the film. I am sure that it wont do the book justice but I just cant go without seeing it. The story is so haunting but yet so beautiful. To have such love in the face of such despair....Its just the best book I have ever read.

William P. O'Sullivan said...

To anonymous "Honestly, the book sucked."

I finished it last night. I am the father of 2 boys 4 and 7. It is the first book/movie ever that ripped me up, both physically and emotionally. I try to prepare my sons for the "current" world, which is hard enough, to be in their situation.. well...

You have no idea what the Father was going through. Don't go to the movie. Go watch Adam Sandlers latest.

WP

Anonymous said...

worked on the show. read the book. was disappointed by the ending, kinda spielburgish(sp?). both of them. looks great what ive seen in dailys. cant starve an extra to be thin for a few days work so theyre not that thin.

floor9 said...

A while back I visited the abandoned turnpike where they shot a big chunk of this film. It's impressive, desolate, and eerie, all at the same time. I have pics and directions posted here: http://picasaweb.google.com/floor9/AbandonedPennsylvaniaTurnpike

Anonymous said...

Mr. O'Sullivan,
It's uncanny how I share your feelings almost 100%. I just finished the book today and was dismayed reading it from the beginning to the end.

I think it might have been because of what all of us have had to endure during these past 8 years. The book seems to have hit too close to home because it shows what human beings are capable of sinking to if boxed into a corner.

I initially planned on seeing the movie but after reading the book I think I will beg off.

Anonymous said...

i'm so annoyed. i thought the movie was going to be released in november or december but now i read it will be in the spring. i've been waitng forever 4 this film to come out. at least they can put out a trailer. i mean they have benn talking about this film for months almost a year and there is still no trailer. COME ON

the book was fantastic. i read it a few months ago after i heard viggo was going to be a part of it.

i can't believe there are people that hated thebook. it was actually the negative comments i've read online about the book that encouraged me to go out and get it. it's now one of my top 3 fav books ever. i almost cried at the end.

anywho, great blog.now i know where to go to get updates on the movie

Unknown said...

Damn them all for turning this incredible book into a film. They won't even come close to capturing the feel of what McCarthy managed to do so in so few pages. Where's the ash in the photos? Are them saving this for post? Just read the book.

Anonymous said...

has any movie done a book justice?

Anonymous said...

I have no faith in the movie UNLESS it's narrated. There is almost no other way to convey the emotion of the book.

The book wasn't good for the story alone, but the way it's written. McCarthy has a unique style of writing.. For some people the writing style is easy to follow, as it just "flows" along. For others it's hard because of the lack of punctuation, "strange" grammar and jumbled conversations between the characters (not to mention the lack of chapters, oddly compounded words and sentences that can go on for a paragraph).

There are paragraphs in the book that are just amazing from a literary standpoint. I'm tempted to think McCarthy had some really good content just sitting around in a notebook and decided to make up a story to go along with it, just to get this stuff published.

"They scrabbled through the charred ruins of houses they would not have entered before. A corpse floating in the black water of a basement among the trash and rusting ductwork. He stood in a livingroom partly burned and open to the sky. The waterbuckled boards sloping away into the yard. Soggy volumes in a bookcase. He took one down and opened it and then put it back. Everything damp. Rotting. In a drawer he found a candle. No way to light it. He put it in his pocket. He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but those last few lines gave me goosebumps.

Anonymous said...

I have finished the book last week for my literature class, I found it very depressing, but absolutely addictive. I could not put the book down because the writing was very well done and the destruction of humanity was sickening.

I live in NYC right now, and it seems to me that The Road is hitting very close to home.
Also, I got the version of the book that has the picture of Viggo Mortensen on it, it is amazing. If you look at the picture where he is hugging the son, and look at the book picture, I think you will understand what computer animation can do. For instance, the picture is very nice looking and the clothes do look very clean. The picture on the book cover looks like they were thrown into a pit and then dragged back out again after years of struggling. Plus there is ash and snow on his shoulder in the picture on the book.

I would suggest going and seeing the movie, it looks to be a very amazing film.

<(^^,)> -Rob E-W

Anonymous said...

I read the book before I knew it would be a movie, and the choice of Hillcoat as director should ease some of the anxiety of it staying true to McCarthy's dark vision. We should remind ourselves, again, that they are two different mediums. However, I actually think the book is quite cinematic, literally the flow, parole of the language, the abstract coniguity of sequences, it reads like a Malick film. Watch the "Proposition" and I think most will understand why Hillcoat wanted to make this. Viggo is also a good choice, and again we should remind ourselves that he is more than just Aragorn, his work with Cronenberg for example. Ash, texture, costume, all post issues, easily resolvable. Patience people, let them get it right, this is not a fuzzy fall film.

Anonymous said...

Patience, this is not a fuzzy fall film, let them get it right

MJS said...

I saw them filming at my families farm in Saxonburg this past spring. We must have moved 2,000 bales of hay leading up to the filming date so they could use the barn. I can't wait to see a movie that has a personal connection in it for me. There's 38 years of memories in that old barn and Pappy's combine.

Viggo's cloths were dirty, he could of passed for being a homeless person. I thought the props they used were pretty authentic looking. He walked down to the local grocery store and no one even recognized him! I am dying to see a trailer.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know the exact time of release? I am so anxious to see the movie.

Anonymous said...

I think the clothes were fine. People are stealing clothes from other people. There's clothes to be had.
One thing though: in the book the truck was pulled by slaves I believe. I don't think they would just be driving down the road.

Anonymous said...

Im pretty sure that in the book the truck was being drivin, not pulled by slaves. And remember it broke down or ran out of gas, a show of reinforcement for a P A story.

Anonymous said...

A good deal of this film was also shot in Erie, PA, on the shores of Lake Erie, due to the dunes, and particularly on Beach 10, you actually believe you are at the ocean's edge. We had 70 mph sustained winds which knocked over a lot of smaller trees, but I can vouch it was a lot "greener" when it was shot. The Presque Isle State Park peninsula was closed off and on during filming - movies don't have to pay to film in state parks!

Anonymous said...

It's distressing that they've pushed the movie's release date back. I'm very eager to see what they've done with McCarthy's book. True, it will be terribly difficult to convey the story's sense of desolation on film, but I think if they stay as true to the book as possible, it might not be half bad. Why are there so many of you posting negative comments about the book here? If you didn't enjoy the book, then why in the world would you waste time looking into the upcoming film? I thought the book was very moving and beautifully written. I'm curious to see what kind of a job the film will do with the more horrific elements of the tale. I'm certain that the brief encounters between the man and the boy with the thief and the old man will be more drawn out. Undoubtedly they will have to try very hard to recreate the terror in the cellar. And what about all the other minor goings-on like the man being shot with an arrow or the man who was struck by lightning? Will the movie's story begin as the book's did and flash back to the boy being very young? One thing I hope they don't do is say for certain what the cataclysm was that caused the world to become the way it did. I've heard rumors that they're going to chalk it up to a Nuclear Strike but part of the beauty of the book is that the reader never knows for certain what exactly brought it on. It could have been a meteor or something as well. Anyway, a fine book and hopefully an excellent movie as well.

Anonymous said...

Why don't we at least have a teaser trailer video yet??? this is killing me!

Anonymous said...

all i know is i cannot wait for this film to come out. I read the book in my lit class and found it hit close to home. It was scarily real. I hope the film has as much impact as the book. I'm very excited.

Anonymous said...

To those who don't like the book, I say, It's not to be liked. It's literature, not entertainment. It has an urgency about it like no other book by Cormac McCarthy. It is a dystopian nightmare in which the candle of human kindness has been extinguished and trust between fellow humans may be impossible.

The central conflict is whether he's doing his son any service by allowing him to live in that world.

I am not going to see this movie. It can't improve on the book, and seeing it would delimit the way I imagine it.

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one thinking that the roving bands are also cannibals. I don't think those people living in the house with their 'food' in the basement are the only ones in the whole story.

Wenum93 said...

I live in a small town called Linesville, PA. Route 6 runs threw it and they actually filmed some of the movie about 10 minutes from Linesville in a town called Conneaut Lake. There is an amusement park there called Conneaut Lake Park and it has been there since the early 1800's, its very run down and a couple of buildings were burnt down and the place looked very bad when they filmed there last winter. It has been cleaned up since. But they had everything closed down in that area for the filming, a friend of mine lives next to the park and he said he saw them filming. I think the movie looks great!

Anonymous said...

Was hoping for a more generous use of smoke and fog during production as well as darkening in post production, but the trailers make this story seem entirely not plausible with the abundant sunlight - and will make the suspension of disbelief all that more tedious. A fine book, and a cinematic one at that, hope the finished product is true to that.