The Matrix Screenplay

 

 

Beautiful. Simply astonishing. A visual feast of stylish imagery. This book is a masterpiece of illustrative storytelling. The Art of the Matrix is a huge, hardbound, coffee table book that tells the story of The Matrix, and more importantly, shows the difficult path the creators followed in getting the studio to greenlight the movie. The script for The Matrix (included in full) proved to be insufficient to fully demonstrate the Wachowskis’ vision to the Warner Bros. executives, so they commissioned a number of artists (several from the comic book world) to produce detailed conceptual drawings, storyboards, and other illustrations. These illustrations proved essential to explaining the movie to the decision-makers at the studio.

The Wachowskis also broke from storyboard tradition and instructed the artists to use their comic book experience and graphic story-telling techniques to indicate movement, action, and other dynamic elements of the scenes. Normally in storyboarding, drawings are produced with copious use of arrows to illustrate movement and action. Feeling this was insufficient to truly demonstrate the level of action they had in mind, the Wachowskis corrected each artist once they produced their first drawing using the industry standard arrows…and they never used another arrow. This led to the dynamic, action-packed illustrations that fill over 300 pages of this 488-page volume. 

Book Review: The Art of the Matrix: 

The Art of the Matrix is essentially the storyboards and shooting script for the first Matrix movie. There are over 600 storyboard drawn by Steve Skroce. They are done in noir style to make everything dynamic and dramatic, as requested by Larry and Andy Wachowski. The storyboard reads like a comic book except there’s no speech balloons. Steve Skroce’s caption by the panels explain the shots and the differences between the movie. It provides a very good understanding into the demands of the story. The concept art is done by Geof Darrow. They are line drawings for the infirmary, main deck, neb chair, fetus stalk, cockpit, neo’s room, sentinel, fetus harvester and battle suit. These subjects take a page or two to themselves so there are not a lot of pages devoted to concept art.

Finally there’s the shooting script and some film stills.

Here’s the list of artists who worked on the film: Steve Skroce (black and white) and Tani Kunitake (colour) are the principal storyboard artists. Geof Darrow for concept art. Additional art are provided by Warren Manser, Collin Grant, Larry and Andy Wachowski. That’s not a lot of artists, strangely, considering the whole world is created from imagination. What the book doesn’t go into is the production process. But otherwise this is a great book for storyboard artists and fans of the movie.

Get The Art of The Matrix for yourself today!

Source: thematrix101.com

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