At any given day you have to be ready with everything. It can be that the director says "this one's done and I need a new one." And you're like, "oh my god! I only have two months, no way!" So your design approach is completely different. You develop, let's say six things at the same time, and try to be ready everyday to give it away.
Daniel SimonYou know, boy versus girl. But she's a tough warrior, so I almost treated it like unisex. But it makes a difference how tall the actors are, because I needed to know that if Olivia Wilde sits in a car that the director, Joe Kosinski can still get the angle he wants, as opposed to maybe in another vehicle than Jeff Bridges has to sit in. So that was fascinating. Because in a real car you change everything and adjust it. But here you have one shot.
Daniel SimonThe downside is, if somebody doesn't like it, then it's like "oh my god, ok its really your fault."
Daniel SimonSam's light-cycle, the car, and the jets are new of course, and other stuff. The new ones are sleeker and so contemporary, that if you could put them in a car design show they would hold up.
Daniel SimonAlso one of my heroes is Syd Mead, who designed the vehicles for the first Tron. So, there are so many beautiful things happening here. And working with Joe was great. He's an architect, so I worked with other directors in between who were just about the action.
Daniel SimonI got very spoiled. Everybody said you will never ever work on such a good movie, you know. I did, because I went on to work on Captain America, which also has a great director, which is Joe Johnston, one of my heroes who designed the old Star Wars movies.
Daniel SimonIt [making tron: Legacy movie] was everything. I got pulled into a different country, in a different language, and a different society. In a movie, it's a completely different feel. In car design you know you have one year, and you have to go step by step. This is an organized catastrophe.
Daniel Simon