On a sunny day they looked white, on a cloudy day they looked darker. “Because they had an anodized aluminum skin, they were like chameleons. “That was tricky because everybody has a different idea of what the towers looked like,” says Baillie. Then came recreating the Twin Towers, in eye-popping, photorealistic perfection. Zemeckis and visual effects supervisor Kevin Baillie set about animating Joseph Gordon-Levitt at tricky moments on the wire, with the actor’s face on the body of a Cirque du Soleil performer, and digitally turning the Montreal set into Paris and New York. That version fell away, and a more straightforward approach was chosen. When Zemeckis first spoke with Petit about making the film, adapted from the French acrobat’s 2002 memoir, To Reach the Clouds, the director was toying with filming Petit in a motion-capture outfit (and having him play every character in the film). The filmmaker, whose technical innovations include the Back to the Future trilogy (1985-’90), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump (1994) and The Polar Express (2004), knew the best way to turn Petit’s iconic act into a movie was to make a cinematic leap, and to do in 3D. His sentence, after being booked: Perform a free wire-walk in Central Park - during which he nearly fell.įor The Walk, Zemeckis more than makes up for that day’s lack of footage. “My friends had a 16mm movie camera ready and loaded on the north tower, but the police came,” says Petit. Philippe Petit, a French high wire artist, walks across a tightrope suspended between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. There are photos from his accomplices and from bystanders below - as seen in the 2008 documentary, Man on Wire - but no filmed document. “It was a big deal in those days to get a film camera at the last minute, so there’s not a single moving image of him up there!” “In 1974 Manhattan, in the 45 minutes Philippe was on the wire 100 stories up, no one could scramble to get a movie camera,” says Zemeckis. It brings the viewer on the wire with me.”ĭespite the infamy of Petit’s extraordinary, and illegal, adventure - the years of planning, the sneaking up to the towers to scope them out, the turns of luck that went in his favor as he set off from the south tower on that overcast August morning - The Walk, in fact, breaks new ground in an unexpected way. Says Petit, “It’s a special work because of the way the camera invites you to walk by my side. “Out on the wire, the movie becomes like a dance.” “The camera here is sort of a dance partner with Philippe,” says Zemeckis. This time, we all come along for the trip. Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/APīut it took director Robert Zemeckis almost nine years, and dozens of movie magicians, to recreate Petit’s sky stroll for the new film The Walk, opening Wednesday. The other towers which are smaller than the twin towers are 3 WTC (22 floors), 4 and 5 WTC (9 floors), 6 WTC (8 floors) and 7 WTC (47 floors).Philippe Petit attends the New York Film Festival opening night gala premiere for “The Walk” at Alice Tully Hall on Saturday, September 26, 2015, in New York. The World Trade Center itself has two silver steel and metallic twin towers (1 WTC and 2 WTC) that has 110 floors with a antenna spire on 1 WTC. Philippe Petit performed his high wire walk between the gap of the two towers and succeeded which made him famous. The World Trade Center is the most iconic landmarks in New York City (until the September 11 attacks in 2001) and it was used as a main setting for The Walk. ![]() Gets properly finished in 1973, but in September 11, 2001, it was violently demolished, due to a plane crash, caused by terrorists. ![]() Philippe Petit, Annie Allix, Jean-Louis, Jeff, Barry Greenhouse, NYPD Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
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