Somewhere between his career as a goofy action hero and his rebirth as a serious actor, Brendan Fraser starred in one of the first commercial 3D films to be put in theatres on wide release. Meteor had a screening theater built with Barco projectors and polarized glasses so that all the crew could see dailies. This was also my first semi-major Hollywood film that I’d worked on after years in commercials and television. I include it here because the shots haven’t dated much, and it’s an early example of hundreds of assets being lit and rendered in stereo which required new pipeline structure and new approaches to production. I also was able to do a bit of asset sculpting for a sand dune full of dinosaur bones.
I’ll always be a bigger fan of the James Mason version of course, which sticks closer to Verne and has Pat Boone and a goose. Brendan Fraser will always get a thumbs up from me , however, especially after he spoke up for all of us artists, but that’s another story. Plus he’s brilliant in “Gods and Monsters” and “The Quiet American”.
