Early Life and Influences
Conran grew up watching such classic adventure movies and serials as King Kong, Lost Horizon, Metropolis, and Flash Gordon on a local television channel.
He was impressed by the whimsy and innocence of these films. He explained in an interview with John Joseph Adams that the adventure films of the 1930s era were not limited by what was practical, but only by the imaginations of the creators. He stated that he found this element lacking in modern adventure films, which he described as "almost too well informed... and more cynical". As a result, he had aspired ever since his childhood to create an adventure film or serial in the same vein as the aforementioned escapist adventures of the 1930s. He spent much of his childhood making short super-8 movies. Upon becoming an adult, he entered the California Institute of Arts. Although he was enrolled in a live-action course, he became enamored with the abilities of those in animation courses to create whatever was in their imagination. He realized that they were not bound by such things as practicality or the rules of physics, but only by their imaginations. As a result, he devised the idea of making a film with live actors, but computer-animated backgrounds.
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