Young director sees film on grand scale

A UCLA student just five years ago, Gil Kenan (on the ''City of Ember'' set) has already earned an Oscar nomination. (Keith hamshere/walden media and twentieth century fox)

BELFAST - Five years ago, Gil Kenan was an unknown university student with a video camera; today he is an Oscar-nominated director strolling around one of the largest indoor film sets ever made. And it's his.

"It's amazing. See the height of this thing? The size and height of this thing actually allowed us to build sets that are practical," says Kenan, 31, as he walks underneath a canopy of lights inside a massive shipping hangar.

"City of Ember," Kenan's first live-action film, which opened Friday, tells the story of an underground city lighted entirely by a power generator that's starting to fail. As the street lamps flicker and pop, the city begins a descent into darkness.

How to build a city that hails from another world? One of the biggest problems was finding a space big enough.

Kenan and his crew darted around Europe for months before discovering Belfast's Titanic Quarter, so called because the RMS Titanic was built there along with other ships, conveniently leaving behind hangars that soar 90 feet in the air. Northern Ireland Screen, the local film commission, offered more than $1 million in funding and waived the rent on the otherwise abandoned hangar in hopes of launching a film industry.

It took five months to build the set in the Paint Hall, a building that spans 64,000 square feet - there are indoor roads - and the result is an English village with winding alleys and concrete, 1970s-inspired buildings that tower three stories.

While trailing Kenan on location in Belfast during the filming, it quickly becomes apparent that not only is he one of the youngest people around, he's also the most animated.

At one point, he suddenly falls to the ground.

"I'm really into these," he says on his hands and knees, pointing at the copper manhole covers. He explains that the engravings on the manholes are essentially maps of the city.

"Like, there's the laundromat over there," he says, finding it on the manhole first before dashing over to a gray building stuffed with rusting washing machines. He then shoves an oar into a machine and starts cleaning an imaginary load of laundry while explaining how resourceful the citizens of Ember are, even though supplies are dwindling.

The film is co-produced by Tom Hanks's Playtone Productions and Fox Walden, and was adapted for the screen by Caroline Thompson, who also penned "Edward Scissorhands" and "Corpse Bride." The story follows two teenagers as they hunt for clues to unlock the city's mysterious origins and help its citizens escape before it's too late. They are thwarted by Bill Murray, who plays the mayor of Ember.

Kenan's big break on "City of Ember" is the stuff of film student dreams. Born in London, he moved to Tel Aviv at 4 and Los Angeles at 7. His father, a commodities trader, used to take him to "inappropriate" - his word - films, he says, such as "The Tin Drum" and "Time Bandits," leaving him "really confused and really fascinated."

His UCLA senior film project, "The Lark," a 10-minute black-and-white film made in his kitchen, won a class award and caught the eye of an agent. Soon he was sitting across the table from industry titans at Playtone.

"It was wild. Not to overstate it, but these were film gods of mine," Kenan says.

With Playtone, Kenan says he began pitching a kind of "non-intergalactic science-fiction film" when Hanks's executives "started looking at each other." A like-minded novel, "The City of Ember," by Jeanne DuPrau, had just landed on their desk. Would Kenan like to take a look?

Would he ever. Kenan called the next day and pleaded for the chance to give his interpretation of the manuscript, complete with sketches. His presentation lasted three hours.

"We loved his energy, and Tom [Hanks] was delighted with Gil," says Steven Shareshian, a Playtone producer at that initial meeting. He says they could tell that "Gil was a true visualist" and that he could bring "an overall look and feel that was incredibly unique."

And if some might think it risky to gamble so much on a young director, the "Ember" producers had all the validation they could possibly want in Kenan's first film. Produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, 2006's "Monster House" is an animated adventure story that has a big toe in the horror genre, and received strong reviews and an Oscar nomination.

Kenan has such a deceptively folksy style it's easy to forget that he's responsible for the most expensive film ever made in Northern Ireland.

"He is super-confident," says Tim Robbins, a costar in the movie. "You wonder about that with someone you haven't worked with before. I mean: Do they have talent, or are they just stubborn? I was happy to learn it was talent."