"I personally believe this is the future of film," said Zemeckis, "because it's a totally immersive way to see movies. It's a narrative tool filmmakers have never had before, but digital cinema makes it all work. And it's very cool."
So he revived the story of the miserly Scrooge, who is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve to show him how mean and pointless his life has become. Jim Carrey plays Scrooge and all the ghosts.
"If you read the novel it's very trippy and surreal and it's very cinematic," says Zemeckis. "When I first imagined filming it, I knew that Jim would be the perfect performance-capture actor.
"Not only does he create a character from the inside of his being, he also works with his entire body. When Jim performs, every muscle in his body is channelling that performance - he's a great actor, he understands comedy timing, he understands drama and he's a fantastic physical performer.
"And now we have also come close to perfecting motion-capture process. We have high-def video cameras that run at 64 frames a second and that means every pore, facial wrinkle or crease in the skin is a movement marker, including the retina of the eye. It creates a complete, supple map of the character's movement over which we add our graphic imagery. I can just put my camera anywhere I want - I don't have to obey the laws of physics any more," Zemeckis added.
"I know A Christmas Carol has been filmed many times before and I have seen most of those adaptations," he said, "including the first film made in 1908.
"But as wonderful as those versions of the story were, I believe that we finally have the filmmaking tools to realise what Dickens actually wrote. So I thought a re-visioning of it would be a lot of fun to do."
ýA Christmas Carol opens on the Ster-Kinekor circuit on November 6
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