I attended a special Tintin press visit earlier this week at Weta in Wellington, New Zealand, where Steven Spielberg (via polycom) and Peter Jackson showed an exclusive sneak peek of a thrilling seaplane chase in 3-D that included the first mix from John Williams’ rousing score.

It’s a frantic and funny scene that typifies the tone of the film, capturing the essence of Herge’s illustrative style and slapstick humor along with Spielberg’s iconic cinematic signature. While Tintin (Jamie Bell) attempts to pilot a seaplane in the rain pursued by baddies, a nervous Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis) attempts to grab a bottle of Scotch (whose contents hardens), and then winds up climbing outside to burp into the engine when they run out of fuel.

We also saw the same reel shown at Comic-Con containing lots of action and some exposition between the intrepid Tintin and cantankerous Haddock (an Odd Couple, according to Jackson). Judging from the footage this looks like the best performance captured film yet, utilizing the latest Weta advances in facial modeling and subsurface scattering. Indeed, we saw a presentation on how they use silicon facial casts to achieve finer detail through displacement maps and painting in Mari.

During a Q&A afterward, Spielberg explained that it was a “crazy and very worthwhile learning cure.” He told me that “it all gets down to the basics: story, plot, narrative, and characters, especially with the Herge books… to exonerate these characters in a way that if Herge were with us, he could look up at the screen and say, ‘Yep, that looks like Captain Haddock to me.’”

Spielberg also said that he shot The Adventures of Tintin (Dec. 23) like a conventional movie. In fact, it reminded him of using a Super 8 Kodak camera during his youth. “I was running around with a PlayStation controller with a 6″ monitor in between the handles,” he added. “I had all the x/y buttons on my right and I could crane up and down, I could dolly in, dolly out; I could basically be the focus puller, the camera operator, the dolly grip. I wound up lighting the movie with some of the artists at Weta. And so I did a lot of jobs I don’t normally do myself on a movie, and it gave me the chance to actually start to see the picture cut together.”

By getting into the volume with the actors, he was able to bring a conventional wisdom to the set each day (he shot in sequence for 32 days in LA), and maintain objectivity nearly two years later when he was able to tweak camera, lighting, atmospherics, and expressions to emphasize different story points.

Afterward, Jackson gave us a tour of the MoCap stage at Weta, using a slightly different virtual mockup camera than the wheel controller made for James Cameron that Spielberg used. Jackson was absolutely giddy, shooting his two performance capture actors in the volume. All the assets are built in advance so the director can compose shots while viewing low-res versions of the animated characters in their CG environments. Here’s hoping that Jackson gets the chance to direct the next one. He’s still open about which book to adapt, but promises a little more from The Crab with the Golden Claws and Red Rackham’s Treasure.