Alex Proyas is not a filmmaker known to churn out one film after the other, year after year.

In fact, his latest project –– “Knowing” –– was a labor of love that took four years to rewrite, cast and shoot.

The Egyptian-born, Australian director’s last movie was 2004’s sci-fi thriller “I, Robot.”

“I like to be involved with the story we’re telling as much as possible,” he said in a conference call last Wednesday with the Pioneer.

“I just believe it’s an integral part of the process, and it’s why I take so long getting movies going because I really tinker with the screenplay until I’m really satisfied with it,” he said.

“I like to have a unique voice. It has to come from someone, so it might as well be me.”-Alex Proyas

In the case of “Knowing,” in which a professor played by Nicholas Cage finds that the contents of a time capsule at his son’s elementary school predicts all future events, Proyas came in at a later stage around Feb. 2005 when the project went into turnaround at Columbia Pictures.

The rights were sold to Summit Entertainment, and Proyas helped rewrite the spec script by novelist Ryne Pearson with screenwriters Stuart Hazeldine and Juliet Snowden.

“I like to have as much involvement with the script as possible.   I like to be involved with every aspect of the process really.   I like to have a unique voice.   It has to come from someone, so it might as well be me,” said Proyas.

The director is typically known for his “unique” visuals, from the grimy, noir-like world of cult-hit “Dark City” to the sleek ultra-scientific stylings of “I, Robot.”

For “Knowing,” however, Proyas ditched his signature, ultra-stylized directing for a more realistic look.

“The one thing I wanted to do from day one was that I was aware of the set pieces that were going to happen, obviously, and I wanted to avoid a sort-of glamorizing of the events [that occur in the film],” he explained.   “I wanted to make them as visceral and as real and as unsettling as possible.”

The grittier look of the film allowed Proyas to tell the story visually in a way that was “unstructured and not contrived.”

He cited an experience he had while watching Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” in the theater as an inspiration for the visual style of “Knowing.”

During the Normandy invasion sequence of Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film, Proyas looked around the theater to see the audience’s reactions to the violence occurring on screen.

“I’ve never seen a bunch of stunned faces who were absolutely riveted to the horror they were seeing, and I absolutely thought that [film] really, for me, captured the horror of being in that conflict in a way that people haven’t seen at that stage,” said Proyas.

The horror that Proyas wanted to convey can be seen in the trailer of “Knowing.” A plane descends on Cage’s character before crashing in a field, a sequence that, Proyas said, caused   “no end of headaches and nightmares” because he shot it in one continuous shot.

“When you don’t have the luxury of stopping a shot, and resetting and doing it again in easy bite-sized pieces, you encounter all sorts of issues trying to coordinate multiple explosions, multiple stunt people on fire, rain, a camera that’s pointing 360 degrees [at all times]. All this stuff makes it particularly difficult to achieve [the shot],” he said.

It took two days for Proyas and the crew to set-up and shoot the plane crash.   The scene lasts two-and-a-half minutes.

“Knowing” also marks another significant change to Proyas’ filmmaking: The entire film was shot digitally using the Red One, a high-resolution digital cinematography camera known for its relatively low price in relation to other traditional film cameras.

In addition to driving down the cost of “Knowing,” shooting on digital film allowed Proyas to learn new tricks and shortened the production time.

“Technically, it’s already revolutionizing [the business], and there’s so many new formats that Red in particular have in the pipeline […] that you virtually will be able to shoot your wide shot on the set and then create all your close-ups later on in post-production because you can zoom into the image so far,” he said.

Digital filmmaking, with its low cost and accessibility for younger filmmakers will “make film better,” said Proyas.

As for working with the actor best known for his Academy Award-winning turn in “Leaving Las Vegas,” Proyas felt that he had found his character in Cage.

“[Nicolas Cage] is someone that I’ve really wanted to work with for a long time and we’ve almost, actually, worked together in the past but it was obviously about people’s schedules,” Proyas said.   “In this instance, Nic read the script and loved it, and he too was very interested in working with me so it was a great marriage in that respect.”

In the film, Cage’s character, John Koestler, believes that there is no central meaning in humanity’s existence, and that the universe functions in chaos.

But as the disasters happen as predicted, Koestler discovers that there may be some grand design occurring.

The theme that Proyas said he wanted to touch on with “Knowing” was not necessarily environmental, as demonstrated by other disaster films such as “The Day After Tomorrow” or the upcoming “2012,” but spiritual.

He hopes that audiences will connect with what he calls Koestler’s “spiritual quest” throughout the film.

“What I found refreshing about ‘Knowing’ is that there’s a course it takes that I really do believe will take people by surprise and take them to hopefully a very satisfying conclusion both dramatically and philosophically,” he said.

With “Knowing” being released in theaters on March 20, 2009, Proyas is already making plans for his next film.

“Dracula: Year Zero” will trace the origins of the Dracula legend from Prince Vlad the Impaler.

But Proyas admitted that he’s taking the time off to spend it with his baby daughter.   “[It] may be next or may be not, but I can’t tell you at this point,” he said.