Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062194
www.postmagazine.com 27 POST DECEMBER 2018 OUTLOOK O OUTLOOK O OUTLOOK DIRECTORS screening going badly and even though the studio says it doesn't care about test screenings, suddenly they do and they want you to change the whole ending. It's always those things, and waiting for the shoe to drop. I've had some things happen like that over the years. For I Am Legend, we tested it twice, and it never tested very well, and a month before release we ended up reshooting the ending. That was a bit of a curveball, and I also had one with the music for it. The day before the recording, after we'd been telling everyone 'the music's great, it's in,' suddenly everyone was shocked we were doing it and there was a big emergency meeting, and the studio decided they didn't like the music, and I had to go and tell the composer. In the end, I told him we'd record it and then redo it, so that was very messy." OUTLOOK: "It seems that there's more and more of a gap between the mi- cro-budget art films and the huge block- buster franchises, with very few movies in between for adult audiences now. And now there's so much great stuff on TV that it's hard for one of those adult movies to pop. And with streaming and all the new platforms, it's also just hard to find an audience now for movies that aren't sequels or known products. It's harder and harder to get people to go to the theaters, so directors are going to have to make films that are truly made for the big screen. And I think there'll have to be a new way of measuring the success of a film. Right now it's still all about the box office, but it'll have to be about success over multiple formats and platforms, be- cause times are changing quickly." DAVID LEITCH Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde Before becoming a director known for his hyper-kinetic, immersive, stunt-driven style, the martial artist spent over a decade in the stunt business and doubled actors includ- ing Matt Damon and Brad Pitt on such films as Bourne Ultimatum, Fight Club and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. He was also a fight choreographer, stunt coordinator, and 2 nd unit director on many films, including Wolverine, Anchorman 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, John Wick, Captain America: Civil War and Jurassic World. STRENGTHS: "I know it's a cliché that [post] is the final rewrite and where you actually make the film, but it's no less true. And the big strength is that you get the chance to fix any problems. And you can make your film better every day in post. On Deadpool, I also discovered another great strength — postvis — which turned out to be a really important part of our whole filmmaking process." WEAKNESSES: "I think one weakness is that some people probably over-think post and get bogged down. Maybe you have too much time and too many choic- es. And there can be too many voices and opinions, and you're trying to deal with the influx of critique, and then you may lose sight of what your original vision was for the movie. But I'm a bit hesitant to say that's a weakness. If you can stay strong and focused on a solid vision that you want to fight for, then I think there are only upsides to all the discussion." OPPORTUNITIES: "I mentioned postvis. Everyone knows about previs, but I think postvis may be even more crucial. We had this big action sequence in Deadpool where we never got a chance to finish on-set, and we knew we weren't creative- ly where we wanted to be, so when we began editing we put in postvis, and sud- denly found it was all working. You don't normally get that opportunity, because you previs it and then just go out and shoot it, and hope that it all works. But with postvis, we could test it first, and see that audiences were already laughing out loud at the jokes and were excited about the action, and then we could go out and execute it. That was huge." THREATS: "For me, time is always the number one threat. When you do movies with a ton of very complex VFX sequenc- es like Deadpool, you absolutely need enough time to execute them properly and integrate them. And inevitably you're deep into post and still waiting on shots to come in, and there's just never enough time." OUTLOOK: "The whole movie landscape and industry seems to be changing so fast and dramatically now. I'm hearing that all the old Hollywood studios may disappear in the next decade, along with cinemas and the whole communal way of watching movies, and everyone will be streaming on tiny screens. No director thinks that's a good way to watch any movie. But I'm an optimist, and while the technology will always change, I don't think cinemas will ever disappear. I think audiences will always want the theater experience, and box office is still doing great. I also think audiences will eventually tire of the current trend of either huge superhero blockbusters or tiny indie films. The whole middle ground of movies for adults has been hit hard in recent years, but I think it'll come back." Leitch (right) with Reynolds during Deadpool 2 Deadpool 2 Deadpool filming.