Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1097515
DGA QUARTERLY 33 C: A lot of people think there's humanist filmmaking and then there's technological filmmaking. I maintain it's all one thing. It should always be one thing. F: I was very much drafting behind you on Jungle Book because that Pace (Pace/Cam- eron Fusion Camera System) system, all the gear, and the MotionBuilder, all that stuff… C: Well, I shot native 3D... F: Native 3D, using your camera system, MotionBuilder. We were using Photon also, but we were in a volume, and we were essentially using the path that you had created. And we were refining it for our particular application because we were doing photography and marrying it much like you're doing now with that technology. But you look at George Lucas, and few peo- ple appreciate how many things he came up with that we now couldn't be making mov- ies without, [such as] CGI, EditDroid… C: Multi-axis motion control. All of it—it was revolutionary. F: And so we need those people to help humanize technology, because film has always been a marriage between technol- ogy and old mythic storytelling. And both of you, I felt, took that seriously in your own different styles. C: Well, I was inspired by George. He had a 10-year start on me, something like that. And Steven (Spielberg). They were the guys that I was admiring and studying. F: What's interesting about Steven is he'll sometimes go completely old school and then sometimes push the envelope with Jurassic Park or Ready Player One. He loves tech. "With a title that still holds up like (The Lion King), you have to create something that feels like a completely new medium." F: The brain bar's there. And to emulate a real live set with Lion King, it wasn't just the people on the stage but it's also the communication. And often, I don't know if you've noticed it, but in tech situations, it tends to be a little bit more democratized. You usually have a lot of smart people who are problem-solving and bringing solu- tions to the table. But when you're in the rhythm of a film, there is an efficiency that is associated with the way that people have been making films for a long time. And you want to fold that creativity and that tech culture into the film culture. And the AD becomes the pivotal part. And so we had a full AD team even though there were no actors on set and there was no background. But you need people who are comfort- able with both worlds. I think a big part of why we were able to preserve all of that stuff was because you had the AD team in there being the glue be- tween the different departments and those different worlds. Just like I drew upon the talent pool that you helped develop through Avatar when I was doing Jungle Book, now you have people who can go out in the world and share this knowledge… C: … And then it morphs, because every film is different, and every production environ- ment is its own culture. It morphs and then you look over the fence and see how somebody else is doing it, and you say, "Oh, that's similar, but that's very different. I can use that." F: They can communicate what they're learning from other sets. And it's not that we don't want to share that information, because you've been very generous with helping me understand and learn this process. Whereas, if I'm working with somebody, a producer who's worked with you, a UPM, an AD, that person can help communicate and steer [me] through and avoid the traps. C: Yeah, I think that's how the knowledge propagates, right? And I think it's not critical for the director to know every nuance of how the system works as long as they still know, "This is how my camera works and this is how I communicate with the actors and this is how we get to see the display." You don't need to know the 10,000 things that are hap- pening in the backfield, but the ADs do. F: And you can still keep that organization- al structure even though the job description changes. Because technology always offers [both] opportunity and a threat to what came before it. And if you could assimilate the new information into the old culture, then you're not disposing of the richness of experience that can inform. The Learning Curve and the Spark of Provocation C: The thing that amazes me about your work, your career, is that you started as an actor and a writer. And you just absorbed all this stuff as part of your craft. But the tech will never seduce you to the dark side. [laughter] F: Well, I was more of a Luddite in the beginning. All the early ones I did: With Elf (2003) it was in stop motion. It was forced perspective. There's a little bit of CG in the end for the reindeer. When I did a movie called Zathura (2005), I didn't want to do that with CG… C: With Stan… F: We did it with Stan Winston, that's right. We had animatronics, we had motion-con- trol spaceships and miniatures and models, but I always felt everybody was doing CG then. First of all with Iron Man, also with Stan, some shots were practical suits, some shots were CG. And it was hard surfaces, reflective surfaces. And when I was starting to give notes on the practical shots, I knew it crossed the line where I could no longer tell the difference. And so I was convinced. But I still hung on to wanting to keep as much practical as I could.