Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530454
www.postmagazine.com 14 POST NOV/DEC 2024 OUTLOOK FILMMAKING problem, then there's the other threat — that you can go on forever in post, playing around with endless possibilities in the edit, the sound design, the music and so on." OUTLOOK: "We just need to make movies that people want to go see in the cinema. It's on us. We can bitch all day about how kids just watch movies on their phones now or whatever, but if you want people to go see a movie in the cinema, then you have to make a movie that people actually get excited about so they want to see it on the big screen. I know what's happened recently [in the industry] has been very hard, as people have been out of a job because of the strike and whatnot. I think that we've got some of the best craftsman in the world and we just need to get people back to working again." PAUL SCHRADER Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo, The Last Temptation of Christ The legendary director/screenwriter started out as a film critic, but after the Los Angeles Free Press fired him for his negative review of Easy Rider, he wrote Taxi Driver, which became the seminal 1976 psychodrama, directed by Martin Scorsese. Since then, he has written and/ or directed such powerful and memo- rable films as The Mosquito Coast, Cat People, Affliction and Bringing Out The Dead. His new film, Oh, Canada, reunites him with Richard Gere for the first time since American Gigolo made the actor a star some 45 years ago. STRENGTHS: "Simply the freedom of be- ing able to change everything. Hopefully if you've done your job right, you won't need to do that. But everything can be made better. Every sound effect, every coloration, the ADR, it can always be tweaked. You're just making everything richer in post." WEAKNESSES: "The DGA director's cut used to be 10 weeks. We don't need 10 weeks anymore. When I started out, you needed those 10 weeks when you were cutting film, as we used to have the bins and the trims and all of that, and every time a new cut was made, you had to tear the film apart. Now you store every single one, so people will have 20 or 30 different cuts of a film stored in the computer. You say, 'Let's go back to that version we had where this played out this way' and boom, 20 seconds later, you're back looking at it again. But now the downside is, maybe you have too many options." OPPORTUNITIES: "All these changes in technology have really helped not just in speed, but in letting you manipulate im- ages, sound and also using sound effects as part of the music now. So, at the com- posing level, you're already starting to premix sound design with the music. So, you're doing everything. You have much more freedom. The biggest freedom is the ability to recompose a shot. Before, you could blow up an image around 10 percent and not have a quality reduction. Now you can blow it up 75 percent and not have a quality reduction. There's one shot in Oh, Canada where I needed a shot of Richard Gere's empty chair. Well, I never shot that, but I did shoot a shot where he walks in and sits down in it. I just reframed it and now I had the shot I wanted without actually having to go and do it." THREATS: "The biggest threat is that actors and producers and everyone has a mantra: 'Fix it in post.' Anything that goes wrong that you should be addressing on the set, they'll say, 'It'll be all right, we'll fix it in post.' Then you get over to post and you see that it's not so easily fixable. This started long ago, with George Lucas and Star Wars and Liam Neeson. He wanted Liam Neeson to smile for a shot and Liam thought it was wrong, and he refused to smile. Later, Liam went and saw the film and he was smiling. They took a smile from another part of the film and put it on him. Now, this is about 40 years ago already. So now with AI, who knows what about the future of cinema?" OUTLOOK: "We've come through the pandemic, all the strikes, and people talk a lot about the changes in how we watch movies now — on phones rather than in big theaters. The truth of the matter is, most people of any income have home screen and home sound to rival a small, boutique theater. They're sitting there Paul Schrader (center): The public's attitude toward cinema has gotten less serious.