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isney's Snow White, the new live-action musical reimagining of the classic 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, stars Rachel Zegler as Snow White and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen, alongside photoreal ver- sions of the beloved characters Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy, all set against a backdrop of massive sets and real locations. To pull the epic production together the studio turned to director Marc Webb, whose credits include The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the fourth and fifth blockbusters in the multi-billion-dollar-grossing franchise. Behind the cameras, the creative team helping bring Webb's vision to life included director of photography Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS (Mulan); production designer Kave Quinn (Emma); editors Mark Sanger, ACE, BFE (Jurassic World Dominion), and Sarah Broshar, ACE (West Side Story); visual effects super- visor Max Wood (Cruella); visual effects producer Olly Young (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore); and anima- tion supervisor Greg Fisher (The One and Only Ivan). Here, in an exclusive interview, the director talks about the challenges of making the film, his long-time love of post and dealing with all the VFX. What was your vision for this film when you took this on? "It was important to honor the lega- cy of the original Snow White. I think Walt Disney invented something pretty spectacular with the first feature-length animated film in 1937, and I think it was important to be inspired by it. We also wanted to create something that had a few modern twists and surprises that were still within the vernacular of what you'd expect a Snow White film to be. And part of that is the music — both these wonderful arrangements of 'Whistle While You Work' and 'Heigh-Ho,' but also some new, original music. And visually, we wanted to build something that felt magical and had scope, but that was also intimate in just the right ways. So, it was a fun exercise to build out this world with the live-action elements in a way that felt familiar and lovable, but also a little bit surprising to the audience." What were the big challenges of prepping this huge production and dealing with the CG characters? "First, it was incredibly technical. We did a very elaborate testing process try- ing to figure out how to bring all these iconic Disney characters to life. So, we began with 'Heigh-Ho' and spent several months on it. First, we shot on a virtual stage with motion-capture actors and then refined the animation and tried to deliver what we felt would be a lovable series of characters doing this musical number, because we were relying so much on that process, which started way before production. And then we deliv- ered and dealt with the methodology. "Initially, we were wondering, 'Should we do motion capture? Should we do keyframe animation?' Because, learning from my experience with Spider-Man, motion capture is good in many ways, and it's particularly good for facial ele- ments. But when you're dealing at a scale which is different than the human scale, which we were, as we're combining these characters from the original Snow White with a live-action human, it was quite a technical challenge, because there was so much interaction both with the music and with Snow White herself. So that testing process was pretty elaborate, and Disney was really involved at the ground level. And then the pre-production was massive choreography rehearsals at a scale I've never dealt with before, which was fun but quite challenging. And then we did a lot of rehearsals. "We recorded scratch tracks and demo tracks, and then we recorded music accompaniments with those tracks, and then, particularly with Rachel, we record- ed the music live — and so much of her performance in this movie is live vocals. And that allowed for a level of detail and nuance and in-the-moment authenticity that really reads in a special way." Did you do a lot of previs? "I did some previs for the night in the forest scenes, but I relied more heavily on my storyboard artists for scenes with the CG characters. And we came up with gags the same way Walt did it, where he paid $10 or $5 for every gag that he used in the animated film. We had a similar incentive system, and it was fun to do for things like the food-fight sequence, where a group of really talented artists came up with playful gags to deploy throughout that scene. And then we would give it to the motion-capture actors and puppeteers, who would add their own nuances and levels and layers to it. "So, creating these characters was a team effort. Everybody had a part in it, even the voice actors. We brought them to the sets before we started shooting and walked them through what the scenes would be, how the scenes would be blocked and had them improvise lines. And that then made it into the story department, and then we riffed on that. Then we went back and shot it with Snow White, which changed it a little bit MARC WEBB DIRECTS DISNEY'S SNOW WHITE LIVE-ACTION, COLOR & VFX COME TOGETHER IN THE RETELLING OF THIS ANIMATED CLASSIC D DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MAR/APR 2025 BY IAIN BLAIR Zegler, Gadot and Webb on-set during production.