Collider's Steve Weintraub moderates a Directors on Directing panel featuring Radio Silence, David Leitch, and Wes Ball, where they discuss the collaboration process and behind-the-scenes of filmmaking.
The Big Picture For WonderCon 2024, Collider's Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to moderate another Directors on Directing panel where we hosted Radio Silence — Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett — David Leitch , and Wes Ball ahead of the release of some of this year's hottest blockbusters.
It Takes a Miracle To Get Movies on the Big Screen "It's just arts and crafts." COLLIDER: What do you think would surprise this audience to learn about being a director in Hollywood? GILLETT: Hearing you talk about the mo-cap experience, I think there’s this idea that you kick back with your feet up behind a monitor and everything gets recorded, and then you sort of choose the coverage in post. But even that, at the highest technical level, is still handmade. You’re still making choices in the moment.
Hear From Those "Hundreds and Hundreds" of Other Creatives Some familiar names from different departments chime in with questions for our panel. BEAR MCREARY: Hey, gang! Bear McCreary here. I've got a question for all of you. You've all worked with some pretty amazing composers over the years, and that means you've heard what the rest of us don't get to hear.
BETTINELLI-OLPIN: We trust him a lot. We usually end up hearing his full score in our final mix. So, it’s very late. I think every time in the process, the people we’re working with in sound say something like, “You guys haven’t heard this yet? That’s weird.” And every time we go, “Wow, this is great.” Then, at most, we tinker some things. We move around some stuff to make it fit. But he very much gets our vibe, and he kind of just lands that plane for us.
COLIN TREVORROW: Hey, guys. I know we're all really hard on ourselves as filmmakers, brutal sometimes, and it's hard to admit we've ever done anything right at all. Is there anything, one moment from any of your films, one scene where you've been up late and you saw it on TBS, nobody was around, and you were just like, “Man, that was dope?”
DAMON LINDLEOF: Hey there. I'm Damon. I’m a big fan of all your work, and my question is about social media and feedback. X, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is the kids are using these days — do you use it? Do you look at what people are saying about your stuff? What's your relationship with it? Do you think it's super-duper toxic or helpful? Asking for a friend.BALL: I’ve avoided most of the toxic stuff, but I definitely get a whiff of it often enough.
BALL: I’ve worked with Gyula Pados, my DP, for three movies now. We’ve developed a shorthand and we have very similar tastes, so typically it’s about me sitting here and pitching him the movie. We don’t talk about visuals, we talk about the movie and the feeling and the opportunities, and all those things, the things that I’m excited about at the moment.
BALL: How do you guys approach it? Do you do long takes with single set-ups, or do you just use the pieces that you think you need? LEITCH: It depends on the movie. With Bullet Train, I shot really specifically. It was a really specific style. We wanted short pieces, and I stayed in really short pieces of coverage, short pieces of dialogue. Except when Lemon and Tangerine would riff; then I’d just let the camera go. But then there are other movies like The Fall Guy.
GILLETT: I think the truth part of that is really interesting, too, just from a creative point of view. I mean, we all spend weeks and weeks cutting our movies alone in a room with an editor. Your first preview when it’s being screened in front of a real audience, the truth of your choices, whether it’s direct feedback or just the feel of the room, there is an honesty in the experience of watching a movie with a group of people that you lose when you’re alone.
LEITCH: You’re testing the gags that they’re gonna do. You’re developing the action for the character. You’re standing in for the character, and you’re actually part of the character, as well, when you’re shooting second unit. So, you do become close.BALL: Let’s hear it for real stunts, baby! BETTINELLI-OLPIN: A big part of it was that it was original. The opportunity to go to Universal and make an original movie that’s not an independent movie we’re making with our friends for, like, $100 bucks was really, really alluring.
GILLETT: It’s fun, too. At the end of the day, shooting your actors with a blood cannon, they’re excited for it, as well.GILLETT: When you sign up for a movie like Abigail, you just sort of know that that’s gonna be part of it. There’s all of this anticipation that builds up around those events. When those events are practical and they’re done well and they’re done safely, there’s just nothing more thrilling.
GILLETT: I think she’s one of those prodigal talents that, when you get to know them as an actor — and this is so much a part of this collaborative approach — when they tell you what they’re good at, you have to listen. We showed up and Alisha was a great singer, a great dancer, and very funny, and could do literally 99% of the stunts in this movie.
The reason I think people are gonna respond to it, and the reason I responded to it, is because it’s a love letter to the stunt community and everyone who makes movies, you have a mystery that works, and you have insane chemistry between Ryan and Emily. How happy are you to have this as Ryan’s first movie after Barbie?
LEITCH: Yeah, locking down the bridge, the Sydney Harbor bridge, they hadn’t done that in probably 25 years, or something like that. We had it from four a.m. to six a.m. I had to shoot dragging Ryan across the bridge. He got there and it’s like five in the morning, and he’s a little bit like, “Okay, what am I doing?” I’m like, “Shh,” and hook him up to the wires. “Hold on to this shovel.” “What?” “We’re going to drag you. It’s only 30 miles an hour. You’ll be fine.
While I understand some fans were really looking forward to the whole Cornelius thing, that story can still be told at some point, I’m sure, but it opened up this whole bigger, mythic kind of story that fits into the franchise of Planet of the Apes, not just a sequel to the last three.
The story follows a character called Noa, who’s our main protagonist of this world. He is a naive, innocent young ape who sets out on this grand adventure of discovery into a world he doesn’t know anything about. He doesn’t really know anything about humans, doesn’t know anything about other apes that may exist. On this big adventure, terrible things happen and he befriends a wild human, played by Freya Allan, and she becomes very important to the story.
Directors Filmmaking Collaboration Behind-The-Scenes Panel Radio Silence David Leitch Wes Ball
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