Zack Snyder Answers Filmmaking Questions From Twitter | Tech Support

Rebel Moon director Zack Snyder answers your questions about filmmaking from Twitter. What actually is a director's cut? How does audience feedback shape creative decisions? What do filmmakers do to prepare for film shoots? Answers to these questions and many more await—it's Blockbuster Support.REBEL MOON PART TWO: THE SCARGIVER releases on Netflix April 19, 2024https://www.netflix.com/RebelMoonPart2Director: Lisandro Perez-ReyDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Louville MooreExpert: Zack SnyderCreative Producer: Jackie PhillipsLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon WhiteProduction Manager: Peter BrunetteProduction & Equipment Manager: Kevin BalashTalent Booker: Meredith JudkinsCamera Operator: Oliver LukacsSound Mixer: Paul CornettProduction Assistant: Mike KritzellPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAdditional Editor: Paul Tael; Jason MaliziaAssistant Editor: Justin Symonds

Video Transcript

- I'm Zach Snyder.

Let's answer some questions from the internet.

This is Filmmaking Support.

[gentle upbeat music] @ImBaby wants to know why did "Rebel Moon's" action sequence have so much slow motion?

The obvious answer is slow motion is awesome.

These movies are physical.

There's a physicality to what our heroes go through.

The use of slow motion to me is a way of just embellishing heroic moments that our heroes go through.

Because I think I'm a fan of beautiful classic artwork or paintings, I like to kind of make the moments into those iconographic frames that you can hang on and see.

Otherwise, you just go right by and you'd never have a chance to appreciate the like composition, the sort of tension that's created by the characters and how they're pushing the frame in all the different directions.

Slow motion tableau where you're moving with a character.

I'm not a fan of like action that is hidden by the camera.

The camera becomes a third character in the fight when it's like looking for the action.

In the end, even in a sequence with a lot of editing, I tend to like to see the action unfold.

Conankun66 wants to know, "Director's cut?

What does that mean?"

What happens is in the focus groups and in the studio screenings, people get ideas about the movie.

And they're like, "You know, it's too long.

You've got too many shots of this.

You need to cut that out."

And what happens is inevitably for me, the movie will get changed based on studio opinion and things like that, and I'll be like, "Okay, that's great.

This is the movie we're releasing in theaters."

There used to be a thing called DVDs and I would go over to that department and I would say, "Hey, would you guys be interested in an extended or director's cut of this film?

You can sell it alongside the normal version and people will maybe buy additional DVDs based on the fact that this is never before seen."

And inevitably DVD would be like, "That's awesome.

We can give you some money to make it as cool as you want."

The Snyder cut of "Justice League" is the most on steroids version of that process.

The studio finally did ask me after pressure from the fandom to finish my version of "Justice League."

One of the things that we restored was the original aspect ratio, which was 143.

If you've seen the other version of "Justice League" that I have never seen, I think it's in 185, but for me the movie was always supposed to be 143, and I think there was gonna be a compromise if there was a theatrical wide release of my version of "Justice League."

I did consider 166 as possible other ratio.

@GoBerserkNow wants to know, "Why did you choose 4:3 format for your 'Justice League' cut?"

"Justice League" was originally framed to be 4:3 because it was meant for an IMAX release.

Now if you've ever been to an IMAX theater, those screens are square.

"Justice League" originally was composed and shot for a square presentation because it was meant to be shown in IMAX.

And so that's why when someone says, "Why is it 4:3?"

It is 4:3 because it was meant to be in an IMAX theater.

@JoelGetty would like to know how much of a fight scene is really up to the writer and how much is up to the director and fight choreographer?

My experience is that I like to talk with them about what I wanna see, what I want the actress to do, what I want the character to achieve.

I always like to break the fights into like little mini three-act movies.

In the first act of the fight, the main character has a lot of confidence and they're like fighting with a lot of power.

In the second act, they might make a mistake or get rocked and they lose confidence and they're now on their back foot.

And then the third act, they turn it around and they actually are victorious.

The way I use storyboards and action sequences, here's the things I need to see, wanna really see Kora throw the hatchet and hit the guy in the forehead with it.

And when she's on the guy's body, she blows his brains out but she's holding the back of his head, boom, and he falls and then she's gonna roll and like get the gun.

Those are the two beats I wanna see.

And then they'll start linking stuff together and be like, "Okay, we think if she throws the hatchet, she's gotta fight her way back and then get the hatchet out of his head and then use it later."

That's how the collaboration works and then suddenly we have a whole fight.

So ToksTalks wants to know, "What do you find is the best way to pitch an idea?"

I like to kind of set it up a little bit so that it's not a cold pitch.

This "Army of the Dead" idea I have, it's like a zombie heist movie, but let me tell you more about it when I see you.

And then how much do you have to have worked out?

I think you have to have the whole thing pretty much 100% worked out.

I don't recommend going in without the idea figured up.

I always say this, "There's one tool that you have that everybody has and that really is your point of view."

What I want from you is the way you see the world translated into a movie.

So the way you visualize a scene is the unique thing that you have that no one but you has.

You should do it from your personal perspective.

Tell me about the way you see and that will engage me and it will intrigue me, and I'll see something unique in your vision and then I'll write you a check for whatever, a hundred million dollars.

@PodcastMovement wants to know, "What role does feedback from your audience play in shaping your creative decisions?"

There's three sort of ways we do it.

A trusted group where I would bring in like a bunch of my friends who I like their opinion and I trust their taste, and I ask 'em a series of questions after they watch the movie.

Next is a friends and family screening.

And so you could have 200 people at that and you show 'em the movie.

I find friends and family are the hardest audience.

You'd think that friends and family would be like, "Oh, they're gonna be nice to the movie and say nice stuff."

They don't.

Then we do a general preview where we go out into the theaters and we show the movie to just a general audience.

You know, you're walking by the theater and someone has a clipboard and goes, "Hey, do you wanna come see this movie?"

And you go and watch it and you give 'em feedback.

Mostly feedback from the audience is related to confusion about the story.

Was it clear that that character was the character they were referring to?

Or when they went from this location to that location, were you lost?

Those are the three methods that we normally use.

The sort of online feedback, I don't really look at that.

If you actually start to look at the internet for opinion about your work, you can really go down the rabbit hole and that's a dark place.

@ConcordLibrary wants to know, "How do you build fictional worlds?"

I always like to start with myth.

Your words, your drawings, your reference, your own personal taste.

You sort of set an aesthetic for the world and in setting aesthetic for the world, I'm inspired by those conversations to draw and paint.

Those are the ways I start.

In "Rebel Moon," we travel throughout the galaxy and we go to all these different places.

Now in the script, this place is like a mining colony.

We go to a place that's like a floating dock.

So once you have these kind of, what I would say, these are images that I like, these are drawings that I've done, we could give them to a concept painter and that painter will do a full blown painting and then I can look at it and go like, "That's exactly what I want it to look like."

Those paintings, they really end up being the sort of touchstones of each one of the looks for the environments you go to.

@ZoomarPodcast wants to know, "How on earth do films get funded?"

Well, movies are like any business.

Whoever's got the sort of resources to make a movie, and that is to say they've got a chunk of money set aside, when are they gonna use this money and they're gonna give it to a filmmaker to make a movie.

They say, "Okay, we really wanted make a horror movie," you know?

So they'll say, "Okay, do you have any ideas for a horror movie?"

Because we, on our slate, would love a couple horror movies.

And so you pitch them and they go, "Yeah, it was pretty good.

I think we should at least spend some money to write a script."

And so they pull a small amount of the money off and they go, "Okay, go write your script."

So you go and you write your script and they'd come back and they read it and they go like, either, "That's awesome, you did exactly what you said, we love it.

Here's more money.

Go make it into a movie."

Or they'll say, "You know what?

Here's some notes.

It's not quite what we thought.

Here's a little bit more money, can you fix it up?"

The other way it happens is they go, they have this pile of money and they have some ideas.

We bought this newspaper article and they're like, "Hey, writer, would you write us a script based on this article?"

What do we do with it?

Let's call some directors that we know.

They read it, they come in and say, "Oh, this is how I wanna make that into a movie.

I see it as like black and white, low angles.

You know what?

We love that.

Here's money, go and make that."

And then they would go and make it.

There's also independent films, you know, where like the financing is not raised from a single source.

That's mostly based on the script and a filmmaker together.

So you go to different film festivals, different marketplaces, and you say like, "I have an idea for a movie, Robert Downey Jr. wants to be in it and I think it could be amazing."

Based on that pitch, we can give you like $5 million.

I'm like, "Okay, great.

I'm gonna put that in my bucket."

Now I go pitch it again in another room and they might have another five or European distribution or whatever.

You can also raise enough money to shoot it that way and you'd have a bunch of partners.

@Capybanna wants to know, "For movies, how do directors decide which scenes to do in which order?"

This is my basic philosophy for what order to shoot the movie in.

Page one, shot one.

Shoot the movie in order as best as you can.

And so then the characters are growing or progressing along that same timeline as the film itself.

If you're doing a super complicated fight scene, sometimes it's good to do it right off the top.

What happens with action inevitably is takes a long time.

It requires a lot of training, choreography.

The way that happens is they spend time in the gym with the fight team learning it.

So that requires in prep the actors because they're not shooting, they have time to learn a really complicated fight.

And when they come on the day now they're super ready and they can do it incredibly well.

@RizzolDraymon asks, "@ZackSnyder, how did you get your start as a director?

Did you have to do an audition or something to start off?

I'm just asking 'cause I want to be a director in the future."

Well, I went to a film school to be a movie director, but about three quarters of the way through my college career, I was talking to the head of the department and he said, "Look, to guarantee yourself a job when you get out, if you'd made a bunch of TV commercials while you're here in school, you would have a reel and you could go get a job immediately."

And when I got out of school, I went straight to work.

10 years of TV commercials.

A lot of the Clydesdale Budweiser commercials, for BMW, for Subaru.

I've done commercials for Bose speakers, I've done commercials for pretty much anything you could think of.

So the way you get a TV commercial is they have a idea for a commercial storyboard and they're like, "You know what, Zach Snyder and this storyboard feel like a good match.

Let's send it to him.

Get him on the phone."

They get on the phone and I go, "This is what I would do if I was directing your TV commercial.

It would be all these like super cool angles, lots of slow motion, all this cool cinematography.

Your product would look amazing and people are gonna buy it."

And so when I went to Universal Studios to audition to do the movie "Dawn of the Dead," I did have a vast knowledge of filmmaking, but I still had to do a song and dance and tell 'em how the movie would look and what would be in it and they seemed to like it.

@SummitPurohit wants to know how do filmmakers prepare themselves for the shoots?

Are there people beyond the crew you discuss the project with, you go into isolation?

Do you focus on fitness before the shoot?

I'm a writer, so I'm normally writing and drawing.

I have drawn the storyboards for all the movies that I work on.

And so I end up drawing probably about five months before I start shooting for "Rebel Moon," the movie I just finished.

I created about 3,000 drawings.

And as far as fitness goes, we do really work on our fitness before the movie starts.

It does come in handy, especially like me, I operate the camera and I was the director of photography, so I'm running around all the time.

Shooting a movie is a marathon and you need to be in the best shape you can because it's gonna wear you down.

@Flwersforyou wants to know, are film directors in charge of scripts like planning the whole movie out?

Or do film directors get hired after the movie's already completely written and planned out?

There are times, like "Man of Steel," where I got a script.

Beyond the words there was nothing planned.

So of course I've written half of the movies that I've directed.

Was very involved in all aspects of production, whether it be costume design or set design, cinematography.

My last two movies, I also acted as the cinematographer.

So not only was I the director, telling the actors what to say based on words I had written, but I was also making shots based on drawings that I had done.

@Jon_Sandler wants to know, is meddling studio executives are always painted as villains in film books, but I wonder how many films set executives have to actually improved.

I don't know.

I've had great studio executives who have given me amazing feedback.

I just wish this.

I don't know how to do it.

You're the filmmaker, maybe you have an idea.

So an answer to your question, I think probably a few.

Alright, so those are all the questions for today.

Thanks for watching.