The Creator Ending and Deleted Scenes Explained by Gareth Edwards

how you doing tonight I'm doing good you want to leave all that in that was good stuff they need to know how unprofessional you are what's what's funny is I've been like at the beginning when I first started doing these things it was much more like rigid and now I'm like what the it doesn't you know what I mean this is like the night before you go on holiday isn't it cuz you've been doing all these Awards stuff and you were saying this is the last one I have to do I'm so excited it's over I don't mean no no first of all it's a privilege to be up here doing stuff like that no sincerely it I didn't mean that but no it's like it's I'm I'm he actually said I'll quot he said I'm I'm glad the last one is with you because it's it's a nice way to go out because it's all started with you at Comic Con was anyone at ComicCon oh so you guys know yeah um what you don't know at so we do I do a panel called directors on directing and last Summer's uh Comic-Con and Hall h uh we've talked about this on camera but a lot of you might not know this uh he was gracious enough to do the panel we also um had two other great filmmakers on stage and what people didn't realize it was a 90-minute panel and um what as we're backstage about to walk up into Hall h you look at me and you say i't got time to go to the L and I said you can either go into where the fans are all the way at the end or take the elevator upstairs and all of a sudden we realized we need to be on stage so oh okay so yeah so basically I I'd already needed to pee myself a good half an hour earlier because I had a headache and I was and I thought okay if I get hydrated it'll go away and they gave me this massive bottle and I didn't want to carry it around so I thought the obvious solution was to drink the whole thing and throw it away and then I was like I really need to pee and then we go on stage and I thought to myself it's a 30 minute Q&A or something and it was 90 minutes and an hour in I was genuinely if you ever watch the video you might catch me doing it I was looking under the table to see if there was a banner so that the crowd would see if I was actually urinating my trousers because I was like it's just going to come out it's just coming out and there was a banner and I sort of was like I'm just going to do it I had dark trousers on I thought I'd get away with it and then thank then then thankfully our clip came on and I felt it' be really rude to go to the L during someone else's clip because this all like no one had ever seen it before stuff our clip came on and it was a thing you dream of you're going to show the first it was the bit from the tank B one 5 10 minutes from the first ever clip ever from your movie in Hall h in comic conon and I had to run to the urinals and and and when I was there I was peeing and I could feel this fan or someone come up with a poster and and a pen for me to sign it and he was just hovering here and I was like I'll do it in a minute when I'm not like and and then you're you're signing that and I can hear all the crowd and you can hear all the sound effects and you're like this is so how it always ends up happening like like you dream of some scenario and the reality is like over here uh that panel uh was so fantastic and everyone loved your footage and that was the beginning of I mean the buzz on the on your film from that moment became anyway people loved it and if you ever see video Louis lat terier was supposed to go to the bathroom but he went to the front row to watch the footage and then he freaked out anyway it was a fun day uh jumping into tonight so um since you've made this film I feel like AI we all talk about AI but it it feels like each day AI is getting stronger more powerful and I look at the videos of AI from a year ago with like movies and what they're doing now so how do you feel about AI Now versus when you first made it and are you also nervous about AI in Hollywood I'm not nervous at all because when AI takes over humanity and kills everyone they're going to leave me alone cuz I made a movie that was very empathetic and they be he's okay he gets us leave him he's good um so that's the main reason I made the film uh but yeah it's genuinely look I'll say the positive side of it right if I was a young filmmaker um starting out my career wanting to make films with this technology appearing I'd be so excited like it looks like it's going to be a very liberating thing for a lot of filmmakers even more so than CGI C CJ CJ CGI uh in the early 90s you know was for film making um it's but anyone who tries to predict what that's going to actually do for the industry right now if you play back any any thoughts you know in three years you're going to look like an idiot because it's it's going to unfold in ways you can't possibly tell but um even just the open AI stuff that came out two days ago whatever it was was like oh here we go this is it like it's it's there's no going back because the other stuff you could kind of go well it's there's problems and doesn't quite you could pick it it apart and say maybe it'll never get Beyond like usable footage and now it just feels like this that that graph of dots each week you expect it to plateau and just every single week it's like no it's still going it's still going and it's going to probably go to where everyone predicts which is it's going to just change the world it's it's uh it's crazy and you know you look and it's an it's a such an exponential growth in its ability to learn unlike you know you look at the original iPhone and how long it took to get to where we are at now and with AI I think it's you know you're going to be in 10 times the speed yeah I it's I don't I mean there's so many things to say it's it's like when like when the automobile was invented um people who own Stables were like you know it's going to be okay because cuz now we can get the hay delivered quicker and you're like no no no there's not going to be horses like it's going to change so drastically and so I hope I just hope what it mainly does is is because one of the things stopping um great storytelling to some extent is because films are so expensive to make you have to be like very broad with your appeal right to get back the hundred million investment of something and so um typically films with this sort of scope and ambition have to please everybody in the world pretty much and and if it only costs you $10 to make a film that looks like Star Wars that will change everything do I mean you'll be allowed to take the kind of risks that we know it feels like the filmmakers from the 70s were allowed to do but with with Blockbuster style um subject matter and I I just get excited about that there's lots of ramifications but there always is with any you know electricity the internet computers you pick your technological break through there's massive repercussions and then the other side of it we all look back and I think no one would want to go backwards and not have electricity you know what I mean and and not have computers and so I hope it's going to be like that like it will be difficult for a while for a lot of people and probably even me you know like I do think it's it looks like it's it's doing the sort of thing I do for a living by just typing something so maybe I'm I'm out of a job too at some point but what you did with this film and the visual effects and what you were able to pull off with the budget it it really changed what I think Hollywood movies can do and so I joked about this with you in the past but I'm being serious now how many people other directors and Studios and whoever have said how the F did you do this can you please show me how um on and I say there's some really good uh DVD extras on the on the Blu-ray that you can check no they it's only $12.99 in Amoeba Records that's the only place that sells Blu-rays anymore so good luck with that um so yeah no basically I it wasn't so much me but my producer and the visual effects artists have had a lot of calls and had to go to a lot of meetings and talk about it but not I haven't really nobody loves I uh that's shocking to me but I would imagine it also I mean you must have done meetings with different Studios or talking to people because you made this at a fraction of what it should cost with the visual effects that it looks like just such a bigger movie than what the cost was even though the cost is still a big number yeah and I think we basically okay so we did loads of uh different approaches to make this film and I'll list a bunch of them real fast if as fast as I possibly can okay so we sh it on uh a camera that's only $4,000 and we didn't do that because of the price tag we did it because it's the only camera in the world that is uh lightweight and also can shoot in Moonlight it's so sensitive to light can you can you sort of it's just the fx3 by Sony and you can buy it at Best Buy do they sponsor you no but I I just want to tell people you can literally buy this camera at Best by yeah and so but it had an old it had a 1970s what you call an anamorphic lens on the so a film a lens that's basically used with films from the era that I grew up loving CU I wanted to have that look um as soon as you do that you can then have lights that are really um small to light Big scenes and so we had LED lights like that were battery operated soon as you do that you don't have to have them on stands you can have someone holding them on a pole like you do with the guy with recording the sound and so I you could move around with the camera and instantly they could relight the scene or in the dop would be talking to them through a little microphone and earpiece and and they would quickly reorientate and so we would shoot like 45 minute takes and do an entire coverage of a scene in one go rather than stopping and starting which is more of a classical way of doing it even the dollies shots you know where you basically you didn't have to ride the dolly there's a there's a iPhone that can be stuck to a to a monitor and as you move the iPhone or the monitor the camera does exactly what you're doing so you don't have to sit on it and operate it so now it's really lightweight and so you can you can put it down on the ground do a dolly shot and then be like okay let's move over here and do one and so like 10 seconds later you've got a brand new Dolly shot and typically that's 10 to 15 minutes on the film set so there was all these little silly things when we were making the film and then in terms of the visual effects the same sort of stuff was going on in that we didn't want I didn't want anybody with those what I'd call pajamas with dots on you know like when when you watch the behind the scenes stuff and and you've got motion capture suits and things like this the problem with those for me is is that you're committing to that guy unless you're making a film about a pajama party you're sort of committing to that guy being a robot and and then you tend to watch that footage back at the end and some shots they're just their shoulders in shot or their little elbow and now you've got to spend $220,000 or whatever it is to to make this out of focus elbow become a robot that no one's going to notice and and so it's like okay what if we don't have anybody with dots on and we just shoot everybody as if they're human and then in the in the edit we will decide who's going to be a robot who's going to be Ai and we'll do that months from now and we did the same thing with all the design we every single scene in this movie we went to a real world location so we never did like you know in a studio with a load of green screen stuff it was all like okay so for instance the I pick seing like the lab underground lab where they find Alfie um that was uh we basically I was we were in Thailand and I was like where is the most technological looking location in Thailand well you know they they'd give a few examples and there must be something a bit more and they were like well there is a particle accelerator and they were like but you will never be allowed to film there like especially what you want to do and I was like can we go visit it it might be inspiring like with the and they were like no well you no no no and they could see what was unfolding they were like no you can't go there's no point and going you won't be allowed to film there but anyway eventually they were like okay you can go look around it so we go around the particle accelerator and we're talking about what we want to do and they say they're like well we have really expensive equipment here it's millions of dollars what what exactly is it you want to film and we'd be like wow kind of soldiers shooting lasers and explosions and and like loads of scientists dying and stuff and they and they were like yeah yeah yeah not going to happen right and as we were leaving you could see the cogs turning they were like what film did you say this guy had done and and this is when I realized that everyone who works in nuclear physics uh is is is a sci-fi fan right and and I was and they were like oh he did this uh Rogue One Star Wars movie and they were like oh wait wait wait wait wait and they were like we'll let you film on one condition it was like okay and they were like we are in the movie so everybody that's wearing a white coat in that whole section they're nuclear physicists for real from Thailand so in is it is it the person who's saying uh who's talking and swearing but it's saying something else okay I exaggerated right there the people saying scripted lines so the lady who's screaming at them she was an actress and the guy who took the fall was a stunt guy but everybody else the people behind that are grabbing things and trying to help with the blood they work there and they're they're like they work in a particle accelerator on Wednesday Thursday Friday but on Tuesday they were dying and from AI escaping their lab the thing that like I really want to talk about is the fact that movies before this had not been able to do what you're talking about which is just shooting practically in Thailand and then deciding in post that will be a robot that's AI we're just going to erase that we're going to add this movies don't do that this is the first one that's done it in this scale and this kind of scope can can you sort of talk about that well it just takes a lot of faith from the visual effects team as in whatever company you're using and I was I'd worked with industrial Light of Magic on the Star Wars films and I have a lot of friends there but there was no part of me that thought they would ever agree to do this um so we were talking to other Stu like other visual effects places and trying to think do we start our own visual effects company what do we do how are we going to do this and and then ilm contacted Kiri har who's the producer on the film she's best friends with the lady that runs it and was like how do we get to do this movie and she's like you won't want to do it tonight like it's crazy and they were like no we want to do it and so I went in and tried to scare them off and I was like we we basically don't want to tell you what any of the shots are right you need to blindly agree um we're going to go off around the world to seven different countries like Nepal and Indonesia and Japan and shoot this movie and then we're going to come back edit it and then design it then and decide what the visual effects are but you've got to say you're going to do them all as the studio w't green light it and they were like okay like crazy idiots and and so then we that's what we did and and so a lot of um all the design James Klein was the production designer and we would I would literally press God I forget that shift command and what is it four to print screen on a Mac right or something like that and I was doing that loads with the playouts from the edit and then I'd be giving it to James go we're going to paint over that shot and so then we' be just adding like monolithic crazy buildings to things and we found that basically if you what they tend to do on these big films is they get nervous at the director it's going to change their mind or change the camera angle so when they build a crazy thing they build it for real in 3D from every possible angle just in case and it costs like 20 times what it needs to on this we were like we never I guarantee we'll never see it from any other angle than this shot and it'll look like this and then so then they would just basically take that image and basically upres it you know basically make it look photo and then project it onto simple geometry and that would be it and and so shots that would normally take a month were happening in like a few days and they started they were like oh this is good and and then everyone got more and more like like believed in the process a bit more and so like by the end of it um like we did probably there was like big when the film finally finished oh actually went to show the movie to um industrial Li of magic when um because as I was a gamble as a filmmaker we did an edit of the film the assembly edit and before we then do another six months of editing we were like should we show ilm the movie so they get invested in it and care and understand what they're doing it would make all conversations a lot easier but what if they hate it like then it's really backfire because we need them to like go For Broke and so so I went up to San Francisco and we hit play on like an a a version of the film that just had text for everything and it was a really nice font it was Futura and which is the best font you can have and yeah it was an aerial you know spared no expense kind of thing and then and then essentially it ended and they all turned around and they' been crying and I remember thinking at the time like oh my God it's worked like this is the first people I'd ever shown the movie to I was like oh it's working this is fantastic and then as I was going home I was like wait a minute were they crying about the number of visual effect shots and then like so there was at the end of the movie when it was finally done there was like family reunions people hadn't seen their kids for like six months and things like that it was very heartwarming like uh I don't know if the version you showed that day was the 5 Hour cut was it the 5 Hour cut no so the assembly was 5 hours uh which makes it sound like there's 5 hours of stuff worth watch there isn't there's a reason it's not in the movie but there is about two and a half hours it got difficult to like it's like a game of Jenga where it's like we've got to pull stuff out because we you do test screenings and um a bunch of you know basically you show it to 500 strangers and then they tell you a load of things that you don't want to hear and and then you have to try and make it better for the neck screening and and one of them was it's just a bit too long and then it was a bit like so what would you take and every time you ask someone what would you take out they're like I don't know and you be like should I take that out and they be like no you got to need that with but somehow we had to get it down to two hours can so here's the thing and I'm curious about this I understand there's a lot of people out there that want love a 90-minute movie there's a lot of people that are like 2 hours is pretty good every minute after 2 hours for some people is too long and then you have people like me and I'm sure people in the audience that are like [ __ ] let's have the three and 1 half hour cut you know what I mean like so my question is uh was it your decision to do two hours was it the studio saying it's better if it's two and like how do you feel about you know ever doing an Extended Cut I'm asking a lot all at once I'm sorry I I'm in the camp of 90 minutes is a great amount of time to tell a story uh there's a great quote by a film reviewer in the UK Mark mode who said uh Stanley Kubrick managed to tell the story of the beginning of mankind to us evolving into a God in 2 hours 10 minutes if you can't tell your story in the amount of time you're just not trying hard enough right and so I I I feel that essentially so the studio were very supportive were they were a dream to work with it was more these test screenings like we just had to get a certain level of like thumbs up and it seemed to be duration but I think once the film comes out they asked us do you want do you want to put deleted scenes on the Blu-ray and all that stuff and I said no because if we ever do an extended edition I don't want people to have seen that stuff you know I mean I want it to be fresh I don't want it to be like oh yeah I've seen that scene you know what I mean cuz I was going to I was really going to come at you tonight for not including deleted scenes that I know you have but I will accept it if you is there a possibility of an Extended Cut at some point but there has to be people have to want to buy it that's the problem so I how about um a special one-off screening with collider at some point in the future if if you sell every ticket for $100,000 the studio will agree they'll be right up for that my question is like you had a 2 and a half hour cut that you seemed happy with that you need to pull down was that a 2 and 1 half hour cut that was like basically done where you don't have to do much work to it or is that like a cut that you still have to finish certain VFX so it's not really done there was a bunch of V effects towards the end that did get cut out that were done um and it's a painful email or phone call however we did it I can't remember but it's no yeah we were doing zooms with everyone so it was like you have to tell them I'm really so sorry but it's a typical thing that happens on these big movies because it's a moving Target and everyone's trying to just build the thing you know whilst it's still wet they're trying to sculpt the concrete and it's you know you're going to make mistakes and stuff but the um what was the question basically like uh did you have finished like the two and a half hour cut that you had that you showed how close was that to like a done D cut it wasn't because there's no music on it we had temp music on it we had um like basically if you ever you couldn't just release that thing you'd have to like give it some love and and finesse it and and also the second decide a scenes night in the movie you just dump it like you don't you don't go into the dailies and try and get the best version of that scene and so there are scenes that if they came back in you'd be like you'd want to spend some time really we this is a pointless conversation CU it's never going to happen this is this is the nerdy [ __ ] that I like to dig deep on because at some point in 5 years if there's not a longer cut someone is going to research well what did he ever say about the deleted scenes or what you know what I mean I'm fascin ated by that kind of stuff maybe two other people in the audience but anyway uh what was the LA there we go what was what was the that's my dad by the way uh my last question about deleted scenes what was the last thing or two that you cut out before picture locking and why so I tell you the the brutal way we did it this is all way too much information you shouldn't know how the uh how the sauses wait I'm going to pause who wants to learn this information okay so we okay so let's imagine you've got let's just pretend for argument s you've got a 2 and a half hour film that's got to become two hours Let's just pretend for a second I was blessed with uh Hank Corwin and Scott Morris from my editors Han Corwin was my hero he did if someone said to me what's the two best edited films ever made sorry what's the best edited film ever made I'd go I can't answer that because there's two one is to me JFK and the one is the Tree of Life by Terrence Malik and he edited both of those so um he's a bit of a God but we would sit there and go um and we try we do a pass okay let's try and take stuff out let's just take let's go through each scene and take stuff out you take oh no I can't take that I can't take that you do it and you get through a scene five minutes say of stuff and you go how much do we took out and they look hold on 10 seconds and you're like oh man it's impossible so then we were like you know what we got to do this a different way let's just build the film from scratch so without looking ever at what the film is just start saying things to put in and so we built it from like a 10-minute film like a trailer to like a 10-minute and then a half an hour and then eventually we got to an hour 45 and we were like that's the movie and then it was like we got 15 more minutes we can put in oh thank God and then we were like don't look because if you look you'll just think of a million things like ju without looking what do you miss and we all went around there was three of us and we'd say I'd say look these are my things I really miss and I miss that I miss that I yeah and we put them all in and got really close to 2 hours and then we're like okay let's just watch it and then if there's any big regrets and there was like about five shots that we really regretted and we put them in and then we were like I think that's the lock and we showed that at a test screening and it went was the best one we'd had and so that was the movie and and it's and and also like it's not like we had another month to play around these things are like there's deadlines it's like a sport and the referee Blows the Whistle and that's this that's the score you know I'll stop there with that line of questioning so what does it mean to you though with all this work you put in for uh the film was nominated for best sound and for best visual effects I mean genuinely uh I mean we had we had an interesting Journey with this film we'll call it in that when we filmed like the whole world it was the pandemic so there a lot of things we wanted to do that we couldn't you know and everyone's wearing masks and having tests and you can't just grab people and use them you've got to do a test four days earlier and whatever it is um and then it came to the premiere it's was like ah it's going to be a great celebration and then the strike happened and the actors couldn't come and they couldn't do any publicity so I could didn't get to see them you know normally you have a like a big Gathering again and you're on this little World Tour and it's a nice little fun reward at the end of the film FM so there's none of that and then I was like you know what I'm going to do I'm going to I'm going to buy 50 tickets at the Chinese Theater on the opening night and I'm going to invite all the actors to come and we're just going to sit and watch it with the with the every you know normal audience and just hit and so I did that and then I was all excited it was a Thursday I think and then I landed from the publicity tour and I was like my throat's a bit sore and then and then I like I did a test and it's like [ __ ] I got covid and then just started to feel worse and worse and worse and then and then so basically I was in bed all week the opening weekend of the movie so so it was like it's it's this frustrating thing so having this happen at the end now is is a really nice like I just feel really good about it for everybody like you know the and it's also both sides of the spectrum it's the visual effects which I think you know is basically the visuals of the film and over here is the sound and so it's not just one element so I I take a lot of I'm very happy for the whole crew everyone I think everyone should take ownership of that um because it's um everyone worked really hard and we couldn't could never have a party so I'm hoping everyone gets really shitfaced at the Oscars I saw a photo of you and your cast at Disneyland oh yeah meline so meline it was her birthday and I can probably say this now I didn't want to admit it at the time because but basically I was with Disney doing publicity stuff and it was Madeline birthday and I said to her what do you want to get you anything you know cuz she's so good just tell me what you want you can have it and I was like just don't ask for a horse but um and she goes I want to go to Disneyland right and I want to go with my family and everything so I was like okay great that we could totally do that so it's like okay we'll organize that and I mentioned it to to the Disney people just like oh we're going to go at the weekend and go with mine it's her birthday and they were like well we can sort that out for you like we're Disney and you can have the whole VIP everything and so basically we had this amazing day where it was like John David and meline and me and their family and we just we just went around on all the rides and we were allowed all backstage and it was like a really magical thing and they hadn't seen each other since the film and so it was uh it was very very sweet yeah and I and I and I'd never been to Disneyland and and that was my first time you got you got spoiled yeah and it was yeah it's always like that right you just go straight on the ride just push bash people and isn't that's normal right what did you I have to ask you this is not in my line of questioning but did you get to go on Rise of the resistance and what did you think yeah we did um it was it I only get recognized in context right if I am out of context I out of this room in a minute no one ever goes any I never get recognized doesn't happen never ever ever when I was in Galaxy's Edge people like are you Gareth and it was just like a really weird thing where I'm like I'm like I guess they're in a Star Wars frame of mind um so we it was it's amazing what they did right it's stunning um absolutely stunning I love it but I am also a sucker for the original stuff like I was really I really like Pirates of the Caribbean and and and all the old school things like there's a lot of I don't know it's just there's something very I'm really like my favorite TV show is The Twilight Zone the black and white ones and yay and um and I have an old vintage television that can take a HDMI lead and I sit and watch I don't really sit and watch sounds like a waste my life but I have it on in the corner and it plays me TV do you know that channel it's basically all vintage television from the 60s and 70s whatever it may be um and and I love it it's like a window into another world and it feels like better storytelling because it's it doesn't feel like it's from my life you know what I mean it's from some other time like another place you know yeah I think it's it's funny that you never went to Disney and then you experienced rise and then Pirates and because it they're just so I mean it's just so Polar Opposites but I'm really Blown Away by what the technology and what they did on Rise and um I mean the park is amazing are you sponsored by them as well I wish I I really wish that would we were outside he was like look I've got I've got hit Best Buy I'm going to it's my kids birthday at the weekend I get free tickets if I can mention Disneyland if only my kids consist of cats and if I could bring them to Disneyland amazing you know what I mean amazing uh so listen you get a lot of credit because you are the the creator of the Creator but there's so many people that worked on this that are you know that don't get the Limelight so you can't talk about all of them but who's like an unsung hero someone that was really instrumental in the making of the film that you just want to give a shout out to here and just you know to say thanks for what you did or just point them out to the audience in the film and the people that you know the people watching oh my god there was loads be here all day you cut the end credit short so you cut the end credit sir he was like like do you want to do you want to do the end credit but they're like 10 minutes long because because there's so many people who work so hard I know listen and that's what I'm saying just obviously there's so many people who helped you make this movie I would okay there's loads so Jim Spencer was the producer on the film um Kiri Hart helped develop it uh James Klein was the production designer who basically everything that's pretty damn good in this film visually went through his fingers on a wcom at some point um the whole of the ilm team the whole of the other vendors as well maybe this is worth pointing out there was nine other visual effects companies maybe 10 I get the numbers wrong a bit but they that that came in at the end we had I was there was a very naughty director that worked on this movie and he promised he would only have X number of visual effect shots and he went over can you believe that and so so um we had to get some help in right at the end and these all around the world it look like every single continent and country people would do like 50 shots you know or so and and ended up zooming with them all and getting to know them all and they all did a phenomenal job and they all matched the quality of what ilm had done like ilm did the majority of it and so maybe there the unsung heroes is is all those VFX vendors yeah I think they're doing construction at the theater in case you're wondering about the noise don't worry it's just a drill that joke comes around every 10 years and I had to grab it I'm so sorry I no I I I almost want a mic drop there and just walk out because it's never going to get better um it's crazy uh yeah so when you think about the shots in this there are so many visually stunning shots in this which is the one that you that was the back breaker the one that you kept going back to or the one you felt like we can just do a little better here if if it if the so we would shoot so everything that is in the movie that's you know is it's got a piece of footage that's it started with it was never like here's a storyboard try and figure it out or here's some green screen it was always here's an actual piece of footage from the jungles in Thailand or somewhere Cambodia wherever um uh and we want it to look like this you know it was and so the the most successful ones the ones that I really love were kind of really easy to do in a weird way and so you're only really like like cracking a whip on the ones that are really hard to do and they're usually hard because we didn't do we didn't give the right foundation for the shot and so I love what I absolutely love the things I'm most proud of in this film is things like shots like the little old well the old robot that's giving a little kid chocolate at one point or sifting through some seeds you know some grain or the stuff you never you would never see in a movie normally because when you put the price tag on that shot and then everyone trying to like make the budget cheaper they're like what what is that given any that's not part of the story you know what I mean but in my opinion it's like it's the World building it's the texture and and in a in a drama you would never hesitate to do something like that but in a Sci-Fi you it gets like everything becomes really contrived and and specific and and and we always joke is that the film was supposed to feel like James Cameron and Terrence Malik had had sex and had a little baby and and they would never do that that that could be the headline of the collider article joking not really it'll be the article to copy and pastes from your your website thanks lovely uh one of the reasons I think that it the movie looks so incredible is because you did so so much practically and like um and I don't mean to didn't think I was going to actually do this but do you remember the movie Real Steel okay okay so let me go with this so one of the reasons why the robots look so incredible in that film is that they were done some of the robots were built practically and they would have CGI the arm moving so you can't tell that the arm is CGI but the rest of the body is practical with your movie so much was done practical that when you're doing some CGI in the scene it looks amazing because everything else is really there like can basically I'm just sort of bringing up the importance of having such a practical base for this film makes everything else so it just makes the unbelievable believable I'll say thank you because yeah um but the I do feel that we get a lot of credit for the World building of the film and really half of that is just going to the world to start building like rather than being in a studio and doing it all against Green Screen and so there's so much you get for free that you would never think of and and half the deal with the crew was when we go to a village or we go to them you know the beach or somewhere don't close it like don't stop people like let people come and go let them be and we were such a small crew visually there was a lot of people hidden around a corner but if you saw us we were like five people you know with a camera it looked like it like we were YouTubers or something and so people were just I was really paranoid the whole time we were filming this I was paranoid people were going to be taking pictures and putting it on Instagram and going I think I've spotted a Hollywood film being shot in Thailand and and and it would spoil it we get one not one post from anybody because everybody just looked at us and went well this looks like you know a student film or something well five people is a student film and it's not even a student film a student film could have 20 people yeah uh yeah it was it was it was trying to not the yeah it was kind of just trying to keep all the all the realism all the detail that you get for free like I don't know like they so the guy there's like shots like there's a guy on a bike who's a robot in that film right and he goes past and it's just a little Montage you bit when on the bus we if you try and organize that it will cost a fortune like you got okay which bike do you want Gareth here's 10 bikes and you oh that one probably okay we got a stunt guy to Do It cast the stunt guy okay okay we're going to close the road and we're going to film it and instead the way we would do it is we would just stick the camera outside the car and we would drive on this straight road and we would just look for bikes people drive and there was really a guy with bananas just driving somewhere and it was like okay catch up with him and the driver would just catch up alongside him we would just film him and we didn't need a NDA signed because he's going to be a robot so he doesn't he has no idea he's in a film and so so then he would just drive off he didn't know he were filming him like I just he didn't look around and see us so um that's C there was stuff like that a lot where it was just that just the when you don't direct something and you've got someone smoking or just half asleep or bored I get really excited like oh my God if we can make them a robot I've not seen that before you know I mean like robots in films are always like front and center or or being robotic you know or aiish and um and I just wanted them to be sat and like a little bit fed up and why are you filming me you know some of my favorite shots are like Alfie just playing with other kids and she's obviously a robot thing but they're just like having fun and joking and we because we would really go to a real Village in Cambodia and have her just play with the kids and shoot it and and then you'd find this little beautiful moment and go okay ilm make her Ai and it was like but the problem is that when you do a big movie is is like you know the normal way is you is you would be they'd want that 10-second moment to be contrived and it's like an action and there's the 10sec moment and laugh meline you know what I mean like okay and cut we got it moving on you know whereas you can't get a real authentic moment like that the better way is okay kids just play for figure out a game why don't you play this game just go for and you just film them for like 15 minutes and you just go in a minute Something Beautiful happened oh there you go there it was and you you don't you're not telling them what to do as it feels false and and that's I don't think it's very hard to do anything original in science fiction or with visual effects like this but I think that's probably the bit we I felt where like I had I can't quite think of a film that was really doing that before you know like I said I'm surprised more directors have not asked you how did you pull all this off etc etc but I'm telling you I just spent the last 20 minutes Telling You Stephen Jesus Christ you're not listening I'm sorry uh what I'm sure that you learned like as you went in post- production like the first day of visual effects and when you started versus where you are at the end it was a huge learning process I'm sure for the for the animators for you for what you could accomplish so how did you notice that the like the VFX and what you were doing at the beginning versus the end were different like or better or like how did the learning curve go or was it always the same from beginning to end there are certain shots where they have to like there's there's a long time before you get a good one and then you'll get good ones from then on and the obvious one to talk about would be Al um it took a long time they have a schedule which is like look to hit the release date you need to have all of our visual effects by this date we've got 400 shots of meline Alfie therefore you have to start we have to approve them on this day and you basically have you have a VFX producer uh Julian on our team who has a massive chart and it's like you have to final uh 200 shots this week you know it' be things like this which basically means you have to say they're done put them away that's it and and so there's this pressure every week as well as editing the film it's like [ __ ] we got to do 15 finals today like we got to solidly sign off on 15 shots and we got to do that every day for the next six months kind of thing and and that is on top of what is the film you know what I mean and it's this this is like the track is going right in front of the train all the time and and it's it's exciting I guess it's maybe a nice way to to say it but it's also it makes give sleepless nights to a lot of people is it it like when you're editing like that and you and you are in the trenches is that a six day a week thing a five day a week is it a 7day a week it's a 7day a week thing yeah honestly it's like you get home about midnight and then you have to leave about 8 the next day for like and for a whole year it's like that you might get if you get a day off it's means you're at home doing work versus you're in the studio in the in the edit Suite doing work you is that is that the way it's been on all your movies uh it ends it goes a little bit like that yeah because there's never enough time and you always feel like you end up these are all bad analogies that are going know on the internet so I have to be really careful but there's always like there's always something more you could have done you know I mean you never finish a film and go I if I had another week I wouldn't know what to do cuz it's perfect you know what I mean you're always like oh my God there's like a hundred things I want to change or get better and so it's really hard to just go and just watch a film or have a pizza you know what I mean when you're sitting there like it's like being a surgeon knowing there's people dying and you're like I got to go back to the hospital um you know got to save someone do you because Lucas is famous for going back to Star Wars and making adjustments if you are you the type of person that if you could go back and look at Rogue one or Godzilla or whatever any of your previous films that you if you had the ability and money would you go in and make tweaks or do you sort of feel like it's done it's out that's the movie no I I you know I don't look I can't watch my films I don't do it um and if it they sometimes they turn up on the TV some reason you know and you go oh and it's like little nice oh that's cool and I watch a scene and I go oh God and I turn it off because it's just like I don't know there's it never you're you always just see all the things that are wrong with it and but it's like going up to I'm going to use an American analogy here it's like going up to Tom Brady and saying are you happy with that result what if you you know could you go back in time and have a different result like yeah you but it doesn't work like that it's a sport well with digital editing and I mean Luc is again famous for going back and adjusting Star Wars so my my thing is you know in five years I mean honestly if in 5 years of new Regency whoever said hey do you want to go in and do something with with that extra footage would you say yeah or would you be like the movie is a movie I would be very open to the some of those ideas in the sense of but the problem is is that it would take like a year of your life and then you have to go do you want to do that or do you just want to make a new film so there's always that dilemma like do you want to spend that year finessing this thing that you've done before or but maybe with AI it's all going to get a lot quicker and AI will just go I've done it for you Gareth here it is that's the thing do you think enough people on the planet have watched like I look at I was going I was going to bring something in uh I can't say that uh if you you think like like you look at the Terminator James Cameron's the Terminator and I truly believe that the military is thinking about Skynet in a positive way and not in the negative way of what could happen and I I think these movies that are made for entertainment are also warning lessons for the planet as to what can go wrong with AI and with science and stuff do you think enough scientists have thought this through I think I think it's a symbiotic relationship I think that especially with science fiction I think science fiction inspires scientists and Science and I think science inspires science fiction blah blah blah and so it's say feedback loop and I think at a certain age you watch a film you watch a film like Star Wars and you go okay am I going to try and join NASA or become a filmmaker and you have a dilemma and you pick one right if that's what you love and we one of the highest compliments at the end of the film um I think it's okay to say this is I got an a really sweet email from Boston Dynamics who are the people that do their uh robot robotics really Advanced like the most advanced Robotics and they were just very sweet about the film and said like they really like the it was a positive robotic AI story um because Hollywood always does usually the opposite and and I and I we talked about Boston Dynamics so many times whil making this film and wondered what they would think of it you know what I mean and since suddenly that email to land I called like I called my production designer up I just like it felt like you know there's little things you go if that ever happened it would be worth it you know and that was one of them I read that you did your own sound effects when you were shooting the Creator you know going boo or whatever s can you please demonstrate some of the sound effects you make yeah I mean I used to play with Little Star Wars figures when I was a kid right everybody did I hope that's my sort of age maybe still do you know and and demonstrated yes and so I would always do the sound effects when I would play with them and then and then as I've gotten older and you end up talking with the like the sound design team uh like Eric and Ethan basically e Square did an amazing job with this and I sometimes when briefing them would just do the sounds because I didn't know how to explain it and then they'd be like stop stop wait wait wait and they' come wheel in a microphone go do it again and then I would do it and I found out some of them are in the movie and so like I it's really bad stuff but like the um can you please tell us what one of the sounds is like the robots the robot police I was like yeah they should talk to each other like they're saying little things to each other but it should be like binary but it should be kind of like a language but it's like a dialup modem and then like what do you mean and I didn't I was like I don't know like like like or something and and so they use some of that and and they they messed around with it and did other things but some of that's that's what they're kind of saying to each other which is like if you actually understood binary it's like really bad swear words first of all I cannot believe you just did that in terms of like that's sounded great I can understand why they recorded it I can do a I oh man do we have a bottle I'm ready for the next sound effect what I can do a good Darth Vader but I need a I need a bottle for it I can't do it without a bit of uh let's not go there wait do we need water or alcohol no I just need like a pint glass let's not worry about it let's move on I actually think we should be worried about this and finding the Pint glass Disney sorry uh how did this is a spoiler question but we can now talk about it how did you decide on the ending and was it always the ending that's in the movie it was always the ending it as it wow hang on okay so there is material that's not in there let's but it was always that storyline um it was always for me what it was supposed to me and I thought it was really clear and obvious but I found out it maybe wasn't but for me it was um that essentially the child um says trying to understand death and Heaven and the idea of heaven and asks Joshua about it and he says it's this place in the sky and then looks at Nomad and thinks oh is that heaven right and then later in the movie goes you realize that uh dang dang the place they've been heading to um is actually heaven and that that's where Mum is right and like if you if you switch her off she'll go to heaven I.E in the kid's mind Nomad and so when they go to Nomad the kid is like oh brilliant mom will be there right so then when she looks around then sees Mom it's like I knew this would be yes it is heaven and there's mom and so then the idea with the biosphere with the crops is Joshua going to heaven at the end symbolically and being with his wife and so that was that was like that's the whole reason this movie is doing everything it's doing so that can never ever change um but we did have more material should I tell people I've never talked about it go on and yay this might this might be the last Q&A I ever do for the film so what the hell right there's a whole section with zero gravity with um Joshua on the outside of nomad trying to get back to the shuttle we just cut him going back into the shuttle cuz it lasted about 5 minutes and there's all this amazing wire work that the stunt team did and and God bless John David Washington he did and suffered a lot doing it um and it was really really cool but it just felt every you know I would what it you can all see it when we do the 4our cut in like 2070 the AI will generate for us no but so like so that's a five minute scene of him trying to get back in but when you're trying to cut a 2 and 1 half hour a 2 hour that can be something that you take out yeah it makes sense with that it the story Works without it and so those sort of things are the things that have a Target on their back to go because because why do you need them you know it's the and there's a lot of things like that but uh yeah that's where we landed with it yeah I I can understand though why that when you're trying to cut it down did you and but even if you had not cut the whole thing down that's the kind of thing that it's five minutes on the page but in actuality it might be one minute on screen or like you know you have a 5 minute sequence but you cut it to to one because you know what I mean yeah and there's also like a rhythm that's going on at the end and I don't know maybe you know it's maybe it'll turn up one day I don't know it was they didn't do the visual effects for it they started on some of it and then we we pulled it early CU we knew this is really expensive stuff and if we let this play out and then don't use it like we've Hur there's other resources we've used up that we could use on the rest of the film so who knows that the Creator was really uh was titled something else during the oh so a few people so originally was called I believe Scooby-Doo or it was called true love um so how did and I know you've probably talked about this but how did you change the title why did it change uh the absolute truth is so it's true love the entire life of the movie up until the close to the summer it was getting released and you go to a big meeting about how we're going to market the film and and they were basically done research and found that people people didn't want to go see a film called true love that they thought it was a romcom and even with this with the poster with it written on it they'd be like what do you think of this film they'd be like romcom and they'd be like would you go see it no and everybody that we needed to see it that that group of people didn't sound like they were going to go and so then they tested all these different other names and the Creator was the one that we all felt like well we could live that's all right it's but it's strange because I know this film is true love and that and some I Stumble saying the Creator during publicity it's like your kids transitioned and uh and it's like now got a new totally different identity but I'm curious because you you really changed the way movies can be made on this and I'm curious by the way sorry I forgot Orin Sofer who's uh the Cod doop on the film he got a tattoo of true love uh and and I had to tell him I was I was like oh you know it's not called that anymore and but he was like this makes it even better CU I'm the only one in the world that'll have it so he was he saw it as a positive I'm curious how much are you going to take what you learned making this film and the way you did visual effects and just the revolution of what's possible to all your future films and how much is it going to be like on a Case by case on what the project needs I think every film is its own unique thing and you can't just drag and Dr I mean the whole point of this is I didn't want someone to drag and drop a process onto it and say because what can happen is it feels like there's two spread sheets two EXL documents in the film industry one is lowbudget independent spreadsheet and the other one is like giant blockb there and they just when on day one they just changed some of the names and and and then that's and that's how it begins and so we were like at the beginning of this like please start with the independent lowbudget spreadsheet and then we will feel like the richest film in the world because we have some money right we had good money if we start with the other stuff the other end and then have to cut things out we're just going to feel paralyzed with so it was like so I just think every single film given the circumstances you just go okay what how can we make this feel different and what can we and the process is as important as the idea I think if it's it's as much about how you're going to film something and how you work as it is what you're doing um to make it feel different and so so yeah I mean always looking for that always trying to have it feel like a different type of film when you can so first of all I didn't really usually I get W like this is supposed to be a 30- minute Q&A we've clear really gone well well beyond that uh and I have something else but uh just real quick uh earlier today before we end this Q&A uh earlier today it might have come out that you could be directing the next Jurassic something [Applause] movie I was going to make a joke but I I could see your face I'm like uh so I mean what uh I don't know what I can ask that you can answer can you say anything what are you allowed to say I honestly I can't really talk about it I'm sorry um it's very very early days and I do I don't know what I can and can't say were you a little surprised at the announce like that it got it came out today or were you hoping it was going to be like a week from now no I was given a heads up that it might come out very soon and so I I tried my damnest to contact my mom and tell her so before it got on the internet and I did the same with my sister I work my sister up to tell her and and then I've I've left a message for my dad but it's because of the time difference he's asleep so hopefully he won't look on the internet when he wakes up he's he's not that kind of person that does that so I can I can call him in the morning and let him know what's crazy about this is so you basically told nobody like who in your life actually knew just my girlfriend that was it that's crazy okay so just can I ask like what I know you you can't say what I want to say I ask more but I don't know what I can actually ask I guess are you no I don't know uh okay it came out that it's it's starting to film in June that's what they reported can you confirm that can you say anything like that I think the only thing I would say is like I was about to take a break and I started writing my next idea for a film and this is the only movie that would make me drop everything like a St and Dive Right In I love Jurassic Park I think the first movie is a cinematic Masterpiece and Sten yeah and Steven Spielberg is 100% the reason I ever wanted to be a film director so the opportunity this opportunity is like a dream to me and to work with Frank Marshall and Universal and David K who's writing the script um I think they're all legends so I'm just very excited and and we'll save all the other stuff for a publicity tour at some point yeah maybe a collider screening next summer okay all right