Chatting Slow Mo with Zack Snyder

Zack Snider welcome to uh slow-mo studio room awesome to be here awesome thanks for coming so what I've what I've done is programmed a move they'll start the camera here okay whoh the camera over here correct and halfway through we'll do a zoom and a focus pull nice hold it for a sec zoom out a very sort of 300 inspired uh I love it zoom in sh and what's going to happen in the so we thought maybe Dan could run jump over this Jank looking bin and and slice an apple with a katana mid okay that sounds great okay perfect the slightly safer version of that if it's feeling a bit risky is he just hits a tennis ball with a cricket bat hits a tennis ball with a cricket bat also equally difficult because when you did this these shots you had two cameras right you had like one camera there was three actually three cameras so one um I had been doing a commercial previously Gatorade commercial and uh the idea came in the storyboard in the Gatorade commercial was they wanted to do classic you know drawing on storyboard by somebody where it's like okay we start and the guy's running and then as he jumps we zoom into his hand as he's catching the ball in Ultra slow motion and then as he catches pulls it down he back go we Zoom back out I'm like okay but that's like impossible easier said than done yeah they were like well what's wrong with that like just zoom in take your camera you're and zoom in and then Zoom back out again I I know but if the guy's running and jumping the ball is coming and you want the moment the ball hits the glove right so that means I someone has to anticipate and then by hand yeah crank it so I said okay well maybe the way to do it is we'll take three cameras one it through a beam s splitter the two longer lenses through a be beam splitter and the slightly wider one will just set right on top and then what we'll do is in post because all three actions will be covered with the exact same camera all at super high frame rate will be able to not only adjust the frame rate in post but actually find because the beam splitter the two beam s splitter uh cameras are filming the exact same frame you can move between the focal lengths sort of a fake zoom and I go at least in that way we'll be able to actually time out when exactly so that was where I sort of cut my teeth on the concept that we used in 300 which was the exact same thing but we had um uh two photosonics cameras and one just normal high spe so that was all film back then photosonics all film photosonics scary big loud camera I cut I cut my teeth in slow motion with film and it's really like you have to wear like a I would have like a GL like a work glove because there's a giant wheel that spins on the back of the camera that actually you can slow once you say cut you can you can touch this wheel with your gloved hand and kind of slow de motor down so the film doesn't break it smoke like a cartoon right like it literally does you get if you don't have the glove it it'll burn your hand for sure I got into the film industry around 2006 it was around the time Phantoms were coming in and photosonics was less frequently used and a lot of the old school film guys were kind of bummed at the Phantom made no noise when it was filming in high speed they missed the sound of it's really upsetting the noise that there it goes like and then a lot of times they'll get a you'll get a jam and the film will just go and it just like sounds like a car accident and then you open the you open the side of the camera you know and you look in the gate and the film is literally just mashed into this disgusting it's you're just like oh my gosh and when I did commercials that's when I started to you know when I would use the photos Sonic cameras a lot and I knew all the guys cuz I used it quite a bit they'd always be like okay what are we doing today and I be like okay I'm going to do we have uh a shot I think I forget like it's a shot with like we have these jet fighters that are going to the actor is like turning like this and we're like on a counter Dolly move and the Jets are going to go that way so I have to we have to push the dolly super fast because the Jets are like going to be turning super hard behind them and and and uh I I'm going to have to counter with the camera and barely able to look through it because it's so fast so it was a lot of that a lot of seat of the pants but cool that we had jet fighters you know it's amazing yeah I feel like I've experienced stuff where using Phantoms and a monitor on top if I'm trying to track a really fast moving thing the monitor doesn't actually update fast enough you kind of just have to look over the lens and just wink you need like a like a like a sight on like a on like a anti-aircraft gun yeah okay so why don't we take a look at this move you want to come over here with me sure it's a super janky light setup but it cool just point point the lights at the thing so the camera will do this 3 two 1 and in there was a was a very fast zoom in and out oh cool I didn't see it so I mean I was looking at the the hard the hardware so do you want to throw the apple or trigger the robot or you like throw the Apple you want to throw the Apple okay so you can be I don't want to be on the trigger because then you'd be like can you trigger the move at the right time Zach it's really not that hard it's like where's the most pressure right yeah exactly I'll take the least pressure position and then you're going to have to just tell me where you want the Apple I will do I'm going to be jumping over this uh dirty little bin here yeah maybe should be like around here yeah that feels good and then uh I thought you guys were going to make me cut the Apple I'm glad that you can if you want no no I'm fine throw it tossing I'm going to have to take this out of my pocket just while I'm doing the move sure oh yeah no sound no sound I'll just leave it over here just in case you get picked up by my mic I'll try and get close enough yeah yeah don't get too I'm just going to turn these on for a little bit of something in the back oh nice little and these don't these don't phase or anything no they're pretty good they tighten cubes that's pretty good you guys are doing all the testing you can tell me what doesn't phase and what does and we we'll let you know what's uh no gooded yeah give me a tennis ball just so I can just yeah do a little a little practice I'll just put it kind of in a s close enough spot yeah about there I'm going to be jumping I'll show you my action okay yeah go ahead and I'm going to run try and slice it okay okay it's just going to be a little thing I'm not going to be swinging it wildly good okay 3 two 1 go that wasn't bad can why don't you can you go to the um zoomed in position uh yeah and just hold for a beat and we just kind of cuz then I can sort of put the Apple there that's zoomed in that's zoomed in so so actually like herish I mean I would say that we should try it there because you're going to be in the air well you want me to get it on the way down should we just try there and see how the time let let me just see it it's exit sign okay should we just do an apple one instead of messing around the tennis y yeah we could go fullblown Apple we've got like 20 apples 20 apples good 3 2 1 go Oh short sorry you nicked it for sure I I feel like I could I I definitely could do better might not be bad might not be bad actually Oh look The Apple coming in already that's great oh come on no [Laughter] I just slightly peeled it for yeah I didn't exactly it though it's pretty good though that's really good not bad kind of zoomed in right on the Apple which was cool yeah Zach a much better Apple throw than me we' Lear that any time you need me for some sort of throwing you can come Z okay we have this crazy throwing thing we need is there any way you can fly out Zach I know you're busy but you're not we're not even going to mention you helped us at all but we just need a a good throw how about the cricket bat with the Apple yeah we can do that you might have to duck a little bit yeah I might you might have a bit of Apple FL that's all right I feel like it's I think it be like more it'll be pretty dramatic if you really do you think the camera should be tilted up a bit I think so you think so let me let me just do that adjustment I agree it's actually more more of a bite out of it than I thought it's it's not yeah it looked like I just healed it yeah but it's definitely uh you know that's that's all right if if we just keep doing it maybe peel the Apple oh that's true just you keep throw it again yeah throw the same one yeah yeah just throw now throw it so that the other end yeah yeah can you do that big Cricket guy huh not really I mean I've watched a little bit on TV what do you do you want to see the zoomed in position again yeah just oh you tilt it up too a little bit so yeah might be a little bit more apples where are they uh we got a box full here you go we got a bushel a we're going to cut a bushel of apples entire bushel oh there they are in The Bushel in the in the Apple box in the Apple box it's literally the first time I've on a movie set where there's been a boxes of apples that's really film dork hilarious I'll give you a 3 two 1 here we go 3 2 1 go you good did you get a little shoulder but I was good I was middle apples in oh yeah see it go for the zoom that's pretty good and we haven't had a bad take really to be honest that's Zack in the corner DOD dodging pieces of app just hiding from the apples how often do you actually get filmed on Phantoms uh ever not not never but not a lot it's mostly like this cuz inevitably I'm the one chucking the thing sure cuz you're the best at it they're like okay and also I I'm I always go like it always feels rude to make someone else take that responsibility cuz like you know it's like okay there's 100 300 people standing here like uh hey you throw the Apple like you know that's I'm always like I'll throw the Apple cuz if it's up get it exactly here in 3D space literally literally that's what I'm saying okay this is a very luxurious setting it is I I you know I've seen some interviews with you before and you've always been satting like a nice comfy chair in the you know I prefer this it's more of a feels like's getting done here so that's cool feel more at home yeah ites it's more natural it's more real we go all right well we're here today with the I would say the king of slow motion Zack Snider oh nice thanks for visiting from you that means something what would you say interested you in slow-mo from the beginning it's funny people have asked me that and and I really think I I had the Super Eight camera my mom got me when I was like 11 years old it's a Canon I think it's a 1014 XLS or something I forget but anyway it had uh a button on the side of it that like would ramp the camera to slow motion just by pushing it and so like you could be filming and while you're filming you push this button on the side and it would go to 50 frames which not insane but at the time was pretty cool unusual at the time yeah I thought it was really rad and I and and that gives you that natural like overcranking effect like the speed ramp is built into what you're sh built in yeah I think was like an auto explosure like really yeah like wow compensation which is insane for the time I think as aesthetically you Just As I Grew and sort of I had this love of graphic novels and sort of I think the idea of the trying to recreate like a still frame in a movie kind of really led me to think about slow motion as a tool to kind of extend a certain composition beyond what it would just be a Flash in at 24 frames you just be like okay I think that looked like the drawing but this way you could really go like oh my God that's the frame right you go you just yeah fly through the actual moment and and I I think that's what really got me interested in in using higher and higher frame rates cuz like you know in the film days I think it was like 380 or 3 360 was the that's the max was the max speed yeah yeah 35 mil um which we thought was insane at the time right so were the photosonics 35 or were they like super 35 yeah they were 35 they're crazy Tech I wish I I wish I'd got into the industry slightly earlier to have experienced that kind of thing yeah you guys ought to like get a photo sonis camera and run some film through for fun I wanted to uh I wanted to film I wanted to film like the prism in the front like take a lens off and just point a phantom into it well I'm pretty sure that the rotating prism ones are different from those are higher frame rate ones yeah they might be the Super 16 on but and the and they because they're not the registration isn't as tight right yeah so it's like yeah this image kind of Wiggles a little bit inside because the prism is laying it down in a less locked way than the actual mechanical grab the frame I mean if you think about the process it's insane the film is actually dragged down held the shutter opens and closes and then pulls down the next frame that all happens in this it's like a watch or something it's yeah I I filmed inside it it wasn't a bolex but it was one of those kind of things and I just took the lens off and I took the front off and it was crazy to see the way the film kind of like Loosely travels oh cuz so many times per second cuz that's the whole thing like where they say there has to be a little bit of like you don't want the you don't want the film like just the pressure plate too tight in the gate because then it it can't be grabbed and you can see as the uh the rotating disc shutter spins I actually wrote frame numbers on all the things so you see the the shutter go over it's like it might say frame one and then as it comes around it says two and you see no movement so it's take off the shutter you then see the pull down claw like moving it into place and doing this and it's just so re it's just so mechanical and so cool so Co which you don't get so imagine that at you know like 3 24 frames is crazy right yeah I kind of mention that 360 yeah it's insane on movie cameras um because I inevitably regardless of the camera I'm trying to make it go shoot slow-mo and you find its limitations of how actually how it writes you know like if if if an object's dropping from the top or the bottom of the side you're like oh okay I see I see how the I see how the camera writes cuz you know like it squishes it or does something weird to the to so you probably test the limits of equipment more than most people I think I I do test the limits of the equipment I'm always asking the question like can it do this you know and and inevitably they're like well it's not recommended or whatever cool and engineer but I have a great I mean like I love my red cameras and um you know um I I just Jared land has been really an amazing like friend and kind of Innovator uh for me and and you know and red the red cameras I I only shot film I've only shot digitally the last two movies I've done Rebel moon was and army were the first digital movies I've ever shot what's more important to you when it comes to a movie camera would you say dynamic range is more important than resolution like do you care about resolution as much I feel like everyone's always throwing out like oh it's 8K but I mean you can get really great stuff out of a 2K camera I feel 100% I feel like there's a sweet spot between dynamic range and resolution that you have to kind of in order for it to be functional it has to kind of Hit the the because you can light for dynamic range a little bit but the fall off is the fall off and inevitably I'm trying to dig in the shadows for something that's the cool thing about film is that there was always like in the blacks there's always something yeah in the blacks on a digital camera there's like no it's just zero like it's black or you end up just staring at the noise pattern of the space% 100% I remember I had this um this light meter called a ceter 2 it was this cool like look like a we called it the sub Commander cuz it was like this G that big it was huge it had all these toggles on it like you could toggle in all the NDS and stuff wow and like so you could get the true exposure it had like frame rate and you toggle in you'd like set the frame rate set the iso and then toggle in the different uh NDS and I remember when I first got it I was shooting a car commercial and I remember it's like Dawn snowstorm Alaska it's an Audi commercial and I'm like going man it's feel like it's getting brighter cuz we started at dawn right you know it's like the meter showing no light right so I'm like man okay well wide open let's keep going I'm like man it's it's getting brighter but it's still huh that's weird and then I remember just going like just for fun just toggling one of the NDS where I thought they were all off you had all the NS on so I was like oh I'm like I'm like click click click click click click click I'm like oh for sake so the whole thing is like seven stops Overexposed you know like the whole the let's do that again but but yeah can we do it again in the blizzard and like at dawn you know like it was one of those things so I I remember sending the footage and going like is there is there any and like you know but we clamped it down and we pushed it and and then the look was really cool it ended up being this super amazing style yeah cuz like the car yeah I meant to do that it was a silver car in a snowstorm so you can it's not it's not it was took a lot of muscle to kind of turn it into something awesome but it it it ended up being something awesome but I learned an awesome lesson actually there was another time when I was shooting uh this commercial and the whole crew had gotten stuck and I was in ainol in um in Honduras I'm waiting for the crew to show up but I had the camera and uh the volcano started to erupt what and I was like what so I'm like loading the camera I'm like I've never loaded the camera like I mean did film school I did but it's been a while right so I'm like so I load the whole thing and I film it and um I guessed the exposure I didn't know my light meter or anything I'm like guessing the exposure I'm like bracketing I don't know you know and turned out I loaded the film stock backwards right so I shot through the emotion side oh my but the cool thing was I had Overexposed it by like five stops on one of the takes which was about the films so it went through it goes through the emotion went through the emotion and gave an image it was really crazy but then so then I was up for this commercial where we were trying to recreate this like 19 twin like you know trying to get the vote and so I was like oh you know what we'll do is like we'll just load the film backwards and we'll shoot through the emotion and give this really kind of vintage look and it does it's crazy so so you learned like a lesson that I use later yeah yeah I'd love to see what that looks like that sound kind of a crazy I think it was a soft and dry or sure deodorant commercial see if I don't know I'm sure it's nowhere but it was it's a Brands really like slow-mo too because their product is on screen for a long time and there's always like a you know you know like splash of water happening well think about the like whole tabletop industry that like basically that was all built around all those crazy Rigs and stuff they would so the strawberries would roll off the shoot and ramp up and land hit the milk you know yeah and then there'd always be like a specialist like a beer stylist who would have like a little case full of different different levels of gelatinous liquid they open it up and put their things out you know they you know that guy gets stopped to TSA every time also like his rate is insane the the best guy like best guy that's just because if if he messes up in slow motion everyone can see it for ages yeah yeah cuz he's there painting the like shine on the strawberries you know yeah how big do you want your droplets of condensation on there all right we should go again cuz those the ones we had before were too small so a lot of your slow-mo is paired with CG like I watching Rebel Moon there's all the the uh the the energy weapon fire and I was wondering is it more fun to put CG on slowmo because if you've got like a fictional weapon you then get to decide what is happening in slow-mo whereas when you film something for real in slow-mo what happens is the truth but you can you can make an energy weapon look like anything which is fun yes I 100% like also just like you know we end up being pretty dorky like I'm like okay so because the muzzle flash would create like heat Distortion so let's wiggle the image through the thing and they do and so they we we that that's all that's all super fun um super dorky uh and then the other thing we had was like with these weapons I was like obsessed with this kind of slag concept right like it they fire these kind of molten metal yeah there's a lot of like spashing on and the when the when the when when the slag hits it like splashes so that was another element that we knew oh in slow motion well we should have had you guys do some run some experiments with like uh you obviously did already with the cricket bat um with the with slag with the slag batting yes you know but it was like it's that stuff that we uh our guys probably looked at that I don't even know if they did I'll ask them if they did we do hear that sometimes like on solo they they watched a video of us doing an underwater explosion oh right cool and it's like a tiny little firecracker but it blows out this spherical cavity that that then collapses and reignites and they they just shot that for an explosion of some chemical in in the Solo movie which is like super flattering that they that they told us that they saw our video and then oh that's cool I mean cuz the truth is you know you guys have probably shot more slow motion than anybody in the world um just CU maybe you would have maybe battling with you though yeah I don't know that's well you know I guess over the course of but like a lot of times I'll shoot like 60 frames and people think it's slow motion I don't you know they'll be like oh you shot all that in slow motion I'm like I did like yeah I was like you know they were firing and running I'm like that's 60 frames that's not slow motion well it depends what it is isn't it there like a different League of stuff like you know someone running and jumping you could film at 60 frames and be like that's pretty that's kind of SL dramatic yeah right but then you film something like a a bullet flying through the air at 60 frames you're not going to get anything it's the same yeah that's what actually I'm enjoying about this new white camera there the one that does 80,000 full frame is that human movement pauses it's just nothing but then you can have a bullet moving through the frame and you have you'll have that differentiation of two speeds so you have like someone who's just like and a bullet will be like and and it's nice to see the context of two different speeds to what in your eye looks like two very fast things that's really cool because like that's the thing that people don't realiz is that the abstra what you can do to abstract time when you abstract time to the point where you know humans are like basically standing still yeah and reaction time is so funny and slowo like you can you can have like an explosion go off here and then minutes later in the slow-mo the person's like you know there so much such a big delay it's already like yeah the shrapnel would have gone through your body by the time you get the chance to react which is cool do you mind the effect of cuz when you when you shoot slow-mo and speed it up to normal speed you end up with very there's no motion blur in the stuff well yeah and so a lot of times what I'll do is in visual effects we'll like add most their back that's kind of what I do with the 24 frames and sometimes I'll leave it and and and and it's got kind of some sort of Saving Private Ride Like That 45 de shot exactly yeah I always I I feel like I noticed that stuff in movies but I feel like most people if if it just cuts to a 45 degree shutter looking thing I don't think most people would think oh it's about to go ramp into slow-mo oh right for sure and that's a thing that like sometimes will you know my visual effect supervisor they'll we'll put motion blur on 24 frame per second shot that's going to ramp for that reason so that it's not like telegraphing yeah that it's that it was shot at a high frame rate you know have you ever shot that's stuff that we think about that no one else doesn't yeah you and me it's just just us he thinks about it but doesn't bother yeah whereas you're like no no we'll do it have have you ever wanted to do a shot where technology just isn't good enough yet like you can't shoot fast enough I feel like a lot of your slow-mo is very human based like even like Manhattan getting ripped apart for the first time like and that also is like we haven't run into for instance saying like Okay I need that camera but I needed it at like 8K you know right you know like that's Haven got a few decades off from that yeah a few decades in a few decades maybe yeah we've been surprised a lot of the time filming stuff in slow motion what's going to happen we don't know that has that ever happened with you where you've been like right let's get this in slow-mo and then you've been surprised by what happens yeah actually we were just we blew up um a building um you'll see in this in part two of Rebel Moon which comes out April 19th so stay tuned everybody anyway so but we did this explosion where we blew up uh this big building there not a big building it was like a I don't know tons of primer cord just blew this building up so we had like you know two we had all our normal cameras two Phantoms one of the Phantom shots we saw that the building blows up we didn't see it in real life but the building blows up the shock wave right that came off of it like the D there's like this line of dust that is on because we had this big bridge set and then the buildings around it and the the dust ring that go goes across so then basically after we watch this like dust like rise off of everything in this shock wave that went out from the building and then the second concussive uh Force kind of blows that dust away so it kind of Rises up and then gets blown away I love that stuff it's so cool yeah a lot of time if an explosion is really big it will start you know it'll blow the dust and then it might suck it back a little it end up sing yeah it makes me I feel like I've Never filmed this because always want to put cameras you know aimed at the main thing but I'd love to just put a phantom on the dirt and just film from the ground so you have that shock wave just coming up to the camera like that thought to have like an explosion here you know everyone's like wow wow wow and they just have a camera pointed at some de you often don't have like a third Phantom to go or it be cool if you like could if if you like got um some like really small almost like ball bearings or something some kind of like some kind of dirt that was like that wasn't going to get blown away but that was light enough to like react to the shock wave so you could really see it because sometimes like we got lucky because this we had been filming in this location for months and driving our trucks around and everything so there was this perfect dust layer on everything like it literally you couldn't even see it we were used to it so all the Rocks the buildings they all were caked with this teeny bit of dust at like one like hard and the dust just like popped off of it cuz if we had done that explosion right after construction there wouldn't have been that much dust but because we had been there for four or five months shooting and you know every day driving the Gators and the amount of dust and we had had one of the things we did for um the spaceship effects like there's a whole sequence where these like spaceships land we had used real helicopters to land or to hover to make the dust because the dust was so is that what you did for the shots of of everyone sort of yeah they're all just getting hit with like helicopter dust cuz like there's no way to I was wondering if that was huge fans there's no way to do it with fans like we and I had had this idea I said what if we just bring helicopters as to simulate the down force of the the the the Jets on the on the drop ships and everyone was like oh it feels expensive and I was like well it's cool though because you know we can love that is it cool yes all right fine yeah check for just feels like the way to go but that's the stuff that caused the it was those types of things we did that over and over and we had a big war you know that we shot there it the dirt was everywhere and we didn't even like I said we didn't even know yeah till we like like holy if our lungs by the way and if you did know and you did want that effect it would have been so much effort to put that dust everywhere was it I don't even know how you I guess you would have had to like get some sort of like um water truck filled half with mud half with dirt spray the mud everywhere let it dry over the course of a couple weeks and it went pretty far shockingly far from the event like over the bridge across the river out through this field you know like all the way and and it and it has a different effect on each medium like it will affect dust at a different speed to not different speed but it will affect in a different way to water but you see the effect on straight across the surface of the water but then picks up the dust again right on the other side yeah it's cool is that your favorite slowmo shot from the movie do you think yeah think it I think it was just because it was so I didn't expect it to have that other quality there was a few Phantom shots we did like there's a great shot of Sophia I think it was in the where she's like it's that shot where she's running that camera and she's firing in part one in part one that that's the moment there's all the red glow and there's there's all the dust and stuff and snow in the it's cool too because like it was real snow we had a snow machine the fireball is CG she had like a we built these like LED um little discs that we put in the ends of the guns and the LEDs would fire forward and then there's a small ring that fired backward as well oh so the red flash on her is is real yeah cool I was wondering because I I feel like that would be so much effort to add in later because all the different texture of the really hard and every now and then we have to do it but like I when we did Army of the Dead one of the things we did on Army was we designed mind well we had all gas guns and that we had all like soft air guns that we used instead of like blanks because you I had I've used blanks my entire career and tons of guns and you know but I felt like I knew on Army we were kind of trying to do like a lowbudget sort of methodology for filming it and I was like look I really don't want the armor and the whole process of like bringing a life gun and is it clear and safe and blah blah blah you know like there's no it's a long safety protocols around it as there should be and so I was like well if we just go with the soft Gare guns and we just add muzzle flash to the to the guns in in post and and some CG shell cartridges that'll save a ton of time on the day and it did and the thing that was cool about it was when we so I had to like so we had to build these like LED lights that were triggered so I would have to be like it was all manually trying to trigger it with the a lot of times and so in the slow motion shots a lot of times it was off like you'd see it I like oh for sake it's so far off and slow-mo is a nightmare for when you're trying to trick timing and stuff impossible imposs that's it really reveals every so what yeah so what we did is when we went to do Rebel Moon I was like it's got to be tied to the trigger like the when they pull the trigger it's got to turn the light on that's whatever we have to do to make that happen let's do it so that's when we built the guns wet up uh Workshop in New Zealand built the guns you know the the the space guns and they built them with uh it's kind of got a coax plug in the barrel you know like you'd have to plug a battery in yeah and then we built these discs that just plug into the gun and there's a battery in the gun so you could that's great it Powers the light source and it all comes off the dck when you fire the gun the lights Flash and it worked out great so it allowed that interaction at high speed which we were blowing on Army like 90% of the time is it so is it something that you'd learned from your previous experiences doing the army of the dead and 100% And so you you used that and then like well now this is what we need to do make these that's cool yeah 100% I mean it was cool like it was funny just the other day I was like I was talking to someone about um we were talking about the gas guns and how to use them and whether they look real or whatever and I said and I just called up on YouTube I was like hey let's look at the Casino fight in Army right cuz I forgot you know it's you make a movie and you don't watch it that many times weirdly once it's out and I was like oh yeah let's this is this thing we shot in this casino in Atlantic City it's like Dave Batista fighting some zombies so we like watch I was like Jesus we really went completely out of our minds didn't we CU he was like the person hadn't seen the movie and they were like are you serious you film this like what is this and I was like no no it's like cuz and he goes those aren't real guns I go no those are just those are like sof air guns they're all like you know basically just you know you put CO2 inside of them pressurized and they it's cool because like every now and then like some of the gasel kind of smoke and it's it it's not what a real gun does but it looks cool so it was good what when was the first time you actually used a phantom it was on Justice League during the football sequence in Justice League the you know where Ray Fisher is like in the snow and all that and uh that was the first time that I use the Phantom I was like oh my Lord that's pretty rad yeah I'm still I'm surprised that because this Phantom that we use today the the flex 4K is now a 10-year-old camera and I feel like there's no there still hasn't been haven't one that goes faster in 4k yeah they haven't beaten it it's a pretty great camera it's pretty great pretty robust camera and I like it's pretty interesting also the buffering system how it works yeah it's an interesting thing you just stop it you stop it and then yeah you it's it's like a it's it's a hard thing uh I think for a filmmaker to get to figure out like right away you know like yeah I mean that was a big part of my job back in the day was just getting the director's head around working kind of backwards from the event and saying like you've only got this much time so you know I can lower the frame rate and give you a bit more time there always a trade-off between all and it's like when do you want the trigger point but it is so useful for filming an event when you don't know what's going to happen like for example if we wanted to put like a deodorant can on a fire and then we just waiting for it to explode I cannot imagine how you would do that on photonic you would just waste so much film trying to predict when it was going to go yeah you'd have to have like some sort of temperature gauge and like the the 10 times we tried it before it went off at at the average temperature it went off at was this so maybe start rolling when it hits that and you just have all these like thousand fets of film just of a can sing and it goes agent can come on sorry the tick tick tick is the film rolling magazine not theate anym that's AIC it's a sound every filmmaker knows it's like because inevitably the actor cries or the thing Falls or the baby walks yeah right when you hear the just you just know you're not getting anything you know there's no and and to everyone else who's not really aware of it they're they're filming so it's amazing you know like everyone else is like oh my God this is awesome and I and I'm just like this cuz I know that but it's not it's nothing so what are you excited about when it comes to Rebel Moon part two what you excited for us to see well you're going to see a fair amount of slow-mo I could guarantee you that looking forward to that I think the cool thing and and the thing that you guys will be excited about is that you know sort of the the second half of the movie is pretty much just a war movie uh full full war in the village um and uh so it was a lot of I mean from a technical standpoint I think you'll appreciate the drama of course is really you know few against many obviously is thematic but the from a technical aspect the idea of like like putting on a a war uh at that scale uh it was quite it was quite cool with like you know with sort of mechanized space tanks and explosions and sort of trench warfare and you know they're down in the tunnels and it's just insanity and I think that that it's real it was really fun to kind of like stage this wild and weird sci-fi War yeah I'm excited to see it I was uh I was excited the end of the first one where Noble was still alive I like that character and I like I liked watching his teeth bounce across that yeah yeah funny when it comes towards the camera I think when you see the um also um later this year all the the extended versions director's cuts um the SN cuts the Snider Cuts will come out and um they're the hardest are possible um and so really yeah yeah oh hell yeah yeah I was thinking this needs a bit bit like of more Arness yeah and it has it definitely has a lot more arest and even that so and so even like that because we have all these highs speeded shots so we had to really create like there's a shot where Kora puts like the gun underneath in The Grainery fight and it I think in the movie in the PG-13 version it cuts wide and and she kills the guy she's on the ground it's right after the there is a full Phantom shot of that guy like flipping over and like Landing scorpion into the ground and then it in that same shot of ramps and she stabs the guy in the foot and then she puts the gun under his chin and pulls a trigger and in the ARR diversion you see like his head kind of like in like slowmo his head kind of like like a like it's like if you put a firecracker inside of an egg hell yeah so going see it like light up from the lights up and all the cracks and then kind of like vaporizes yeah I cuz I was wondering that cuz a lot of the uh the more graphic head shots would often happen behind out of focus or in shot in a way that was you know for for younger audiences yeah and and look you know the the to Netflix's credit and thank God they we all went into it um with this sort of understanding that we would release the PG-13 versions of the movie because frankly what I wrote was that super hard R was the movie that I wrote and so when they saw it they were like well the issue is is that you know for the price point this hard R which is clearly for a more Boutique audience because it's so intense and you know and for those people they'll love it you know for the people that love it it's the best thing ever but you know for the kids maybe it's not yeah and I get that and I was like yeah and they go is there any way we could do both like maybe we do you you give me the PG-13 version of the movie you want to make and then we'll let you when that's done go do whatever you want you know I actually really like that that method of doing it because I feel like in the past you might have had you know a theatrical version and then years later there may have been a director's cut on a DVD of some sort but I I like that it's just like bam and then bam yeah I I I liked it too because I feel like what was awesome about it was first of all Netflix also allowed me to shoot a bunch of additional material for the r version so the experience is wholly original like when you watch it yeah it's it's similar but you really I think the tone everything kind of changes when you put this other lens on it you really are like whoa okay that means that um and I think that that part was really exciting to do and I think when you see both the versions of the movie you know also there's a lot more sex in it it's just like a different it's a different experience yeah I'll be honest you know I get dinged a lot a lot of people are like you know you use too much slow-mo I know that sounds weird to you guys I know if that's a real thing if that's a real thing and also it's like I've always been asked like well why like what why do you use so much slowmo I was like well yeah I I mean like I use a fair amount of slow motion but if you in modern Cinema you know there are certainly films that don't use slow motion absolutely and that's cool and 100% huge respect for that um but like it's almost like a modern Blockbuster movie and not that I'm trying because to me using slow motion is completely natural and not a thing that I I don't force it at all I don't I don't look for slow motion sequences or get all like slowmo get in the cameras it just happens I just it's really instinctive and I've you know when we're choreographing the action sequences I'm was like oh that's did let we this will be like this is a cool moment for the for photosonics or I I still call the Phantom photosonics by the way everyone's like okay we know what you mean um but uh so it's not like a thing that I that's hugely premeditated or hugely um it it's I would say it's more intellectualized than it is premeditated cuz it's always like I'm like oh I really like this Frame I'd like to hang it I like to and by hang it I mean I'd like to stay with it right and so um It's that kind of thing and so a lot of times we'll have the Phantom on a whole day and I use it I've done a few as like a yeah you're like right well let's just do the sequence and if we need the slow-mo we can bring in the Phantom and then you're like no no no that would be a cool bit let's bring it in yeah like we're doing this fight let's have it for those days or we're doing this explosion there's going to be 4 days of us blowing up let's have it for all four days we don't know when it'll play exactly but have them ready that's cool I I didn't expect that I didn't expect it to be as spontaneous as that yeah I think that in the early days when I would use it it was much more premeditated and really designed and and now I I like it as a as a tool and maybe it's partly because the Phantom is so convenient and easy you just keep going it's a lot of data but yeah you know who cares it is but you don't have to take all of it you know yeah little trims yeah do you use motion control I don't I don't I you know or like this bolt camera is awesome um for that cuz the cool thing about this is the problem and we were talking about earlier the idea of putting a camera move in a high-speed shot is difficult because the camera the action for human is so hard to like the dolly grips got you'd have to have like track all the way across here and every grip like yeah you got to like get the camera up to like 30 m hour and Ed take he's get you just have to have line of grips like I was able to get like this I got these I recruited these Bob slets to do it the Cool Runnings crew coming exactly they all they're out of their Bob sledding days and they went into pushing dollies on highspeed photography shops it was funny cuz I just did uh we did uh I was just in um in Riad in Saudi Arabia at the joy Awards and they had a bolt and a phantom so when you won your award it kind of like they did the Academy Awards glamour B thing yeah and so I I threw my award in the air you know they were all like freaked out I'm like I'm not going to drop it don't worry but I but they were like can you do it and not look at it and I was like okay that's going to be a little bit a little bit more of a that I think I did you do it did you get yeah I think I have it it's pretty cool just no look don't worry about it it was a BTY move yeah but yeah so I was like cuz they were like hey can you do something Dynamic I was going to try and like spin around but like light around the back yeah but it also comes apart a little bit so I didn't want it it's I like how you you clearly like you know graphic novels and things like that and you managed to kind of combine slow motion like you talking about with the bit with the where the head explodes like an egg yeah and that's kind of like quite graphic nov and you've made it with the slow-mo 100 create shot you would see like in like you know Heavy Metal magazine you know and by the way it was probably Heavy Metal magazine is the most it's the clearest touchdown for the tone of the of like you know if you've ever seen the animated film have you ever watched that animated Heavy Metal movie I haven't it's insane it's worth it it's worth watching if you if you you find yourself like you know um with like a bunch of marijuana or something like you're just like what the am I going to do with this oh I know put on heavy metal that's it s I'm not advocating that I'm just saying that could happen somewhere I'm not saying that's ever happened or it will but you know um anyway my point is that uh and I I and and because when I was growing up you know the heavy metal was such a strong had such a strong influence on me as a kid because it you know was an adult Illustrated fantasy magazine that's what it says on the cover which small but it's on there my mom didn't see that part you know she just saw heavy she never read it really closely just had your thumb over that part and so like you know that influence of that like extreme violence sexuality sci-fi everything just like at 11 uh really and it's an anthology so it was always a new story new artist you know I introduced to like these amazing um you know illustrators storytellers image storytellers through that through that magazine it really changed sort of my aesthetic and I really wanted to honor it with and that's what Rebel moon really is in a lot of ways is homage to that and it kind of like you know it's perverse Star Wars but like I think the PG-13 is kind of more accessible and sort of I don't want to call it normal but it's an easy movie to watch you know yeah and that and that style is pairs so well with the graphic novel Vibe like I remember watching The Watchmen before I read the graphic novel and I was so blown away to see how like accurate the film was in terms of what you read the graic later I read it later I was like oh my God it's like wow yeah and and and just you know the the slow-mo people getting torn apart and Ros Shack just getting popped so the reason we're going to have the r version is because your mom didn't stop you from buying a magazine when you were a kid CU it's inspired you pretty much correct pretty much correct thanks M pretty much correct she actually bought me a um subscription to the magazine as a gift for Christmas because she knew I was buying it and she go oh I got you a I got you it it's going to come monthly and I was like can I have a look are you sure she's like yeah I'm like that's fantastic so it was and it came in a um it kind of had a brown you know like if you had bought like a dirty magazine it has like a brown paper covering you know sure definitely you know it it it would always come in that round because if you sold a lot of times the covers were pretty racy so like if you bought it on the sometimes if you bought it at the at the magazine store it had that cover on it and I was glad my mother never suspected I think she just thought it was for protection you know like how you know they didn't want it to be ruined in the mail I was like yeah they don't want you to it's a naked woman on the cover of the mag it's a drawing but it's you know yeah yeah well yeah it's it's super interesting to hear your Inspirations and uh you've been a huge inspiration to me well thank you guys this I learned a lot today so thanks yeah I don't think I'd be I mean seeing 300 for me was a huge Turning Point with just my enthusiasm for slowmo loved it so thanks thanks for making that and all your other movies that was a huge inspiration for my sixpack I went in the camera route you went just died in the gym clearly definitely not anymore right all right well awes yeah make sure to check out Rebel Moon part two what what's the date of it uh April 19th April 19th she Netflix and I know you have Netflix they don't act like oh how am I going to watch that all right thank you very much for watching see you next time awesome guys that ruled thank you so much cheers that was great thank you thanks guys

Channel: The Slow Mo Guys 2

Views: 208,426

Keywords: slomo, slow, mo, super, motion, Slow Motion, 1000, 1000fps, gav, dan, slowmoguys, phantom, guys, HD, flex, gavin, free, gavin free, high speed camera, the slow mo guys, 2000, 2000fps, 5000, 5000fps

Id: iwRk7ZCVUO4

Length: 49min 7sec (2947 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024