His latest movie, “Bright,” is Netflix’s biggest project to date and marks his reunion with Hollywood superstar Will Smith after “Suicide Squad.”
It premiered on the video streaming service last December 22.
“The basics of filmmaking never change. It’s about script, the actors, and the camera and you grow and learn from everyone,” Ayer said in a recent press conference for “Bright” at The Ritz-Carlton in Tokyo.
“I have to own everything that happened with ‘Suicide Squad,’ and it really taught me a lot of amazing lessons as a director. I learned about large-scale action, computer imagery, and makeup, and I was able to bring those lessons into ‘Bright,’” he added.
Perhaps the only major difference Ayer saw between a Netflix movie and a film that is meant for cinema is that the former gave him more freedom as a director.
Noting the flexibility and adaptability of Netflix as a platform for creative storytelling, the director said: “Making ‘Bright’ was wonderful for me because Netflix is very nourishing to filmmakers and they really let me have my voice.”
Smith shared the same sentiment, saying that he could not imagine a traditional studio spending more than a $100 million for a rated R movie.
“With Netflix, everything about the production was identical to a major big-budget Hollywood feature,” said Smith, who has starred in movies like “Men in Black,” “I Am Legend,” and “Independence Day.”
“But what happens with studios is if they’re going to spend more than a hundred million dollars on a movie, they will have certain creative demands because of the risk profile,” he continued.
“So what happens with the demand is it jams the creative process. In a way, you can’t make a movie like ‘Bright’ in a studio because of how much it costs. Just the very cost of it changes the entire creative process. [In the end] It has to be PG-13. They’re not going to make a hundred-plus-million rated R movie that’s not about an IP (intellectual property) that is historically proven.”
CHALLENGE
But doing a big-budget Netflix movie like “Bright” was not without its challenges, according to Smith.
And the biggest challenge for them, he believes, is making sure the movie will have “the same kind of emotional penetrating power” to viewers as they watch it from their electronic devices at home instead of the cinema.
“So the question is, does the big cinematic experience of seeing it in the theater have any emotional reaction? Can you get that same emotional reaction if you’re watching it in your house? That’s what I’m not certain yet, that’s the big question,” he said.
“Does it penetrate the human mind and the human heart? Does it penetrate in the same way that it does in the cinematic experience, that you have to drive an hour to get to the cinema with hundreds of other people? Does it have that same kind of emotional penetrating power?” he added.
Actress Noomi Rapace, who plays the elf villain Leilah in “Bright,” also recognized people’s difficulty in focusing on a movie because of distractions like smartphones and tablet computers.
“I think one of the biggest problems today is that it’s really hard for people, including myself, to stay concentrated. And when you watch a film at home, you have your iPad, you have your computer, you have your iPhone, all your devices next to you. To actually switch them off and decide that you are watching a film as if you are watching it in the theater, that is a decision that you have to do,” she said.
“You want to check your e-mails and text, and you respond to them and you miss out on the film because you’re going between different things… So it’s something that you really need to decide on, that you’re watching the movie and putting everything else away. So I would love everyone to do that [with ‘Bright’],” she ended.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
