By Iain Blair
Director Destin Daniel Cretton is best known for his work on Just Mercy and The Glass Castle, emotionally powerful, low-budget dramas that focused on characters and behavior, not spectacle and visual effects. So it was a big surprise to many when the indie director was tapped by Marvel to helm its VFX-heavy new tentpole Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, an action-packed origin story featuring Marvel’s first Asian superhero.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton behind camera (left) on set
But the gamble has paid off, with Cretton combining intricate, cross-generational family dynamics with dazzling action, martial arts, monsters and VFX in a mega-budget epic blockbuster.
Cretton’s creative team included DP Bill Pope, ASC; VFX supervisor Christopher Townsend; and composer Joel P. West. The editors were Nat Sanders, ACE; Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir, ACE; and Harry Yoon, ACE.
I spoke with Cretton about making the film, his workflow, editing and dealing with all the visual effects.
You’ve never directed a VFX–heavy movie like this before. How steep was the learning curve?
It was pretty steep. I was constantly learning; I felt like I was in film school every day. It was stimulating and exhilarating, and it’s a unique creative environment, particularly with someone like VFX supervisor Chris Townsend, who’s been doing this for so long and has been on the forefront of some pretty amazing technology.
Chris has no ego, so it’s very collaborative, and he was constantly asking me what we needed and wanted and letting me know what was possible — which in most cases was almost anything. And I had a blast. That was my goal from the very start — to have fun, and I did.
I assume you did a lot of previz and postviz?
We did a ton of both with The Third Floor. There was a lot of fight-viz that was coming from the stunt department, quite a bit more than in most Marvel movies. Then we’d figure out how to do a combination of fight-viz with previz, and we’d pass on the fight-viz to previz in order to do all the VFX-heavy previz that the stunt department was not able to do.
Then we’d puzzle-piece all our sequences together to see how they were working. We also did a lot of postviz in post too since we were constantly searching for the edit and doing test screenings. We had a post VFX editor with us in the room all the time, as we had so much postviz happening through the whole process to make it watchable for the test screenings.
What were the main technical challenges in pulling it all together?
There were so many, but one of the biggest was integration — we had this dance between trying to create stunts and stunt choreography that all felt very real and grounded, and then all the VFX.
Like the big opening bus fight sequence?
Exactly. It has all the very complicated stunts, but it’s also a very VFX-heavy scenario that you could never shoot in real life. So to be able to create VFX that could mold to the style of the stunt choreography and that aesthetic was quite a process.
Then there was the whole third act, where it turns into this giant beast-on-beast battle with our hero hanging on for dear life. That was so complex and technically challenging to create, and I learned so much about what it takes to do something like that. It was like getting Christmas presents every Friday when we saw all the VFX reviews, especially toward the end. It was so exciting.
You shot mainly in Australia, but the opening city bus sequence was shot in San Francisco, right?
Yes. We shot all the bus interior stuff and stunts in Sydney and shot it right at the start of our shooting schedule. We’d already gone over it all with Chris Townsend and his team and tracked out exactly what the bus journey would look like going down the hill, so we knew precisely what plates we needed outside the bus at any given time.
It took a lot of coordination between VFX, stunts and our 2nd unit on the ground in Sydney. Then at the end of the shoot, once we had the whole sequence pieced together with previz doing the big bus crashes, we went to San Francisco to shoot the real, physical action and crashes. So again, it was like this giant puzzle you had to put together in post and the edit.
How did COVID affect the edit and post?
COVID had a huge effect, and a big part of post was very strange, as we had to shut down about two months into the shoot. So we’d shot a good chunk of the first act, then COVID shut us down for some four months. So we began the edit and working on post then, before going back to shooting.
You had three editors — your go-to guy Nat Sanders, Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir and Harry Yoon. How did that work?
So during that four months shut-down time, the editing team — it was Nat and Elisabet at that point — never left Sydney. They continued to work from the studio. I worked remotely from home every day, and we were able to work through all the footage we’d shot and then also do a lot of work on the previz for the rest of the third act.
Then after we’d finished the movie, we continued to edit in Sydney to work on my director’s cut until December 2020, and then we came back to LA. That’s when Harry Yoon came on board to help out since Elisabet had to leave for a prior commitment.
We had a month when all three were working together, which was great. Basically it was each editor taking a sequence or scene, and it was very free-flowing. We’d pass stuff around and all take cracks at it. Everyone left their egos behind and explored the material to see what surprises we could pull out of it.
This has a ton of VFX with a ton of companies working on it. How did that work.
We had so many companies, including Weta, Trixter, Digital Domain, Rodeo, Luma, Rising Sun, Scanline, Method Melbourne, Distillery, Stereo D and Fin Design. [Basilic Fly and BotVFX also contributed].
Weta did all of the third act, all of the creatures — all the big stuff. Trixter did a lot of the creature design and animation, and all the initial work on the rings was done in-house at Marvel. Then various companies did animations of the different ways the rings could be used before they was handed off to Weta. And then Industrial Pixel and Lidar Guys did the character scanning and lidar for us.
What was the hardest VFX stuff to do and why?
The one word I’d be very careful about ever putting in my scripts in the future is “water.” What Weta did, and what we ended up with, is really gorgeous water simulation, but it took so long and was hard work. I was told that at one point, we’d completely shut down all of the rendering computers available to Weta for these water sims, and it wasn’t even done then. They said it would still take another month before the render was finished. That kind of stuff is just mind-boggling to me.
L-R: Our writer Iain Blair and Destin Daniel Cretton
Can you talk about doing the DI at Company 3 and working on the look?
We worked with colorist Jill Bogdanowicz, who’s awesome. The whole approach was to make all the visuals – especially when we first meet all these characters in San Francisco – look and feel not overly heightened, but as grounded as possible. So we worked to find an aesthetic that’d also work as they go further and further on their journey into this fantastical world. Chris and Jill came up with a look I felt really balanced those two worlds, along with all the practical stuff we shot and then the VFX.
As an Asian American, this seems like a perfect fit for you, and I heard you actually pursued this project but thought you’d never get the job?
Well, initially I never even thought I’d want to do a movie of this size. A giant blockbuster superhero movie just wasn’t on my radar, but when they announced this, I wanted to be part of the conversation. Then I ended up really connecting with the Marvel team and the whole concept, and here I am.
What’s next? Do you want to direct another huge movie like this?
I do, and I really enjoyed it, but they’re giant machines that you can only turn very slowly. I really miss certain things about smaller movies and being able to move nimbly. So my plan is to do a mixture of both.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
