The Tomorrow War Director
Chris McKay Talks Post and VFX

By Iain Blair

Director Chris McKay first made a name for himself in animation, helming over 50 episodes of Robot Chicken. Next, he directed The Lego Batman Movie, the second feature in the Lego film franchise, after serving as animation director and editor on the first one.

Now he's made the leap into live-action filmmaking with the sci-fi action-adventure The Tomorrow War, which follows a group of time travelers who arrive from the year 2051 to deliver an urgent message: Thirty years in the future, mankind is losing a war against a deadly alien species. The only hope is for soldiers and civilians from the present to be transported to the future and join the fight. Among those recruited is high school teacher Dan Forester (Chris Pratt). Determined to save the world for his young daughter, Dan teams up with a military scientist (Yvonne Strahovski) and his estranged father (J.K. Simmons) in a quest to rewrite the fate of the planet.

McKay assembled a creative team that included DP Larry Fong, editors Roger Barton, ACE and Garret Elkins, ACE, and VFX supervisor James E. Price. I spoke with the director about making the film, dealing with the VFX and his love of post.

Live action is very different from animation. How did you prepare for it?
Very different, but there are similarities as well as big differences. When you’re building animation reels, you’re doing animatics and layout. And in live action, you’re still doing some version of animatics with storyboards and doing previz, which is layout. I like playing around with all that stuff.

I have a team that helps with all the previz, so we can see how it will come together, and I want to show the crew what we’ll be doing. Even on a big movie like this, you never have enough money or time, so all that prep and communication is so helpful. And there are huge differences — in animation you can control everything, but in live action it feels like you can control nothing. You have to think spontaneously and adapt constantly to weather, logistics and so on while you’re shooting. That’s why I love post so much.

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