Ang Lee, the softly-spoken, two-time Oscar-winning director of Life of Pi and Brokeback Mountain, is seldom mistaken for James Cameron.
“Not ever,” nods the Taiwanese-born filmmaker. “I’m not technically very aware. And I don’t have his money and resources.” He laughs. “But here we are. Damn it!”
Lee may have only signed up for email in the past few years, but, quietly, secretly, he's an innovator who smuggled martial-arts wirework (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and gay romance (Brokeback Mountain) into mainstream hits. He is also the director that invested Hulk (2003) with the same psychological depth he brought to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1995), and long before Marvel Studios became a "movieverse" juggernaut.
Hulk smashed into cinemas less than 12 months after Star Wars: Attack of the Clones became the first major feature to be shot completely digitally. Back then, Lee was not for turning.
"I was a diehard film person before Life of Pi," says Lee. "People were trying to convert me to digital for Hulk because of the nature of the movie. I was fighting against digital the whole time.
"Even with Pi, I wanted film. But philosophically, I needed an extra dimension to tell that story from the two viewpoints of young Pi and older Pi. And film is a bad idea with 3D. The two don't synch very well. That forced my hand.
“I still donate money to preserve film. But movies – as a format – is a battleground that has undergone many technological advances. I hate to hear people compare digital and film. It’s like comparing painting and sculpture.”
Returning to digital after his experiences on Pi would, he says, "have been like pretending to be a virgin". Still, his pioneering work on Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk has surprised everyone, not least himself.
Billy Lynn is the first major studio feature shot in 120 frames-per-second 3D, with 4K clarity, using two separate 3D cameras precisely mounted to capture action like a pair of eyes. That 120fps exposure rate is five times faster than traditional movies and nearly three times the 48fps that Peter Jackson used for The Hobbit.
Highest-spec film
“Two eyes are sharper,” Lee says. “Just like our eyes. So the mentality is different. All of us think in 2D when it comes to movies. But now you are so close you can see people’s intention. So the acting needs to change. The lighting needs to change. The framing needed to be altered. The storytelling has to be different. The relationship between the filmmaker and the viewer shifts a bit.”
Peter Jackson’s Middle Earthian foray into higher frame-rate film-making did not necessarily go over well with critics or audiences. The traditional tried-and-tested 24 frames-per-second rate that has governed cinema for 90 years or so works because it is just a little faster than what the brain requires for a persistence of vision effect.
Lee's doubling-down on The Hobbit's speed – coupled with 4K resolution – makes Billy Lynn the highest-spec film to emerge from Hollywood to date. It's a big gamble.
“When I first saw the test footage, I felt I was damned,” Lee says with a smile. “Why me? I’ll be crucified. I have to pursue this, but I know we’re working probably 15 to 20 years ahead of the technology. There is no commercial application for this yet. There’s no projector to screen what we created. No living being will ever see it.
“You couldn’t even say it was lifelike; life doesn’t have close-ups. So I thought I’m in trouble. But it’s still very exciting; it’s a privilege and a fear at the same time. Just don’t try this at home.”
The logistics were tricky to say the least. The camera rig is even larger than the cumbersome brutes used in early cinema. The rushes were unknowable and required a flight simulator borrowed from the US Air Force to facilitate any kind of playback.
“I couldn’t see what I got,” says Lee. “The projector we had for no more than a week before we had to return it to the military. So halfway through shooting we saw some footage. There’s no lab for this either. So we improvised our own lab with computers independently.
“Halfway through the shoot I saw 15 minutes of footage. A couple months into post-production, I saw some 60 frames per second. I had to guess from previous impressions. But that’s not precise. Because once you go over a certain level of information, it becomes its own thing. Something can look off at 60 frames per second but look right again at 120 frames per second.”
Best-selling novel
On paper, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is not exactly a project that screams for bells and whistles. A very grown-up $40 million drama based on a best-selling novel and featuring Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, Vin Diesel, Steve Martin, Chris Tucker and newcomer Joe Alwyn, the film's titular hero is a young soldier, who, while parading against the sensory avalanche of a football half-time show (replete with a performance by Destiny's Child), recalls his combat experience in the Iraq war.
Why marry this material to the hyper-reality of Lee’s technical specs?
“For me the most fascinating spectacle is the human face,” says the director. “We derive most information – mood, focus, even temperature – from the face. That’s where the drama is. I thought the material is already very attractive. You get a half-time show. You get a battle. You get to take the soldiers from a battle to a football game in Dallas.
“There are competing sensations. A stadium full of aggression and hot dogs and vending machines. There is the absurdity of capitalism and class differences and how people thank soldiers. It’s a poignant story. I think I would want to do it regardless. But this new cinema gave me another reason to be excited.”
How does one prepare and direct actors for Billy Lynn's many discombobulating facial close-ups?
“They almost have to be less precise,” he says. “If you direct as you would for 2D – this is why you act, this is what this character is about, this is your task at this moment – they look like they are acting, which is not what we do in life. In life, 20 thoughts hit you at once, and you adjust, and keep processing.
“Of course, the actors are performing: they have lines; they have a task to do; they have to be nuanced. But on top of that I gave them a lot of distractions, take after take, so they can look like they are in life.
“There has always been an idea that we need artifice in cinema. And that’s true for 2D. But we – the viewers – don’t need artificial things to look at. There’s a beauty in looking at faces. There’s a beauty in just seeing.”
- Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is on general release
