After watching Step Up 3D and your web series The LXD, it seems clear to me that you've very devoted to the idea that long shots and long takes are the best way to show off dance. Does it frustrate you when you see a modern musical and it's edited with a bunch of quick cuts?
Oh, so much! So much. Especially because I know how good the dancers are; our dancers are actually in a lot of commercials, but you don't get to really see what they do because they're so cut down that it's more like a highlight reel. It just becomes a headspin or a flip in the air, whereas when you get to see that dance start and see them get into it and transition between moves, that's what dance is. They're telling a story through the moves put together, not the move itself. In our movie, I'm blessed that we were able to work with some of the best dancers in the world, and we tried to play that to our advantage. It was the same with 3D -- one of the traits of 3D is that you can't cut around too much anyway, because it takes a half-second for your eyes to adjust. You want to stay a little bit longer, so we thought, "If that's the way we should play it, let's go all the way and show the dancers off to our advantage." Even compared to Step Up 2, we stick with the dance a lot more.
Does it worry you that we've had so much bad post-conversion 3D this year that it may have tainted the audience a little bit?
You know, I can't speak for everybody else, but for me going to a movie, I want the filmmaker's voice to come through. Some of the 3D conversions, I feel like it's sort of taken the filmmaker out of it, and since the movies weren't made for it, obviously some of the shots aren't going to be built for 3D. It's not part of the language. Alice in Wonderland was cool because they knew before they started shooting that 3D would happen, so they made dimensionalizing it part of the story and it was an OK thing. I think all the discussion about whether there's a future for 3D and is it a gimmick...I was asking those questions too, but we found these little things you can do with it that can really help a story emotionally in 3D.
Even something as simple as [when Step Up 3D's two romantic leads] meet in a club -- in the script, that was that. Because 3D makes you feel so claustrophobic in a small space, I had him grab her and pull her into a photobooth. As cheesy and random as that might seem, you can actually see the audience lean in a little bit, and it creates an intimacy about it. That was a total change because of 3D.
Do you think directors are really exploiting that?
I think there's a lot more to do. I saw a 3D test where it's raining outside and there's a couple breaking up inside a car. In 2D, it's raining so hard that you can't see the couple inside, so it's a shot that's no good. In 3D, because you're getting that depth, you can actually make them out in the rain and your eyes are trying to find them. As they're breaking up, there's an emotional shift in your brain, and I cannot wait for filmmakers to play with those ideas and try new things.
A week ago, I talked to Paul Anderson, who's making the new Resident Evil movie in 3D, and he told me that 3D cameras can be really temperamental when it comes to water and heat.
[Already laughing hard]
So then I go to see Step Up 3D, and you have a water dance sequence and hundreds of people in one location, so I can only imagine how hot and humid it was. Did you run into problems?
Oh, we ran into those problems all day long. It was a huge issue for us. For the first two weeks, we were like, "This is not possible. How do we make a movie like this where every day, a camera goes down?" Sometimes all the cameras would go down, and you couldn't shoot! It's not like film where you just slap something on it, screw it in, and as long as light hits the emulsion, you're good. These cameras had software issues. There'd be one guy on a computer talking to another guy in California who was programming something, and I'd have no control.
We just got used to it and decided we wouldn't be scared by it. We said, "All the rules that the adults said we can't do with this camera? We're gonna do it, because we want to discover those for ourselves." That meant beating up these cameras and throwing water at them. You know, the cameras themselves don't even have protection for the water because the lenses are too big, and they haven't invented it yet. So the camera guys are yelling at us to not get water on these lenses, and we're like, "Screw it! Get it wet, we have insurance!" [Laughs]
You were one of the first directors to make a big movie like this in 3D. Have you heard from a lot of other big directors now who are asking you for advice?
Yeah, across the board. It's been a fun journey. When we first decided we would do this in 3D, I went to the DGA and we had this seminar with Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and James Cameron. It was just feature directors, so I'm sitting there next to Steven Soderbergh and Jon Turtletaub and they're all taking notes as these three guys are talking about 3D. It felt like film school, and everyone was on the same level again because no one knew how to use this technology. No one even knew which questions to ask, let alone what the answers were.
So you were raising your hand next to Steven Soderbergh to ask, "Can we throw water at the lens?"
[Laughs] Exactly! Yeah, basically. For the first three minutes of the meeting, I was just looking around at everybody else, not even paying attention. Then I started listening.
Now, let's talk about that long, one-take dance sequence between Adam Sevani and Alyson Stoner, where it goes up and down a city street with all these incidents and obstacles. Was that really one take, or were there invisible cuts I wasn't picking up on?
No, that was one take, two and a half minutes. Coming into the movie, we knew that was something we wanted to do, because we have such talent. Adam was 16 at the time, Alyson was 15 at the time, and they're such amazing dancers that I wanted to do this throwback in 3D on a real New York street, not a backlot, and I didn't want to cut around them because I knew they could pull it off. So I put the challenge to them, and they were down to try it. It was actually the first number that we choreographed and we had the general idea, but our choreographer Jamal Sims really figured out the details of every gag that had to be there. There's no special effects at all, so every time they jumped in that trash bin, it had to explode the right away, every time there was water, it had to spray the right way...
What were the hardest parts of that sequence?
There were two really hard parts. When they do the tap dancing on the trash can lids, those would always fall off their feet, or we'd get to the very end, and Adam would grab for the tree branch [to shake leaves off of it] and miss the branch and that would ruin the whole thing. We knew we had to get it perfect.
That took two and a half minutes on screen, but how long did it take to shoot?
We shot it in one day.
I'm surprised you had it so nailed in one day.
We'd had rehearsals there the day before, which was really nice -- especially to work out all the technical issues with the camera, because some of the 3D cameras are spastic and you never know if they're gonna work or not. That was Take 18 that you saw in the film, and we didn't get that until 6 o'clock at night, when the sun was going down. [Laughs] By 4 o'clock that day, we hadn't gotten even one shot completed yet. It was a scary moment. We knew that if another hour went by and we didn't get it, we might have to get some cutaway shots to sell it, but I really wanted to get it all at once so we could have a discussion like this about how these great dancers can pull that off.
Obviously, you have a passion for dance, as we can see by the fact that you're doing The LXD too. Do you worry, though, about getting pegged as the dance guy?
I mean, I never get concerned about getting pegged as anything because I know I can tell lots of different stories. For some reason, dance speaks to me, and there's something about the language of movement that I've always been fascinated with. I feel like, if I can make movies for the rest of my life -- whatever movies they are -- then I'm incredibly lucky. These dancers are so incredibly talented and I grew up watching Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Michael Jackson, and these guys made me believe in magic. That doesn't really exist anymore, these dance heroes. There should be a Tony Hawk of breaking, there should be a Michael Jordan of popping -- and they're out there, they're all on the internet getting better. I think that's an important idea behind what I do on something like The LXD, and if that's what I do for the rest of my life, then so be it. If I can be as good as Stanley Donen or Jerome Robbins, that would be a great career.
Then when is your LXD star Harry Shum Jr. gonna get you a guest directing gig on Glee? You seem like you'd be an absolute natural for that.
I'm ready! When they call me, I'll be here.