Director/Producer Arthur Anderson

Act One Podcast - Episode 30 - Interview with Director/Producer, Arthur Anderson.

Arthur Anderson began his film career while attending the University of South Carolina. Because of his background in live radio comedy sketches, local advertising agencies hired him to develop comedic radio and television commercials to promote their clients’ products. In his junior year at USC, Arthur opened a successful commercial production company, Riaan Productions, to meet the increasing demand for commercials from the agencies. For two years he served as Producer/Writer/Director of radio and television commercials. After graduating, Arthur sold his interest in the company and began working on feature films in New York. He became a member of the Directors Guild of America, moved to Los Angeles, and worked on numerous television shows and feature films as an Assistant Director.

THE NEW LASSIE tv series was his first venue as a television Writer/Director. In 1996 he joined John Woo as his 1st Assistant Director on FACE/OFF. On MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2, Action Writing was added to his duties. Since then, Arthur has been John Woo’s Co-Producer and Action Writer on WINDTALKERS, THE HOSTAGE and PAYCHECK. In addition, Arthur has also served as a 2nd Unit Director on several of the above films as well as on Woo’s Fox TV Pilot, LOST IN SPACE.

Arthur Co-produced MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 for Paramount Pictures, as well as directed the East Coast 2nd Unit of the film. He also Directed the 2nd Unit on the "Starship Kelvin" in the 2009 feature film, STAR TREK.

More recently, Arthur directed a TV comedy pilot presentation, STUDIO CITY, and has directed numerous episodes of the hit TV series PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. He is currently in pre-production with John Woo on his next film.

Arthur's prayer ministry website is https://www.myprayerwarrior.com.

The Act One Podcast provides insight and inspiration on the business and craft of Hollywood from a Christian perspective.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

God's my agent, you know. I have an regular agent too. I'm an attorney. But uh my real agent's God. So I look at myself as I'm being deployed out in the battlefield of spiritual warfare that's going on around us. So, and you know, some projects come to you, you just know they're not right for you. That's not where he wants you to go. And then when he wants you to go someplace, I always ask him for a sign. Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And he'll give me a sign.

James Duke 0:41

You are listening to the Act One Podcast. I'm your host, James Doobie. Thanks for supporting our podcast. Remember, you can subscribe to it, leave a good review, and share it with your friends and maybe even your enemies. My guest today is director-producer Arthur. Arthur is an accomplished director, producer, and writer in film and television. He began his career working as an assistant director in television on the new Lasty TV series. In 1996, he joined legendary action film director John Wu as his first assistant director on the classic action film Face Off. He's since gone on to AB, second unit direct, produce, and even write on other John Wu films such as Mission Impossible 2, Wind Talkers, The Hostage, and Paycheck. Arthur has also worked with director JJ Abrams as co-producer and second unit directing on Mission Impossible 3, as well as directing some second unit on the 2009 film reboot of Star Trek. More recently, Arthur has directed numerous episodes of the hit TV series Pretty Little Liars. He's currently in pre-production on John Wu's next film. Arthur is one of the kindest people I know in this business, and I think you will really enjoy our conversation. Arthur, welcome to the Act One podcast. It's great to see you.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Hey James, it's good to see you again. It's been a few years.

James Duke 2:02

It's been a while. I think we've both been busy. Um, you've probably been a little bit busier than me with some of the a lot of the projects you've been working on. And that's really what I want to spend uh the bulk of our conversation today is just um just asking you all kinds of questions about um all the different things that you've done. Now, let's start off a little bit with um you're a you're a little bit of a of a um of a Swiss Swiss Army knife of production, and um you you've kind of done it all. You know, your credits range from uh AD work to producer to to director. And so I wonder if we could kind of just start there. Um what got you into production? Like what were was it something you did you always want to make film and television? Is this something that came on later in life? What got you what got you into film and television?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Well, I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, which is a long way from Hollywood, but it is on the same latitude. And oddly enough, at one point they were thinking about creating the film industry over in Charleston. They did quite a number of films there back in the 30s. Um, oddly enough, my dad was uh a child at the time, and they wanted to cast him in one of the parts there, but my grandmother wouldn't let him get in the business, so it took another generation before my family was able to get into Hollywood. Um I was always interested. I so I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, went to the first Baptist church there, went to church school. Um, I was always interested in entertaining people. So when I went to college, I took theater, but I realized there was no route for me to go through there because there were it wasn't a big theater town, wasn't a lot of opportunities. So I went into finance and then, but my sideline was I did stand-up comedy. Um, a guy who roomed next to me worked at a radio station, and he had a nightclub that came to him and said, Hey, you know, uh, we need some good comedy spots. Everybody does all these spots, but they're not getting any attention or traction. So he approached me and says, Hey, would you be interested in doing some comedy commercials? I said, Sure. So we would go into the radio station when it went off air at midnight, and we would do all these comedy spots for the local nightclubs, and then they would let us in for free. And they got to be such a big hit. The local advertising agency says, Hey, who's doing those spots for you? So they asked us to do comedy spots for them. So we started our own production company and we wrote, produced, directed radio commercials, and then were you still?

James Duke 4:30

Did you still have your finance job at the time?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Uh well, I was I was we were still in college, we were sophomores in college.

James Duke 4:35

Wow, so you were in college, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

So we were running this business, and I was taking finance. My uh partner was in journalism, so we were working a lot of long hours, but we were learning the hard way up, and then one of our ad agents says, Hey, you know, Volkswagen's coming out with these new cars, they want us to do this whole new commercial with them. And we'd never done television before, so we call one of our friends at the TV stations. Hey, listen, the ad agency wants us to do this commercial. Uh, we've created some rough storyboards of what we want to do. The uh, you know, we want to bring the car in the studio, and we it's gonna be one long dolly shop from the front. It was Nick's uh the new uh Audi. And so we want to start at the front of the car, we're gonna dolly all the way around the back. We want to intercut the stereo, the wheels, and but we've never done this before, make us look like we're good. So we went to the control room, we set this whole thing up, do the commercial, and uh the commercial's done by the time it's over because we're doing live switching and everything, and we're running the um uh the voiceover underneath it, so it was great. So by the time it was over, commercial's done. And this is like a Friday night, and it's about midnight when we finish, and great. The clients loved it. Uh, they were there with the ad agency. This is great. So they left, and then the stage manager comes over and he hands me the car keys. He says, Here's the keys. I said, Well, what's this for? He says, Uh, the ad agency said you take care of the car. I said, Oh, really? And he says, And the unfortunate thing is all the stage hands are gone. So the big steel plates we need to put down to put off the uh stage uh are gone. So you guys you're gonna have to deal with that and everything. I said, Like my said, No, we're not. I said, Open the stage door. I said, I said, Rick, we shot the wrong commercial. Watch this. So I got in the car, backed it up on the stage, drove it off the stage, like a three-foot drop. Car goes off the ramp, hits the ground, slide sideways. I said, See, that's a commercial we should have shot. Um, so so we were, you know, listen, we were young and crazy the whole sport, and we had no you were you you were directing action back back in college.

James Duke 6:36

You were already doing action sequences before we knew what we were doing.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Uh, so here's the other crazy there was no film equipment around then, right? So they said, Hey, we'd like to do some more. We we we got this big account for uh to do commercials for uh the uh the state of South Carolina promoting the cities, and one of them we wanted people driving cars. There were no camera cars and tow rigs. So I showed my dad some pictures out of a grip book with reflectors, and I said, Hey, can you build me a couple of these that'll fit in the back of our pickup truck? I'll put the gate down, I'll get a tow rig from U-Haul. We'll hook this car up, and then I'll I'll let I'll let some of the air out of the tires of the car to make it more spongy. We'll find a new paved road and we'll get the light behind us so they'll hit the reflectors. She had to get several hundred foot candles inside the car because it's 16 millimeter film, right? So we're driving in and I'm I'm telling the people in the car. We're shooting at the back drive. Look happy, they're about to melt. The lights just direct. Wow, my makeup's melting. Good. Look happy about it. So we had to invent a lot of things, you know. And then we put generators, mobile generators in the back of the pickup truck so we could run some lights, and um so we we saw all the Hollywood equipment, what they were using in Hollywood, there's not available, so we had to create our own. So um, so our company was doing really well, and then my my senior year, my partner got killed in an auto accident right before Christmas. Yeah, I mean, it was it was it was terrible, and um so after that, I still had the company, and uh yeah, I had to make a decision to make because it it was too much work for me to do my by myself, yeah. So I sat in my studio one day and I just prayed and I said, Lord, listen, you know, I know I haven't been talking to you that much, but this is the time I need some help and some direction on where I'm gonna go. And um, I'm it was like two days later, my mother called me and said, Hey, there's a film coming uh to her hometown here. And I know you've always wanted to get in the film, but you know, uh I don't know if there's anything you do, but I wrote down the phone number, they were advertising for her assistant. So I called a woman up, she was in um Atlanta, and I told her you know what I'd done. She said, What you're way all over qualified. I just need a casting assistance. I said listen, I just want to get on the ground. I'll do whatever you want. So I had a giant casting call in Charleston, all these people showed up, and we took pictures and and then the uh just back up a little bit. Prior to this, when I was going through this decision-making phase, like the weekend before that, I told my dad we had a farm about 40 miles outside of town, and we go out there and we we work on the weekends to raise your own vegetables and stuff. And I was plowing one day, and I and uh this was before I met my partner. We started our company, just to back up a little backstory, and I've been praying, and it you know, when God talks to you, it's not always an audible voice, just a feeling inside of it. So, this feeling came over, says, you know, you need to go to Hollywood and make films. And I said, That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Well, while you're while you're plowing while I'm plowing, I stopped. Wow, and the great thing about deep plowing is all the birds in the neighborhood know about it, so they come to like 30 birds behind me, and they're not paying attention to plant, they're eating all the bugs coming up.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

And I stopped the tractor and I hear all the birds.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

But I heard this, I stopped. I said, That's the craziest thing I've I've thought about. So I went to my dad, who's a great man of faith. I said, Hey, listen, this is kind of what I heard. He says, Listen, you have no money to go to Hollywood, you don't have any connections. He said, Listen, if that's God's plan for you, He's gonna make it work, you don't have to worry about it. I said, I forgot about so. Meanwhile, we go through college, we start doing this commercial thing, this thing pops up for film. And the first day of photography was right out in front of the church I went to for 12 years, went to went to school through. So I had no money, I had no contacts to get there, but God brought Hollywood to my church. I mean, and that wasn't the first day I'm holding extras in the cafeteria where I spent my whole school life going to. Wow. Um, and I worked with a couple of great uh assistant directors there. And uh the second week of filming, they both got the flu and they said, Who can run a film set? I raised my hand and said, I have a little experience, and so uh that my second week in the business, I was running a film set. Are you kidding me? It was that's what happened, and it happened to be a comedy scene where people were running in outside a door, so it was a it was a comedy sequence. So I was uh it was right in my forte.

James Duke 10:59

Do you remember what the film was?

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah, it was um the double McGuffin, uh Joe Camp was directing, and um and so the assistant director off of that, Terry Donnelly, uh called me for a film. He he got called to take over in New York, which is the Brinks job with uh Billy Friedkin. And um uh and so went up there, took over he was taking over the film. We were prep we you it was already shooting, so we were shooting. It was a really tough film, too.

James Duke 11:30

So so clearly, so clearly you obviously showed him something that he thought this guy what do you think that was like looking like looking back now with all the experience you had, what do you think he saw in you that he thought this guy, I'm gonna take this guy with me. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna show him the ropes. What what is it? Because you know, we got a lot of people here listening who who want to get into the business. What do you think when you were that green um at the time, what what do you think that what do you think is some things that they identified as as uh potential?

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I always look for something that was going wrong and tried to be there to fix it. And then I would always stay close to the assistant directors, I would see what was going on, I see what wasn't working, and I'd always try to be the gap filler. Or if something was going wrong, I said, Can I go over and help in that? So I was always there, I was always available, and I was really willing to learn and I wanted to learn, and I knew these guys were really top-notch. And um, uh, so I was just a sponge and I was absorbing everything. And I ended up um it we were traveling all over the place. So the second ad really had to take the the first AD was he was first in in production managing, which is really hard when you're moving around. So what happened was the second AD really took over the production manager job. I took over his job, and then I was setting the background call sheets, all so my first picture, I was doing everything a normal union uh second AD would do. Wow. So I got thrown right into the lion stand and you know, I just stepped up and made myself available and and try to be as helpful as I can. And that's really I mean, that's 50% of it's showing up on time, and then the other 50% is being present in the moment, seeing what's going on, and seeing how you can contribute and how your talents can help out for that, right?

James Duke 13:19

I uh is it you know, hearing your story talking about just in terms of just your ingenuity, you know, as a college student, you and your friend, and kind of what you guys were doing and starting your own company, and and then hearing the way you described the way you kind of acted on set. It sounds like what you're describing is um obviously not only what I mentioned before, like to have this kind of level of ingenuity. Um, but there's also it seemed like there's this there's this level of of uh what really works on a film set is the ability to problem solve. Like it's like it's it's it's all about you know, and and if you can anticipate, right? Like if you can anticipate even better. But your your willingness to try anything, do anything, just kind of get your hands dirty, that's a that that's that's a that's pretty underrated, but really that's that's key, right? When you said yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

And a lot of times in my career, I'd get called into shows that were a mess, and uh and I'd be a fireman, I would come in and put the fire out, you know, because operationally they had been set up incorrectly or personalities clashed, there was a big problem. So I would go in and say, and they would ask me, they'd fire somebody off a show, they'd bring me in and say, What's the problem? And I'd say, Well, look how many scenes are on this call sheet. I mean, there's there's 13, 14 scenes, there's not enough hours in the day to get this done in 12 hours, so you're overriding. I said, uh uh, I would look at the episode and I'd look at how many days they had and how much page count. And I said, You'll never get all this page count done. There's too many scenes, there's too many sets, and you know, uh, you'll never get all this done. So it's been set up uh improperly. So and here and here's how you fix it, and that's where knowing how to write comes in because when you go in, you know, how can you tell a story with the least amount of scenes, the least amount of setups and get it done on schedule on a budget, right?

James Duke 15:22

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

So uh, and it's the same thing on movies, it's the same thing, you know. I've directed short films, I've defect directed um uh streaming videos, everything. It you're given a budget box, and you can pretty much do anything you want to as long as you stay inside the budget box. So it's knowing what tools you have, what person that personalities and personnel you have, and what their level of competence is. And if one of those people you're coming on the show and they're not competent, you have to figure out a way to work around them, but still get the job done uh without getting aggrieved union-wise.

James Duke 15:58

Um, and and Arthur, you know how many people I work with, young emerging filmmakers, who want to complain and say, Oh, well, if I only had a hundred thousand dollars, or if I only had what you know, whatever amount of money I could make what I want to make. And I just every time I hear that, I think, well, you're probably not gonna make it in this business because the whole point is take what you have and be excellent at it and just execute at a high level, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

That's it. That's it. Well, I'll just say the other thing being a man of faith has played a big role in this because back in my early career, I wasn't close to God at all. I mean, I knew him, I had a relationship, I'd pray, but you know, uh, I just wasn't that close. But things happen in your life, tragedies and things, and he guides you into a place where he wants to have a conversation with you, you know. You can either choose to have that conversation or not. And uh, so I got thrown right into the deep end of the pool doing a lot of big movies. Uh uh, Billy Friedkin, Paul Mazurski, uh Jim Bridges. I work with really great assistant directors, really great producers, and I learned from them, you know. So I took on uh and some of the films I did were really bad, but sometimes you learn more from a working in a bad film you do in a good film because you don't realize how competent and great people are who are good at their jobs until somebody is not competent and great, and all the wheels are coming off the wagon, you know.

James Duke 17:18

And when they and when you were doing this, were you were uh functioning as a second or a third or a UPM? What were you fighting?

SPEAKER_01 17:25

I I started off as a production assistant, and what my forte was was directing large background on movies, so got it, did the Brinks job, William Phil, Urban Cowboy just directed all the background as a PA, and that's how I came out to LA. Was they had they had some additional photography they couldn't finish there, so I came out to uh to LA on that. Then I got my days in and got in uh the guild as a uh second assistant director, worked through that, got my days in there, uh became a first on TV shows, and then um in I think it was 1993, uh did Beverly Hills Cop three as my first feature with uh John Landis, and then in '96, I hooked up with John Wu on um uh Face Off. And I've been with him for the last uh 26 years, and first starting first starting out as assistant director, and then I became uh uncredited writer on his films because we would take a film and we would break it apart because action was an unseen actor in the film. So we take the scripts like Michelle.

James Duke 18:26

I'm sorry, what is that? What can you break that down for us? Action is an unseen actor, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 18:31

An unseen actor, the uh one of the unseen characters in the film, because you can use action to do a couple of different things, you can use it to advance the plot, right? You can use the action to create a barrier for an actor so that it stops them and they have to analyze their personality or what they're doing that's that's that they've tried working before and now it's not working. Uh, you can use it as a reversal where they have to change their attitudes and actions, they have to go through, you can use it to help their character art, right? So they start out one way and they have uh they have an Achilles heel, they have there's a character flow in their personality. Maybe they don't trust people, they can't love, they're full of anger. And through the course of events of the movie, something has to cause them to change, right? An antagonist, a co-protagonist causes them to change. And what we would do during the films that we we would use the action to propel a plot or to affect the character, right? To test him, to put him through the crucible. Okay, everything you've done before didn't work. What are you gonna do now? Right. And change that arc to change the character by the end of the film. So um we would take the script, we would tear it apart. Uh, if it was an action film like Mission Impossible 2, we had car chases, we would take out toy cars, we would put them on a desk. Okay, and John would always say, I want to do action that's never been seen before. So you'd rent every car movie, crash, fringe connection. You know, every uh fast and fury, any anything that been out there, you would look and see what had been done, and then you'd try to come up with something that hadn't been done. You sit down with the stunt coordinator and the second unit director, and we'd sit out the table and say, Okay, we did this. There's okay, what does this mean to the character? What would his character do? How would he do this? And then we'd figure that out. Uh, we'd send out storyboard artists, we'd storyboard it, then we go find the locations, and then uh and then sometimes things would change when we're out scouting. I remember on Mission Impossible 2. There's the big fight at the end between Tom Cruise and Du Gray Scott, right? And John says, Oh, I want to do something with motorcycles, never been done before. He says, What I want to do is take these two motorcycles, I want them to charge at each other. I mean, I I say like two nights. Okay, he's he says, Yeah. Then I want them to raise the motorcycles up, jump off the motorcycles, hit midair, and then go to the ground. And I started laughing. I said, Okay, that's that's really funny, John. That's good. So we let's go look over here at this cliff. We go to cliff and and Brian Smurs, the uh stun course says, You know, I think he really wants to do that. I said, No, I again I said, Let me ask John. You were kidding, right? Motorcycles, guys hitting the guy. He says, No, I said, John, the physics of that is if they went off the motorcycles, they hit each other in the air, it would kill them. The g force would be too much, just too much, it would kill each other. The movie's over early. He puts his hand on his shoulders, says, Ah, silly boys, just a movie, they'll buy it. So we had to with stunts and and uh uh and the effects department had to come up with this rig that would these two motorcycles looked like they were going each other, they would rise up on their back wheel, and so there's two cranes on either side with a big wire going across, and then there was a cable that had to lift the actors up off the motorcycles, and then there were two wires attached to their back that went to either side of the crate with the cinder rig so it would stop them and they would literally be six inches apart. Oh my god, so we're not gonna do that with the actors. I said, We're gonna do this with the stunt doubles, and then and then they fall off, and they will pick it up. The actors, and and of course, uh Dugray Scott was fine with that. But Tom says, No, I'm I'm riding this thing.

James Duke 22:14

I said, Are you kidding me? I thought says, throw me, throw me.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

I said, Tom, listen, we hire the best guys in the world, we have the best cable, we have the best equipment. But I said, The worst thing you'll ever want to hear when you come off that motorcycle is doink. He says, What's doink? I said, That's when the cable under the cinder rig pops, you smash into the stunt double, and both of you're dead. And he went, I'm willing to take the risk. I said, Oh my gosh, um, so we call a studio. Well, there's what I'll do. Oh, Tom wants to do it. Well, okay, great. So he so Tom did all that stuff. He did, you know, wow, he did 98 probably of all his own stunts.

James Duke 22:55

That's got to be the most terrifying day of jealous, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Jealous this gray hair I've got.

James Duke 23:01

That's from Tom Cruise doing his own stunts.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

I did Mission Impossible 2 and Mission Impossible 3 when that's all the gray hair worrying about is safety. But listen, I I'll tell you what, he's he's in the best shape of any actor I've ever worked with. I remember when I first met him on Mission Impossible 2. I said he and he told me, you know, I want to do a lot of my own stunts. I said, Well, what kind of condition are you in? And so he was standing on the sidewalk, and I was standing in the parking lot, and he jumped off the sidewalk and did a full forward flip and landed in front of me. I said, Okay, you're in good shape. But I he's he's a hard worker. I mean, I'll tell you one more quick story Mission Impossible three. We were in Shitong, uh, China. It's a like a 1700-year-old village in a restaurant there. But the menu is 700 years old. I said, How can you change it? Oh, every couple of hundred years we change it. And so there was a sequence where Tom jumps out of the uh the top of this building, he runs it and he's running full tilt uh down by this canal. And so uh the only way we could do this when uh um JJ hadn't had an opportunity. We had totally re JJ had rewritten the third act of Mission Impossible three. And I had nothing to do with writing on that, only on John's. JJ and his guys uh uh had done a great job on that. But um Vic Armstrong, who's a second unit director, and I had to go pre-scout this stuff because JJ didn't have time, we just didn't have time to do that. So we were looking at this, and I said, Wow, that's I said, Vic, how does he come out of this window and he runs down the sidewalk full down? I said, We're gonna need like you know, some kind of uh uh I said the helicopters won't do this, but we need something like the space cam or something. He says, Yeah, if we put two towers, it's like an eight we put two towers on the end of this and we rigged uh uh a cable rig up, we can put the space cam on it. We can come up, bring them out the window, follow down. I said, Wow, that's really gonna be expensive. I said a hundred hundred thousand dollars. At least it's yeah, he says, You're the producer, you have to make the call. So I had to call. We got this great idea, and and they they bought off on it, and and it and it worked. And Tom did it, and I'll never forget because he had to set this computer to run the camera along from, and he was running at 16.9 miles per hour. I mean, he's he is so fast, it's not yeah, wow. So that's part of that's part of the the problem solving and and things you you you do, and and and you know, when the director's not there and you're having to make decisions for him, and what I would do is I get the video camera, I would shoot everything where all the sequences would be, and then I gave JJ a map of the DVD that he could go through the sequence the whole way through. I and I've never done this with any uh picture other than a pile out I'll tell you about later at the line, but but the director wasn't there, he had to show up on the day and shoot it. And J D did an awesome job. I mean, the sequence came out great, and we we finished a day under schedule, which on a picture like that is just wow, but he and it was his JJ's first feature film.

James Duke 26:01

That was that was that was his first big studio film, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Yeah, and I'd work, I I'd work with a bunch of people who'd work with him on a TV show, and uh and I knew he could do it, and he did it. And he's just I mean, you know, his career's just taking off features from them, but he was a great guy to work with.

James Duke 26:15

Uh that's awesome. Is that is that what is that what is that what you love? Like considering all the and I want to get into all the the details of all the different kinds of hats you've worn, but but truth be told, is that your favorite part of movie making is seeing a sequence where John Wu says to you, I want to throw two people on motorcycles into each other, or I need or I or I need our star to to bust out of a window and run down a canal. Like, is it kind of coming up and designing those sequences, working with the the stunt men and the uh you know, is it truth be told, is that your favorite part of movie making?

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah, you know, uh it is uh the way a movie should be made, it should be 90% pre-production, where you've gone through, you've gone through the sequences, you've gone through the story, you've done the storyboards, you figured out how many days it's going to take you to shoot this sequence. Um, you've sat down with the actors, you've gone through, answer any of their questions early on. And that's what I like, you know. You sit down, you do the table read, and then you make them stay after say, okay, listen, if you've got any problems with the script, now's the time to bring them out because once we start shooting, there's no time to sit around and be talking about it because we've only got 165 million dollars, we've got 100 days, and it's we've got to go hard. Um, but then there's always things that come the great thing about it is that 10% improvisation on the set is when you get there and you realize that that something you had plot, planned, and schemed uh and rehearsed doesn't necessarily work, and you have to come up uh with a solution to that. That that is really the kind of the exciting process, or early on when the director says I want to crash two motorcycles into each other, is you really have to, you know, sometimes you're so far on the outside of the envelope, your feet are barely touching the glue. That that is the exciting part, and that's also the terrifying part. Um, but that's a great thing about motion picture. A script is a blueprint, it's like the architectural design. And you have to look at that's your blueprint, that that's your blank canvas as a director. Then your uh your colors are your actors, and your paint brushes are your crew. So, and the problem is your canvas is constantly moving, so you're painting on a moving canvas, but that's the exciting part of it is that no days the same, and that's the terrifying part. No two days are the same. So, um sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, that's I just I've been fortunate where uh I've worked on probably every type of medium in live performance, film, and and television, a lot of different, a lot of different capacities, and um and it gives you a lot of joy at the end of the day when you go home and you know you've done something, and particularly when you work on a a film that you know people are gonna go sit two hours in the dark, and it has a chance of maybe changing their lives, you know. You take them out of their circumstances, their normal day habits and stuff. You have them suspend reality for a little while, and you uh you give them some encouragement and and some hope, you know.

James Duke 29:22

Absolutely. Um, let's talk a little nuts and bolts a little bit. Uh the difference between um AD or running the set television versus film. What are what are some of the big or some what are some of the big differences?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Um television in these days and times, usually you're getting the script very late on episodic television. When I first started out in the business, uh, you know, whether it's six or twelve episodes or you know, twenty four, most of the episodes are already written. Yeah, so you're in great shape. You'd have a chance to sit down with the director, go through and the producers and go through and analyze what you're doing, and what's the most efficient way to tell a story? Um in later years, you're you're lucky to get the script by the first day of prep in a lot of shows, and so you're going off kind of an outline and you're looking for locations, and then you get the script, and you break it down, and the script is too big to shoot. So then part of my background, which has been great, having been a writer and I've written on uh written on half hour uh television back in the early uh early 90s, is uh analyzing the script and say, okay, how can we condense this story uh so that we can get enough of it done to tell a story in an imaginative and interesting way, but yet get it done within seven or or eight days, whatever your your schedule was. And then you would sit down, you would go through, make recommend, talk to the director, bring the writer in. Here's the changes we need to make to do that. And either they do it or or they don't, and you say, Okay, well, this is gonna be a 14-hour day, and the producers have to sign off on that, right? So, as a having written a lot, uh it was always helpful to me to be able to sit down and converse, be able to converse with the writers, try to get and and you know, as a directing television, it's the same thing. I would always bring the writer of the episode in. Usually it would it would take me 18 hours to go through and shot list an hour episode. Really interesting. Because I took my time, you know, on the right side of the page would be the the script, and on the left side would be my piece of paper where I'd be shot listing whatever. And then I would sit down with a writer um before we went to the floor, and I would flip through with them. Okay, here's what I'm seeing visually for this scene, what's happening with the actors, and I would go through and and the great thing was that oh no, my intent was this. I said, Well, you didn't write that, so let's fix that. So we'd sit down and try to fix all that before we get to the floor because a lot of times, if you get there, listen, the actors are jammed up, they're working five days a week, they're learning eight, nine pages of dialogue and multiple scenes, they're shooting in the rain and stuff. So it's it's tough on them, too. So the more the more you can get to find before you go into the set, and you know, and everybody's always happier if they go there and they know listen, we're gonna work really hard here for 10 hours or 12 hours, but we're gonna get done to maybe 10 because you're organized, you know what you're doing. Everybody's anxious and they're motivated to work hard, right? They're they're gonna give you their best. And so, as an assistant director on television episodes, it was usually my job to bring my episodes in way under budget because we were getting near the end where they they needed more money for the ending, so I knew how to do all the tricks and I could come in, you know, way under budget, make budget for the people shooting the ending. Um, so I had a unique uh uh set of skills that I was able to use on that, and that got me directing assignments like late 90s on the Lassie TV series as an assistant director. They were going over budget, and um uh Bob Weatherwax says, Hey, back in the old days in the black and whites, we used to do uh three-day episodes where it was all about the dog. I said, Well, let's sit down and do that. So we sat down and we we uh came up with the story, pitched it. They said, and and I said, We can do it in three days. I said, No, kidding.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

So we did that.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

The camera directed that episode. They said, Well, well, do you would you want to do one of the same? I said, The same. Okay, so we did that, we wrote another one, and um uh and I shot that one in in three days. And what I did, there's so many shots because the dog doesn't speak, right? So the dog has to see the so I took three by five index cards and I indexed every shot in the sequence so I so I could lay them out, and then I could okay, dogs looking there, the other, and then uh you would block shoot a lot of that stuff. Okay, have Lassie look to the right, have Lassie look to the left, okay. Have lassie backup, look concerned, you know. So every place you would go, you would do that. So when you get in the editing room, if you found yourself in the gym, uh all right, there's a shot near Lassie looking right to left. Look, look at that. Oh, oh, now you've seen the action going. Okay, so you always had ways to get around it, but busy three days, like 58 setups a day. I mean, and it's sing at a single camera with no video monitors, so so when you're doing those, you were really busy. But that taught me a lot about action films. So later when I was working with John Woo and stuff, I do use the same techniques for that.

James Duke 34:21

Um, before I I want to I and I want to spend some time talking about that in particular, but before I do, could you could you lay out for our audience um uh the the different uh responsibilities that say a first ad has versus a second unit director? Um what um who's doing what? How's the communication flow and um and uh you know how how does that work uh typically on on some of these big budget films?

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Okay, uh a good example is face off. It was a uh I don't know if you remember too much about the movie, there's a giant boat chase at the end of the movie.

James Duke 35:03

Oh, yeah, I remember that boat chase. Come on, I'm I'm I'm a I'm a product of the 80s and 90s. I remember that well.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

So the studio was really nervous about this big sequence. So John had storyboarded it out, he's really good about that. So I took it, I broke out all of storyboards, and I said, uh, and Barry Osborne was the producer on it, and Barry came up with the idea. He said, This big sequence. Uh, suppose we shoot the boat chase in the beginning, second unit. I said, I think it's a great idea because then he can cut a buzzer reel out of it and help promote the film. So I broke all that out, broke all the second unit action out, broke all the first unit action out, so that then um Billy Burton was the second unit director. He took he took that out and then he shot that sequence. And John was able to go out every night and work with him on that sequence. We so we shot that all in prep before we started shooting, so that then at the end of the movie, I took all the the inserts we needed of the actors of Nicolas Cage and and John Travolta. And at the end, at the end of the shooting, we spent three days out in LA Harbor with two units going on. One would be with John Travolta doing all his close-ups with Nicolas Cage's stunt bubble, and on another unit would be Nicolas Cage with John Travolta's stunt bubble, and then the last day was doing all the sequences where we needed them together, right? So we shot all those close-ups in three days, and then in editorial, they cut all that together. But meanwhile, before the film started, they cut together that whole sequence, and the studio was super excited because it was a great sequence. They can now they can understand a vision of how the movie was gonna go, and they had something they could start prepping for and sales with and stuff like that. Um, so normally what happened is that the first AD will break down uh the story take the script, break the script down, break the storyboards down. He'll delineate, take the storyboards and break them into all right, here's the action that can be shot second unit. So the second unit director is gonna be involved at that. He's gonna work with the with the first unit director, first unit director.

James Duke 37:07

How do you define how does the first AD define what's second unit action?

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Second unit will be any action you can do that doesn't involve the principal actors, okay. Or if they do, it's on a very minimal basis. So the first unit director could jump over at some point and do that. So any part of the sequence of car chases, you can do the cars banging into each other, uh chasing each other around curves, they blow up, cannon rolls happen, things like that. Then you designate that as second unit. So the second unit director would work with the first unit, the first unit director would tell him what he's envisioning in that, right? And then uh the first unit then is all the action is all the action activity that goes on with the main cast, right? So sometimes they overlap a little bit, like on Mission Impossible three, uh, the whole sequence where all the cars blow up on the bridge. I don't know if you remember that. Uh, we shot that in the Pacific County.

James Duke 38:04

The helicopter with the helicopter shooting the shooting the rockets and blowing them all up.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

That's yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so that whole sequence was it was it was complex because I was uh Vic Armstrong was the second unit director, and I was the auxiliary second unit director. So I went to the east coast and directed all the second unit with the cars coming onto the bridge and setting the whole thing up in Norfolk, Virginia. Vic was back at Pacific Palisades on top of this mountain that we had green screen that would pop up because I was shooting the plates and everything for that that would pop up and he he did all the cars, wrecks, explosions, and all that. Wow, and JJ came in right behind him with the actors and overlapped then some of that action with Tom running up, shooting the helicopter explosions going off and all that. So that worked really well because we had three units going on, but there were that was the only way to get all that action done because the movie had to be done by Christmas because it had a May release, right? Wow, wow. So uh it was really complicated. We were shooting in three different countries, we were in Italy, Germany, China, um, all over the place. But we had, I mean, we had a great team of people, and we we had the most fun, okay. Great stunt guys, and it was just a blast doing it.

James Duke 39:17

So when you um so for in let's take take, for instance, that sequence or any sequence or the face-off sequence. Um, the first unit director, the direct John Wu or JJ Abrams or whoever, um, are they are they are they they're they're talking to the second unit director in terms of what they need and what they want, yes, but are they then leaving it up to you, the AD, and then even the second year to actually design the shots? Or are they actually telling them, no, uh are they are they designing the shots also?

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Like, yeah, like okay, like in face off, it was storyboards, and uh John would talk to Billy and tell him how he uh Billy's had worked with John before. She's familiar with the shooting style, right? Got it, yeah. So as a second year director. What you really have to do is understand your director's shooting style and his method of shooting because you want it to be seamless when you go from the action into the actors blending into it. So uh Billy had worked with him a lot. Um, and then in Mission Impossible Three with Vic Armstrong, um, JJ had pre-vised all his action scenes, which really makes it great because he could understand the narrative, the entire story, and what happened. So JJ pre-vised those, and then what I did um uh I was co-producing that. Uh I wasn't the AD on that, but what I would do is I would take those storyboards because they were we were kind of behind because they rewritten the third act, they were shooting. So I would take those pre-vises and we do freeze frames out of those to make up a booklet, but you always had to pre-vis, but the booklet then would become the shots that were going to go to um second unit, the shots that were going to go to first unit, and then there was a visual effects component too. A lot of plates that had to be shot in China. So it was a visual effects unit that was going over and shooting all these plates because the top of the bank of China, we didn't go there for that. We shot those with the visual effects window units and shot those. There was one shot that comes down from the skylight, comes down to the building, then it merges into a shot that comes right up to the top of the building. And the top of the building we built at universal, so those had to be blended together. So it was a complex film, also because there was a lot of visual effects and many units around the world going on. And I had this big calendar up on who was what were doing it, when, how, and so it was it was uh it was kind of like a Rubik's Cube.

James Duke 41:35

You you you just mentioned something there of visual effects. Now, obviously, you started in the business when visual effects were were were either never used or hardly ever used to now you're making films with John Woo and other people, and visual effects are used all the time, right? Yeah, and I'm just curious for you, what has that transition been like? Has it been frustrating or has it actually been life-giving? Like, do you do you what what is the process for you now living in the world more of where there's more visual effects? Do you feel like you have more tools at your disposal, or is it yeah, I'm just curious about your thoughts about that?

SPEAKER_01 42:11

Well, I prefer a combination of live action and visual effects. I I think that some of the visual effects have gone so over the top. Listen, there's one thing about suspending reality, and there's the the other part about going so far with it as you go, that would never you could never do that, you know what I mean? And then some of these action films, I mean they go so way over the top. You go, but hey, listen, that's the medium. You you push it as far as it'll go, but I'm a I'm a firm believer in trying to combine uh physical action and using the uh visual effects to complement that, you know.

James Duke 42:47

The the the film that the film the film that broke broke it, you know, broke all that for me was uh Die Another Day, the James Bond film. Oh my gosh. Which up until then, if I remember correctly, I'm a big James Bond fan. Um you know, they the one of the things that they took pride in with the James Bond films was that they all they all almost everything was all practical.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Yes.

James Duke 43:11

And if I remember correctly, I think it die another day was the first time that they did visual and it was uh using and it and it the shot of him um surfing on the water with the wind uh surf thing, whatever was so out of character for a James Bond film. It it wasn't even very well done. Like that was the first time you were like, Okay, this isn't this is broken. This is this visual, this is this is not serving the story.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

The problem is is when you go over the top like that, you take the people out of the story and back into the theater and they go, What? Yes, you don't ever want to step back in the theater and go, What you want them after they leave the movie to go, Wow, that was awesome!

James Duke 43:53

Yes, yes, yes. Suddenly realize like I remember watching the first season of The Mandalorian, and it dawning upon me afterwards that it was all it was all a set, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:05

And that was all giant green screen set, yeah.

James Duke 44:08

And I was like, Okay, that's impressive. Like you got me on that one, you know.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

Yeah, but see, it did it you you bought into it because visually it looked right, right? It didn't take you out of the story, you bought the environment that the characters were working in, right?

James Duke 44:21

Yeah, by the way, have you shot anything with this new technology? Is it called Real Engine or whatever? Have you got anything with it?

SPEAKER_01 44:26

No, I haven't.

James Duke 44:27

Yeah, it's a whole it's a whole other thing. It's uh for production design, it's a whole other thing. Um let's talk, let's I'd love to talk about your relationship with John Wu. I mean, he is a one, he's just he's a legendary film director and he's made some amazing films over the years. And um, I believe you said earlier that you first got connected with him on FaceOff. What uh and now you said you've been working with him for you know 20 something years. And so um tell us a little bit about that relationship. You how did you guys connect and what is it about uh you guys' relationship that you've continued to work together? Just just uh love to know a little bit more about your relationship with John Woo.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Yeah, uh well, the producer on that was uh Barry Osbourne, and the production manager was Marty Ewing. And that the two of them thought I'd be a good fit for him uh for this picture. So I came in, I I interviewed with him, I told him my philosophy of filmmaking, how I enjoyed his films, um, particularly his you know, his Hong Kong films like bullet in the head. And I mean, it was some great, you know, established that kind of action. And um, we chatted for a little while, and um, and after I left, I said, I don't think I'm gonna get this job. Just you know, he didn't talk a lot, and then Barry called me up, says, Hey, you got the job. I said, Wow, great. Uh, so uh, you know, we started working on that film. We talked about his methodology, how he storyboarded everything, and I'll never forget that our first day of shooting, we were in the bedroom with um uh it was John Travolta and Joan uh Archer, I think. And uh, and John we're and you know, they had swapped characters at this point, and John was making these big camera moves going back and forth around the bed and doing all this. And I said, I said, John, how you know people have to have dramatic to see this scene if you're gonna use the way you're shooting all this. He says, Oh, silly boy. No, I'm only gonna use two seconds here and you'll see. That's a couple of days later, he invited me up in the editing room and showed me. I said, Oh, I get it. He says, He says, Yeah, he says, the one thing that we're remembering, my camera moves the audience through the film. I said, Okay, and then I got it, right? And he's just a great guy. I mean, listen, we've been all over the world together. Uh, we were in Australia for like 11 months on Mission Impossible 2. Um, uh, we were in Hawaii, we did wind targets. We had to recreate the invasion of Saipan, which is a freaking monumental job. I mean, just so everybody, we you know, we had 100 and 300 crew members, there were 65 40-foot trucks. We had uh 500 Marines, 250 Japanese there. We had 300 bombs going off in the first shot. It was a two and a half mile-long helicopter shot with 14 other cameras on the ground. So I said, Well, we're never gonna be able to sure where they are. So we had them build this model that was 30 feet long and 15 feet wide, and then had a little stick with a helicopter on it, and just so everybody would know where everybody was when this was going off. And I could talk through the positions and where the guys, the bombs are going off. Here's where the helicopter is going to be tracking. Uh, if anything goes, the radio communications channels, the uh uh camera crews on on their channel, everybody's on their different channels. We had a one channel we'd all collide in together on, and I'll never forget that that first shot, it took us three weeks to set it up. Uh, we're ready to go. I'm up on top of this giant hill. There's monitors with with John and the people in the studio there, and I got these big zeiss uh naval binoculars, so I can see the whole battlefield, right? And it took two hours to do the safety meetings. I had three zones, I'd have to take this truck with big speakers, just do the safety meetings. So finally we get up there, get ready to go. All right, had 40 effects guys setting off bombs. I said, All right, here we go, guys. All right, get ready to roll the cameras, and all of a sudden I see this shadow just come down and come across the valley. And I said, Whoa! And I hear these footsteps behind me, and I can recognize Jeffrey Kimball by the way he walks. He's a DP. He says, Arthur. I said, Yes, Jeffrey says, How long would it take to reset this battlefield? I said, Well, probably take a week, Jeffrey said, Well, you can shoot this, but it won't make a pretty picture. I go, Oh my, we're spending a million dollars a day, right? Oh my god. So uh and I see the just a little tip of the mountain, the sun had hit, right? It was like 2 p.m. And so I go over the studio execs and I said, We can't shoot because the battlefield's dark, we won't be able to see anything. They said, Oh well, if that's the way it is, you have to. So next morning we get up, we get everybody ready, we get out the safety meetings, everything we're going, huh? And I see the sun, it's heading towards that same peak. And it literally, we've got like 15 minutes to get this shot up. All right, roll the cameras, get everything going. Here we go, start the helicopter. We did it. The shot went like two minutes long, bombs going off. Everybody's all at the helicopters come along the top of the ridge. And the effects guys got a little excited and they started setting the bombs off too quick, and they were getting close to the helicopter. And the pilot calls me and says, They're getting too close to the bombs. I said, Nobody can hear me fly faster. So he just had to fly faster around the arc. It was so noisy, there were so many bombs going off. Once it started, it was you know, we had a flag system we could put at red flags, but it's been way too late at that point. So uh I said, use your own discretion, bail out, do whatever it is, fly faster, just get out of there. So we did it, and it and it came off great. But that's you know, that's one of those things that you you can't anticipate until something like that happens, and then you have to scramble and and and you know, uh, I thought it might be my last day producing on the show, you know.

James Duke 50:03

That so when you when you and just real quick, uh just to I don't want to focus on this just for a second, get back to John Woo. That designing a sequence like that, like when you read the script and you read that in the script.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

Uh has you reached the point where your mind immediately can tell me days and and dollars in terms of how much no, not not till I see what John's vision of it is, because then what we would do is when we once we get that script, we'd sit down with uh with uh Brian Smurs, who was a stunt coordinator, and then he ended up being the second unit director on that film, which then launched him. He's a giant second, he does all the giant films now. Uh second unit direct, he's an excellent uh second unit director, and he's for he's uh directors on first unit uh uh films also. Um, we'd sit down with the toy soldiers, break out all the toy soldiers, okay. Here's the invasion. So everything you used to do at five years old, you're doing on a tabletop, just getting paid better for it. Um so we do this, and then we'd look at camera angles, okay, and we have the storyboard artists, okay. From this angle, we'll see the guys come up here, and we would develop the storyboards for that, and then we would break that down into what would be the second unit that Brian would do. Uh, what we we we tried to do all that without a second unit, but there were times that we found out it was just too much to do. We had we'd send Brian off, he'd be blowing up stuff early in the day, we'd be off another area, and then both the first and second unit would come together at the end of the day to do like the assault on a machine gun nest and blowing stuff up with the required, you know, 12 cameras and stuff like that. Uh, so it's a massive, it's a map, that's where all that happens in prep, you know, and that's where you need a lot of prep time to get all that done. Um, when you're doing big stunts, you want to have time uh before you start shooting to prep those to design them to make sure that they work out. And sometimes when you don't have that time, then you get together with Saturday on the stunt men with the stunt man and you go through it, and then we'd shoot video of it, edit it together to make sure that uh the continuity of it worked. So it's it's it's a massive undertaking, but most of that you want to try to have happen and prep because that's a cheap money to compare when you've got 150 people standing around going, Wow, how are we gonna do this? That's not that's not that's not something you want to hear, and it gives everybody a feeling of confidence too that everybody knows what's going on, what's expected of all the departments, because the worst thing you can be have on a film set is everybody not knowing what's going on, you know. Particularly when you're doing stuff like that, you bring everybody together at the beginning of the day, like we sit around there. Here's what's gonna happen today. We do this, this, this, this, this, so have this ready. So the nobody wants you to be waiting for them, you know. And so if you give people an operational plan and they have confidence that you can execute it and you have confidence in their abilities, it it all works out much better than trying to throw the Hail Mary. Sometimes you have to throw the Hail Mary because things happen, you know, like with the sun and stuff. But most of the times you want to try to get all that done in uh pre-production.

James Duke 52:59

What do you uh all the years you've worked with John Woo and now that you have directed yourself, um what are some things that you think you've learned from him that you think um sitting so closely next to him and working with him, what are some things that sets him apart as a as a director? And what do you think are some things maybe you've learned from him?

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Well, the the I think the major thing is story. Uh he has a great uh sense of obligation to humanity to tell an uplifting story. Uh, he grew up in extreme poverty in the in the streets of Hong Kong. And um uh it was actually a Christian family that helped uh give him money to be able to go to school and have books and clothes and stuff. So he has a great sense of obligation to contribute. Um, and he's he's great with people that way. Um, you'll see in this film, he always he always the dove always represents peace, right? You always see the dove or pigeons and things like that. So he's always trying to uh raise up uh the best qualities in humanity and people helping people and coming out with a good resolution that no matter how diverse our our beliefs, cultures, our skin colors are, that we have the ability to rise above that and help each other. So it that goes outside his filmmaking, but that's the core of his character, and your character is reflected in your films. On the filmmaking side of it, I really learned how to move the camera, not just for the sake of moving the camera, like you'll see a lot of people do in pictures, but to move the camera to tell the story. Because remember, when you're directing, you're directing the audience's attention, right? So the movement of that camera, what the camera sees, is gonna focus where their attention is gonna go. And John's a master at subtlety of adding music and camera movement. Uh, I don't know if you remember the scene inside um the loft of the bad guy when it's being shot up and face off, and a little kid's standing in the middle of the chaos with the headphones on, listening to the song, and the place is being blown up around them, and you're just circling around the kid.

James Duke 55:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 55:16

So it's the dichotomy of the innocence of the kid and hearing this song and the violence of what's happening between good and evil around him. I mean, there's there's things like that that are just genius, you know, that you you say, Wow, I never would have thought of that. That's that's pretty interesting. But here's here's innocence in jeopardy as chaos and bullets and people are dying all around him. Um, so those are the things I learned. Number one was the his character, his his love of humanity, and always trying to uplift it. And number two, his film technique on his interesting way of telling stories to uh bring more depth, more and more emotional connectivity to the audience, you know, because that's what you what you always strive to do is if you can make an emotional connectivity with your audience, really get them to care about the story uh and involve them with with the music and the visuals. I mean, you can really change their minds about things.

James Duke 56:17

When you are uh on set, um, let's say as a first AD, um uh who's your best friend? Who's your like when you when you when you're on set and you know you're in that mode where you you know, kind of like what you were talking about, where you can't really be standing around. Like you've got to um when fires start popping up, um who who are you looking to? Um because I want our I want my audience to to know, like as you know, as they get into production, like um, how do they get the attention of ADs like yourself? Like how did you how you got the attention of so who who are you looking for? What are you looking for um for the the crew around you and and and and and how how they should be operating on set to make a to make an impact?

SPEAKER_01 57:08

Right. Well there's a strong triangle in filmmaking, and that's between the first ad, the director, and the DP, right? So you're when you're in a tough situation, you're trying to figure out how to shoot your way out of something, um having a good relationship with the director photography is always good because you know they've got so much experience, they know how to do things. Listen, like in television, the beginning of the day you start out shooting a Picasso, and by the end of the day, it's Aaron Brothers Heart Mart, you know. So yeah, how you know you start off doing all these great shots at the end of the day, you've got two scene, you get two scenes to do, and you've got an hour. How do you do it? Okay, well, throw throw a bounce card on the floor, put a light on it, and let's get the steady cam out and do a one or make it so if you can't make it look right, make it look weird, make it look like you did it on purpose, right? So so with John Woo with uh you know with uh with uh Jeffrey Kimball and stuff, I'd always go to him, I'd say, Okay, here's a situation. Uh we're now we're shooting in Annal Valley. We don't have enough daylight to complete these sequences. I need to be able to shoot night for day in this valley. And he goes, Night for day, are you out of your mind? I said, You have to make it look like daytime here, so we can get another four hours of shooting here. And he he'd call over Danny, Danny, his gaver, get over here. I need a construction crane, I need a 60 by 60, I need to get every 18k you can out here right away. And sure enough, he put this crane up, this huge 60 by 60. He bounced lights up, and you could not tell a difference that it wasn't daytime out there. Wow, so that that's who you you depend on, and you develop that relationship early in prep when you're starting to go through the script because you want to go through from page one, so everybody's on the same page. How are we going to do this? You want to if you're not gonna storyboard, you're gonna shot list it, right? So um, I uh uh when I was doing Pretty Little Liars, uh I directed a number of episodes, and then Warner Horizon had a great hang on, it was something weird sounding. Uh Warner Horizon had a great program. It was to train um diversity candidates how to direct, right? Um, so they had a course where they would go through and they would go through a number of weeks uh on stage. Um, and a director would take them through all a process of how you direct, how you break the script down. All right, when you get on the set, how do you how do you shoot these things? And then I did I took three of those candidates and uh they hired me as a director to take them through prep, shooting, and post, right? So I would make them sit down with a script. And the good thing was they they had uh gone through Bethany Rooney's course, so they knew how to break the script down, they would go through. And I would say, okay, we would go through the sets and every shot that we're going to do. And I say, okay, so it looks like you might have too many shots. So if we get down, it's 4 p.m. and you've got two hours left. What can you do for this? And they would say, Oh, I don't know how to do that. It's okay. Well, look at this. It's a steady cam walk and talk with a two shot, and then you change the lens on either side, and it's going to be good. Or you shoot through something and you see them walking up and they stop, stop at a position where you can just shoot this, you can punch in closer and have one reverse. Try to keep everything on one axis. So would take them through that process, and they uh and they were they had such good training from Bethany Rooney that when they by the time they got to the set and they actually started shooting, they got it, you know. And that's the way new directors, all new directors should be trained. So they go through a process with somebody who's been through it so that they can achieve success rather than just taking somebody throwing them into Queensart where they've got 12 hours to get you know 32 setups done and action sequence, and you know, somebody has to go in a tank at the end of the day, and they're just sitting there, and it's up to the DP in the first AD to kind of pull them through it. You know, that's not the way to train. So Warner Horizon did a great job, came up with a great program, and the people who come out of it, you know, uh uh a lot of them have gotten jobs on regular TV shows. So um uh in a in television, the same thing. Your DP's your your best friend because he knows he knows the the ball game. You tell him he knows when you're behind, and he'll come up with suggestions and help you with the director.

James Duke 1:01:34

That's that's really insightful. The um when you um oh when you are looking at um projects to be a part of, um what's a part of your decision making process? Like obviously, I know if you probably have some sort of relationship with a director, but but are there other aspects that go into the decision making process um that would be good for a young aspiring filmmaker to know?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

Well, I'm a man of faith, so I look at every project from the standpoint of how's this going to advance the kingdom? How how is this gonna help humanity? Um, and if it's a really dark picture that there's no redeeming value in it at the end of it, and you just feel, I mean, about three years ago, I remember looking at the screeners that were coming out from movies, and I just said, Is this really the best that we can do? I mean, they were all just dreadful, downer, and no redeeming value to them at all. And so when I look at a project, I look at it from the standpoint is there some contribution this movie is gonna help to elevate people or to tear them down? So if it if it doesn't elevate people, I tend not to take the project. Um, so that's my my first, and I always pray about projects too. You know, I'll I'll uh I'll read a script and um I'll pray about it because uh God's my agent, you know, I haven't ever regular agent too. An attorney, but uh my real agent's God. So I look at myself as I'm being deployed out in the battlefield of spiritual warfare that's going on around us. So, and you know, some projects come to you, you just know they're not right for you. That's not where he wants you to go. And then when he wants you to go someplace, I always ask him for a sign. Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And he'll give me a sign. And sometimes I'll be on a project and things are not gonna go right, and you know there's a there's a potential for things to really go wrong, and uh and I bailed out of projects too, because they were just the people involved weren't honorable, and that's where people get hurt, you know, and so I won't be a part of that, and so I would bail up, but so I have my spiritual meter that I put up against projects like that. Um, because here here's the the deal about spirituality and and filmmaking is this is really important for people who are just getting into the business. If you're getting in this business for fame and fortune, uh go learn how to trade stocks because you've got a much better uh possibility of that happening. I know because I trade, I used to trade a lot, but you get a better chance of making money and becoming maybe not famous, but maybe being more successful. Um, because Hollywood is a meat grinder. The people who get the one percent to the top have been through untold horrors to get there, you know. Um, and it's tough, and it's tough to stay at the top too. And sometimes your bright shining star is only good for a couple of years, and then you burn out, and you know, and you can't get arrested. So um, if you're a follower of Christ, you're a man or woman of faith, you need to find out what's your motivation for getting in the business. Um, because listen, if you're a follower of Christ, you you know what the purpose of life is, your mission is to save other people, you know. Right now we're on the Titanic. We've I feel like we've hit the iceberg, but the band's still playing it. But oh, it's not so bad. Yeah, our our job as followers of Christ is to help people get in a lifeboat, get in the lifeboat, the ship's sinking, and that's our job, right? It doesn't matter what you do. If you're making films, you're working in Wall Street. I I don't care if you're digging a ditch, you know, at the end of the day, you know, you're working on a film set with 300 people, they're going through divorces, deaths, uh you know, cancer, horrendous things. So, uh, you know, as a man or woman of faith, it's your job to come alongside them. I can't tell you the number of people I've you know I've had they've had happen to that. And I said, listen, you know, we're not curing cancer. Here we're making a film. If you need to go home and take care of something, we'll cover you, we'll get somebody in, go take care of it. If I could be of any help to you spiritually for what you're going through, listen, I'm there for you. I'm not, I don't preach, I'm not an evangelist, but you know, I know some techniques that have have worked for me over the years and have helped other people. And um, so you're they're your family, so you come alongside them and you you help them out. Um, so you have to know, first of all, what's your motivation to get into the business? You know, pray about what does God want you to do in the business? Because what He may want you to do in the business may be not what He has in mind for you in the business, so be open to that, right? Um, and number three, when you do get into it, always be teachable, always learn something. I mean, listen, I've rewritten three tenth poll movies, written episodic television, but I I tell you what, every time I sit in front of a blank screen to write a script, I feel like I know nothing. I don't know what happens, I call it cinematic amnesia or something. So I I sit down and listen, I know all the techniques for outline, plot, subplot, character definition. What's the main question? What's the main conflict? What's the dilemma? Where's the reversal? Where's a character art going? I know all that stuff. I don't know. Sometimes I sit down in front of a blinking dot in front of a piece of paper and I go, Wow, what do I know? So I'm all this, I'm always taking courses and classes because you will never know it all in screenwriting or anything. So when you're not learning, you've you're dead in this business. Um, so anyway, so here's what I think you're getting in the business, you're a follower of Christ. Uh, why are you getting in? What's your talent set? Uh, and the other thing you need to do is uh if you've got family, there's three key things you have to do. First is your vertical relationship with God, second is uh uh your relationship with your family, and then third comes your relationship with the world uh in your work. So you want to have that foundation before you go out, you get the lot of temptations in business. Man, when I first had the business, I was a wild man until God got me under control and He gave me a wife better than I deserved. And you know, thank God, because there's no telling where I would end it up. Uh but the other thing is is your home, your work is going to be erratic, right? So uh I would suggest always look for uh alternative forms of passive income. So if you say you can afford to buy an apartment, see if you can buy a duplex, rent that other side out to help cover your nuts so you're just not up against it all the time. You want to try to stay out of debt, you want to live below your means. It's easiness, but whoa, I'm making this much money. Let's go buy a great house, a big car. You're gonna get swallowed up in debt. And what's going on in the financial world right now? Trust me, live, buy a duplex, live under your means. If you're first starting out and and you don't want to rent, you want to have some find a small piece of property, put electrical power sewer, get a motorhome or a trailer, put it on there, live on that. You know what I mean? Yeah, but keep your nut really low, get that paid off. And here's a great thing. Then when you can't afford to pass and move it, you can rent that out to somebody else. So now you're building equity, you have cash flow, right? Anything you have that's a hobby that on Saturdays you can make money off of, that you can go online, you can work an extra day. Build up your bank account and buy assets that are going to pay your nut so that by the time you're in this, by the time you get to your end of your career, you have a big cash flow that you don't have to go to work every day. You have a choice to take movies and pictures, right? Um, listen, five years ago, I wanted to understand the blockchain. So I started building Ethereum miners, right? And and uh Bitcoin miners. So I said, I'm gonna try this because you know it may take them a year to pay off a stuff, but once they're paid for that, and you know, sure enough, I figured out how to build them. I was interested, and now they sit in a garage and they you know they just mine Ethereum coins, I don't have to worry about them, you know. But they do that, they'll and they're not big ones, they just mine a little bit, but you know, they're still working as the price of Ethereum and stuff go up and down, it's it becomes valuable. So, second of all, look for some type of passive income you can have outside of this business so you're not dependent on it, right? That's so that when you when you get into shows and you're making a lot of money, put that money into assets that are going to make you money, not things that are gonna cost you a payment at the end of every month. You know, God honors that too, because listen, I'm a big giver. Whatever I get, I'm putting a large percentage of it out there because it's not my money, it's his. And he tells me, like, Samaritan's purse is one that I'd like to contribute to because they go all over the world, people are disastrous, they go help them, right? So I contribute to people like that. So uh, you know, so get your family set first, then get your financial system set up in a in a manner so that once you do start making some money, live below your means, but try to find a way to get more income coming back into it. And so I think that's not stressed enough in the film business about how the hardship is. Listen, I I've been through there were strikes. I was a year without work, I was heavy in debt, and I always honor my debts, I always paid them off, but it would take a year to get them. And the great thing is you make a lot of night. So when you get back, you can pay them off. But there was just always a cycle like this of you know, feast or famine, feast or famine. So you want to be able to find something like I finally did. Do you break that that cycle so that you get constant income from them?

James Duke 1:11:09

That is really good advice, and I hope everyone who's listening in, it's that is such sage practical wisdom that I don't think enough people well. One of the things we've thought about doing uh at Act One is offering um financial courses because there's people just get into way too much debt, they they come to Los Angeles, you know, they're coming from someplace that you can afford to live, and they come to someplace that you can't afford to live, and um, and it everything gets get it just gets more and more complicated. And if you can avoid that, um, you're only setting yourself up for longer-term success. Yes. And I think that's really wise. I want to I want to close with this, Arthur. You we were talking briefly about kind of your passion for um uh praying, helping people uh uh uh pray through uh spiritual warfare and things, and you've developed that am I am I saying this correct? You you've developed actually developed some tools and some things to help people, and this is based on personal experience, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:10

Right, right. Yeah, my my daughter went through a terrible physical stretch that uh uh she's had had these terrible headaches since she was 12. And man, we took her to every specialist there was, um, every scan, every every allopathic doctor thing we could, and nature pass, everything, and she just wasn't getting any better. And uh, she's all these therapies. My my wife actually became a master herbalist during this to find natural things that would help her, and it didn't remediate some of it. But one day she passed out and she was in a uh through an ambulance on the way to the hospital, and her organs were failing. And I've been studying so I said, I said, listen, there's nothing physical that we haven't done that nobody's diagnosis. I said it's gotta be. I went back to the instruction manual for life, the Bible. I said, There's got to be something in here that tells me what's wrong. And listen, I went through 12 years of peripheral school. I had 10,000 hours of religious training by the time I got out of there. Um, and so I always knew if there was something wrong, I could go back to that instruction. So I went back, looked at it, and I looked at what did Jesus do every time he heals somebody. And I said, Wow, every time he heals somebody, first he cast out something that was oppressing or afflicting them, a demon or something, you know. And that was every time he heals somebody, and so I said, Well, that's that's gotta be if that was true, then it's gotta be true now. So I started studying people like uh Wynne Waterley, Derek Prince, um, and then Bob Larson on spiritual warfare. And I'd studied a lot of them up to this point, and I found myself in that ambulance. I said, Well, now this is the rubber meets the road. Is this gonna work or is it gonna work? I put my head on her chest and I did spiritual warfare prayers against anything that might be a pressing or flicking or cast it out and asked for and loose the healing angels of Jesus Christ upon her. And she woke up in the the the ambulance said, Wow, you know what happened? And I said, You passed out, and you know, you were heading down the wrong road. Um, and so from that point, uh, I said, I gotta learn more about this. So I went uh I uh went to Bob Larson's International School of Exorcism. It took me about three years to get through that, studying spiritual warfare. Um, and when people found out I was doing this, they would call me up, say, hey, I'm having this problem, can you help me out? Uh so I'd either go to their house, they'd come out of mine, and I would I would help them in deliverance sessions, getting rid of whatever's oppressing and afflicting them. And when COVID hit, I couldn't do that anymore. And we moved from LA up to uh northern Idaho. And so my daughter said, Listen, it's 2020, there's nothing else you can do. You're not gonna be doing any movies. Uh, you've been talking about wanting to do this app. I can show you how to do it because she does it, she takes people and takes a bill. I took so I came up with an app that explains spiritual warfare, the the battlefield, who the participants are, and then warfare prayers that you can pray. And I and I pray uh those through audio on this app. And the the app is called um myprayer warrior uh.com. And you log on that, there's a one-time fee to to uh log into it, and then it has these prayers, and some of them I'll pray with you, and others are just prayers you can pray if you're having problems with anger, fear, depression. Listen, suicide is one of the biggest things I work with people on. Suicide's a demon. So when you hear that stuff talking in your ear saying, Oh, it's not gonna get any better, you got to kill yourself. That's a lie from hell, and you can rebuke that, you can bind it, cast it out, and loose the ministry angels of Jesus Christ to come help you. I can't tell you the number of people I've had. Uh I was on um, it's funny. So I did this app 2020, and I was just gonna see if I could get on a show, sending the shows to find out. So I contacted Coast to Coast AM with George Norrie, and he said, Hey, we've got a slot from midnight to 2 a.m. on um Christmas Eve. I said, Yes. I went on, I explained what I was doing, what spiritual warfare was, what the battlefield we're in, and man, the the thing just blew up. And then I had a lot of people contacting me uh off the show who had problems, and I would do Zoom calls with them and I would help. And some of them were in serious trouble, but I in the major people had called me were facing suicide, and so I taught them how to deal with that. And I said, and I and I said, next time that happens, I said, Well, you call me, and I said, Satan hates to be laughed at. So the next time he called you he calls me at midnight, this thing's after me. I gotta kill myself. I said, No, it's not that's just the life of now. I said, We're gonna laugh at it right now. So I taught her how to bind it up, cast it out, and I said, Now we can start laughing. What? We start laughing at it because he hates to be humiliated. And I said, This next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna start praying for everybody else. What do you mean? I said, Everybody else is who's feeling so excited, we're gonna pray for them right now. She says, Well, okay, so we pray for them. I said, We're gonna pray for world peace. I says, She says, Why are we praying for all these things? He said, I want you to learn that every time Satan comes after you, it's gonna cost him. So he's first he's gonna come to you, he's gonna try to oppress and let you get you to kill yourself. That's not gonna work. You're gonna laugh at him, and then you're gonna pray for other people, which is gonna cost his kingdom because you're gonna allow the angels of Jesus Christ to go after all his demons. She says, Wow, I feel better already. I said, Yeah, it's great kicking, you know, demon butt in it. She says, Yeah. Um, and I can't tell you, I've had hundreds of people that I I've done that Zoom calls, phone calls, emergency calls. So uh I have I have that app, and then I have a book I'm gonna put out before Easter. It's called that's um Spiritual Warfare Prayer Manual. And essentially it covers the things that are in the app, but what it people wanted a written version of it. So when they're on the road, they could open it, they could read it. It says, Okay, guys, I'm gonna do that. So it'll be it'll be an Amazon ebook and it'll be a published book you can order also.

James Duke 1:17:48

Oh, very cool. That's um, that's very exciting to hear, and we'll look forward to getting the word out for that when it comes out. Arthur, this has been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:58

Um, well, I hope I've helped some people. Listen, in this in this world, it's all about helping each other and uh trying to have some fun while we're doing it, you know. Uh, with everything that's been going on in the world and and all the division and you know, wars and rumors of wars and stuff going on now. We can't forget that God has created us as victors, not victims. Amen. And as I don't care if you're five years old, you're 105, as long as you can pray for other people and pray against the evil in this world, you're in the battle and you're one of his warriors and you're a victor, not a victim.

James Duke 1:18:35

That's well said, my friend. This has been a real joy. I um I I really think that uh people are gonna get a lot out of this podcast. You've got great stories, and uh it's just so good. Uh anytime I've ever had a chance to spend time with you, I just feel like I've always come away um with a big smile on my face. So thank you, Arthur. It's well, James, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:55

Listen, I think it's such a great thing you're doing to train up the next generation. We need more people like you out there doing that. So anytime I can be of help doing anything for you guys to train up the next generation, I'm there for your brother.

James Duke 1:19:07

Thank you, my friend. I like to close all of our podcast by praying for our guests. Would you allow me to do that? Oh, absolutely. All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just uh pause and just thank you. Thank you for my brother Arthur and just uh just uh the testimony that he that he lives um the way you have used him in so many different ways. Thank you, God, for using him on film sets and TV sets and the crews and all the people that he's worked with. Um and God, thank you for this um this ministry he has of um helping people um um uh experience freedom um from um from spiritual warfare. And God, we just uh I just pray a blessing upon Arthur. I pray a blessing of protection and of health for his uh entire family. Um I pray for um just a a hedge of protection over um his family and everything that they do. I God I pray especially for this new film that he's working on, he's prepping. I pray that you would um give him your favor and help him with uh just all the details and um God, we just entrust all these things to you. We lay it all at your feet and uh we thank you. We pray this in Jesus' name and your promises we stand. Amen. Thank you for listening to the Act One podcast, celebrating over 20 years as the premier training program for Christians in Hollywood. Act One is a Christian community of entertainment industry professionals who train and equip storytellers to create works of truth, goodness, and beauty. The Act One program is a division of Master Media International. To financially support the mission of Act One or to learn more about our programs, visit us online at Act OneProgram.com. And to learn more about the work of Master Media, go to Mastermedia.com.