Alex Proyas on Directing on the Set of the Future

Alex Proyas is one of the true legends of the Australian film industry. He defined the cybergoth aesthetic in the ’90s with Dark City and The Crow, and went on to direct a number of the biggest hits of the 2000s in the forms of I, Robot and Knowing. No less a voice than Roger Ebert’s called him an “expert and confident storyteller”.

Now, he’s returning to the medium where he began, having signed with Seven Sunday Films to produce commercial work for Southeast Asia. And he’s bringing his studio Heretic Foundation with him.

“Commercials are nimble, much more so than feature filmmaking. There, you're always at the mercy of the story, and the studio, and the finances. With ads, it's much more about the immediacy of one visual and a narrative statement. That’s all that matters.”

Alex brings serious commercial chops to his new home. In the ’90s, he was part of Propaganda Films, the legendary production house which boasted David Fincher, Michael Bay, and Spike Jonze among its coterie.

“We all really believed in the medium of music videos and commercials, because we could, immediately, try all this stuff that we would then use in subsequent projects. It was a great proving ground for new techniques. And it still is.”

So what are the new techniques that Alex intends to push forward in his time at Seven Sunday?

“I'm doing this specifically to showcase my company Heretic Foundation. We built it about a year 18 months ago, and the key thing that holds us together is virtual production.”

Virtual production is something of a catch-all term, technically encompassing anything with a strong VFX component. But what Alex is referring to is specific. He’s describing the process of placing real elements (actors, say), being shot with a real camera, in a virtual space, all in real time.

“The holy grail of virtual production is that you can set your camera up and film the real element, then turn to the monitor and see exactly what it’s going to look like in the final version.”

Alex has been working in this field since the early 2000s, where he used virtual production to help design chase sequences on I, Robot.

“It looked like Pong,” he recalls, laughing. “But I really believe it’s the future. We should aspire to a point where we don’t call it virtual production - we just call it production. You save money on location shoots; it’s incredibly environmentally friendly because you don’t have to travel and you’re not building this big, wasteful set; and it’ll be great if, God help us, there’s another lockdown that we have to endure.”

Alex doesn’t speak quickly or loudly, but he does speak forcefully. He presses on with an even, persistent tone, relentlessly making his case with careful precision. He is a confident expert, and such a man needs to move no slower or faster than he likes when explaining himself.

So when I ask if he fears something will be lost without real world locations, it’s worth noting that Alex does pause. But only for a moment. “It’s a potent question,” he replies, “but, ultimately, as long as you and your DP are coming from a photographic background; as long as you understand how light and lenses work, there’s no reason to worry. These are the fundamentals of stylisation versus realism, and you can dial that in or out depending on taste.”

So why is a filmmaker so committed to virtual production working with the Southeast Asian industry? Especially when he remains based in Australia?

“We love Australia, but it's a very slow burn here. It takes forever to get these sorts of new technologies to become part of the lexicon. Heretic Foundation has had a strange first year of operation because we've been thrown straight into the features, and they, and the local industry, haven't really given us an opportunity to showcase these techniques. 

The thing about Southeast Asia, apart from the time zones being far more manageable than the UK or the US, is that they’re mad about new technologies. It's a great playground for us to explore.”

Alex is quick to clarify that it’s not as though Australia is technologically backward. Rather, there are different industrial attitudes in the two regions.

“Australia has a very good reputation, particularly in the VFX world. Ultimately, it’s something of a budget consideration.” Despite the cost savings Alex described earlier, there’s no denying that high-quality virtual production remains somewhat expensive. It will grow ever more affordable with time and practice, but that requires investment. “And so,” Alex explains, “you need somewhere that’s willing to embrace that future promise.”

That promise is, to Alex’s mind, manifesting in two parallel trends in commercial filmmaking. “One is shorter and more to the point for YouTube consumption, and the other is more long-form advertising, almost more like short narrative films. And the boundaries between all these different mediums are endlessly changing, shifting, and eroding. When I was making ads, you'd have to make a 60 second for TV, a 30 second, and a 15 second cut. You don't have to do that now.”

These trends both in form and technology are driving serious change when it comes to Alex’s storytelling. “I have to be an optimist,” he says. “I'm a real fan of technology. I believe that, in the end, it enables us to be freer, as artists and as storytellers.”

Alex has made many films about the strange possibilities of the future. The surprise is that, all along, he’s been directing in that world too.