Ang Lee on His New Film: This Isn't Showing Off — I Want to Bring You Back to the Theater

As for the people in Hollywood: "It takes me a long time to tell them that, actually, you're not good enough."

In 2012 Ang Lee released Life of Pi, his first attempt at 3D. It took US$606 million worldwide and won him his second Academy Award for Best Director.

Four years on, he is back with something far more demanding: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. It runs so far ahead of the industry that people everywhere are asking what the thing even is. The film is not only 3D; it is 3D at 4K and 120 frames per second (frames shown each second; an ordinary film runs at 24).

That is not an upgrade. It is a jump over several rungs at once.

Besides handing the industry and the press something to argue about, the film keeps setting world firsts. You could put it another way: Ang Lee is writing a new technical standard for movies.

Part of that standard is projection, and his requirements are the highest in the world, which is why only five theaters anywhere can show the full 3D, 4K, 120-frame version — in New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei. Everywhere else will screen the lower-specification versions Lee also produced. In Taiwan a ticket to the top version costs NT$800. It opens on November 11, Veterans Day in the United States, which suits a story about an American soldier who survives a brush with death in Iraq and is called home.

Only five theaters in the world can handle it, and Lee still insists it had to be done and that the road is passable. "While I was shooting Life of Pi I could already see a future sitting there." "I'm past 60. I don't want to wait for the future — I want to see technology that comes closer to the real thing now," he said at a recent press conference titled "The Future of 3D."

Life of Pi opened up a much larger curiosity in him about the digital, and he is convinced it will overturn the way audiences experience and feel a film.

In an interview in 2012, Lee put it this way: "3D is becoming a proper art form for cinema. In fact, without 3D I really wouldn't know how to tell this story. It had to be told in a very particular way; a flat image couldn't do it." Lee is not only ahead on technique. He can also see the particular beauty a technique brings with it.

Across the whole history of film, nobody seems to have questioned 24 frames. Lee is not satisfied with that apparently unbreakable frame: "24 frames isn't actually good — it's just cheap." He has seen plainly what it cannot do.

Promoting his earlier films, Lee rarely dwelt on the technology — or rather, he always met his audience quietly, mildly, modestly. On this tour we see a more forward Lee, with a great deal he wants to say about the unknown ground he has spent the past few years exploring.

Earlier, the Taiwanese business magazine CommonWealth Magazine went to New York to interview him while he was in post-production. Lee took the reporters through his post-production studio and explained every stage of it.

Two days ago he accepted CommonWealth's invitation to a forum called "Exploration and Creation," where he spoke alongside T.H. Tung, chairman of Pegatron.

At the forum, Lee used the making of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk to state a blunt fact: the film business is changing hard, and a jump this size could put unprecedented strain on every stage of production. The people who work in film will have to change how they work. Shoot at this specification and actors cannot wear makeup; lighting a set has nothing in common with the old way. Lee has made a start on the new technology. He also worries that the rest of the industry will not follow.

Whatever problems a challenge this new brings, Lee has at least hit them first.

Edited highlights from the forum:

Moderator: Why make a film like this?

Lee: Simple — because it looks good (laughs). I can give you plenty of reasons; in an interview I can reason my way through it. But when I was doing it, I just wanted to see it.

Making Life of Pi made me very curious. It was my first contact with 3D, and I found a lot of things that didn't add up — what I had learned in school, and the way I first understood how a film gets made.

At art school my father gave me Super 8 film. It felt like an electric shock. I felt all of it could be controlled, and for years I projected myself into it.

I had never thought about the 24-frame question. Thinking only comes from having to get past what you don't understand. It's the same reason film uses drama to test human nature: if everyone's days go smoothly there is nothing to test. You have to hit a situation you can't work out before your nature comes out. Technology is the same. We do it the same way three meals a day and get along fine.

I often felt that 24 frames was a railing around paradise — step past it and you're out of paradise.

But once I shot Life of Pi I found you couldn't even look at it. 3D is closer to what two eyes see, and the more I shot the more problems I found. I was lucky in the end and it came out well, but I was on edge the whole time. I only dared use a little 3D; past that the problems showed. I'm not trying to pull down the fence around paradise. I only want to push it out a little.

I want more frames. But I came out of theater, and once the frame rate goes up the film becomes unwatchable: the acting looks foolish, the light is wrong, the set is wrong, everything is wrong. I began to doubt 24 frames. I knew 24 frames had nothing to recommend it except being the cheapest.

Past 60 frames a film stops looking like a film and starts looking like what our eyes see. That changes both how far you feel you are inside it and the grammar of cinema, which made me nervous. I spent more than a year deciding whether to go past 60.

Almost nobody was working at 60 frames then. But I really wanted the audience inside it the way you are inside real life — in the first person, not only the third. The relationship between a person and a film, and the way you experience its situations and its story, would change. So I was very curious.

I know nothing about computers, but I kept asking. If today's computers can't do it, build new ones. For projection we rebuilt an industrial projector the U.S. Department of Defense uses for fighter-jet simulation. I first saw anything above 60 frames two weeks before we started shooting, so I was curious what 120 frames a second would look like.

I didn't mention this just now, but my light level is many times higher — at least four or five times brighter than the best theater. When there is enough information, it works like a term from chemistry, "active energy": once every material reaches a certain level, the reaction starts.

I have to introduce something this new to an audience, and it is hard to explain to a studio, because a studio gives the audience what the audience wants. I think: how can that be right? The film industry now runs by popular vote, and sometimes I find that hard to say.

T.H. Tung: I went to Beijing recently to see a VR team. With some underwater and aerial images, and in fast-moving games, anything below 90 frames doesn't look real. If you want it lifelike, going past 24 frames is necessary.

Lee: Let me add something. Whether it's 3D or a high frame rate, what it shows best is the close-up. The most important thing we do is read each other's faces, and we read them the way our eyes do — you feel what someone feels through their eyes, you see the light in them. The biggest thing I got this time may be that it let me see a human face.

So we didn't dare put makeup on anyone for this film; you can see every hair on the skin. That's precious, and it belongs in drama. When people hear "high specification" they think of action and spectacle. I think the most valuable thing is filming a face.

Moderator: Should we change the way we watch a story on film? You said just now that in an age of experience, our relationship with the subject of the story changes.

Lee: It's a choice. When I want to get close, I can get close. Someone like Trump, I wouldn't look at that closely — I'd pull back and shoot him at 12 frames (laughs).

Moderator: In 2012, shooting Life of Pi in Taiwan, you said Taiwan's tech industry was excellent and could certainly build a post-production business. Four years on, Taiwan still doesn't seem to have found its edge or its way into the global film supply chain.

Lee: I don't actually know Taiwan's industry well. I know computers even less — no interest, and no knack for them either.

When I shot Life of Pi, I was genuinely proud. In Los Angeles, in Hollywood, it could not have happened. I got it done in Taiwan. Taiwan is small, but you can find almost anything here. People don't realize how much is made here — the best screens now come from Tainan. I only found that out at the NAB Show.

But in film I don't think the industry has come together. Film people always work alone. I brought outsiders in to make Life of Pi, we got it done, and then it was over; everyone starts again from the beginning. The experience can't accumulate.

It seems a waste to me that Taiwan isn't building post-production, because the people here and the standard of their work are good. Plenty of young people in Taiwan love film. It's fine to have a hard time at the start, fine to take contract work. We used to imagine filmmaking as a straight line — prepare, plan, shoot, cut, one step after another. The way I make films now, I'm into post-production before pre-production has even started. Shooting conditions in Taiwan are limited, and a film isn't only shot; in the digital era every stage can be controlled, instead of rigidly following one fixed way of shooting.

The way I shoot now, actors can't wear makeup, so in future we'll have to solve that — to make the unlovely look lovely. I think we are making films, not shooting them.

T.H. Tung: (after discussing costs in the tech industry) Technology is a good tool and a good base, but how it gets used still depends on people. Over the past 20 years, apart from IMAX, things have stalled somewhat since the move to digital. A phone or a television at home can now match the quality of a small theater screen. So I think theaters should be built to feel like an NBA arena or the Super Bowl; that sense of being there can't be replaced. Once theaters turn a film into that kind of experience, audiences will come in to feel 120 frames, 3D and 4K. The technology already exists. It's expensive now, but volume brings the price down. Then it would be worth looking forward to whichever director shoots at 60 or 120 frames. Theaters should use good equipment to tell better stories, and that becomes a virtuous circle.

Lee: Let me add something. I would still defend film stock to the death, then and now, even though it isn't good for the environment. I'm not against film and I'm not telling everyone to shoot digital. Shoot film if you shoot film, digital if you shoot digital. What I see now is everyone using digital to imitate film without ever reaching film, and that makes no sense; it's walking backwards. Digital must have things of its own. It has to move forward.

I didn't invent this format. I'm only reporting what I saw. Technology and animation are ahead of us; those of us who make films are slower.

So we owe them something back. These companies — technology, animation and the rest — all want to move forward, and they need filmmakers to tell them what new things we want. For example: the faster the speed, the shorter the exposure, so you have to put up a lot of light. Once there isn't enough light, the depth of field goes shallow. Or: this camera is enormous, so how do I shoot a boxing film next time? To meet demands like these, every stage behind them has to keep up.

I have never thought technology and art were two different things. People ask me all the time why I bother with technology. They are one thing.

Moderator: You are far out in front, and much of this is still being explored. How do you talk to the crew, and how do you persuade the people putting up the money? How do you convince everyone this is right?

Lee: I have to spend a long time telling them that they're not good enough, and neither am I. "You are not good enough" isn't an easy sentence for an American to say, but I said it anyway.

Often we're three weeks into shooting before I find that something done the same way for a hundred years, for no reason anyone remembers, is wrong. You have to be able to see that kind of mistake. If you think you're wonderful, you can't — so humility comes first, and that's hard. When an industry gets this good, it has more than confidence and skill; it has pride and an identity. Tell a Hollywood 3D man this won't work and he'll lose his temper, and then you have to smooth it over, talk it through, tell him the truth, hurt him and then coax him. With the studios it's half coaxing, half bluffing (laughs). All this time hasn't gone into my own work; it's gone into talking to people.

Then there's commercial distribution at the end of it: how to get each thing done inside this industrial system, how to connect it all up, and finally distribution and viewing habits. Turning viewing habits around is of course very hard.

In the end you can dislike my film; just don't curse the medium. We've only just started. If the audience comes away knowing this is worth pursuing, that's enough.

Moderator: On leading a team — are these long-term collaborators, or do you work project by project?

Lee: Apart from my editor I have no fixed crew; mostly I find people project by project. As for leading a team, most people are quite keen to work with me. Once the idea is out, it becomes something everyone believes in, and we go through the good and the bad together — feeding lions or whatever else, hand in hand. I'm something like a missionary. But because it's new, they have doubts too, and I'm fairly honest about it; I won't over-coax them, because there's a limit to that as well.

Most of them think the experience was worth it. Someone who loves this line of work usually welcomes that kind of well-meant torture. They like a challenge, they like what can't be done, and even when they fail and can't pull it off there's still some life in it. Those are the people I prefer to work with.

The ones who already think they're wonderful I don't pay much attention to. I'm not wonderful; how can you be? We should all be learning. And I dislike the cinematographer who talks about cinematography every day. That's not OK with me — getting your own patch right and caring about nothing else. Why work in film at all? I'd rather they talked to me about drama, film, life, literature. Anything beats talking about their own craft.

Moderator: You're already successful and could play it safe. Why keep walking into risky new territory, especially at the age Confucius said should be free of doubt?

Lee: Past 60 I really am starting to have doubts again. Put simply, it's like the Madonna song, "Like a Virgin" — I want every time to feel like the first.

It's temperament, I think, and being honest matters. Once filmmaking becomes easy and you can see the formula, it's best to change even the method.

Everyone used to make films this way without asking whether it was any good. Take the ocean waves Hollywood makes: a big tank with water sloshing back and forth, like a bathtub. That isn't a wave; it's a bathtub.

If I'd shot Life of Pi in Hollywood, someone would have told me he'd won several Oscars and worked on Titanic — and he still wouldn't know how to do it. I have never once seen Hollywood rain look right; it's unwatchable, and nobody questions it.

A wave at sea has a very long wavelength; it doesn't swing back and forth. I wanted to build a new one, and Hollywood couldn't, so I took it to Taiwan and invented it myself. We shaved the waves down so they wouldn't come back at us, which let us stretch the wavelength. It still wasn't a real sea, but it had the feeling of open sea, and I find that interesting. To this day I haven't seen anyone else do it.

Telling a story still matters, of course. Beyond that, what you say and how you tell it matter equally, because a film is an experience. How your body takes it in; how, when the audience sees the image, they breathe with it and talk to it — that is what film is. The joy and sorrow in a story are, stripped down, also a form. The most valuable thing about film is your direct relationship with it, and that has a great deal to do with how you shoot and with technology.

So content and technology are not two things. They are two sides of one.

T.H. Tung: Everyone thinks of Ang Lee as gentle and refined, but when he answers a question what comes through is a creative Ang Lee with a streak of rebellion. You can see that past 60 he will keep exploring and creating, and keep rebelling; he won't settle inside the film industry's existing rules, its boxes or its technical frames.

For the tech industry, change is the nature of the business. Hardware and software often move at different speeds. Hardware gets developed to a certain point and, before the money is back, a new technology arrives. Hardware makers badly want the content business to pull them along; without content, what is the hardware for? The tech industry always has the urge to invent and create, but if the applications can't keep up, it struggles.

Moderator: Will you keep pushing the technology further?

Lee: What I'm afraid of is that the next film at this specification will be my next film, and the one after that will be mine too, and then I'll retire (laughs). Whatever my colleagues feel about it, I hope they'll get their hands on it and try. This has to become an industry. Television makes the point: a TV can already show 3D without glasses, but with no software and no demand, building it was pointless. I hope that isn't what happens here.

I'll sell it wherever I can — not just Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, but at least the idea, to tell my colleagues this is possible. I keep saying it: I'm not crazy, I haven't lost my mind. I saw it. It looks wonderful. It's fine not to like the film, as long as you know the thing is worth pursuing.

It really isn't easy to pull an audience into a theater now, but I believe in the theater, especially now that we no longer go into churches or temples. We need to communicate. People gather to watch one thing, and the director shares something of the spirit with them. You have to pretend to enter an imagined world, then test your own life against it and find some order in it.

People are creatures of instinct. From the start of our history — lighting a torch in a cave to tell a story — film will keep moving forward, and this is only the beginning. You can watch on an iPhone if you like, but gathering with other people to watch and to feel it is, I think, one of the important ways of touching the truth inside a person.

Someone asked me about VR. I said I don't know yet, but as a filmmaker I'd rather believe that my VR is not your VR. This step up runs in every direction — technology, art, all of it.

I really do want to bring the audience back to the theater.

Cover image from CommonWealth Magazine and Douban