The Future of Filmmaking: AI, Human Emotion, and Visual Storytelling

Orlando Wood (00:31)
Eran Crevy is a writer director who has done has gone the whole gamut of the film industry, starting as a runner, moving into music videos, doing videos for Take That, Alice Gaudino, and then moving into

feature films, this debut film Shifty, which got him nominated for a BAFTA. And then moving on to Welcome to the Punch and Collide. And then has been working most recently on The Gentleman for Netflix as a writer director and the Harry Potter reunion for HBO. So we’re going to cover a bunch of stuff and yeah, I’m just psyched to have you.

Eran Creevy (01:07)
got a little bit nervous about doing this podcast because I was a bit like, I guess because I’m not massively O.F.A. on the side. So I was trying to kind of think about where I sit with it in the industry, the film industry and what my thoughts are about it. But yeah, there’s been a few sort of things that have come up recently in the media, like with Paul Schrader, know, like with that thing that Paul Schrader put up, the post about AI and…

Ben Affleck has said a few interesting things recently about how he’s infringing on the creative space and his opinions on it. That sort of provoked a bit of thought process in me, which I found quite interesting.

Orlando Wood (01:49)
Because, you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about kind of what this is. The people we’re getting to interview are people of all sorts of forms of creativity. I’m trying to focus, I think, on just the human process of it all. And if it sort of wanders into AI, I think, and I think it naturally will, I will sort of cover that off as well. Ben Affleck’s comments, he was at a conference, I think, his comments on AI, I thought were incredibly articulate, but I thought they were broadly wrong. You know, I think that the problem with

the statement that like films will be last in the things that AI comes for, I think is incorrect because a lot of the people who are creating this stuff have been inspired by films their whole life.

Eran Creevy (02:31)
I’m probably sitting on the other side of the fence and that. And I do agree with him in a way. Like one of the things he said, his movies will be one of the last things to be replaced, right? AI is a craftsman and craftsman is knowing how to work and AI is knowing when to stop. And I kind of, there’s sort of certain elements about it that I agree with. Like I don’t, I do think that the arena from where I work in and where as a creative, I do think it’s going to stay slightly protected. And I was thinking about it today because I’ve directly been working with

know, funny enough, before we came onto this, I actually went onto, chat GPT and asked it to write me an Iran Crevy movie. And it was like, Iran Crevy is well known for his thrillers and fast beats. I was like, I was a gentile chat GPT, go to IAT man. And it wrote a thriller. It was called The Break. And it was about an ex soldier suffering from PTSD who teams up with this ex kind of criminal female called Maya Davro.

It was quite fascinating. It basically wrote an entire synoptics of an Iran Krivi movie and then told me that kind of what I was well known for, my aspects, the thriller and drama and how the plot was going to culminate. Paul Schrader recently wrote, he typed into Jack Chat GBT, didn’t he? And said, give me a Paul Schrader movie, give me a Quentin Tarantino movie, give me a Martin Scorsese movie, give me a Spielberg movie. And within sort of five seconds, it gave him pretty amazing outlines. And he was like, why would I ever need to sit for hours? And he thought of coming up with story concepts or…

plot lines, but that for me is where I think it kind of ends in a way. I don’t think that AI is ever going to be able to write an entire new and sophisticated screenplay that we’ll be able to put straight to camera with a bunch of actors. And I have my reasons for kind of going into that and why I believe that. And we were going to get into talking about Ben Affleck and what he said about that he believes that movies will be one of the last things to be replaced by AI.

But yeah, go on. You were saying like, why do you, you were saying why you think you don’t agree with that.

Orlando Wood (04:31)
I think that a lot of the people who have developed this AI technology and lot of the coding talent out there and machine learning talent out there, a lot of them have been inspired by films their whole lives. There’s a reason that the language models can write like Dickens or write like Tarantino and because it’s been trained on all that stuff, they can be trained on massive legal texts very easily. I think that the people building these models knew that

The stuff of life, the stuff that’s going to make these models really make people want to interact with it is literature and art and films. so I think that, all of that is released already. So I think that it’s also a massive training set to train on. I think it sort of creates a perfect storm where it’s coming for film. don’t think that AI will ever craft a film in the way that we’re used to in the way that we enjoy film. But I do think that it’s going to come for some low level of storytelling.

Eran Creevy (05:28)
It’s going to bring down the cost of filmmaking. as Netflix said, you’re going to be able to get two seasons of How to the Dragon, rather than one. And that would be because of reasons like BFX. And that he was right in saying that BFX is an industry that you wouldn’t want to be in at the moment because it’s going to take a complete hammering. And to put that in the prime…

Orlando Wood (05:51)
This helmet color just closed two days ago. Yeah.

Eran Creevy (05:54)
sent me that. saw that. here’s a prime example of that. I’m doing the season two of The Gentleman at the moment. I can’t get into specifics because I signed the NDA with Netflix, but we’re going to have to have some animals in the show and quite a lot of animals in one scene. The producer was sort of throwing up all these figures and these numbers of what he’s going to cast to of this sort of augment these animals into this room or if we had animal trans, was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I was like, listen, man. I’m sitting looking at my daughter’s Instagram account.

And she follows these AI content generators who are creating, they’re sort of creating, making real videos. They’re making real videos, kind of got a kitten that, know, the video is real, but what they’re putting in there is a kind of fake AI kitten and the kitten’s got wings, unicorn wings and some of the floats and takes off in that central park in New York and everyone’s around kind of cheering and stuff. And I’m like, it looks real. I’m like, and that guy is doing it at home for no cost. How comes you are quoting me this for 50 or so animals in this room?

When I’m seeing a guy doing it but nothing on my phone and it looked, and I cannot tell the fact it’s not real or realistic. How comes you’re saying it’s going to cost me 10,000 hours, whatever it’s going to cost. This much labor, I don’t see that, those numbers making sense anymore. And for me, I feel like the VFX industry is hanging onto an old template on, you know, it’s those sort of things, but.

Orlando Wood (07:10)
Because aren’t those the craftsmen that Ben Affleck’s talking about? I mean, they’re the flame operators. They’re the ones that kind of sit there and go frame by frame and create something. And the CG artists and the 3D artists, you know, those are the craftsmen and they’re kind of being put out on their ear.

Eran Creevy (07:27)
I guess so, but, this kind of goes into filmmaking and this goes into, into screenwriting as well. Like, you know, AOA is never ever going to be able to probably create a full movie with performances that someone like De Niro or Al Pacino would give. Because as a director, I’m somebody who on set, who I mediate takes consistently. do that multiple takes. We go over, we nudge the performance. Can you give me this much emphasis on that word? Can you give me that? Can you draw back on your

heartache. I might know that an actor went through sort of kind of a quite a bad childhood and they’ve got a lot of pain to draw back on there. So I go and I’ll take them aside and I say, listen, can you draw on this pain when you give me that line? And I just don’t ever see that, you know, and as Affleck says, you know, AI is, it’s a classroom, but it’s not an artist. It doesn’t know when to stop or the sophistications of that. So I don’t ever see that really being

kind of taken over by AI, there’s always going to need to have four actors in a room and some form of camera. The camera may get smaller. The camera may be able to make, you know, I may be able to have a camera that makes it look like two, three, five widescreen, Michael Bay, because AI has allowed that. don’t have to cost the camera. It won’t cost as much. editing system won’t cost as much, but I’m still going to basically need the nuance and sophistication of what those actors give me in that sense. also think, and I think that

you know, I think a visual effects artist will be able to create me some, something to put in that scene. And I’m still going to need somebody to go, okay, it’s going to be quicker to make that art, that AI character, that computer generated character, but I’m still going to need a, I’m still going to need an art, the effects person to sit and work on that with me. I’m working on Amazon Studios TV show at the moment that you have been kind of invested in yourself as a producer, but we’re, I’m working on this TV show for Amazon and we just got the notes back.

And for example, I was thinking about this before I got on the show. I like, I’ve just been running through my co-writer, a bunch of notes from Amazon. you know, imagine that you’re trying to give these notes to AI. There was like, there’s four scenes throughout the pilot episode of this script that I’ve written for Amazon, where we’re trying to kind of express the villainous intentions of our antagonist, right? And it comes kind of out in four different scenes.

and four different characters talk about it. And Amazon gave the note like, could we truncate that all into one scene here? And it’s like, it’s not those four different characters, but it’s one character saying it. And, and maybe it’s the main female lead and the male male lead. And I didn’t agree with Amazon because I was like, it’s a bit weird that the male character lead our lead male character would kind of give all that information in that position to a female lead character. And if you read the script, you understand why. So I decide, what if I bring this other character in, who’s on the story?

who he’s not meant to be in this scene at this point in the movie, but I can think of a way to bring him in. And then the dialogue between this character and my lead antagonist, my male character, they can have this expositional but humorous, nuanced conversation, which allows me to deliver all this exposition about the villain. But that’s got to be done in a very nuanced, sophisticated way. And it’s got to have human interaction and moments of color and humor between them.

Orlando Wood (10:36)
this.

Eran Creevy (10:46)
It can’t feel like it’s too expositional, but I don’t know if AI is ever going to have, like, how would I ever give that note to AI or to think that, maybe, but I don’t think it will ever be able to get to those moments of nuance. I think we’ll be able to get to a point where we’ve got an entire screenplay laid out in the basic kind of rough form. And as craftsman, I’ll go, all right, AI has given me something here, but I’ve to do a lot of work in order to get this into shape.

make this feel human. That’s where I think it’s going to be. I always think there’s going to, I don’t see that it’s ever going to get to a point where an Amazon exec can give notes and it will be able to interpret that and deliver back exactly what you need in a nuanced way. And that is two human beings, me and the co-writer, chatting over Zoom today about this bit of dialogue, kind of roughly getting it into shape and then use our own human experience and humor and jokes and quirks in order to make it work. And that takes a lot of effort and you

That’s why I don’t worry about AI. I don’t know what you think about that.

Orlando Wood (11:42)
is

a bland studio executive when it gives notes and it’s an eager to please assistant when asked its opinion. You know, I sort of, get a lot of, know, when an assistant you’re asking their opinion, like, well, on the one hand, it’s bad because of this. And on the other hand, it’s good because of this. know, they sort of don’t really take a stand on anything. And I do think that that’s the, the, the point of it. And I do think that you’re right. Like once you get into

creative areas, you you need to take a stand. You need to stand behind your taste, you know, very, very strongly. It brings up, you were talking about acting and it brings up just an interesting thing I’d love to talk to you about that, you know, obviously your second feature film, Welcome to the Punch was executive produced by Ridley Scott. He’s sort of universally known to be one of the best actor, you know, actor directors, you know, of all time. You know, you, in that movie, you got to work with

Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins and Nicholas Holt.

Eran Creevy (12:40)
No, no, that’s collide. That’s another one. That’s another one. Welcome to the punch. was James MacAvoy, Mark Strong, James MacAvoy, Mark Strong, David Morrissey, Peter Mullen, Daniel Kaliya, Andrew Reisburer. But yeah, yeah, but still good. Yeah. And then the next, the next three, then.

Orlando Wood (12:55)
Incredible,

incredible cast. Working with somebody like Ridley Scott, what sort of insights do you start to get into the acting process? And as a director, you know, when we’re talking about making that decision of how much freedom you’re giving someone, obviously on the one end you have giving them a line reading. I want you to read this like this, which of course you don’t do with actors like James Backboy, Mark Strong versus, you know, kind of watching them, you know, just go and giving them full free rein. How do you, how do you handle that? The guidelines of that on set.

What?

Eran Creevy (13:25)
I think it’s an interesting question because I think that is the battle of what being a director is. I think that no one, two actors are the same. No one, two actors are the same and all actors need something different from you as a director. And all actors have a very different process. Riz Ahmed, who is kind of a very well-known actor in his own right, who starred in my first film, Shift Eon has now become an Oscar nominated actor and has won Oscars for the short film he’s made. And yeah, he’s one of sort of…

up and coming sort of young, Muslim Pakistani actors in the world. Riaz needs kind of nurturing on set. He wants to talk about a character, have to kind of put time aside and step aside off set for him and talk about the motivations. You need to go into depth. He wants to know who his character is, what the perspective of this scene is. And you have to prepare to give him the time and be generous with your time and talk it through. And then someone like Danny Mays kind of needs less attention. He doesn’t need

He wants to talk it through, but he doesn’t need as much as that. And then you’ll get to somebody like Mark Strong, who’s kind of like, nope, he comes on the set, he has his complete own ideas about how it’s going to be, and he doesn’t really need to talk about it. He doesn’t want to talk about it. It kind of like confuses him as an actor. This is how it’s going to be. And then you may walk up and nudge a little bit and go, Mark, could you give me a little bit more here? And I was thinking that this line would be delivered a bit more like that. So, Siren actors just need way less. like on The Gentleman, for example.

we were rushed for time and Ray Winston, the check, there’d been script changes and the changes would come in late and Ray Winston was, had to learn his lines pretty much on the day. There had been some rewrites that happened and I never do this, never do this, but he, wasn’t really getting the lines. And I think he started to get more more frustrated with himself more that he couldn’t get the lines. was a long take. So we were like shooting this long take on this rooftop with Ray Winston and, Kya’s got a Lario.

He’s unpacking this picnic basket, Ray Winston. And then he’d kind of get towards the end of this sort of long monologue speech with Kaya. And then he’d kind of get a line wrong. And then he’d restart packing the picnic basket and going back to number ones. And I was like, my God, he keeps kind of, he keeps doing these lines. And we’re going to die. Like we’ve got to get this in before the morning’s out. can’t just, we can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep going back to number one. So I just stepped close to Cameron and thought, I’ll just give him line by line reading. I’ll sort of say the lines, you know, I’ll

like when he messes up, I’ll be like, no, you use go back and give me that line again, Ray. just, he said some line about two weed farms or two weed fields. You’ve got two fucking weed fields and so on. went up, Ray, it’s farms. Just go back and give me that line again. And he just went, I’ll fucking do it. Don’t do that. I can’t do it. He just shouted across the thing, but not angry at me, just more angry at himself because I just jogged, I jogged his trainer for.

I shouted out in the middle of the take, like, though it’s not weird, we’d

Orlando Wood (16:22)
and you’re trying to stay in the take so that you can continue to make them li-

Eran Creevy (16:26)
I’m

just trying to kind of see we can make the day. I’m trying to help him. But what I’ve done is I’ve jogged him and now, and all he can think about is I’ve shouted and he’ll take the line. Now he’s angry with me. Now we’ve got a cut anyway. And then there’s like a big kind of like…

Iran’s pissed off Ray Winston. I didn’t have to go and have a cuddle with him. Give him a cuddle on set. Be sorry about kind of interrupting your take. He’s like, no, no, no, it’s me. I keep forgetting my lines. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted. And we sort of had, you know, and we kind of just hugged it out and went back to being friends again immediately and on set. But that’s the, and that’s, and from now on, you know, I’m doing The Gentleman season two. I am never going to interrupt Ray Winston. He shout any, or shout anything out because I know how Ray likes the work.

It made me realise that Ray likes a bit of time to warm up. He likes a little bit of to warm up as an actor. It’s probably sometimes best to start on the other actors first, let them and then Ray warms up and then once you bring the camera around and the shots around to Ray, he’s kind of warmed up. He’s got used to the lines. And the reason why this was happening is because we were rewriting the script the night before.

Orlando Wood (17:32)
People,

think, don’t realize how much when you talk about the actor’s process or what’s happening on set with rehearsal or whatever else, I think people then forget that once you get into it, now you’ve got a schedule and they’re like, well, we got to get, we’ve to move the unit and get to that location before lunch. So we’re rolling after lunch. People kind of forget. And then like you said, the pages are coming in late to Ray Winston. You know, it’s like, you know, Nestle suddenly gets shaken up by the realities of it.

Eran Creevy (17:59)
and

we’re on a rooftop where one minute it was cloudy and then the next minute the huge, sun, the clouds cleared, sun came out. We had to put up like a 20 foot silk in order to block out the sun because we shot half the morning with sun. Then we got to try and get a 20 foot crane, 20 foot silk on a crane to block the sun out so we could continue with the scene. And then I’m shouting to Ray Winston, he’d lie underneath he’s like, what the fuck is? And I think, and you know, that’s the process, that’s the process of filmmaking that as a director, you have to carry all of that stuff like.

the weather, the script coming in, changing, the actors moods, like how long you’ve got left until you’ve got to be moving on to the next setup. you’ve got to kind of operate under pressure and look, would AI be able to do all that better?

Orlando Wood (18:43)
You seem to be constantly operating, especially as a director, because you’re trying to be creative under pressure. You’re trying to both be incredibly specific and so free for new things to happen. You know, it seems like you’re constantly vacillating between those two extremes and you just need to pick the right attitude at any given time of the day.

Eran Creevy (19:03)
Yeah, and also look at it that way. In that scene, gives a really good performance and he’s quite explosive in that scene that we were filming. I think Ray Winston is known for being a great actor. He’s in The Departed, et cetera, and multiple amazing movies. But whatever Ray would experience on that day and the kind of frustration he was with his not known alliance, it gave something to his performance. It gave an energy to the anger that he was having. In the scene, he was meant to be getting a little bit pissed off and a bit angry.

And it gave something and I can never replicate that. Do you know what mean? These sort of forces that come together and it becomes a great scene because the sun was kind of coming at a hard angle across his face and we had to bleach it out. But then it gives it a really dramatic look and the way he’s delivering the lines and it all just kind of comes together and it works. And you go, oh my God, we made it through that. We made it work. And I don’t see a computer being able to replicate those things. I don’t know. I know I’m bringing it back to AI, but.

Orlando Wood (19:59)
No, I think that’s a really good point. I’d love to ask, because you spoke there about your dual role as a writer and director on something like The Gentleman. How does it influence the way that you approach a job when you’re both writing it and directing it at the same time? Does it give you more freedom, or does it kind of create so much responsibility on your shoulders? How does that… a lot to take on on a shootdown?

Eran Creevy (20:23)
You know I mean?

Yeah, mean, firstly, I’ve been through many different variations of what it means to be a writer, director on a film or a TV show. And Shifty, for example, and Welcome to the Punch were two scripts that I wrote. My two first movies were scripts that I wrote and were pretty much lockdown finished and ready months before we shot the film. And, you know, they were storyboarded to a T and they never changed. So that process as a writer was quite separate from my

approach as director, but I knew a lot about the movies. knew how I was going to approach them because I’d written them. Then I came to Collide, which was a very different animal. It wasn’t a success for me, that movie, but that was a series of things coming together. Joel Silver, the producer, was a full force to work with on that film. kind of just, yeah, you’ve heard the stories, but Joel Silver, who’s a sort of

a huge Hollywood producer who’s made Die Hard and Lethal Weapon and the Matrix movies and Sherlock Holmes and made billions at the box office as he would often tell me how much he made at the box office. And how much, how little money. Yeah, how little money I do. Well, yeah, he decided to, he wanted to just rewrite the entire script kind of five weeks outside out of production. And we, and I’d already had a pretty locked in script that I’d co-written with another writer.

Orlando Wood (21:31)
running tally

Eran Creevy (21:45)
and we had to rewrite the entire script and it just wasn’t working. And even by the time we got into production, the script just didn’t work because it was a nonlinear kind of Deadpool style movie, which told a very nonlinear action story, but it was cut up in a kind of Tarantino way and the script was carefully jigsawed together in that way. But then Joel decided that he wanted the film to be linear. And then when we tried to make it in it, it just didn’t work because we kind of realized it didn’t really flow from A to B to C to D to E. And I spent a lot of time staying up till four in the morning while we’re shooting it.

rewriting scenes, trying to figure it out. It wasn’t working. And it became quite a hard process. And you know what I went through on that movie. Like we’ve talked a lot in depth about how the emotional toll it took on me and how exhausted I was after trying to balance both those roles of writer and director and the script wasn’t working. And that meant the film wasn’t working. And it became a very heavy process and almost kind of, yeah, soured my relationship with the film industry for a little bit. So I sort of, after that I…

went off and I just kind of buried my head in writing. So I honed my craft, I learnt a lot more about writing. And I say, don’t forget that when I came in onto The Gentleman, I was only hired as a director. And I was a block three director, which means you have a block director means you have one director directs the first block, which is episodes one and two, which was Guy Ritchie. There was Nima who came in and directed episode block two, which is episodes three and four. I directed a block three, episodes five and six. And when I came in, my episode five and six needed some work. So I kind of said, look, I’m a writer.

I can help you out here. Like we can, can give you a 10 page beat sheet of how I think we could fix these scripts, which I did. And so I was never really hired as a writer, but I had the skillset to be able to be brought in and to fix those scripts as best as my ability. And also I had an invested interest in that they were my episodes. I was going to, you know what mean? was, but it became a great process. I didn’t find it stressful as weird as I did on Collider. I cause I knew that a lot of the heavy lifting already already been done by Guy. I’d seen the first two episodes. I knew they were great.

And I just knew that we kind of needed to keep that train going and kind of keep this season on the rails. So it was very much Wallace and Gromit. We were kind of laying the track down as the train was going along. Biddley, when you’re on a TV show, the kind of, the Albatross around your neck feels less in a way. don’t know. Do you know what mean? It just feels sort of less. Exactly. And Netflix were, you know, not just blowing hyperbole up their balloon knot, but they were pretty amazing and anything we needed.

know what mean? They gave like if we needed more money, we needed to fix it, if we needed to stay, we’re kind of completely supportive of the filmmakers on The Gentlemen, season one. Whatever we needed to do to fix it and make it right, they were behind us and kind of supporting us the whole way. Ritchie and Matt Reed are kind of much more heavily involved in season two and crafting all the episodes. But again, for the episodes that I’m going to direct, I’ve kind of been giving guidance, giving notes and sort of helping craft where some of it can go.

Orlando Wood (24:32)
brings up something I wanted to get into because between the US and the UK, they seem to have very different processes when it comes to writing a screenplay. so a lot of people won’t know this, but you worked on in a writer’s room, of co-head of a writer’s room in Los Angeles for Netflix. It seems like there’s a difference between the US and the UK. The UK tends to hire a specific writer or writing team.

to write an episode or an episode block, as you say. Whereas in the States, it’s a very much a writer’s room system where it’s kind of everybody’s there running the overall story for the entire season. How do those processes differ from the perspective of a writer and director? Obviously I would imagine each have their pros and cons, but how does that change how you act as a writer? And do you like the lone wolf aspect of being on your own wrestling with a script? Or do you like that process of

sitting and breaking story with 10 people.

Eran Creevy (25:27)
Yeah,

it’s an interesting one because obviously, so to give a bit of background on that project. So the project was called Viva La Madness. It was the sequel to Layer Cake, as you know, is the sequel to Layer Cake, which was the Daniel Craig starring movie, which Matthew Vaughan directed. And Layer Cake was a book by J.J. Connolly and Jason Statham had brought the rights to the sequel book called Viva La Madness. And I think Netflix and Sky Atlantic had come on board and they were going to screen it. They weren’t financing it. WIP, which was like CAA’s…

studio, myself along with Scott Rosenbaum, who was a kind of one of the writers on the shield and Chuck and yeah, various great American TV shows. I wasn’t that experienced in TV, so they brought on Scott Rosenbaum with me to kind of guide me through that process. And Scott Rosenbaum taught me the whole process of an American writer’s room. And we hired some English writers, some American writers. We set up a writer’s room in Beverly Hills. He taught me the process and the steps of how to kind of whiteboard out an entire

episode of television on whiteboards around the room and then whiteboard like the entire season. And when I say whiteboard, that means you put up like episode one, episode two, episode three, and then you break down each episode into five acts. Teaser, and teaser is like the beginning of the episode before the credits come up. And then you have acts one, two, three, and four. And Scott worked like that because he’d worked in a lot of American television and was used to doing ad breaks. But what it taught me as a writer,

is he would say, right, the end of act one, we’re going to have a real down moment for our hero. But the end of act two, there’s an upbeat. But then at the end of act three, there’s this twist and turn. And what it teaches you to kind of give your pilot episode or whatever episode you’re writing by breaking it down into act, a teaser and say three, four acts, five acts. It gives it all these dips of light and shade and kind of twists and turns and when to kind of leave the audience on a cliffhanger and leave them wanting more on the ad break. But actually that is…

nature of storytelling. You kind of want to be drawing your audience in and kind of giving them a tip bit and another little twist and leave them on the cliff hanging here. And yes, we were all in a room with a bunch of writers, me and Scott, and we broke down the entire season together. J.J. Connolly, the novel, there as well. It’s a massive long story about why that show didn’t happen. It’s a big Hollywood sort of machine. And I think Stavefilm was kind of locked into doing Hobbs and Shaw for the studio for which that was a juggernaut.

And I think that maybe we slightly got trampled in the process of that. Do you know what mean? But it was an amazing process for me to work on a big American TV show like that. It was set in England. It was set in England. We were all going to go back and film it. And in fact, we did go back to England and start building sets and everything. And six weeks out of production, like, yeah, the TV show didn’t happen because Jason had to kind of basically go off to do Obst and Assure. And it was a huge thing, but I learned loads from it.

I learnt loads on that process of working within the American. I don’t know loads about an English system because it all feels much more kind of siloed. Do you what mean? Like from what I know, the gentlemen, like you get Matt Reed and Guy Ritchie that write their episodes, but then they sort of bring in other writers to do episodes three or four. There’s no writers room per se, maybe for a little bit, maybe like half a day or a couple of days. But then those writers are sent off and they just go to their houses and they write their scripts and they send them in. And it feels like there’s less of a pros, there’s less of a kind of

structure and process. It’s much more insular and alone in the English process. You’re kind of out there a bit more, I think. And in the American system, you’re much more supported by the WGA and kind of that trade union and the whole kind of support of the writer’s network, which I don’t think kind of really exists to a degree in England. It’s a much more sort of lonely, bitter, grumpy, Barton Fink-esque.

It’s just that, and there isn’t the money as well with British system. It’s just because you don’t have the WGA protecting you, so you just don’t get the same rates. I remember, yeah, me and Scott Rosenbaum needed to do a Bible, react and give a Bible what the TV should, because we’d done the pilot episode. We sort of knew roughly where it was going, but I needed the Bible. So me and him sort of like, well, it’s basically the book, it’s the Bible. So we got the book and we basically…

wrote out a Bible over the weekend. There was quite a lot of work. It was like a 25 page document. It’s still a lot of work, but it only took us the weekend and then we dropped it in. then the next week, the W because of rules, you know, 120 grand goes into your account because you delivered the Bible. my God, what’s that money going into my account? yeah, that’s that’s standard. If you deliver a Bible, you get 120 grand. You didn’t get that in England, the 120 grand delivering the Bible and the Bible, if anyone knows.

Orlando Wood (30:01)
I’m surprised you didn’t conveniently lose your passport at that point. oh, I guess I can’t go home. I don’t know where it’s gone to.

Eran Creevy (30:08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m currently writing the TV show for a major stream over here at the moment. And the rates aren’t the same because they’re all kind of through the UK division and the money’s not the same. As a writer, I think once you get on to set and your directing and stuff, it’s all very similar, but there’s definitely not the kind of support network. And yeah, that’s the only thing I’ve kind of seen the difference between. I think they have mini writers rooms a lot in England. And that means it’s kind of like you maybe have like a couple of two or three writers and…

You’re all kind of doing what we’re doing now. We jump on Zoom. We talk about what we’re processed. But at the moment, there is one show I’m writing for Amazon with Will Truefit, who was one of the script headers on The Gentleman. We’re something for them at the moment. And it’s lovely having someone to co-write with. I find that a real support. Me and him were kind of going through Amazon notes today. Sometimes when you’re on your own and you’re trying to kind of decipher executive notes and you’re on your own.

in your office and you just go, I’m lost. I can’t see the wood for the trees. And just to have someone to be able to bounce off and then you do a pass of the script. I then send it over to him. He does a pass of it. And somewhere you kind of work your way through it and you figure out the notes. that seems to take a, it seems to be a much quicker process if you’re doing that with someone. And you just, it’s just much better having another co-writer there because obviously their life experience is a different from yours. Their way of saying things, their speech patterns, their…

There’s a great thing that Will says that I never said is why have you got to turn everything into a three penny opera? And I would never say anything like that, know, but that’s like something that Will would say. mean, he puts that into a character in the script. I love that little saying. That’s not something I would ever have said. And, you know, it kind of gives your voice new nuances and yeah, and little colors and stuff like that. yeah, it’s been nice co-writing on this show, Ilkonde of Umbria at the moment.

Orlando Wood (31:52)
Are there things that you learned in music videos that you still apply to something like, you know, a large film like Collide or when you’re working on The Gentleman? Because even in The Gentleman, there are certain sections like when he’s dressed up as the chicken costume that feel very music video, you know, and how does, what do you learn from each of the various formats that you bring across to your overall perspective?

Eran Creevy (32:14)
Yeah, look, I’d like, I was somebody who came from a very working class background. had a mom who worked two jobs, didn’t have, filmmaking was never on the radar for me. It wasn’t something that I believe could happen. It seemed very out of reach. So I wasn’t like a Spielberg or no one who grew up with super eight cameras around me and the tech that I could kind of get my hands onto. It felt like something that, what I did have was the ability to watch lots and lots of movies.

my stepfather, he owned a chain of video rental stores, as you know, owned a chain of video rental stores. And I just absorbed every single movie possibly going that I could from Big Trouble in Little China to Moonwalker with Michael Jackson to Lagoonies to Gremlins to the Ghoulies to like Willy Milly to fucking random ages, of like horror movies to everything. So I kind of, did that. I learned a lot about movies. I watched every single movie made.

Same with you, we’ve got a massive love of comics. I read loads of comics. I was massively into my art. I was into my art and drawing and drawing comic books and storyboarding. So my head was already in that visual medium of movies and comic books and drawing a lot. And then I didn’t really do very well in my education. And then when I left university, I decided I wanted to get into the film industry.

I guess I didn’t know any other way to get into it other than my route was to be music videos. That’s where I learned my trade. Then I expanded from doing very low-budget music videos for like 500 quid to getting bigger budgets, five grand to going up to like 20 grand to 250,000 pounds for take that music videos and traveling.

Then I met you and one of my first commercials was for Nike and we traveled the world. That was my first commercial. I was a young director who was hungry. And yes, you are right. Like a lot of the techniques that I picked up as a music video director, like in episode five of season one of The Gentleman, there’s a big scene where the Irish travelers have a big party. we just got loads of music on. The actors went crazy. We just got our cameras onto our shoulders. We ran everything at like 96 frames per second, slow motion. Do you know what mean? So we just went.

And we got everyone to go wild as if they were in a party. And we just run it for like two whole, three, four whole passes of just like different camera angles, different speeds, getting the crew going mad as if they’re having this mad wild party with the Irish travelers. And I had music pumping on set. was shouting, go everyone, let’s throw drinks in the air. Throw money, like go crazy. And it was exactly how I used to direct music videos. And I think the thing about working on something like The Gentleman, why it’s fun.

you can use so many different aesthetics in the Guy Ritchie world and the crime world in general in filmmaking, like from Squasace to Tarantino to Guy Ritchie. Like the crime genre allows you to use freeze frames, slow motion, title slamming up on the screen, top shots, you know, whatever you want to do, like strapping the camera onto something. You can get away with it in the crime genre because it allows you to that freedom. And I think there was a, there’s a shot actually in episode five of The Gentleman where it’s the Irish travelers are going across.

going through customs and I created a camera that goes right through the window, past the people in the car and out the other window and into the customs window where the guy stamped the stamp like down. And I saw it on a KFC advert. I was like, that’s a wicked camera shot. saw it the KFC advert. And it was someone who ordered a KFC at a drive-by. The camera had gone all the way through the car into the sort of drive-by window where you order your KFC and into the kitchen where they were making the KFCs. And I was like, how did they do that shot? So I sourced online how they did that shot. And basically they

got the head of the camera, they put it on a kind of a metal extended pole and they just drove this pole on a dolly, you know, through the car. No one was kind of, got the actors in the car. But I basically ripped it off from a KFC commercial and everyone’s, I love that. I love that shot that you do. You know, I love that shot that you did in the general. It was amazing. I’m like, mate, you can take your inspiration from Tarantino. You can just take your inspiration from a KFC advert. It’s just like, if it’s a good camera shot, it’s a good camera shot.

but they actually did that KFC ad where it was creative and did a good job and I’m taking it. I’m using that shot man. And then it became a motif that we reuse that shot throughout. There’s a sort of musical sequence in episode five of The Gentleman where they’re transporting the Irish travelers are transporting the drugs and this hip hop track kicks in and we kind of keep going back to that shot going through the car window and then it’s custom that they keep like moving the drugs through. And so yeah, it became this little motif that we continue to use that shot. But I think when I did collide, I was sort of kind of getting a little bit serious and I was like.

I think doing The Gentleman has kind of shook them back up my creative instincts, the filmmaker, of why I wanted to do this. That Guy Ritchie world is really fun. I think my sensibilities and my aesthetic fits into it quite easily with him, which is why I’ve sort of been brought back for season two. I like pushing it. I grew up on a diet of Tony Scott. I love Tony Scott movies when I was growing up. I love Die Hard. I love Lethal Weapon. I love Predator. I love Tony Scott. I love Ridley Scott. I love the American aesthetic. love…

movies of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. I didn’t want to do the BBC drama looking stuff basically. I wasn’t interested in doing Doctor Who. I wasn’t interested in doing that milky kind of BBC looking. Look, I know the BBC does lots of great stuff, but I didn’t like what English television did. I was always like, man, American TV and American movies are so chunky and amazing looking. I want to be working in that medium. I want to be like shooting action scenes of American cop cars.

Orlando Wood (37:42)
It’s one of the things you said, we were on the train, we had to go back and film a pickup shot in Paris with this, Nike thing we were doing and we were making Paris look very cool and you kind of said on the train back, you were like, why doesn’t London ever look cool like the way we’re shooting Paris? Like, you know, it feels like London is always gritty and underworldy and actually London can look pretty amazing. And then you did that with Welcome to the Punch. You know, I think about like three years later, you were then shooting Welcome to the Punch.

And I think that actually that look you created in Welcome to the Punch, I think really actually changed the way people shoot London from then on, from then after.

Eran Creevy (38:21)
I grew up on the diet of Hong Kong, the heroic bloodshed genre of Hong Kong action cinema. So John Woo was hugely influential to me. And weirdly, I rewatched The Departed the other day. And then I stuck on the trailer for Infernal Affairs, because I love Infernal Affairs, the original movies that they remade into The Departed. The original movie came out in 2002, and I think The Departed came out in 2006. I think The Departed visually looks really dated compared to Infernal Affairs. When you go and watch the trailer for Infernal Affairs, it looks like

Michael Mann heat. It is in this neon Hong Kong city. It’s kind of the black, beautiful blue filter. I love it shot at night time. At the time I was living in and around Canary Wharf, which was just an amazing financial district, skyscrapers, glass, concrete, of chrome, steel. I could never understand why no one shot London like that and made it look like a futuristic metropolis. Then I did that with Welcome to the Punch.

funnily enough, loads of people like Gangs of London and everyone started doing it after me, shooting London in a certain way. And they even mentioned it, like I think in the Empire magazine review of Gangs of London, like saying, and they said in that review, there’s only ever really been two people that shot London this way, Matthew Vaughan with letter cake and Iran Kweevy with welcome to the punch. That’s amazing. That’s made London look like this. I think, yeah. So that all stemmed from having those American sensibilities.

of Hong Kong Asian sensibilities of growing up on my love of that cinema and bringing that here. Welcome to the Punch is definitely a homage to the heroic bloodshed genre of Hong Kong cinema. mean, all you need is white dubs flying off. When James McAvoy is sliding along the bar with two guns, I was like…

Orlando Wood (40:08)
sliding

over his back like that yeah

Eran Creevy (40:11)
Yeah, it’s like, you know, and in many ways now I wish I’d pushed it even further.

Orlando Wood (40:16)
in London it would have been pigeons.

Eran Creevy (40:18)
Yeah, yeah,

just some greyy pictures. The Gentleman with Guy has given me a sense of humour and I kind of want to, it’s made me look at filmmakers like Matthew Vaughan and Guy Ritchie and Edgar Wright and where they’ve really hit that sweet spot of kind of balancing action and humour together, you know what mean? And I sort of, really enjoyed doing that with Gentleman. I’d like to do that more going forward, which is kind of what Il Connolly is, like trying to push that level of action, but with a beautiful level of comedy and fun and you know, me and you are similar. We grew up on films like Beverly Hills Cops.

You know what mean? And like the comedy of like the buddy cop movies of like the eighties and you know, the Saturday Night Live crew all making movies like Ghostbusters or Spies Like Us or The Three Amigos. Like, they would have some movies I grew up with, man. you know, fucking lethal weapons of funny film. Like really funny.

Orlando Wood (41:03)
Yeah, yeah. You were the first person to really treat eighties and nineties action films like a respected genre to me. I kind of was like, oh, I love those movies. And you were the first person I met creatively who was like, break down Die Hard from a filmmaker or a film theory perspective and see what you find. And actually you crack Die Hard open and there’s all this amazing storytelling, really tight script, planting and payoff throughout.

You kind of really, you were the first person who made me go like, actually there is some good filmmaking, you know, that, that is sort of written off as popcorn cinema.

Eran Creevy (41:40)
But the ones you

Orlando Wood (41:41)
incredible time.

Eran Creevy (41:43)
Yeah, feel like growing up a lot of people’s favorite movies were always that Pulp Fiction or The Godfather. I was always Dianne. I was always Predator. I always that I’d leave a weapon. I was always like the last boy scout, know, Tony Scott movies. I’d grown up like…

Orlando Wood (41:56)
Boy Scout. Unbelievably overlooked film.

Eran Creevy (42:00)
I

believe it’s got less than 30 % of runs and artists. I’m like, why is one of the greatest movies of all time? yeah, I think it was just the sort of bravery that American movies had just to like the sort of visual aesthetic style. It’s very grevident. Yeah, it’s just confident filmmaking and the brevity of how they were just kind of these big bold characters. I can go for it like in the line of fire with Clint Eastwood. And I love Westerns and like, Unforgiven is one of my favorite movies.

But yeah, so I think, yeah, when I met you back in the day, I was like, man, that’s like the greatest move yet. I mean, I’ve got the Nakatami plait. For anyone who doesn’t know, in the photo, I’ve got the Nakatami plait tattooed on my back, which is actually true. I do have the Nakatami plait tattooed on the back of my neck.

Orlando Wood (42:46)
You’ve

got lots of film oriented tattoos. mean, your hand is, yeah.

Eran Creevy (42:51)
There’s a John Woo, yeah, that’s like two guns, John Woo hard boiled, Alfred Hitchcock the bird, but anyway we can gain.

Orlando Wood (42:58)
I love it. Listen, I’m going to let you go. There’s two questions I wanted to ask. you have a sec. One is I had a boss, you know, called Dan Wyden who was he, you know, he and Dave Kennedy started Wyden Kennedy and they wrote Just Do It and they, you know, they’re just the kind of real influences in advertising. And Dan Wyden had a quote where he said, you’re useless to me until you fail big at least twice. And so I just kind of wanted to ask,

Can you think of a time you absolutely shit the bed? Whether it’s as a runner, at the time you got in trouble, but a time you really feel you messed up and then what you learned from

Eran Creevy (43:40)
The process of making a movie like Collide is a movie where I did something where it almost derailed my career. What did I learn in the process of making something like Collide? I sort of licked my wounds a lot after I made that movie. It wasn’t very well received by critics. I knew the reasons why. I knew that that was happening as I was going on to set. I knew that I was not making something that I could stand by. The script was kind of falling apart around me, but a lot of that was my own fault.

They say the only strengths you’ve got as a director is what you say yes to and what you say no to. you know, even Christopher Nolan has to say yes to the studio at some point, but he chooses his battles when to say no. And I think that now I would have greater conviction in what I stood up against and what I would take and whether I would just walk away from a project because I was just like, you know what? I can see that this is falling apart and I can sniff that out. I think that with Collide, in all respects to the script, I never truly a hundred percent believed in it.

like the script because it was written by someone else. But I thought that I was smart enough in order to make it work. I thought I was smart enough as a creative and an artist to kind of get the script to the place it could be. But I never really truly believed in the film. I never really quite liked the script. And that was always an issue with my music videos. Whenever I didn’t like the song, I often wouldn’t make a very good music video.

Like if I really loved the song and I really was into the music, I would often make a really great music video. would be part and parcel of that. If I doing commercials, I was really into the product that I was selling. If I was really into what it was or the creative, you’d always push that a bit further and do something better. And I think I just had a niggling in my stomach when I made Collide that I kind of like, I don’t know if this is the film I should be doing next, but they were offering me a lot of money to do it. It’s a great opportunity. I get to work with some amazing actors.

But what I’ve learned now is just to kind of remember that feeling and remember that. And if I get sent a script and there’s just something in him, says, man, this is not for you. there’s a lot of good stuff about this, but there’s something in my gut that says, this is not for you. This is not right. And I just think in life, you’ve just got to follow that feeling, just follow that gut feeling. You know, and I’m not putting myself in the same bracket as people like Spielberg, but when he made Hook, he says a very similar thing. Like you just, he never could get his head around that script and telling that story properly.

I think he wanted to make it, but he just couldn’t ever figure out what that story was or what the movie was. Something in his stomach told him this is off. So he pumped just loads of effort into the production design of Hook. So when you watch Hook, it’s like production design to Clark. It’s this is a matter of T.T. because Spielberg said, just focused on my edges on the production design because I didn’t really know the film I was making.

And I think that’s what happened to me when I was doing Clyde. sort of, got lost. didn’t really know what the film I was making. It suddenly got rewritten. You know, and is that Joe Silver’s fault? Is that my fault? I don’t know. It’s just they’re the circumstances that I put myself in. And I think more, what I’ve learned I think out of that process is to follow my instincts, to follow my gut instincts. And from now on, I only do stuff that I’m a hundred percent into and committed to. And yeah, I think that’s what I learned, man.

And that was a big life lesson. Lots of therapy to get to that point there, I’ll a lot of therapy. I think there was a part in my life where I was pretty angry about what had happened and I was quite bitter and angry. And I it was like the world’s fault that the world was against me and all I had done was try to do a good job. But I think at some point you have to go, where does the fault lie with me as we’re in that situation? Like you can sit and point fingers your whole life and go, it’s their fault the film didn’t work. Or is this producer’s film or is Joel Silver’s film? It’s like, at end of the day, God’s just got to look at itself and the fault lies with you, right?

And like what I just have to sort of process what I did wrong in that and how I learned not to make those same mistakes moving forward. think that’s the answer we learn. And on that note, Namaste.

Orlando Wood (47:21)
Yes, I mean, I now feel like I should have another question that’s a slightly more slightly more positive, but but I think that’s positive.

Eran Creevy (47:33)
That

is positive, yeah, I think positive, but I think I came out of it, I think the positive thing is I came out of it a better filmmaker, sort of understanding the process. I think you need to go through, everyone says, you know, don’t learn until you fail. You need to go through those processes of having major failures and filmmaking’s an alchemy. There’s a million and one reasons why things don’t work. You know, so many things have to align to make it a good movie or TV show. I’m gonna choose things in the future that I’m really into, that I’m 100 % believe, that I put all my effort into, and it might not work again. It’s just this game, isn’t it? never know.

You never know, but just what I’m gonna do now is I’m older and I’m just gonna enjoy the journey more. I took it all too seriously when I was younger. I took it all too personally. I felt like the world, felt, yeah, I just took it all on my own, took my shoulders too much. Now I’m just like, I don’t care, man. I’m just out here having some fun, making some shit. Living the dream, man, living the dream.

Orlando Wood (48:24)
Well, dude, thank you so much for hopping on with me. This has been fun. And actually, as somebody who’s, you know, obviously, you know, you’re one of my best friends and but at the same time, I’m a big fan of yours. Like I love why I put on Welcome to the Punch probably like six months ago. I just popped it on and instead of watching it.

Eran Creevy (48:41)
Well mate, that’s why I’ve always loved you, because you’ve always been a massive fan, you’ve always been my my white partner, Danielle, you’re one of my number one supporters, you’ve been championing the creepy draft man.

It’s fine if you go, should be directing a Marvel movie. You should be directing a movie.

Orlando Wood (49:02)
You do that don’t I look they’re looking for this for some Marvel movie. I’m like, this is you all over you can’t get in there

Eran Creevy (49:10)
before

I get in the room with that dude man, there’s no way I’m getting in the room and then you sent that thing for me.

Orlando Wood (49:21)
Yeah man, just give me your agent’s details. I’ll harass the shit out of

Eran Creevy (49:25)
No, you should be my agent. should be. Create me an AI agent through Kubrick.

Orlando Wood (49:30)
Yeah, for sure. It’s not a terrible idea. Well, listen, dude, thank you so much. This is wicked of you to do this and it’s been super fun. Now, we’ll say our goodbyes.

Eran Creevy (49:42)
Yeah, thanks very much. I love you. I love you. I love you, bro. Yeah, it’s been fun chatting, man. And I hope that anyone who listens for this enjoys it.

Orlando Wood (49:50)
Yeah, exactly. Who knows? Who knows?

Eran Creevy (49:52)
I’m not a G-

Orlando Wood (49:58)
So that was fun talking with Aran. What really struck me was how him crowing up on a diet of Hong Kong action cinema and 90s blockbusters mixes with his experience directing music videos and commercials to give him this incredible unique perspective. Whether it’s a shot he’s stealing from a KFC ad or an idea sparked while directing a Nike commercial, an idea that eventually three years later has him working with Ridley Scott. It all kind of feeds into his filmmaking in a way that feels honest and real.

And I think it’s that honesty and reality that makes movies resonate with us. There’s something true behind them drawn from real experiences. AI and technology can do a lot, will do more, but storytelling at its core is human. And so when IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1996, it didn’t lead to an era of people watching computers play chess against each other. Now you may say, who’s watching chess anyway, but actually,

Because of the Queen’s Gambit and the advent of Twitch, more people are watching and playing chess than ever before. And none of it’s computer on computer action. So even when a machine is technically better, there’s still something about human creativity, struggle, and storytelling that keeps us watching and keeps us invested. And I think invested is gonna be a very important term over the course of the next few years. We may watch things, but are we invested? Do we care?

You know, it makes me happy to know when I watch one of his films that I’m seeing the passion of a kid who once fell in love with cinema at his stepdad’s film store. And these stories are going to change. The tools will evolve. But I suspect that when we see our first major AI driven film breakthrough, it’ll come with a story about some person writing it in their bedroom and what they were inspired by and what their background is and how their life has changed. Similarly to when Sean Baker made Tangerine on an iPhone.

Because at the end of the day, it’s the human endeavor that elevates technology into art. And Eran is a perfect example of that. His first film was made for 100K, and now he’s working on a 60 million pound series for the biggest studio in the world. Now AI may be able to generate stories, it will generate better stories, but it’s hard for it to make me care about them the way I do when I see that kind of journey. I don’t know about you, but when I see some AI film on Reddit, I blow by it.

It’s empty calories to me, it’s ephemera, unless it’s based on some historical IP, but that’s because that historical IP moved me years ago with something that was honest and true. When something breaks through, it’ll be interesting. And we’ve seen it before with the development of YouTube, you’ve seen more opportunities being given to more people shooting their lives in a mix of documentary or reality based on having more professional cameras in their pockets.

But we now may see more of that happen in the narrative and sci-fi and fantasy space, and that’ll be interesting. It may not all be great, but it’ll be interesting. And you may say that YouTube isn’t necessarily creatively excellent, but it’s undeniable that there are definitely creators who understand that medium, who have followings, and they have significant success as a result of that technology, and I just think it’ll be the same here. Anyway, once again, if you made it this far, thank you so much. I hope you join us again next time.