Justin Lin made his directorial debut in 2002 with Better Luck Tomorrow, a low-budget indie crime drama which he also co-wrote, co-produced and edited. The film debuted at Sundance to critical acclaim and launched his career. Since then, Lin has become one of the most successful directors in Hollywood - and the go-to car-chase and car-stunt filmmaker of his generation – by steering the long-running
Fast & Furious action series into a multi-billion-dollar global mega-franchise.
Now Lin (pictured), whose credits include the blockbuster Star Trek: Beyond and
The Endgame, has returned to his indie roots with his new film,
Last Days. Based on a true story, it tells the story of a young American Christian missionary, John Allen Chau, who leaves family and friends behind to embark on a dangerous adventure across the globe to share his faith with the isolated tribe of North Sentinel Island, off the east coast of India in the Bay of Bengal – and off-limits to all visitors. After he finally reaches the forbidden island by kayaking there, he’s never heard from again, and his disappearance soon becomes an international incident and the focus of a manhunt by police from the nearby Andaman Islands, who are tasked with finding him before he comes to harm at the hands of the protected but violent tribe.
Starring a breakout performance from British actor Sky Yang as Chau, the film reunites Lin with an accomplished behind-the-scenes team, including his longtime editor Dylan Highsmith (the Fast & Furious franchise,
Star Trek: Beyond) and cinematographer Oliver Bokelberg (
The Endgame).
Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, the director talks about making the film and his love of post.
After all the Fast & Furious films I can't imagine a more extreme change of pace for you than this. So what was the appeal?
“After 20 years of big tent poles, I was yearning to challenge myself and do something very different, and I was at the airport, and I remember seeing this story about John on the news, and I had a very strong reaction to it, as I couldn’t understand someone doing what he did. Then they showed a photo of John with his age – just a 26-year-old kid — and it really hit me that he's somebody's son, and I have a young son, and who am I to judge someone so quickly? So that quick judgment I made led me to a four-year journey to make this film and examine not only John’s life, but my own biases. I knew from the beginning I wanted to tell his story without judging him and to see if I could connect with John's humanity, because what he did was so polarizing.”
What did Sky bring to the role?
“His commitment to John. Even with an indie movie, they're always looking for a ‘name,’ and I felt, to be true to what we're trying to do, why don't we just throw a huge casting net around the world and see if we could find our John the old-fashioned way. So, we did tons of auditions, and Sky kept moving up and I ended up workshopping with him, and I just found him so refreshing, because it was not about him or his career, it was about what's best for the movie.”
This was very ambitious for an indie. What were the main challenges in terms of prepping it?
“At one point we were going to shoot in Thailand, but the strike threw us off, and then we were going to go to India, and we were two weeks away from production, and then we couldn't get the final permission, so we had to move back to Thailand, and we had a lot of challenges. It’s an indie movie, but it required all these people who’ve worked on my big tent poles to come together and make this happen. We shot in Thailand on Fast 9, and that same crew came together on this. They had a lot of offers for bigger movies, but they all stuck with me. It was the same with the team who helped on post.”
How long was the shoot, and how many locations did you have in the end?
“It was a 38-day main shoot, and we shot in dozens of locations spread over five countries. It took a lot of planning, and I had to use every indie trick, and technology really helped us because there were times when I would send Sky and our second unit DP to another location, like Iceland. I would talk to the aerial unit, and we would be doing it all live, and I'd be directing from another continent. It was just wild.”
Tell us about working with cinematographer Oliver Bokelberg again.
“The look was very important, and Oliver and I talked a lot, and we really wanted to shoot film and have this organic feel. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford it, so we shot digitally, but we wanted that filmic feel, so we did a lot of tests and Oliver found a great set of lenses. There's a lot of challenges doing indie films in terms of money and budget, but the one thing that you do have is time to prep. You don't go until the script is ready, and we worked on it for two years. And there's no premiere date already set, so Oliver and I had time to try different cameras and lenses, and we were able to find a package that was very mobile, efficient, and gave us the aesthetic that we wanted.”
Where did you post?
“It was all based here in LA at my office in South Pasadena. It's been my dream to have my own post setup, because even doing huge tent poles, a lot of times you feel like a gypsy in post. You move from building to building constantly, so I've been building this little campus, just five minutes from the house. And after being away from my family for over five months, it was nice to be at home and focus on post and putting everything together without having to move again. And Last Days was the first film that we got to edit out of the new space.”
Tell us about the editing process, as I assume Dylan didn't come on location?
“Unfortunately, no. On the big movies, he's there with me on-set all the time. But again, we were able to take advantage of the technology, so we have the same process, because I like editing as we're shooting. So during the little time I was sleeping in Thailand, he was editing back here in LA, and when I was up, he would send me cuts, and I'd give him notes while we're in the van riding to set. So, it was still very similar, just not having a physical presence. But we've worked together so much since we started in Fast Five back in 2010, that we have a shorthand, so that was a big advantage for us.”
What were the main editing challenges?
“First, there was a lot of piecing things together, because although it's just a 38-day shoot, I wanted these things to feel huge. So we had units going out with Alex Vegh, who's the second-unit director and the VFX supervisor, and we’ve been together for 20 years since Tokyo Drift. So if I had a crazy idea while we're busy shooting ‘magic hour’ for a lot of stuff, when you get these nice, beautiful blue hues, the problem was in Thailand, you only have ten minutes at dawn and ten minutes at dusk. So I would have to work with him while we're shooting first unit, and Alex and 2nd unit would have to go out and get shots with the cars and stuff like that. So I'm constantly working with Alex and Dylan to make sure we have enough shots before we leave locations, and that just became part of the process doing the big movies, and now I got to apply it on a little indie movie. Then with performance, we needed enough time to react and process and digest all the subtleties of the actors’ work. It was layering it and making these adjustments. That was probably the most challenging thing, because we had just ten weeks as the schedule was really tight in post.”
It's obviously not a big effects movie, but there are quite a few VFX, right?
“Right, and probably more than you would expect. Bluebolt did a lot of the more complex shots that we had, and we had a lot of split screens and stuff like that, and Eye-Spy VFX did work on that. It was the practical shoot that was leading the VFX which, philosophically for me, is a nice tweak from the way VFX dictate stuff in the tent poles. And as technology's evolving, that is changing my process in how I want to use VFX.”
What about the sound? Where did you mix?
“On the Hitchcock stage at Universal, and I had mixers Jon Taylor and Frankie Montano, and sound designer Peter Brown, who mix and do all the big movies, including the Fast and Furious films, and they gave me a call and said, ‘We'd love to do your indie.’ And I said, ‘I don't think we can afford it.’ And they're like, ‘No problem.’ So, I got spoiled. This is the one favor you call in after 20 years of working with everybody, and everybody showed up to help out in post.”
Tell us about the DI.
“We did it at Picture Shop with Andre Rivas, my longtime colorist who’s done nearly all my films. Obviously, I have a shorthand with Andre, and I get into the granular on a DI. A lot of times, DPs are on another job, so they usually get a week to set the look, but Oliver and I were with Andre the whole way, which was a luxury I usually don't have. Oliver did such a great job, it was just making sure that we stayed disciplined and focused on the interaction between contrast and saturation, and not overdoing it and making every shot look too beautiful. And I wanted it to feel that photographically, it was something that we just captured. That's something we talked a lot about on every shot, that we could control everything, but let's not do that. What are we trying to say in this film? So, if some things are maybe a little too dark or bright, we weren't trying to correct it just to make it look perfect. We were trying to correct it to make it feel like it was captured in that moment without any help.”
Did this turn out the way you first envisioned it, or did it become something else?
“It’s probably the biggest example of something changing radically, and it was very humbling for me, because Oliver was the first person I called, and I remember saying, ‘It's probably going to be me, you, six people, and we're going to travel the world for six months and shoot this.’ That was my ambition, but the more I developed the script, the more I realized John was so obviously inspired by Hollywood films and adventure novels that the best version of this had to feel more like a big Hollywood movie. So, I had to shift my whole vision for it.”