Part 1- Interview of David Womark, an American Film Producer

0:01 This is Silicon Valley Tech, Behind The Scenes, a podcast hosted by Shawn Flynn and Sunil S Ranka. Here's where we talk to the real heroes to find out how decisions are made and how they're executed to create the thriving businesses of tomorrow. I think you have to start similar with any product. Once you have your theme, especially in the creative endeavor, but I think it's also back to jobs and the iPad. I want to create something that people will want to use that's mobile, that's not a phone, but it's something bigger. But my theme is it has to be aesthetically pleasing to me, and hopefully that will translate. And I think you need somebody always to be able to have that perspective, that seed, start the journey, and then everything else kind of falls into place around that. It's never simple, but I think having a philosophy or a theme of what it is you're trying to achieve, and then slowly going through all the various steps of visualizing it. And that was David Wohlmark, who is an American film producer. And with Ann Lee and Gil Netter, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Life of Pi. On today's show, we talk about David's journey to becoming a producer.

1:19 We talk about the similarities between creating a movie and a startup, and much more. So stay tuned for today's episode on The Silicone. The Silicone Valley Tech Podcast. Enjoy. David, thank you for taking the time today to be on Silicon Valley Tech with Sunil and myself. Now, you've had this amazing career, this amazing journey. For our audience at home that may not know you that well, can you give us a bit of a background on your journey up to this point? It's outside of the tech world. It's parallel, too. I started in the motion picture business 30 years ago, 30 plus, and it's now 30 years later. It's been a pretty amazing journey. What brought you to the movie industry to begin with? The film business. Why the film business? Subconsciously, I think there was a connection. My grandfather was a survivor during the Hitler and Nazi period, and he was a German film producer in Germany. And once the table started to turn and he knew he had to get out, I'm going to back up for a second. And he had made anti-Hitler films as the regime started becoming more and more powerful. And once... They took over. He escaped with the reels and made his way out all the way back to Portugal, and then from Portugal to New York.

2:45 It was like a subconscious thing that just sits in your head as a kid when you hear those stories. So I think that that's my connection to following in some footsteps of... I knew him. He passed away when I was 11 or 12. But as a kid, I think we all get impressed with certain things in your family or events. And that's one of them. When you entered the industry, did you find any mentors or any guides that helped you along the path? Or what was the knowledge that you gained to really move you forward in the career? I think in every journey you have in a career, in any field, there are people that you meet that impress you. Some of them were actors. Some of them weren't directors. Some of them work producers. And when you meet some of the most talented ones, you know, it's hard not to be impressed when you meet somebody that has a take or perspective that is outside of your own imagination. And they have a different way of looking at things. So I think that always kind of by osmosis, you end up... If it's something that interests you, you end Up connecting to it. And I've been very fortunate in that regards. And on and off for five years was Ang Lee.

4:02 And even though this was midway to... Later in my career, besides being a great honor, I get to see the journey of a great filmmaker at work. And I think like any artist, what makes Ang's art so unique is that he believes in the journey of the protagonist. And many times he will, in his own imagination, take that journey. And I think when you look at a storytelling from that perspective, not only do you have the character's perspective, but you immerse yourself in the environment. How similar is creating a story and creating a product or a business? Wow. I think there's a lot of parallels. There's some differences, but I'll start with the parallels. I think even with a business, to be successful, it comes from your gut. You know, this is something you want to pursue. And you'll adjust and be persistent, but also adjust to get to your goal. And I think that that's something... Also, creatively, you have to know where you're going. I think the only difference is that there's so many parallel pathways in business that you can look at for guidance or reference.

5:19 And I think sometimes with a creative journey, for certain people, there's less reference. So many different ideas coming together, different people, different visions. In business, a lot of people might have ideas coming to the table of how a new project... Or a new thing should be implemented. What is the best way to collaborate as a group? So everyone's opinion is heard, but yet a path is decided upon. I'm going to say this, even though this is a podcast where there's no visuals. But I have a rule that over the years I've made up, but I call it rule number one. And it's a show me business, not a talk to me business. And I think that's applicable to tech. You know, I'm going on this journey now with the app. I see the difference when... We have something to show versus something to say. And it's a similar medium because if you think about it, you're still looking at things on a screen, right? Moving, not moving. It's still on a screen. So since the goal has a visual element, showing things to people is a much better form of communication. That's why, you know, you look at all the classes in your world, the tech lectures, jobs, gates. It's usually always the annual rollout of new hardware and software.

6:36 It's done visually. So to me, I think that's the biggest thing is making sure that we're all communicating visually because the visual communication has a little more unity in terms of understanding. Whereas words, we all know sometimes everybody can look at things differently. I think always having a visual element to any discussion for success.

7:01 When you're working with international teams where maybe a language could be more diverse, difficult than in a situation where everyone's from the same geographic area, same background. How does that vision, how does that visual picture get altered or changed? I have one huge advantage. When we were doing Lepa, we were in Taiwan and India. Taiwan, Mandarin, India, thousands of languages, mostly Hindi. But I grew up in two cultures. I was born here. And at the age of 12, I had to learn Hebrew. Different lettering system, different words. It's not Greek. Greek, Roman, there's no connection to English. And I think once you have to battle through that, when you're young, and especially since I was in sixth or seventh grade, you're not young enough where you immediately absorb it. And you're not old enough where you get stuck. You're in that middle zone. Back to the visual cues. The visual cues, using of hands, people's faces, how they express themselves, just automatically becomes part of your own language. So when I go to other cultures, I'm used to this all the time. When we would have a... I went to a lot of meetings in Taiwan with dignitaries and politicians. I would be the only English speaking person there. So many times they would speak Mandarin for hours. And I would go, you never seem to get bored. I said, no, because I'm looking at how they're behaving and trying to figure out what they're saying.

8:19 And 50, you know, if you've done this long enough, 50 percent of the time, you're right. I mean, in Hindi, in India, having done two films there, the entire crew, you know. They'll speak English on occasion. But the go-to language is Hindi. The film we made was in Hindi. The second one was Sonia. So, again, you're sitting around on a movie set with another language and you have to, my favorite word, adapt. Now, David, you'd mentioned a couple of things there that an audience that hasn't done their research on, you probably don't know. You mentioned two movies. You also mentioned an app. You got to tell us about all three of those. Okay. I guess I would start with Life of Pi. And Life of Pi is a film that I produced. It's an Ang Lee film that I had the honor of producing. And I'd worked with Ang previously on The Hulk. And it was a pretty amazing journey because I think it was four years for Ang and three years for myself in the beginning to end. But what made it so interesting was some of the challenges that we had to do cinematically. And the biggest one, of course, was making the audience feel that they're on the ocean with Pi. And that was one of the hardest decisions to make. You're working at times with live animals, but not always. But when you start taking animals, kids, compounded by the fact that...

9:36 We were the second film to use the 3D system that was first used on Avatar. There were just so many complications. We had to get to a place where Ang felt comfortable doing it in a controlled environment. And we shot all the water sequences, 99%, except for one shot where Pi arrives in Mexico on the beach. We shot in southern Taiwan and can think. Everything else was done in what essentially is a big, big swimming pool. That was 350... 100 feet by 100 feet, approximately, 100 meters by 300 meters, and 30 meters by 100 meters. And in order to get the waves to work, because what we had both done, Ang really felt it was important for the audience to experience the drifting and the being on the water. And in order do that, the trick is you do less cutting. You let the camera just lay there and you see sometimes things in real time. And that gives you a sense that you're participating and you have a window into the real thing. But in order to do that, the water movement for a long shot like that needs to look accurate. And we've all seen those movies where they're filming and it looks like they're in a bathtub because the water hits one wall and hits the other wall, but there's waves and you can get away with it. When you're in the open ocean, there really are no waves.

10:54 So the challenge is when you're filming something in a pool and you want to make it feel like you're in the middle of the ocean, in the middle ofthe ocean, there are no waves, there are swells. And what the swells are, is that you're in a pool, you're in an open ocean, and you're in the middle of the ocean. And what the swells do, usually on average, they're roughly two to four feet, and they cycle, I think, 14 to 15 seconds, sorry, 10 to 14 seconds. What we measured in our pool was we would have had to build, in order to get a cycle, 10 to 14 second from the two to four foot waves, you would have had build a pool that was almost a kilometer long, which would have been impossible to also tent and maintain. But we realized we're shooting everything against blue screen, so all the backgrounds, we can move and adjust together with what's in the foreground. So if the waves are moving a little too quickly, by having the background move up and down at a different speed, you can make the swells and create the illusion that you're in the middle of the ocean. So that was one of the harder things to do, especially when you're doing a shot that's like 30, 40 seconds long, where you can't cheat it. So again, what the pool did, what the tank did, is on one side of the tank, we had computers, and there were 14 blowers, and the blowers would pull in water and push out water.

12:13 And you could adjust the blowers in order to create whatever waves or swells you wanted to do in the tank. On the other side of the tank, we had these huge cement triangles that they use in construction that we dropped in on the other side the tank in the crane. What they do is, is when the water gets pushed from one wall to the other side, they disperse all that energy. And the water tends to go underneath it. So now you lose that bathtub water effect, and you're getting real, potentially, real swells or real waves. And that was the hardest thing. I know both Aang and I, it took me months to build the pool, and it's one of those decisions that you make. Aang had to make a similar decision with casting, he always said, this is like, it's not Cast Away with Tom Hanks, it's Life of Pi with Suraj Sharma. So when you have a film like this, where basically the entire movie rests on the shoulders of your lead actor. That's a very critical decision, as well as the decision to do all your water work in a completely controlled environment, when you're a realist as a director. And I think that was a big challenge. That was one of our biggest challenges on the film, besides the creative challenge of interpreting what I would say is somewhat complex novel. David, can you also talk a little bit about implementing new technology in filming?

13:32 I mean, right there, you just came up with a solution to a problem that had to be solved. I mean, that's a huge challenge. That's a huge problem. Yeah. I mean, that's something that hadn't existed before with the ideas of the blue screen, the building, everything. How do you come up with new ideas to solve problems? I think the film world is very similar to the tech world. We study other films and what came before us. And I was fortunate enough to be involved in an iteration of Seawolf that Ron Howard was going to direct many years ago. And we spent six months really studying filming on the water and had a lot of preparation time. And then the gift was, of course, working with somebody like Ang, who's very meticulous and detailed and patient. So the execution, obviously, was amazing. But going back to your question, I think we gravitate towards those challenges, but you address them by really doing a lot of R&D, what came before you, and then coming up with an alternate way. Because it's like in the tech world too, each film has its own challenges. Each application, each piece of software or hardware comes with its own set of challenges, as well. So I think you always want to look at your peers and then build on that. And yes, sometimes, like in this film, we went to a place where nobody had gone. And the funny part of it was we actually were very lucky to work with Wave Park, a big group of guys that design wave parks all over the world.

14:54 They actually have one in Taiwan. I believe there's a couple in Japan and Asia in general. And the wave park technicians were extremely helpful because they had to create waves. Now, we were just asking them to create swell together with waves. But going back to what you asked, yeah, I think the challenge is what makes it fun. There's another film that I produced together with Mark Wahlberg and Lorenzo de Montaventura and Steve Levinson called Deepwater Horizon. We had to address the challenge of putting everybody in fire because we really had looked at a lot of the visual effects and digital work, and it didn't really seem to hold up. You could see the cycles. The digital work, it just didn't feel real. And we realized that since Backdraft, which was made, I think, 30, 40 years ago, Ron Howard's great film, nobody really done a full-on fire movie because that is one of the complications of the film, technically. And we wanted to make it as real as possible. And the funny part of it is 30 years ago, the digital arena has grown and changed and progressed. But on the physical side, you still have man and fire, not a good combination. So it was coming up with a lot of tricks and projection and special effects, and we were very blessed because we got nominated for an Academy Award for the visual effects and special effects.

16:17 We were the only movie in a long time, I think, that really earned it based on a lot of the practical work as well as the visual work, not just the visual work. So that's always exciting. Perfect, David. So you talked about your experience of shooting films in India. Hmm. I grew up in Hollywood, Bollywood. I grew up with Bollywood, a big fan of it. Yeah. Interesting stories. What do you see as a cultural difference, anything which would excite us? You know, India is such a complex culture. And having made two films now in India, one, Life of I, and the other film, Love, Sonia, directed by Tabrez Noorani, true story about child sex trafficking, a major issue in India has been throughout history. It's gotten worse. Over the years, there's something I really enjoy about working in India because you're coming at it from a different place. You're coming at it for a spiritual place. And even on the films that I've worked there, I've heard many foreign crew come to me and say, wow, we can shoot in the slums. We can shoot in some of the most luxurious apartments. We can shoot some of the amazing landscapes. But at all these different places, I've always heard, especially the Western crew and filmmakers, I always go, wow, this was a magical and spiritual experience.

17:39 And which is funny because then you bump into Bollywood, which is just plain, full-on commercial experience. But I think the hidden gem of Indian cinema is that, which a lot of people, unless you're Indian, of course, on the outside don't know, is that India also has a very vibrant, independent film scene. And a lot of the actors in Love, Sonia, Richa Chadha, Manoj Bajpayee, Monal Thakur, all grew up in the Indian world. And it's interesting when you're in an area that's 95% conquered by Bollywood, to have the gumption and the courage artistically to put yourself out there in these smaller films, I think makes them some of the most incredible actors I've ever got to work with. We come from a product journey. We build product in anticipation of what we see as a need. But in your case, you have to sell dreams. How do you embark on that journey? How do you do that? How do you take that journey to know what the finished product would look like and what it should be? How do you do that journey of setting the dreams? Every endeavor, there's jobs, gates, there's a leader. And Aang was a leader in that endeavor, and I think when I observe his journey, what first and foremost gets him through it is a perspective, a POV, a point of view.

19:02 And I remember when Aang gave me the book and asked me to read it. I came back. I thought I was very smart. When he asked me what the theme of the book is, from my perspective, and I said, power of faith, a belief, not religious necessarily, but just a belief in faith. And Aang said, that's one way of looking at it. I see it as the power of storytelling. And I realized that what he was indicating was basically you watch an entire story, the way the book is structured in the film, only to discover at the end that there is an alternate option that exists. And you as an audience member. And you as a viewer. And you as a viewer, you get to choose whether you want to embrace both of them or one of them. And I think you have to start similar with any product. Once you have your theme, especially in the creative endeavor, but I think it's also back to jobs and the iPad, I want to create something that people will want to use that's mobile, that's not a phone, but it's something bigger. But my theme is it has to be aesthetically pleasing to me. And hopefully that will translate. And I think, you need something that's not just a phone, that's something that's bigger. I think you need somebody always to be able to have that perspective, that seed, start the journey. And then everything else kind of falls into place around that. It's never simple. But I think having a philosophy or a theme of what it is you're trying to achieve, and then slowly going through all the various steps of visualizing it and materializing it is, that's the journey.

20:27 And everyone's a little different. And that concludes part one of David Woolmark's episode. Now stay tuned for next week as we bring you part two, where we dive even deeper and find out a lot more about who this amazing man is. All right. We'll see you next week on the Silicon Valley Tech Podcast. Thank you for listening to Silicon Valley Tech Behind the Scenes. To find out more, contact the team, or to be a guest on the show, visit our website at siliconvalleytechpodcasts.com. We look forward to hearing from you. And remember to support the show by leaving a review on our website at siliconvallytechpodcast.com. We look forward hearing from you and remember to support our show by leaving the review on our website at www.siliconvalleytech.com. We look forward to hearing from you. And remember, to find out more, contact the team, or to be a guest on the show, visit our website at siliconvalleytechpodcasts.com. We look forward hearing from you and remember to support the show by leaving a review on our website at www.siliconvalleytech.com.