Renegades | Twisters' Lee Isaac Chung on Leaning into Curiosity
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Welcome to Renegades, Gold House’s newsletter series spotlighting Asian Pacific leaders and creatives who are carving their own paths and defying stereotypes along the way. This week, we sat down with Lee Isaac Chung, Director of Twisters (2024), Minari, and Munyarungabo. Lee discusses the serendipitous college course that introduced him to film, humanizing tornadoes with advancements in VFX, and not being afraid to try something of everything. See Twisters in theaters now!
You initially pursued a major in Ecology at Yale University and planned to go to medical school. What was the defining moment or influence that led you to pivot to filmmaking during your senior year?
I took a “video as art” class by Michael Roemer in my last year at Yale. I took it out of curiosity and to fulfill a category I needed to graduate, but I found that it pulled me in entirely. I spent all my time that semester working on short films for the class. Sometimes I’d be editing a project at night, and the next thing I know, the sun is coming up because I lost all track of time. All of my grades in my other classes were very bad that semester, and I started to wonder if I could pursue this as a job, because I wanted my entire life to feel this way.?
Last year, I wrote to Michael Roemer to thank him for letting me take the class, because normally that class was only for art majors. I told him it helped me find my calling. He wrote back with a spin on a quote by Pascal, “you were searching for it because you had already found it.”
Your debut film, Munyurangabo, received significant acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. What was the biggest takeaway/learning lesson from this film that helped shape your approach to filmmaking?
That film was very helpful in giving me a sense that, at the very least, I had some ability to tell a story through a feature film. I remember when I was editing that film, I felt pathos at the ending, in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. That laid the groundwork for “Minari,” because I wanted to try to make another film with an ending that snuck up on me emotionally.
Transitioning from creating indie films to directing a big blockbuster like Twisters must have been a significant shift. What was a particular challenge you faced and how did you overcome it?
The trickiest element might be understanding what everyone department’s expectations or methods of working are on a film of a large scale. A smaller film is a much more intimate, as a team, while a large film has a greater footprint and separation between departments. There is also a balance in how much time a director can devote to the minutiae of things in every facet of a film, because the size of the production and the needs are so great. It takes a lot of work to figure out what the biggest priorities are each day in terms of availability and time spent with certain team members. On Twisters, I feel I overcame this by accepting my limits by working with very good producers. Particularly my executive producer Ashley Jay Sandberg and my associate producer Douglas Seok became some of my ‘octopus arms’ on this film, and I could simply trust them to help me manage my time and focus. And then wherever I was giving my focus, I tried to enter into meetings and conversations by listening first, directing last. Usually listening helps the directing, since most people working on a big movie are working at this level for a good reason, and they have great ideas.
Replicating any natural disaster in cinema can pose a tremendously difficult task. How did you balance the elements of VFX and real-life effects in Twisters, and what is a particular scene that you believe viewers should keep an eye out for?
I knew that we’d be able to get very realistic tornadoes using CGI because of?the advancements that ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) had made in their technology since the first Twister, but I felt that more importantly, the layers of space between the tornadoes and the camera needed to feel real. The physical effects of the tornado would all need to be as tangible and physical as the actors. We used a lot of high powered fans with special effects rigging of various objects, to spin, fly, break, and fall. And the actors performed in a way that makes the illusion feel very real. One of the last action sequences we filmed was the scene at the motel, into the pool, and I felt that we as a team had really worked cohesively through that to make the entire set feel alive as though a tornado was bearing down.
Considering the advancements in filmmaking technology since the original Twister, there is opportunity to enhance the visual and narrative impact of Twisters with modern day techniques. What was one technique you explored to bring this film to life?
I spent a lot of time with our VFX supervisor Ben Snow and ILM on the VFX work of building our tornadoes, to represent them in a very realistic way, and what they accomplished is of a revolutionary difference in advancement to previous films that have rendered tornadoes. The entirety of VFX data from the first Twister wouldn’t equal the amount of data we are using for a single shot of a tornado in this film, simply due to the complexity of our animations.??
There are many real life tornado videos on social media to study now, and we built our tornadoes based on actual tornadoes from the past; this film presents the closest replication of tornadoes ever shown on film.
What character or moment in Twisters did you resonate with the most? Why?
I felt the closest to Daisy’s character on this one. With Minari I saw myself in all of them, but with this one, it’s a film about a person taking on a very big, crazy idea, facing a giant tornado, and to me, that felt a lot like making this movie.
You mentioned in an interview that the Twisters cast consists of people who are both talented actors/actresses and whom you find enjoyable to hang out with. Given the significant amount of time you spent working with this cast and crew in Oklahoma, can you share a funny or memorable moment on set?
The day we found out David Corenswet was cast as Superman was a wild day for us. We had known he was auditioning and moving up the ranks, but when he finally got it, the cast started filming a congratulations video, shouting, jumping, dancing - everyone was so excited for him. We had a lot of camaraderie on set, and it was amazing to see them celebrating each other’s success in this raucous way.
You've worked on a wide variety of projects, from Munyurangabo to The Mandalorian to Minari. What excites you about the future of your career, and are there any specific stories or genres you're eager to explore next?
I’d like to try something of everything, and I don’t know what that next one will be. At some point, I’d like to get back to writing again, when I feel the time is right. I am excited that I have seen behind the curtain of all kinds of films and television now, so hopefully, the next time, I feel less limitation about the size of production and just run toward whatever feels like the best story to tell.
What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers who are just starting out?
I would tell them there’s no other way to learn than to make films, no matter how short or small, and to learn by trying new things, while always risking failure. Failure is such a good way to learn, and it makes any progress feel all the better.?
Lightning Round