As a film director, James Gunn has always done things his own way. From the paper to the screen, it all gets that special Gunn touch that leaves many audience members swooning in satisfaction and others saying, "huh?" But how exactly does he plan things out in that unique style of his? The answer lies... somewhere else, probably. But he recently revealed one aspect of his creative process, and it's particularly interesting for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 fans.
Taking the conversation to Twitter, as Gunn so often does, he posted a picture showing a large stack of storyboards for his highly anticipated threequel Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. He even shared a few of the actual storyboards from the past Guardians films. But as impressive as the stack is out of context, it turns out this is just a fraction of the whole film, and it's actually par for the course when it comes to Gunn's movies.
"This represents 12 pages of script & will be the foundation for this section of the film," Gunn said in the Tweet. "Designing the film like this is the most important part of my job at this point." It seems his big focus, contrary to other mainstream filmmakers, is on establishing a specific vision early on and sticking with it throughout the creative process. This includes drawing up intricate storyboards that allow him and his team to visualize every shot well before filming begins.
"Every shot in my movies is hand drawn first," Gunn said when answering a fan question. "That's at least 2,500 shots or so per my recent films. Many of the shots - about 1/3 - take anywhere from 2 to 10 cards or more - because I'm drawing the movement. So I probably end up with about 3,000 cards." This drives home the idea that Gunn doesn't change much during the process, and seems to know exactly what kind of movie he's making from the start, at least visually. He has every movement drawn out and intricately described beforehand, unlike most films, which tend to cover more broad strokes with their storyboards (not that there's anything wrong with that).
This kind of detail makes a lot of sense when considering the very tightly designed movies Gunn tends to make. It's one thing for a director to take a storyboard drawn by somebody else and attempt to translate it to the big screen, but it's another entirely for the director to handle both the storyboard and filming. It gives the person in charge an extra level of creative freedom, which Gunn even said is why he stopped using storyboard artists and elected to do the drawings himself.
It's not exactly a huge info dump or even much of a surprise. But it does help partially explain why Gunn's sought-after films have that very specific feel to them. Not only does he maintain creative control, but he still manages to enjoy a reputation as someone actors love to work with. Not too shabby to be able to pull both of those off.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is scheduled to be released in theaters on May 5, 2023.
Source: James Gunn/Twitter