- The exercise of world building
at its best is that the world is without limit.
You can't see the edges of it.
And so it makes the reality
of the story even more compelling.
And I think that's kind of what world building is about.
(dramatic music)
Hi, I'm Zack Snyder.
And today we're going to talk
about how to create a cinematic universe.
This is Snyder School.
(yelling) (dramatic music)
One second.
When you're talking about a cinematic universe
you're really talking about a fictionalized world
in which your story will take place
and also where the normal rules or the normal sort
of environments or social constructs might not exist
in the same way that they do in our everyday life.
When we did 300 or Dawn of the dead
or if you want to talk about Watchmen
those are examples of worlds that,
that assume through their existence of say zombies
or superheroes that it's a different world
than the world we live in.
So when you're thinking of a story
you're having to sort of imagine a society
and or complete world that can support the mythology
that you're creating.
And so what does the world look like?
Like, what are the rules?
What is the, who's the president?
Is there a president?
Like what do cars look like?
How does that affect your story?
Watchmen is a good example of a fictionalized history.
A lot of what the title sequence is of that movie is
this fictionalized history that brings us
to the present day.
It shows us the influence of those superheroes
on our culture and on the world.
So that when we arrive in the present day
which is the 1980s in that movie,
we arrive there with all the knowledge of what's happened
up to this point.
And that's similar to Army
because we have this title sequence that kind
of like is a primer and the fall of Las Vegas.
And it's subsequently the wall being built around it.
And it being sealed off from the rest of the world.
It's a way to kind of get the audience
up to speed with the sort of culture of the film.
Even just in this sort of main notion that Las Vegas
is a walled city and the zombies are stuck inside.
That's an example of like, okay, so we need to figure out
a society for the zombies inside of Vegas.
And often those elements are part of the why of the story.
Anyway, like in Man of Steel for instance
we had to create Krypton in order to express that,
that Kal-el was from another planet.
And so we had to design this entire world,
like the entire planet, you know with different spaceships,
different technology entirely,
different social constructs, everything.
And action.
This idea that the zombies are us without a lot
of the like tropes of society on top of us,
you know like greed and guilt and jealousy.
(screeching)
So like what is that pure sort of creature like?
We were loving the idea of trying to get to that.
And so that's what sort of informed the society
and the creation of the alphas.
The movie has some self-awareness and understands that it is
sort of playing with genre
and playing with like the way you understand the tropes.
The whole idea is to lull you into the genre
and kind of twist it a little bit
and kind of start to put you on uneasy ground.
And so we were always working on that,
like we always kept that idea central.
And so that informed a lot of things like you know Zeus,
how he interacts with his guys
and what he wants to do when he finds
out that the queen is dead.
How he reacts and the humans breaking the deal.
And you have these story elements that start to
like make the world have to make sense.
- What is this?
(dramatic music)
- Valentine. (roaring)
- The perfect example with Army is, you know, the birds.
So there's no zombie birds
in Army because zombie birds break the story.
'Cause you can't build a wall to contain zombies
if there's zombie birds.
'Cause the birds fly in there, get infected,
fly out and now the world has a zombie issue.
But because of their unique biology,
birds aren't effected by the zombie plague.
I mean, thank god.
(roaring)
My relationship to the actors.
I'm asking them to realize this imagined world.
Through them we are to experience, you know,
pain and sorrow, whatever it is.
And so when looking for those actors and when sort of
when it's been my experience to talk to them and kind of try
and see if they see it the way I do, I find that really fun.
You apply that to everybody,
even the smallest parts, like, do they see it?
Do they feel it?
Or is there something unique about the way they see it
that I'm like, wow, I didn't, wouldn't have thought of that.
We should do that.
You got there.
But anyway, you were like, when the dog barked
you were aware like in here, right here.
Yeah.
It's fun to imagine like who you actually need to do
a zombie heist, especially in our case.
What our characters' skill sets are and how they relate.
And that's often where the characters come from.
Minor characters have incredible stories and arcs as well
just because in the work of making them real,
in the work of finding their, the why of their existence,
you know they'll speak to you
and they have their own agenda, their own needs, you know,
and then the, those will become interesting,
but often in the service of their true role,
they'll sacrifice themselves nobly.
We're going to cross you back the other way as well.
So it would be like this.
- Does this do you justice in here?
- Yeah that's good. - Okay.
- So let's talk with Shay Hatten, amazing writer who wrote
Army of the Dead with me and who wrote Army of Thieves
and, and also the animated series.
So let's talk with Shay about how
we're blowing this thing up.
- I think the thing that initially was exciting for me
is that like I've, you know, of course been watching zombie
movies my whole life, and I've seen so many versions
of this that I, I felt like the genre was kind of tapped out
on ways that you could level it up.
And then Zack had a really clear way that you could level
it up by just introducing the other genres.
(gun shot) (screaming)
No matter how many times you've seen zombies,
when you see them in the context of a heist movie
it suddenly gives them new life.
- The reason why I think zombie movies have like endured
is that we are the monster in the movie, right?
It's just humans without their humanity.
In Army because there's a culture
and our group is really the imperial sort
of side of humanity.
It's more interesting that there's like a society
that they have to, that they have to deal with.
- They didn't ask to be there
or be created or be forced to live in this city.
It's like every facet of their existence was kind of created
by the bad decisions of us and our government.
And now we still treat them like the enemy
and it's our you know responsibility to wipe them out
which is just kind of inherently, you know, ludicrous.
- They're not ambitious, you know,
in contrast to the humans in the movie
who are super ambitious and like willing to F someone over.
- What are you doing?
(screeching) (gurgling)
- We were very into the rules.
Basically, we had like a patient zero, Zeus,
and he came clearly from a military base.
If Zeus bites you you're an alpha
but if an alpha bites you you're a shambler.
That allowed at the beginning this overabundance of
shamblers like right.
Like they're, they're the main threat.
And you might not even see an alpha
because there's so few of them.
- Part of the fun is that we kind of left ourselves a lot
of room for discovery along the way.
Like, you know like the spin-off movie
is like set in Germany.
So we had to figure out what
that part of the world is doing
while there's a zombie apocalypse in America.
And then the anime had all these other questions
that grew out of it as well.
So it kind of evolved very naturally
as we just were having fun, having these conversations.
- You go, you howl their arrival,
then they'll all part sideways.
You know movies require a massive group to make them happen.
Right?
But writing you can do by yourself, you know,
it requires no money.
It's like a commitment, that's putting your head down
and just doing the work.
And I always say like, you know, write a short story,
like write a, write like a five minute thing that's good.
Write 10 minute thing that's good.
Or that you like, you know.
And then you can say, okay, I did that.
Now I can write 15 pages.
Now I can write 30.
Now I can write 500 pages or whatever.
You know, if you're writing a Zack Snyder.
- Don't write a 500 page screenplay.
- Unless it's, unless you're me,
and then you're out there only write 500.
- Yeah, exactly.
- I was given this piece of advice early in my career
by my friend.
And he said that really whatever movie you make
you should make it as if there's no chance
you'll make another one.
And so your effort and your passion
and your dedication needs to reflect that point of view.
Cut! (dramatic music)
This is all I've got and I'm going to do it all the way.
It really depends on how fleshed out your world is
in your mind whether or not you can seed it.
Got it.
- Alright, and play back, please, play back.
- In Army of the Dead
there's a lot of Easter eggs in the movie.
I think in the first like four shots
there's still a little weirdness in the sky.
The zombies have glowing eyes.
If you look in the pool scene, you can see some of them.
There's a couple of zombies
that when they get killed something weird happens to them.
There's always a question about like
what does that sort of blue phosphorescence that was like,
that's in Zeus's blood and that's in the baby.
These are like things to look for and talk about.
So like, you know, it's always fun.
Like what if the crash and the Superman ship
that is whatever thousands of years ago,
a Kryptonian scout ship crashed on earth.
Everyone died in the crash.
One of the crashes is open and the person's gone.
So you're saying that there's a Kryptonian here
on Earth somewhere other than Superman.
Among my fans it's like a question I get all the time,
who was in the crash?
I have a pretty good idea who was in the crash
but I don't know if we'll ever know.
I don't know if I'll ever say.
(dramatic music)
Okay, we'll do one more.
Last pass.
- Last pass.
One more guys, last pass.
- Movies are and can be an escape.
They can be like this place to go
that you can never go in real life.
And we get caught up in a movie.
It's taking us to a place that we could never visit
in the real world.
That's kind of a world building is about
when you get to go experience stuff, you know,
whether it's Star Wars or Excalibur,
you get to go to that place and briefly live in that world.
Alright guys well I hope some of this information
about filmmaking is helpful.
I can't wait to see what movies you guys make.
That'll be awesome.
I'm always excited to see a new film
from a new filmmaker so please knock my socks off.
(dramatic music)