Epic Movie! Jonathan Liebesman talks…

Battle Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans director Jonathan Liebesman met up with the Xtreme Entertainment Network to discuss his career so far, 3D movies, and how, when it comes to budgets, bigger is most definitely better…

You’re starting to make a name for yourself as a big budget director. You’ve come from Battle Los Angeles, where you worked in a huge scale environment, to Wrath of the Titans which looks similar in scale… Was this intentional?

I think Wrath felt way bigger to me than Battle Los Angeles. In Battle Los Angeles we had Louisiana and a lot of real world locations, then in Wrath we were creating a world from scratch. There was a lot more you have to do to create the sets, which we built from scratch, and because of that Wrath feels a lot bigger.

How do you cope with working on such big budget productions? Do you find you work better under pressure?

I have no problem with that – I think I work better, not the least because I am surrounded by a great team. It’s nice having deadline and its nice having constraints, because it forces you to think in a certain way. It’s hard when there are no boundaries or constraints because then things can take forever and nothing ever gets done. It really focuses you because you have to be decisive and live with your decisions. I prefer to work like that as opposed to having no pressure at all.

Otherwise you tend to meander around a lot?

Yeah I think what usually happens is you go with your first instinct, and you find that is usually the right one.  If you have no pressure, your instinct then gets second guessed by everyone and nothing ever gets done.