#dan deleeuw

[spoileryreblogs]

season one was not just an isolated incident

[tv-moments]

Loki

Season 2, “Breaking Brad”

Director: Dan DeLeeuw

DoP: Oliver Loncraine

[lokiondisneyplus]

For 30 years, Dan Deleeuw has worked in visual effects, from “The Mask” to “Armageddon” to “Night at the Museum” — but he always had a dream that one day, he might get to direct. That opportunity finally arrived in 2019, when “Avengers: Endgame” directors Joe and Anthony Russo — who’d worked with Deleeuw on VFX for their three previous Marvel Studios productions — hired him to shoot some additional photography for the behemoth production. That gig led to second unit directing jobs on 2021’s “Eternals” and 2023’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” and then, finally, to the main directors chair for the second episode of Season 2 of “Loki.”

Deleeuw, who oversaw visual effects on Season 1 of the show, presumed that he was hired because of his proficiency handling the action beats of the episode, in which Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his TVA compatriot Mobius (Owen Wilson) pursue a rogue TVA trooper (Rafael Casal) to 1970s London, and then later reunite with Loki’s variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) at a McDonald’s in 1980s Oklahoma. But Deleeuw says that executive producer Kevin Wright told him he was hired as a director because, even when working on visual effects, he “always talks about story.”

Deleeuw also discussed how both he and Ke Huy Quan — who joined the show for Season 2 — were surprised by how Hiddleston approached rehearsing the show, why the production decided to have Sylvie working at McDonald’s — and his reaction to the recent decision by Marvel’s VFX artists to unionize.

Since Sylvie is living in a branched timeline, did you ever discuss having an alternative version of McDonald’s, rather than the actual McDonald’s?

We started saying, OK, she’s gonna settle down on a timeline, what restaurant do we use? At that point, there was a pitch for RoxBurger — you know, the evil corporation in the Marvel Universe, Roxxon. But it didn’t tell a story other than it was like this faux-restaurant. And so McDonald’s came up as a suggestion. And McDonald’s is timeless, in a way — it crosses countries and borders. Everyone started talking about this nostalgic moment they had with McDonald’s. So quickly getting the audience cued into what Sylvie’s feeling — being on the run so long and seeing normal people, and just wanting to have that and leave everything else behind — we’re using McDonald’s to set the audience in a place where they can pick up on that pretty quickly. That’s what kind of sealed the deal on using McDonald’s.

Rafael Casal in Episode 2 of “Loki.” Courtesy of Marvel Studios

What was one of the biggest surprises about the experience of directing this episode?

Something I’ll always try to do on any other show that I direct: It was the openness to collaboration that Kevin Wright had, particularly encouraged by Tom Hiddleston and his experience in the theater. As the scripts were getting closer to being done, we would invite all the directors to come in for their different episodes. All the actors would come in. The writers are there. And we had a week-and-a-half, two weeks where we went through every single script, and just rehearsed them and played with them and made them better. It was just this wonderfully creative moment on the show. Once we got shooting, we had a really good idea of what we wanted to do. Ke [Huy Quan] sat next to me. He saw it all happening, Owen and Tom playing with lines. He leaned over and he’s like, “Is this normal?” I’m like, “It’s normal for them!”

You’ve been working with Marvel for over 10 years now, largely in visual effects. Did you always have an ambition to direct as well?

Yeah. In high school, in college, we did small films — public access, back when there was public access. It was something I always wanted to do. Even from the visual effects standpoint — designing the sequences and doing animatics — telling the story was something I gravitated to. When I got to work with the Russos, they definitely were encouraging of that and gave me the opportunity to shoot additional photography on “Endgame” that led to me doing second unit directing. I just always approach something from a story standpoint. So Kevin Wright saw that I had that kind of brain, and invited me back for Season 2 to direct.

How did he pitch that to you?

Being at Marvel for 10 years, there’s a little bit of a rumor mill going around. So I knew that they had hired Justin and Aaron, and then heard that Kasra [Farahani], the production designer, had gotten an episode. I was like, “Ah, there’s one left!” And then Kevin called me one day and he’s like, “Yeah, so, how’d you like to direct a ‘Loki.'” “Yes!” It was as simple as that.

Last year, several VFX artists who’ve worked on Marvel projects expressed pretty deep frustration with their working conditions, which contributed to the recent decision to vote to unionize. What has your experience been with those issues?

I support everything they’re doing. I’ve been in it for a long time. The number of hours in visual effects have been ingrained in the system for years. From the very beginning, we always had that crunch time. We take a couple months off, and we come back to it again. What you’re seeing now is, the shows are so much bigger, and you’ve got so many shows. A lot of the artists on set, and especially in the visual effects houses, are going from one big show to the next big show to the next big show. 

There has to be something that makes a better work-life balance, for the artists’ sanity and for their families and just their creativity. Otherwise, you’re getting diminishing returns. It’s your crew. You have to take care of them. That is something I think we have to think about and work out.

How did your experience in visual effects have influenced your approach to directing this episode, especially with regard to the VFX?

I can tell a story with something that isn’t there. In the original draft, there was a car chase. It didn’t make a lot of sense why Loki would be in a car chase. We decided we wanted to go a little bit more towards the dark Loki side and move away from a traditional chase. I was imagining one day, “What could Loki do?” and came up with the shadow gags with the horns and things like that. 

Was anything you did that a director who hadn’t worked in visual effects might not know to do?

You already know what it costs in terms of time and difficulty, and when you’re trying to get through your day, what you’re going do to [VFX artists] if you try to shoot without getting the blue screen just right Because I know the consequences, I’ll fight harder for getting it right, so the artists don’t have to deal with it. Getting into post-production, you know how much you can use an effect to help with storytelling, in terms of if you need to change the set a little bit, just to make it make sense for where Loki is. There’s an editor we have at Marvel, Jeff Ford, who’s cut a lot of the films. Jeff is a master. He doesn’t change his cut to fit the footage, he changes the footage to match his cut. I think that’s an insightful way of knowing how to use  some visual effects in post, without getting get too carried away with it. 

[boardchairman-blog]

**Shots of the Episode**

Loki (2021)

Season 2, Episode 2: “Breaking Brad” (2023) Director: Dan DeLeeuw Cinematographer: Oliver Loncraine

[michaelcoffeysthoughts]

Finished Loki Season 2

[eternalssource]

THE GREAT KINGO in: Eternals (2021) dir. Chloé Zhao LOKI 2.02: Breaking Brad (2023) dir. Dan Deleeuw

[sersi]

LOKI 1.03: Lamentis (2021) dir. Kate Herron LOKI 2.02: Breaking Brad (2023) dir. Dan Deleeuw

[elena-gilbert]

"There's a scene that we wanted to play with very little dialogue until the end, so the actors had to show it with their performance, and I think they both did a wonderful job. You kind of see Sylvie as he comes through the door, and Sophia [Di Martino] played it a little bit like she's trapped. And I think one of the things that doesn't initially come across on the first viewing [is] you realize that for Loki, it all just happened – he just got knocked through the door. For Sylvie, she's been down on the timeline, right? Hair in this episode helps us show the idea that time has passed, so she's gone in and, you know, her hair has changed, and everyone at the McDonald's knows her. So she's built a life, and now Loki’s come in. “Why is he there? Is it a romantic thing? He's just trying to track me down?” And so that's kind of a lot of what they're feeling." — Loki Season 2 Director Dan Deleeuw on Loki and Sylvie's Reunion in 2.02 (x)

[brsb4hls]

Loki spoilers + spec

I was wondering what Sylvie held in her hands at the end of 2x2, couldn't make it out so I searched:

From this article

This holds a lot of action potential and drama, it's gonna be interesting.

[dzinahk]

[twh-news]

Is There A World For ‘Loki’ Beyond Season 2? EP Kevin Wright Sheds Light

Warning: the following interview contains spoilers about tonight’s first episode of season 2 of Loki

After Loki’s amiga Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) opted to kill He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) spurring multiple nefarious versions of the newbie villain across several timelines, Loki was sent back to where it all started: the bureaucratic, office grind of the TVA — but a very different one; one where his new best friend Mobius (Owen Wilson) doesn’t recognize him. Out of touch with his soulmate, Loki is trying to find his way back to her. However, like Chicken Little, he’s trying to tell everybody that the sky is falling; that Kang the Conqueror is coming their way. We talk with Marvel executive and Loki season 2 EP Kevin Wright, who is with the series from start to finish, script to post, about the daunting task of living up to what was a spectacular season one.

EP and director Kate Herron left some big shoes to fill on Loki season one and I was shocked when she told Deadline she would not be returning for season 2. What went on there?

Kevin Wright: Throughout season one, I was constantly teasing her with, ‘Hey, when we come back for season two,’ and she said she made it very clear through shooting, she’s like, ‘This one’s it’ and I think it was purely from the…She really put everything into it, and look, COVID was right in the middle of shooting.

So, it was an even longer commitment than she had initially even signed up for, and while that was happening and while we were shut down, she was editing, and we were working together through that. I think she felt like she really put her heart and soul into it, and she wanted to be able to hand the storytelling reins over to other filmmakers, and her fingerprints are certainly on it, and she was somebody that, when we first met her, knew she was fully aligned with what we wanted to make.

So she departs, who do you go to from there? The new directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead? Were they driving the ship on season 2?

KW: There was a little bit of downtime. Before they even came on, (EP & star) Tom (Hiddleston) and I kind of recalibrated. Figured out what we wanted this new season to be. We spent a lot of time developing that. Eric Martin had come on roughly around additional photography on season one as our season two kind of lead writer, and so, the three of us just starting building out story.

And there was a long stretch of just writers’ room, developing these scripts, figuring out what it was going to be, while we figured out where we would go in the directing front. Pretty early on, we knew we were going to bump up (production designer) Kasra Farahani to direct, as well. He was with us in the writers’ room, so he had already taken on a big creative role there and had so much to do with the world-building in season one. (VFX Supervisor) Dan DeLeeuw even kind of came on fairly early just because he was with us in that post-production process of season one. And he’s such a storied brain, we brought him in, but yeah, we needed that captain. I had met with Justin and Aaron. I brought them into the studio before season one. We had met generally. I really liked them for Loki. We had already brought on Kate, and so we passed them off to another project, which ended up not working out, either, and then they ended up becoming Moon Knight.

So, they were guys who were in our system, that we liked and had been in the periphery of Loki, and while they were doing additional photography for Moon Knight, I recruited Kevin Feige, the big guns, to go in there and visit them on set and say, ‘Hey, we want you to take the reins of Loki and come in on that.’ So, it was like a meandering process, but it had felt like they were eventually going to come on and work on this.

Loki season one is perfect television in the Mr. Robot sense of the word. Coming off season one, what were the challenges? You’ve established this great world, great villain in Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains – was it a high bar to jump?

KW: Yes. Incredibly high bar. Partially, though, one of the biggest challenges was, early on, Tom and I just talking about not only was season one good, and then people liked it, which is not a given. We had a really great time making it, and it was a crazy time in the world, but it was, like, a really exciting, happy process for everybody involved, and coming back for a season two did feel a little bit like, well, how do we capture that lightning in a bottle again?

And so, we had a lot of conversations about we can’t just come back and try to play the hits and do what we did in season one, because even if we recapture it and do that again, it won’t be fulfilling, and I think there was a sense of we built something really cool, and the audience went along with it. It was big sci-fi weird stuff, and if they have bought it, it felt like we had a lot of, then, freedom to go further and deeper with these characters and not fast-forward. Like, it had this great cliffhanger.

Let’s pick up in that: what is the drama and the stakes of what is happening with Loki in the TVA with Sylvie? And I think anything that could be scary about picking up in a new season like this goes away when everybody just starts going, what is right for these characters? We’re not trying to build some bigger Marvel arc. We’re not trying to do this. If we’re true to these characters, we will deliver on what people liked about season one, and we can build the world out and dive deeper into these characters and their drama.

So, tonight we see that there’s cacophony. Loki returns to the TVA, Mobius forgets him. Sylvie’s lost. However, the TVA was destroyed in season one, and we come back to place where it’s still in existence. Was this just the best place to start with the mishegoss of timelines?

KW: I think, for us, the exciting thing then was, in that chaos of multiverse, to be able to play with those first few minutes of season two, being loose footing for Loki, trying to make sense of what is happening. Is this a different TVA, which shouldn’t make sense, because it’s outside of time? So, it’s not like it’s a different reality. Is this ours? Why don’t they remember him then?

And I think it just gave us a groundwork. We wanted to come in and not do the same thing in season two. We had a high bar that we wanted to hit, and a cyclical story structure is hard to do. Eric, our writer, even said, I think we can pull this off, but it’s going to be messy for a while, while we figure it out. That opening allowed us the tools and the groundwork to start telling this time-looping narrative, and it was sort of the mechanism to kind of get this whole thing rolling. That just gave us a lot of character drama.

Now Sylvie – we see her for a minute toward the end of episode one. That’s Loki looking into the future…

KW: Yeah. So, in the context of that, he’s been slipping in the past and to the present, and in that moment, he has slipped into the future, and so, he is seeing something in Sylvie that has yet to happen for him on his personal timeline, that will loop back around again.

Does Loki season 2 like other Marvel series bridge to another big movie in the near future? Clearly, the next Avengers: Kang Dynasty, but are there others?

KW: Nothing that I could say in the near future. The implications will ripple into other projects, though, certainly, and the TVA is an organization that will continue to have stories to tell, which is one of the exciting things about it to us.

Is there an arc here? Do you guys have, like, a five-season plan, a three-season plan, or do you take it season by season?

KW: We take it season by season, and there are certainly things that Tom and I and other casts have talked about of where we see this going, and I know there’s some excitement for that internally, but just from a storytelling standpoint, I think we always conceived of seasons 1 and 2 as a whole. That these are two chapters of the same book, and that season two is finishing that book, and there are other stories to be told there, but I think they would be new books, if that’s not too coy.

Are we going to be just as shocked as we were at the end of season one? I mean, season one was jaw-dropping.

I hope so, but what I will say is it’s not a cliffhanger. We want to be able to deliver real fulfillment in what we’re doing, but I do think it’ll be exciting and unexpected and everything people like about this show.

[tv-moments]

Loki

Season 2, “Breaking Brad”

Director: Dan DeLeeuw

DoP: Oliver Loncraine

[lokiondisneyplus]

YOUTUBE EXCLUSIVE - EDITH X LOKI #Loki #DisneyPlus #Marvel

[alexzalben]

New LOKI trailer, poster, and plot description:

Today, Disney+ released a brand-new trailer and poster to celebrate the upcoming second season of Marvel Studios’ “Loki.”  The first season of “Loki” is the most watched Marvel Studios series on Disney+, and the second season promises new excitement as it thrusts the infamous God of Mischief into a new set of adventures with the TVA.

The series stars Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Rafael Casal, Tara Strong, Kate Dickie, Liz Carr, Neil Ellice, with Jonathan Majors, Ke Huy Quan and Owen Wilson. Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, Dan Deleeuw and Kasra Farahani direct episodes. The head writer is Eric Martin. Kevin Feige, Stephen Broussard, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum, Kevin R. Wright, Tom Hiddleston, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, Eric Martin and Michael Waldron are the executive producers, with Trevor Waterson serving as co-executive producer.

Marvel Studios’ “Loki” Season 2 begins streaming on October 6, exclusively on Disney+.

[insanityclause]

Kevin Wright's been doing interviews and he actually talked about Loki and Sylvie's relationship this season. He acknowledged their romantic connection and said their connection is very real and big and they're important to each other, but that they're currently on an arc and having to resolve the "you can't trust and I can't be trusted" issue that caused their divide in the finale of season 1 and they wanted to play with that tension for a few episodes because it creates rich interactions.

So I would expect frostiness to continue for an episode or two more but I hope they work things out in the end, and I don't want either of them to die in the end because Loki deserves to be happy.

Dan Deleeuw also shared some interesting insights about the show. In his recent interview after the release of episode 2, he said that instead of Loki chasing Brad with magic and shadows, they had a car chase, but they changed it because they felt it didn't make sense for Loki to be in a car. I think that was a good call on their part, it allowed them to showcase Loki's magical abilities more.

And he mentioned that Owen Wilson and Rafael Casal improvised some lines during the interrogation process.

Loved the second episode, love the interviews. Surprised Kevin Wright is doing the majority of heavy lifting promo wise this time around but he's offering valuable insights into the show and the plot so I'm thankful for that and he clearly knows his craft. I'm surprised Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead haven't done any interviews yet considering they're the main directors of the season but that is likely to change in a few weeks.

I wish the cast was able to do interviews though.

I'm sure we'll get interviews with Kasra after episode 3, and then Justin & Aaron for 4-6. We might get something with Eric Martin, Natalie Holt and Christine Wada, too.

The interview with Dan Deleeuw from today with Brandon Davis was cool; he got to talk about Endgame & Infinity War, as well as mentioning Owen and Rafael ad libbing the 'elevated thriller... it's cinema' part.

[kanzgamesandtrailers]

Loki - Official Trailer | Marvel Studios & Disney+ 

Loki is an American television series created by Michael Waldron for the streaming service Disney+, based on Marvel Comics featuring the character of the same name. It is the third television series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) produced by Marvel Studios, sharing continuity with the films of the franchise. The series takes place after the events of the film Avengers: Endgame (2019), in which an alternate version of Loki created a new timeline. Waldron served as head writer and Kate Herron directed the first season, with Eric Martin and the duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead serving as head writer and leading the directing team for the second season, respectively. Tom Hiddleston reprises his role as Loki from the film series, starring alongside Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Eugene Cordero, Tara Strong, Owen Wilson, Sophia Di Martino, Jonathan Majors, and Neil Ellice. Sasha Lane, Jack Veal, DeObia Oparei, and Richard E. Grant also star in the first season, with Rafael Casal, Kate Dickie, Liz Carr, Ke Huy Quan and Richard Dixon joining for the second. By September 2018, Marvel Studios was developing a number of limited series for Disney+, centered on supporting characters from the MCU films. A series featuring Hiddleston as Loki was confirmed in November 2018. Waldron was hired in February 2019, and Herron joined by that August. Martin, who served as a writer on the first season, was revealed to be writing the entire second season in February 2022, along with Benson and Moorhead joining to direct the majority of the season's episodes; Dan DeLeeuw and Kasra Farahani also direct in the second season. Filming occurred in Atlanta, Georgia for the first season, with the second season being filmed in the United Kingdom. #loki #lokiseries #lokiwebseries #lokiseason2trailer #lokin     Loki premiered on June 9, 2021. Its first season, consisting of six episodes, concluded on July 14 and is part of Phase Four of the MCU. It received positive reviews from critics, especially for the performances. A second season, also consisting of six episodes, ran from October 5 to November 9, 2023, as part of Phase Five. It also received positive reviews, with praise for its conclusion, musical score, and Loki's character arc.