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www.postmagazine.com 13 POST JULY 2018 DIRECTOR'S CHAIR Where are you doing post? "All on the lot at Sony, and I'm work- ing closely with VFX supervisors Sean Devereaux and Troy Moore, who are with Zero VFX, and then we're just starting the DI with colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3. That's so important to me, getting the right look, and I work very closely with the DP and Stefan on all that." Do you like the post process? "I love post, probably more than anything. The first cut of a movie is always a disas- ter — I don't care who you are! It's never what you want. It's the biggest heartbreak and most directors try to avoid it forever. You finish shooting, take a break, and then you see the first assembly with your edi- tor and you're just cringing, as you haven't had a chance to figure out the rhythm and performances. But then you start digging in with your editor, and then the magic of post starts to happen, as you can bend things and make it better. And once all the post guys — the sound, music and so on — work their magic, suddenly it all starts to come to life. And then when you test- screen it, it changes again, as an audience may respond to stuff in a different way. So post is where you remake the movie completely, and it's magic." Talk about editing with the great Conrad Buff, who's cut four of your films, who won the Oscar for cutting Titanic, and whose credits include Snow White and the Huntsman and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Was he on-set? "He usually is, but he broke his ankle, so he was in Boston with us but stayed in the edit suite most of the time. And after four movies together, we know each other pretty well." What were the big editing challenges? "Finding the right rhythm and tone. Every film has its own personality, so it's finding that DNA and remembering the charac- ter's journey. And of course recreating the hurricane, and making it look totally realistic, as people know what they look like nowadays. It's got to be right." And obviously all the VFX play a big role? "Exactly. Zero are doing the lion's share, but we also had some other companies like Crafty Apes and Mammal Studios come in to help out. It was so complicated." You're well-known for your love of location shooting and doing as much as possible for real in-camera. I suspect you're not a big fan of working with VFX? (Laughs) "You're right — I'm not! I just don't have the patience. It's such a tech- nical process and you have to get your geek on, and the guys who are so good at it have been very helpful to me, but I'm always wondering, 'When will this look better?' as it takes so long to really finish complex sequences. You have to stop while they get their plates and what they need to do their work, and I just want to keep shooting. And now in post I'm doing several meetings a week to look at the VFX in 2K, so I have to stop editing and whatever else I'm doing. And the hurri- cane VFX won't be finished till the very last minute before I hand over the film. But I've learned a lot and I've been work- ing with Zero for a while now, and what I like to do is take VFX and put them into reality, so that you don't even see them." Talk about the importance of sound and music to you. "I love music and sound design, and I normally have music scenes in my ear when I'm doing action scenes. It keeps me focused on the tone and feeling I want, even if the scene doesn't have music in it. I work very closely with my compos- er about the storytelling, and then with sound design, you can completely change a scene with just one simple sound. I've had people come up to me and talk about some scene, like the one in the last Equalizer where a drill gets put in the back of a guy's head, and I pan off as you hear the drill start up, and I have to tell them 'I never showed it going in on-cam- era.' It was just the sound — that's how powerful sound is." There's been a lot of talk about the lack of opportunity for women and minorities in Hollywood. Are things improving? "They are, but very, very slowly. Look, Wonder Woman and Black Panther came out and were huge, and everyone thinks, 'Hollywood's gonna change so much now,' but then it's back to busi- ness as usual. Change is happening, but it's slow, man." Denzel Washington is a frequent collaborator. Conrad Buff edited the film.