Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1516067
but you want everyone to feel free to suggest things that could be a disaster. You need to operate on that edge for things to be really exciting and transcen- dent, I feel." Tell us about the post production. Where did you do it? "All the editing was in Soho, London, and then we did sound editorial at Cinphonic, ADR at Goldcrest, the score was done at Air Studios and the re-recording mix in Dolby Atmos was at Pinewood. I love the whole post process, especially the editing." Your editor was two-time BAFTA nominee Victoria Boydell (Great Expectations). How did you work together? "She's just brilliant and has this great sense of humor that's even darker than mine. She came on-set once, and as we shot on film, she saw all the rushes. We had that slight delay, which was really useful. [Film processing was done by Cinelab, dailies by Company 3]. I try to make every part of the filmmaking process — from writing to prep, shoot- ing, editing and post — their own space. I really relied on Victoria if we had a continuity issue, or if she felt a story beat wasn't working for whatever reason. I don't like to watch all the dailies. I prefer to come into the edit with fresh eyes, so she does her assemblies as we go. For me, the editing process is so much about working with all the material, that it's just not that useful for me to be constantly looking at the footage as we shoot." What were the main editing challenges? "There were so many. Barry is a very spontaneous actor, which is so thrilling, but it sometimes makes continuity a bit tricky. And we had a lot of issues to do with tone, tension and release. How much pressure do you apply and how long do you keep it going? I like to apply it for too long usually before I let up, so it's always a matter of finding that sweet spot and getting the pacing right. Early on, a lot of our discussions were about, what do we reveal when? You're trying to make the film the most satisfying experi- ence you can, without making it too easy. And you test it, and people want things laid out more, and there's a lot of back and forth, but if it was up to me, I'd just end it without much resolution. For me, it works as a really dark comedy with all these other layers." What was the most di¦cult scene to cut and why? "It was the 'Shepherd's Pie' lunch scene, which is divided into one half, with natural light, and the other, with this awful red glow when the curtains are closed. We couldn't move things around as freely as you might want to, and it's also this incredibly-tense, emotional scene with the whole family in it, and we had a huge amount of coverage to choose from, along with a huge number of di©erent- ly-calibrated performances. So it was all about, what's the most e©ective cut so it doesn't drag or feel rushed? And how do we ensure you feel the full emotional horror of it, and the awful comedy and the surreal atmosphere? So we did a lot of micro-cutting, what Victoria calls 'frame-fucking,' and it's those milliseconds that make all the di©erence in how a joke lands, or how an emotional beat works." Talk about the importance of music and sound to you. "It's so important, and like the editing, it's always down to a choice, such as, what's more horrifying in a scene like the lunch — total silence, or the sounds of life going on normally? So, we had layer upon layer of sound design, with birds singing in the distance, the sound of cutlery and so on. We had a brilliant sound team, with Nina Rice, our set sound mixer, and Adam Armitage, our sound designer, and Nina Hartstone, our post supervising sound ed- itor. The two Ninas are scrupulous when it comes to dialogue, which is a big thing for me. I like a lot of breath and mouth sounds, the sense of intimacy when you're really close to a person. Then, when it comes to sound design, I'm actually quite minimal. For someone whose tastes aren't exactly subtle, I don't like a lot of design. I like it real and I prefer to strip back stu©, and save it for big moments, like the maze scenes, where it really intensi- fies the experience. And we did a lot of very detailed work, like getting the exact sound of Oliver's squeaky brogues. And pop music is also so important to me in establishing so much about the time and the characters, and it helped that a lot of the bands we used are forever linked with that era. As for my composer, Anthony Willis, he also scored my first film, and he's brilliant at coming up with great film themes, which have fallen out of fashion a bit, but I think they're so e©ective, es- pecially when you're working on so many levels tonally. It's very grounding." All period films need VFX, and there are quite a few. Who did them and what was entailed? "I like doing as much in-camera as possi- ble, and even the opening credits were all hand-painted, stop-motion animation. I don't like working with VFX, which is not to say that they're not absolutely brilliant. We used Union, and VFX supervisor Dillan Nicholls and his team did very discreet, invisible work in scenes like the maze, where we mixed a real maze with VFX for the overhead drone shot and digi-doubles for the actors. Then there's all the usual replacement work and clean up." What about the DI? Who was the colorist and how closely did you work with them and the DP? "The colorist was Matt Wallach at Company 3 here in LA, and he does really beautiful finishing work, but it was fairly minimal and mainly just preserving and tweaking what we got in-camera on the day. I don't like a film to look artifi- cially graded, and the goal was to make something very heightened look very real, and I'm so happy with the way it looks and turned out." www.postmagazine.com 9 POST JAN/FEB 2024 Victoria Boydell handled the edit. The color grade was perfomed at Company 3 in LA.