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we did also all the underwater scenes in Vancouver. We built our aquarium set on a stage, and then we also shot a couple of nights at the actual Vancouver Aquarium. And for all the underwater photography out in the wild, we had an underwater photographer who went down and shot us plates and tried to capture exactly what I had storyboarded so that we could place our CGI octopus into this real environment." Where did you do all the post? "Here in LA, at Vortex. Post was so im- portant on this because of the octopus and all the VFX, and just generally I think post is a complicated experience for a director. I always say it's like therapy, be- cause you come in and you unload all the trauma from shooting — all the things that you wish you had done differently or didn't get, and your poor editor gets an earful. But I've worked a lot with my editor, Tamara Meem, who also cut my first movie, and a television show that I shot the pilot for and produced called The Last Thing He Told Me. "We have the same taste, and she's my second set of eyes. She's incredible with cutting performance, and so it's a joy to work with her every day, and I did my director's cut at her house. She cut my first movie that way, and I want that privacy for my director's cut. We had an amazing post team. Ryan Price was our post supervisor, and he was always 10 steps ahead of us, so we never felt that we were in a crunch. We always had goals set and knew what was coming, and never felt caught off guard. "So, for this movie, it was actually one of the most pleasurable post experi- ences, because I really felt that I had a creative team that, while I was shooting, had my back, and was catching things that we might be missing or might want later. So, I came to the edit knowing we had everything that we needed, and we didn't have do any reshoots, so we really could just focus on getting the best story out of it." What were the main editing challenges and how did post help shape the film? "It's interesting you ask that as, to get the film greenlit, we had to really be thought- ful about how much VFX we needed. And so we had to trim down as much as we could of the octopus in terms of his involvement in the story. And then, after our first cut, we realized we really loved Marcellus and we wanted more of him. So, the challenge was: How do we keep him present throughout the story with the footage that we'd shot? So, we ended up creating scenes that weren't in the script. We created them in post just to bring back the octopus and keep him active, without taking away from the central storyline between Tova and Cameron. So, we rewrote part of the movie in post. "The other amazing thing about post on this movie, and working with a CGI creature, is that you can re-block things. When we were shooting, we would have very specific blocking that we had in mind for the octopus. It had all been storyboarded, and we shot to those specifications, but when we were editing, we could move him around and use shots of the tank, and so we had this freedom that you don't normally get to re-block one of your main characters. We also wrote and rewrote his voiceover to whatever we needed. So, we had a char- acter who we could continue reshooting and reworking all the way through post, which was amazing." Dealing with all the visual effects must have been the heaviest lift for post? "That was huge and took the longest, from prep all the way to the end, making sure that the octopus looked as real as possible. You have all the movements, color and texture changes, and so many details to pay attention to with the octo- pus, so that was a big priority. Chris Ritvo and Taylor Rockwell, our VFX producer, were both on-set with us the whole time and we were constantly checking in with them if we decided to change something we had storyboarded, because sud- denly the lighting called for a different blocking, or if the actors wanted to do something different than what we had blocked for the octopus. We would have to describe it and make sure that it was going to work." How important are sound and music to you as a filmmaker? "Hugely important. I'm married to a composer and musician, so music is central to my life. And the sound de- sign, particularly with the octopus, was really important. Marcellus has a very specific personality that I wanted to capture through specific instrumental choices, and there was a Mal Waldron song that I loved called 'Warm Canto,' that has this bass clarinet that worked so well for an octopus slinking across the floor. We did the Dolby Atmos mix at Sony, and I was able to bring back almost my entire sound team from Crawdads to do the mix." Where did you do the DI? "At Picture Shop with colorist Nat Jenks, who's worked with my DP for over a decade, so they have a real shorthand. It was just about pushing what was already in-camera. We really wanted to make sure that the aquarium space felt different from the rest of Tova's life — that it feels slightly otherworldly, as aquariums do. I love the way the film looks and I'm really proud of it. It turned out the way I hoped it would." www.postmagazine.com 11 POST MAY/JUNE 2026 Untold Pictures created the film's CG octopus.