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December 2014

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www.postmagazine.com 18 POST DECEMBER 2014 your mind very quickly. If you spend a lot of time pondering, you'll end up having these three-year gaps, like a lot of direc- tors, and right now I don't have any gaps, which is how I like it." Where did you do the post? "We did a lot of post as we shot, so we were cutting in Almeria and the Canaries. We'd just set up in hotel rooms, and to- day's technology means that by the time you fi nish the fi lm you don't travel with two million feet. I travel with digital out- put and data, and away you go. There's no more giant circus with tin cans, and that really suits me." The fi lm was edited by Billy Rich, who was assistant editor on American Gangster and Black Hawk Down. Tell us about that relationship? "He cut The Vatican for me, and as I was saying, I always start editing as I go, and so Billy was cutting with the dailies as they came in, and then in the evening I'd see how the cut was going and look at the rushes. He's not on the set, but close by, and I always have the largest screens I can get on-set — at least 40-inch moni- tors — and if we're shooting fi ve, six cam- eras, we'll have six monitors in the video tent, all 3D as we cut 3D. And Billy has a huge screen where he cuts, with smaller monitors for the assistants." How many visual eff ects shots are there in the fi lm? "Around 1,300 — so, a lot!" Was parting the Red Sea the most technically-diffi cult shot to pull off ? "Probably. It was very diffi cult, as fi rst you have to fi nd and shoot appropriate beaches and tidal areas that, at low tide, look like they could have been drained. And I wanted to make the middle of the gulf more into what is essentially black coral. So it's a lot of prep, going from the sandy shore into this giant river. And when a gulf drains, like from a giant tsu- nami, you have all these rivers and rivu- lets you still have to wade across. So just by boarding it, you start to think about all the visual detail as the Hebrews are fl eeing from the Egyptians, and we found these great locations at Fuerteventura." How do you approach fi lming a miracle like that? With ultra-realism? "Exactly. I was very worried about it looking like anything other than ultra-re- alistic, as there've been so many magical movies in the last 15 years. If I see one more talking tree I'm going to leap off a building. So I couldn't have anything like that, or clouds talking with God's voice. I have to approach it realistically, as we're dealing with a man who's initially an atheist, who gradually and reluctantly edges towards being an agnostic, and it takes a very long time and a lot of events before he starts to question whether they're controlled or just nature." How important is music and sound? "It's hard to overstate its importance. It's everything. If you don't have great sound and music — for most fi lms, as some work well with just dialogue — it's not going to work very well. And I've always had the added ingredients of sound and music. Even on my fi rst fi lm, The Du- ellists, the sound was minimal, but the music was very haunting. And then on Alien I felt we really needed major sound eff ects, and that's when I discovered the threatening 'Dolby rumble.' I think it's on every goddamn scene — it's a wonder my bowels didn't fall out! [Laughs]. We mixed this at Twickenham in this big new room which was great, as you need a big room for this kind of movie, and we did a Dolby Atmos mix and it does give you clarity and separation between dialogue and the other layers." The DI at Co3 in London must have been vital. How did that process help? "They'd come down to the set a few times so they could show me where we were going with it. I used my favorite colorist, Stephen Nakamura, and we'd sit there and adjust and change a lot of things — quite dramatically, sometimes, which is what's so great about the DI, but you've still got to get it fundamentally in the camera fi rst. You can't fi x bad cover- age in the DI." Did the fi lm turn out as you had hoped? "I had a very clear vision of what I wanted... and it turned out great. I had a wonderful relationship with all my actors, and it was one of the best fi lmmaking experiences I've had in a while." DIRECTOR'S CHAIR Edited by Billy Rich, the fi lm underwent its DI at Company 3 in London.

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