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www.postmagazine.com 25 POST DECEMBER 2016 PASSENGERS How much direction did you get from Morten Tilden? "Morten hadn't done a big visual effects film, so I think thankfully he was open to ideas and he definitely brought his own sensibility to it. We worked together every day on it. The shoot was overwhelming, there were so many units going, the space units, and starship units and he was covering all that. I wasn't on location with them because of the overlap with Star Wars, so he pretty much left me to it. But when he came in, I said, 'Look, let's not watch a first cut, let's avoid that and let's start shaping the scenes. And then when we have all the scenes shaped, let's watch it. Because at least that's a starting point where I can understand you and you can understand me. We've already set the groundwork.' And I believe that's a really good way to work, especially with a director you haven't worked with before, because, if I did present my version, there's all this crazy head stuff that goes on. With a director, the way they thought they wanted it, what they wanted, but if you start to work with them scene by scene before that, you de- velop a language and you can talk about that and it's not a shocking experience. I am thankful that it worked out well." How did the relationship work between you and Rodrigo? "Actually, we had a few reshoot days and I was on the set for those every day and it was great talking to him, because he could talk about story and to me why he shot something a certain way and when we were reshooting some of this space stuff, he was incredibly collaborative about it. I enjoyed working with him so much and I spent a lot of time with him in DI doing color correction. He has a lot of atten- tion to detail and why he wants something a certain color. I take my hat off to him. After he saw the film for the first time, he came to me and said, 'I was just blown away. I didn't realize the amazing film we ended up making.'" When I spoke with Rodrigo, we talked about the expansiveness of the scenes and showing how huge the ship is…did that a play a role in your editing? "Oh my god, yes, the realization that they are alone and just these two people. Yes, that came through in the dailies loud and clear and I definitely used their smallness to show bigness. It's funny, it's the same thing you use when you show a starship in space. The biggest problem is, it's dark and you have to show something small to show how big the space ship is. Space is so big, so what do you do? And that applies to how Rodrigo shot it. He shot these beautiful wide shots, so I had to figure out a way to use them at certain points in the film to say they're really small. To show how big it is, I had to show how small they were." What system did you cut the film on? "I'm always on an Avid — it's a hard enough job, I'm like, don't take my thing away." (laughs) Was there anything on this film that you thought was more challenging than other projects? "One of the big challenges was deciding what to take out. There were so many great scenes that were funny, well written, well acted, but the film as a whole couldn't sustain them. The film was telling me it wanted to move on …it wanted to get to the next bit. It was hard to fiure out what I needed to lose and if I was losing a great moment for the sake of moving the film along quicker and not losing my audience. It's in every film that you cut, but it was very particular to this film. "On a technical level, the really difficult things are obviously to get everything to look great and integrate with visual effects but with a very human story. You can get away with Star Wars like, 'Hey, they went into warp speed' because you say that in that world there's warp speed. But there's no warp speed in a film that's based in reality, but still a fantasy. So, trying to keep it real is hard and not breaking the rules. You ask, how far can you go before you break rules? I made up a lot of things and I'm hoping I get away with it because I think it's awesome and cool, but it's a fine line between that and when you lose your audience and they go, 'No way, I don't believe it.'" Overall thoughts about the film "I'm so proud of it. I think Morten did a fantastic job…Rodrigo…Eric Nordby…everyone stepped up their game. I'm really proud of this film. As exhaust- ed as I am, I'm so happy I said yes." MPC London recently completed a host of VFX work for Passengers, including everything from creating the spaceship itself to multiple environ- ments within the ship, and a complex zero-gravity water sequence. Visit postmagazine.com for Post's exclusive Q&A with production VFX supervisor Erik Nordby. MPC CREATES VFX FOR PASSENGERS Large sets were built to convey the ship's size.