Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/915639
www.postmagazine.com 21 POST DECEMBER 2017 STAR WARS into a scene. We work back and forth with them and slowly but surely, these very complicated sequences — through iteration — both the visual effects and the edit become what they are in the final movie." So the previs placeholders can actually influence the visual effects? "Absolutely, and it's quite extraordinary. And it's a very important tool. One of the things that having an in-house group is we can interact with them by just walking up to a workstation or talking to the artist. So we are able to move through these ideas rather quickly and in a way that is very accessible to us, versus dealing with a vendor that's a long way away — or even in town frankly — just having them in the same room." Talk about your set up? "We had a reasonably-large staff and a bunch of Avids, and a lot of storage. As you can imagine, there's a lot of film on the movie and there are an enormous number of dailies, so all of that stuff is all on a network. I think we probably had nine or 10 Avid systems to put the movie together." How did visual effects editor Adam Avery contribute? "If you were to ask somebody: 'What does a visual effects editor do?' Their main job is really to inter- act with the visual effects company to translate what it is in terms of what the visual effects com- pany can use. Adam is a great filmmaker himself and makes tremendous contributions to the visual effects workflow from an artistic and technical standpoint. He's another asset that we had on The Last Jedi, where you can walk in and say, 'This is what I am thinking. I really need this sec- tion to go faster.' Or, 'What if we took this perfor- mance from this actor and we took this other take from this actor? Can we combine them? Can you find a way to put these things together?' His skill as a compositor and filmmaker served us well. "The number of resources that we have in figuring things out that are hard to figure out is actually significant, and you have a lot of people to help you right in the facility. "And then the visual effects company reacts to those things, but they don't just slavishly follow them. They come back with their own ideas and always make everything that we are doing much, much better. I'm not even talking about the technical quality — I mean from an ideas standpoint." Where were you working on this project? "What we did on The Last Jedi was, we were on the Disney lot. And as you can imagine with these movies, security is extremely high. We were in a suite where everyone is together. All doors are card keyed and it was a very lovely place to work. But security was very high and it was one of the reasons it was really valuable to be on the Disney lot. We have our own small theater where we would do visual effects reviews. We were connected to ILM and Lucasfilm. We could screen things in our screening room and interact with the visual effects company, do things on our Wacom tablet with Rian and such. It's a very, very nice and excellent facility where everyone is in one place, which is not always the case." Actors were placed in motion rigs to look like they were in X-Wing fighters. Franchise star Mark Hamill. Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson (left) on-set.