Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/915639
www.postmagazine.com 26 POST DECEMBER 2017 OUTLOOK DIRECTORS O Things — that are often far more sophis- ticated than their movie counterparts, and very impressive. I've produced and directed several recent TV series — Limitless, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, among them — and I love it and will keep doing TV along with movie stuff. So overall, I tend to be more hopeful now, especially as you have all these new outlets, like Amazon and Netflix and other platforms. It's a very creative time." JOE WRIGHT Darkest Hour, Atonement, Anna Karenina, Pride & Prejudice, Pan Wright first grabbed Hollywood's attention with his debut film, 2005's Pride & Prejudice, which won a raft of awards and four Oscar nominations. He fol- lowed that up with the Oscar-winning war drama Atonement, and in 2012 reunited with his Atonement star Kiera Knightley to remake Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's classic tale of love and betray- al. After the VFX-heavy extravaganza Pan, the director returned to a period piece with a smaller canvas, and that new film, the WWII political thriller Darkest Hour, is getting a lot of Oscar buzz and star Gary Oldman looks like a lock for an Oscar nomination. STRENGTHS: "Post is cinema, and cinema is post, really. They're insepa- rable. It's the only aspect of the whole process that applies just to movies. All the other arts, whether it's theater or painting or photography, are all involved in pre-production and then production, but post is unique to cinema. It's where you create the movie, and engage with the language of cinema and its forms and grammar. And it's also the only art form where you can really manipulate time, apart from music, and to me, the closest relative to cinema is music, and I spend a lot of time in post working with rhythm and pacing. So the key strength of post is that it's the real creative heart of all cinema." WEAKNESSES: "When I did Pan, we had about 1,800 shots, which is a huge amount, and we had a lot of VFX com- panies to deal with, and I found that I really like working with VFX as they're such a useful tool, with infinite possi- bilities, and a means to an end. But you have to be careful with how you handle all that. When they just become the end, then you have a big problem." OPPORTUNITIES: "I always embrace any limitations as opportunities to solve a problem creatively, because there's always going to be limitations. The trick is to use them to reveal the film that's still half-hidden in the raw material. In the cutting room, I sit next to my editor every day, and we slowly craft some- thing and work stupid hours, and at the end of it, I never feel, 'God, I wish I could carry on for another few months.' And all the technology like the Avid is another opportunity, I feel. I really enjoy the speed of cutting digitally, and the choices it offers you." THREATS: "You often hear there's never enough time or money, but I don't really agree with that. I don't usually have huge resources, but I always seem to have enough time to do what I want to do in post. The threat is how you use that time Darkest Hour Pan