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www.postmagazine.com 5 POST DECEMBER 2017 BITS & PIECES CHICAGO — Writer/director Ned Crowley's feature film Middle Man (www.middlemanmovie.com) recent- ly made its debut on Netflix. Prior to its debut, Crowley — who is the US chief creative officer for adver- tising agency Mcgarrybowen — took to the stage at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to deliver his "A Bloody Mess" keynote. There, he also discussed Middle Man, which, along with Crowley and editor Chris Claeys of Chicago's Cutters Studios (www.cuttersstudios. com), included the work of talented creatives from The Cutters Studios' graphics and VFX division Flavor, and its audio post house Another Country. Both Crowley and Claeys recount- ed how the film was assembled in its entirety before a single frame was exposed. This "animatic" version was created with the director's hand- drawn storyboards and audio from an early table reading of the script with the film's co-star, Jim O'Heir. From there, as the footage rolled in from their 13 days of production — captured on California locations from LA to Palmdale via DP Dick Buckley and second unit DP Gary Palmer. Claeys already knew exactly where to add each new scene into their working narrative. "I was surprised at the talent, skill and organization Ned brought to the project as a first-time director," Claeys recalls. "I had the coverage I needed from the angles and the per- formances. As an indie film, there was no overshooting." Working on the film's desert locations, which spanned interiors and exteriors, and quite a bit of night shooting, cinematographer Buckley ex- plains that the group's strategy was to maximize everything they had to work with, and not try to do too much. "When you have such a strong cast and script, it takes a lot of the pressure off of the DP," said Buckley, who is also highly accomplished as a commercial director. Working with a Red Epic 4K digital cinema camera and Zeiss Super Speed MK II prime lenses, he shot the vast ma- jority of the film hand-held, with the exception of a few crane and drone shots. This approach helped min- imize set-up times, choreography and blocking, while also supporting the post workflow. As the live-action footage arrived, Claeys' approach to organizing it proved to be highly efficient. "Avid Media Composer makes it so easy to organize your footage in any way you prefer," he explains. "Scenes, shots and sequences can be located in seconds." Over time, he cut together all the scenes into three acts, before spend- ing several months with Crowley to essentially lock the picture. Given its 50 VFX shots, VFX supervisor Brian Higgins from Flavor chose Autodesk Flame Premium as the project's VFX, grading and finishing platform. "Flame was the job's hub, but we processed each of the VFX shots us- ing a customized '.clip' pipeline, allow- ing me to load the latest Flame work from our other artists into the cut by clicking a single popup menu," he says. "The film had quite a bit of prac- tical gore in it, which we pushed even further in Flame. For example, we digitally blew the top of a guy's skull off, hid squibs and splattered gallons of blood on just about everything." With all of the visual content con- formed and transcoded to log DPX for the VFX touches, composited scenes were presented to the direc- tor for approval. The next step was grading with Autodesk Lustre, which was critical for visual continuity and atmosphere. The process of creating a DI was completed in Flame, under the supervision of Crowley, Buckley and executive producers Roger Petrusson and Bill Fortney. The film's 5.1 surround sound design and final mix presented more challenges for Drew Weir of Another Country, where the work was divid- ed between sound design, dialogue and sound effects/Foley. Since many scenes were recorded in noisy environments, dialogue cleanup was addressed using a combination of editing takes in Avid's Pro Tools 12, ADR, wild lines and restoration using Izotope RX. "Sound design of the gun shots was a big concern, too," Weir added. "Since each weapon and setting was unique, we wanted the differ- ent sounds to have personality but also still feel reel. Gun sounds were collected, edited and designed from library elements along with other samples. We also sent a field record- ing engineer out into the desert to collect wind, sand, ambience, cars and more sound effects for the film in surround and other formats." In the Foley sessions, props, shoes and clothing were used to match the actors' movements and ensure each scene feels complete. Weir mastered all of these elements in the final surround mix in Another Country's Sound 4 Theater Room. Crowley says that, from the begin- ning, "We wanted to make some- thing we were proud of, to make it into one festival, and to have a beer afterwards and feel like we accom- plished something. Those milestones were all surpassed last June, when Middle Man was presented with the New American Cinema Grand Jury Award at the 42 nd edition of the Seattle International Film Festival. Now, after successful screenings at festivals and in limited theatrical release across America, Crowley and team proudly stand behind Middle Man, as it crosses into 190 countries via Netflix. CREATIVES OPEN UP ABOUT NETFLIX'S NEW DARK COMEDY, MIDDLE MAN The film was shot on-location throughout California. (L-R) Claeys, Higgins, Crowley, Weir and O'Heir