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www.postmagazine.com 23 POST JANUARY 2018 OSCAR CONTENDERS The film was edited by Affonso Goncaves, who worked with Haynes on Carol and Mildred Pierce. "So much of post was about editorial and he was key to it all. Our big challenge was figuring out how to deal with the two different stories and the time spent on each." Like all period films, Wonderstruck uses a lot of VFX and Haynes reteamed with VFX supervisor Louis Morin who worked with him before on I'm Not There. "He's worked a lot with Denis Villeneuve and did Arrival and Sicario for him, and his credits include The Aviator and Brokeback Mountain, so he's very experienced. For me, the best VFX shots in period pieces are the ones where you don't fully rely on them. We did as much as possible in camera and practically, and then finished them with digital work by Alchemy 24 and Framestore. There's always a lot of removal of contemporary stuff and cosmetic work and clean up." Given that it's partly a silent film, sound design also played a key role, and Haynes also reteamed with sound designer, Leslie Shatz. "I've worked with him since Far From Heaven, and this is the fourth collaboration with [composer] Carter Burwell, and like the sound designer and my sound recorder Drew Kunin he was involved from pre-production on. So we'd all discuss sound and we recorded everything — all the dialogue for the B&W bits, all the ambiance, so we had it, even if it was just an indication of what we'd eventually do in post." The Shape of Water, a visually dazzling, emotionally daring film from Guillermo del Toro (who looks likely to be a Best Director contender), also looks likely to win some Oscar love for its post work. It was edited by veteran Emmy winner Sidney Wolinsky, whose credits include The Sopranos, Rome, Ray Donovan, House of Cards and Boardwalk Empire. "We shot in Toronto, and I set up editing at Cinespace studios, and began assembling while Guillermo shot there," he reports. "He worked with me every day on the edit during production, which is quite unusual." The duo, who previously worked together on The Strain, then finished the edit at Cinespace. "The big chal- lenge was pulling all the threads together, and making all the beats work, which took several months to get right and refine," he adds. "But we had time. It never felt rushed." The film also features some spectacular VFX, courtesy of visual effects supervisor Dennis Berardi, the founder of Mr. X Inc., whose credits include Fight Club and Sully. The company is well-known for its collaborative infra- structure of producers, supervisors and artists, and for pushing the enve- lope technically. Since opening in 2001, the studio has grown from a small eight-person shop to a global enterprise currently employing over four hundred staff in their Toronto, New York, Montreal and Los Angeles studios. Berardi helped to place the story in a now-vanished 1960s Baltimore, recre- ating the city digitally from archival photos. "The idea was that it should feel photo-real, yet with that fableistic component — which is a tough balance to strike," he notes. "What helped is that Guillermo is so collaborative. Even when we came up with something pretty good, he was always asking 'OK, what can we do now to make it great? What's the next level?'" The smash rebootm, Spider-Man: Homecoming, helmed by director and co-writer Jon Watts, also deserves some Oscar love for its fine post work, all done on the Sony lot, except for recording the music, which was done at Fox. The film showcases some 1500 VFX shots overseen by VFX supervisor Janek Sirrs and worked on by "a ton" of vendors, reports Watts, including Luma, Trickster, Digital Domain, Method, ILM, Ilura and Sony Imageworks. "I'd never worked with Janek before, but we had the same core approach on how to tackle all the visuals, which was to make it all as grounded as possible — no impossible camera moves, no impossible physics," says Watta. "So when we broke down sequences, even if they were all going to be CG, we'd discuss how we'd shoot it, what camera rig would you use and so on. We tried to shoot it all like we had an actual Spider-Man."