Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/102700
Oscar Picks he got "a real education" in how visual effects (done by Method) could really help create the period piece. "It's always very tough doing stuff set in the recent past," explains Affleck. "Luckily, I had great people, like Jackie West, who I stole from To the Wonder, the Terrence Malik film I was doing, and got her to come and do all the costumes. She understood that you don't do Shaft with bell-bottoms and fur coats. You make it real and allow it to fade into the background. The paradox is that it feels more plausible and more realistic that way. One of the most interesting things is that we were doing a film set in the late '70s and early '80s, and using VFX technology that's only been developed in the past six months, and all that helped us so much in creating a period piece. We could wipe off elements that weren't period, reconfigure buildings and change signs — all the stuff you can't really do without VFX. People are used to seeing effects being used for Harry Potter's wand or magic, but they're truly invisible in this film and that Flight DP Don Burgess worked with Light Iron Post early on: "I like to set the whole look of the film before we even start principal photography." Post0113_022-26-OscarsMV3FINALREAD.indd 24 made it all far more convincing. "In particular," continues Affleck, "we had to create Tehran from the ground up basically. We had some wide, establishing shots that were all VFX, as well as all the embassy shots and scenes. We had 2,000 people on one side of a wall, and on the other we had a soccer field, and we used VFX to turn that into the US embassy. Not only that, we were able to recreate it precisely, brick-for-brick. Pretty amazing! That was very interesting for me since I never went into this thinking that it would be a big effects movie in the end. But ultimately we had over 600 shots, and without them I probably couldn't have made the film." Another Ben, Ben Lewin, is also getting Oscar buzz for Sundance Audience Awardwinner The Sessions, the emotional yet ultrarealistic portrait of real-life poet and polio victim Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) who, bled an impressive behind-the-camera team confined to an iron lung, hired a sex surro- that included Aussie DP Greig Fraser (Snow gate (Helen Hunt). "Usually the big post chal- White and the Huntsman, Killing Them Softly), lenge for me is getting over the shock of who was interviewed on page 16 of this seeing the first assembly," admits the Aussie director. "But this time I was very moved by it and realized, it's not a repair job — be careful, it's precious. Editor Lisa Bromwell and I knew it would be a performancebased piece that didn't need an editing style so much as just refining the great performances we had." Lewin, who "loves" the post process, and Bromwell edited on Avid Media Composer 5 in Lewin's Santa Monica garage. "We did a six-week pass, took a Beasts of the Southern Wild director Behn Zeitlin (left) break and then did another month," teamed with DP Ben Richardson on this indie offering. he reports. "Then we did all the sound work over six weeks at Sonic Magic in issue, and film editors William Goldenberg Culver City, who were great. Sound is so (who also cut Argo and won Oscars for The important to me; I can get a sense of a film's Insider and Seabiscuit) and Dylan Tichenor drift just by listening to it, without visuals, and (whose credits include The Town, There Will Be I did a lot of sound work at film Blood and Brokeback Mountain). school. One of the great things It was shot in far-flung locations, including about the Avid Media Composer 5 India (which doubled for Pakistan), Jordan is the number of tracks you can (which doubled for Afghanistan) and London, work with simultaneously, and we and with the film logistics mimicking the milicould mini-mix all the way and get a tary operation they were recreating, Fraser total sense of the sound, which and Bigelow opted to go digital and shoot with helped a lot with the pacing and the Alexa — the first digital feature for both. specifics. For instance, the iron lung As usual, the DP was "extremely involved" sound was quite complex, creating in the DI, which was done at Company 3 in the right sound, and one of the real Santa Monica. "I always like to be involved as art forms of mixing is blending the much as possible, depending on time and production sound with ADR, so you availability, and another big plus of going digican't notice the difference. That's tal was that there were no neg pulls that had quite a skill." to be scanned for the DI," he says. "So it was Summing up, Lewin notes that a bit simpler for me to start the DI process the film, "turned out better than I very early." expected. We'd filmed a couple of Hitchcock tells the story behind the legfantasy sequences, but in the end we never endary director's 1960 masterpiece and even used them, as I felt they would just taboo-breaking Psycho, and was directed by blunt the realistic tone the performances had another Brit, Sacha Gervasi (Anvil!) "I love established. That was a surprise to me." post because it all comes together in the edit It's sad but true: women directors rarely and post," he says. "That's where, after the get any Oscar love, but that all changed in craziness of the shoot, you really get to shape 2009 thanks to The Hurt Locker, the Iraq War the material and make the film." It was cut on bomb squad drama directed by Kathryn an Avid by Pamela Martin (The Fighter) on Bigelow, when the nail-biting suspenseful the Fox lot. "I loved what she did on The underdog shut out the biggest gorilla in the Fighter, and she did another brilliant job on room, James Cameron's Avatar, the top- this." Like Argo, the film is a period piece, this grossing movie in history. time portraying LA in the late '50s and early Now, Bigelow is back — and at press time '60s, "which needed a lot of VFX to get right," getting more Oscar buzz — with another he says. "Furious FX did all the effect shots war drama, Zero Dark Thirty, the still-largely — several dozen — and I found the whole classified story of the decade-long hunt to process fascinating." find the world's most wanted man: 9/11 masCalling the sound mix and score "crucial" termind Osama bin Laden. Bigelow, who to the film, he worked with famed mixers once again teamed with Mark Boal, assem- Doug Hemphill and Ron Bartlett — "two of 12/21/12 4:12 PM