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www.postmagazine.com 11 POST OCTOBER 2018 DIRECTOR'S CHAIR actors, the crew were local working guys, and that was great as it meant I was a sort of minority, and creatively that gave it all a really interesting quality." Where did you post, and do you like the post process? "All in London, and I really love post and seeing the movie come to life after all the stresses of the shoot. The whole post was pretty smooth. Sometimes you run into problems, but it's great when you have a story like this and you trim it down and it's just 'there.' It was hard work, but it just flowed, and we did it all in the shadow of an unfolding situation across the west, which made it feel more and more relevant." Talk about editing with William Goldenberg, who won the Academy Award, BAFTA and ACE Award for Argo, and who was Oscar nominated for The Imitation Game, Seabiscuit, The Insider and Zero Dark Thirty. "He wasn't on the set, but he was based in Oslo while we shot, and he's just so cre- ative and inventive, and so experienced. As I said, this needed a subtle touch rather than pushing a lot of buttons, and he was so sensitive to all that. It was lovely working with Billy, and this was our first collaboration and I'm sure we'll work together again now." What were the big editing challenges? "First of all, handling the attacks them- selves, as the film's not really about the attacks but the aftermath. So he had to handle them with tremendous restraint, and he did that brilliantly. And then it was all about shaping the material so that it always kept Breivik, and the survivor we focused on, on course to meet face-to-face in court. And then there was the challenge of keeping you engaged in the story without push- ing. We didn't want to do all the usual things, like using music to push and cue emotion. The watchwords were restraint and dignity, and yet we had to carve out very strong emotions." Talk about working on the VFX. Do you enjoy that? "I do, a lot. I'm quite involved in the whole process. They were done by several companies — One of Us, Nvizible Visual Effects and Outpost VFX — and most of them were pretty invisible things like wire removal and clean-up. There weren't any huge VFX set pieces, like in a Bourne film. I'd say the biggest was deal- ing with the whole bombing sequence of the government center in Oslo, and we had to do quite a lot of work to recreate it as it was, prior to the bomb going off. That sequence cost the most. And we also had to do work to make the contour of the island where he shot all the kids match the real island, as we obviously didn't shoot it there. We used another island near Oslo." Talk about the importance of sound and music in this film. "They're hugely important, and in all my films I'd say that they're about half the film. The first film I made where I really worked hard at sound was Bloody Sunday, because I wanted a far big- ger scale, and that was where I started experimenting more with layers of sound and trying to create this really immersive experience. And on this, the sound and music were again all about restraint. I didn't want it to push, or tell audiences what to think or how to feel. We used very limited music, and [composer] Sune Martin did a beautiful job and gave a lot of heart and dignity to the film. We did all the mixing at De Lane Lea and Oliver Tarney was the supervising sound editor." Where did you do the DI and how important is it to you? "We did it at Goldcrest Post Production in London with colorist Rob Pizzey, and that's also a hugely important part of post. Him, me and the DP worked hard to get the right look, which I think is very beautiful, and there aren't a lot of zooms. It's all pretty steady. I didn't want to push, but just let the story tell itself." Did the film turn out the way you hoped? "It absolutely did, and I'm very proud of it, and of all the performances, which are so full of humanity and which show what I most wanted the film to show — how this dark right-wing force ripped apart their world and how with great courage they overcame that darkness. The whole experience was like playing with a totally new bunch of musicians, which makes you play in a different way. And I loved all that." William Goldenberg served as editor. Goldcrest in London handled the DI. The film relied on an all-Norwegian cast and crew.