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DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 13 POST JULY/AUG 2019 David Scheunemann, my visual effects super Dan Glass. Without those guys, I don't know." Where did you post? "On the lot at Universal. We cut there, did all the sound and so on. I had the same sound team I had on Deadpool, and we mixed on the great Hitchcock stage. Talk about editing with Oscar-winner Chris Rouse, director Paul Greengrass' go-to guy, whose credits include the Jason Bourne franchise, Green Zone and Captain Phillips. How did that work? "He came out to the set in Hawaii, and then he started doing an assembly while we kept shooting, so by the time we wrapped we were already in good shape. He has a great crew and he's so hard-working and fast and creative, and I was so grateful to have him. Cutting this was a huge puzzle we had to solve, and our first pass was over three-hours long. Usually on a film like this you need a couple of editors, but he's a powerhouse and we did seven day weeks, so just hav- ing Chris was enough. But we've been editing right up to the final lock. As the VFX come in, you want to make small adjustments, and then there are all the other negotiations you're making with talent and the studio right through post." All the VFX play a big role. Who did them? "The main vendors were Dneg in London and Vancouver, Framestore in London, and then we had a bunch of smaller places working on various sequences and enhancing action stuff, including Rise, Crafty Apes, Cantina, One of Us and Outpost." Talk about working on them with VFX supervisor Dan Glass, who did Deadpool 2 with you as well as The Matrix films and Batman Begins. "Again, we have a shorthand by now and I can delegate and trust he'll get stuff done. He's so creative and accomplished, and like with all the VFX in Deadpool, we've tried to really come up with great sequences and push the envelope wher- ever possible." What was the most difficult VFX sequence to do? "It has to be this whole sequence we did set inside an abandoned power plant, where we created this whole catwalk, which the cars are driving on, and we have three or four great shots that really bring the whole sequence together, but they were actually all created during post as we just couldn't get them on the day with practical photography. And once we were in post, we realized we had to get these shots. So we sent a drone up and got digital plates, took the plates and built a model of the facility, and then built up the shots that way. Dneg did all that and did an amazing job, as you'd never know it wasn't real. And that's the beauty of post. You shoot the script and then, as it often happens in post, 'I need an extra piece here, then I can cut this bit.' So it's this huge puzzle you have to solve in post." Talk about the importance of sound and music. "It's easy to watch a film like this, with all the visual information coming at you, and forget just how key all the sound is. It's so important, but I was pretty spread out with all the VFX and extra ADR and so on, and Chris Rouse helped supervise a lot of the sound mix and the notes. It's really great to have an editor who's able to do that, and he was a lifesaver given the schedule." Where did you do the DI and how important is it to you? "We did it at Company 3 with colorist Dave Hussey, and I love the DI. On this, we had a lot of places with a very dis- tinctive look, and we took London and dialed up the colder feel with elements of blue and saturation, and then contrasted that with Samoa and all the warm colors. And we had fun doing that with the split-screen montage that opens the film, where you see the contrasting 'day-in- the-life' of the two leads." Did the film turn out the way you hoped? "It did. It's one of those big monsters that keeps evolving, hopefully for the better." DP Jonathan Sela shot the film in London and Hawaii. All post was completed on the lot at Universal. Stuntman-turned-director David Leitch (left) on-set with Dwayne Johnson for The Fast & Furious' first franchise spinoff.