Post Magazine

March 2013

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director's chair Post took place on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles. 12 ends, as I'd probably lose my nerve. I'd never sleep and just lose it. You'd second-guess yourself to death. So I shoot it, take a week off, and Danny does this big assembly. Then we go at it on the Avid. We did one month's cutting in Dublin at Screen Scene — the post house who also did all our previs — to be away from the madness, then moved to the Fox lot for the rest of the edit." POST: There's a huge number of visual effects shots in the film. How many are there, and what was your approach to dealing with them? MOORE: "We had over 550, and I'm liking working with VFX better than I used to. I'm still very nervous about them because if they disappoint you, you're in a bit of trouble. If I shoot something in-camera, then I've got it. But if a studio loses a little bit of faith in a process, or we get unlucky with a vendor or VFX super, I'm screwed. If they then turn off the tap and don't want to pay for it anymore, the whole picture suffers. But it went fine, even though we had a lot of vendors. "Pixomondo did most of the helicopter work for the big set piece at the end, and then we also used Method Studios Vancouver, Shade VFX, Scanline, Factory VFX and Spin. The VFX super was Everett Burrell, who did Max Payne with me, and then Bill Westenhofer, who [won the VFX Oscar for] Life of Pi and The Chronicles of Narnia, came in and finished the job." POST: What was the most difficult VFX sequence/shot to do and why? MOORE: "All the helicopter stuff. I thought I'd have a lot more time with the real Mi:26 'Halo,' this monster Russian helicopter — the biggest in the world — but we ended up with just one day. So we had to also use a model. Then Sean Faden, the VFX super at Pixomondo, worked like crazy on the whole sequence and did an amazing job." POST: Can you talk about the importance of music and sound to you as a filmmaker? MOORE: "How do I say this without sounding glib or like Spinal Tap? (Laughs hard) It's so important. It's everything. I get more of a thrill when I hear great sound added to the visuals. When I get a nice picture and I color time it, and then Jay Wilkinson, who has been my supervising sound editor on every movie, does his thing — then it crosses over into a different world. It stops being a snap I've taken and becomes a piece of a real film. It comes alive to a level that escapes me. We did the mix at Fox with Doug Hemphill and Ron Bartlett, who were Oscar-nominated for the eighth time for Life of Pi." POST: The DI must have been vital. How did that process help? MOORE: "We did it at Technicolor with colorist Skip Kimball, who's great, and for me Post • March 2013 Post0313_010,12-directors chair Die HardRAV6finalread.indd 12 The film features 550 visual effects, such as these helicopter shots from Pixomondo. it's a great thing since I came out of commercials, so the DI is so familiar to me. But in my earlier movies I was really scared trying to color time in a wet lab, so when DI became mainstream, I felt far more comfortable. I'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but there's a little bit of the hairdresser thing going on with the colorists out there now — especially in Santa Monica (laughs). There's some getting flown around on private jets. Easy, lads. Let's calm down a bit! You know what I mean? But Skip has that perfect mix of artist and technician — 60 percent artist, 40 percent technician, which to me is the right balance." POST: Did the film turn out the way you hoped it would? MOORE: "It did. I'm chuffed with the way it looks and sounds." POST: Any interest in doing a 3D film? MOORE: "It's funny. If you'd asked me that a little while ago I'd have been vociferously against it, but then I saw Ang Lee's Life of Pi in 3D with the Atmos mix and it just amazed me. There's one incredible shot, of the kid underwater as the ship is sinking, and I swear it was like a near religious experience. It's made me shut up and reconsider and not be so arrogant about 3D. I still think we blew it for the audience after Avatar, came out and there was this crazy, almost coke-fueled 3D insanity about it. I've talked to the Dolby people about Atmos, and I think they need to be careful and make it a consumer-led, not a tech-led, revolution. If they get it right, it will be a milestone, not a fad." POST: What's next? MOORE: "Something very small for a change. I'm working with the blokes who do the Paranormal Activity movies, so I'm going to take either a Nikon D4 or a Canon D5 and shoot one of those found-footage projects. It'll be a lot of fun." www.postmagazine.com 2/28/13 3:41 PM

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