Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1189824
www.postmagazine.com 19 POST NOV/DEC 2019 OUTLOOK O OUTLOOK O OUTLOOK DIRECTORS bone of making your film. Sometimes I think it's a big shame that because the camera is this glamorous front end, peo- ple forget you can be equally creative — or more so — further down the process. I began my career as an actor, so it was all about the camera. But now I realize as a director that it's really all about post, and I love it, and I love it more and more now. It's this whole side of filmmaking that I never really appreciated as an actor, as I didn't have much to do with it. But now I can't wait to get in the edit, and I'm there every day, and I'm very involved with every aspect of post, and I love all the op- portunities you get to learn about post." THREATS: "It's always time and budget. As they say, 'You never really finish a film, you just run out of time.' So you have to be prepared to work very long hours and see ideas shot down, so you have to be very adaptable and tough — you have to have a thick skin — but you also have to hold on to your vision of the film. It's a very high-pressure job." OUTLOOK: "Again, you have to be very adaptable and be able to move with the times. The one constant with any creative endeavor like film is that nothing stays the same. Culture keeps evolving and devel- oping, and film has to reflect all that and be a part of that — and that's not even talking about just how fast technology's changing now. But film's always risen to the challenge, and filmmakers will always adopt new technology." JULIUS ONAH Luce, Open Continents, The Cloverfield Paradox One of the young new wave of filmmakers championing diversity in Hollywood, the Nigerian American writer/ director/producer was born in Nigeria but grew up in Arlington, VA, and began his career making shorts — notably 2015's The Girl Is In Trouble, executive produced by Spike Lee, before breaking into feature films with last year's hit The Cloverfield Paradox, produced by J.J. Abrams, followed by this year's acclaimed thriller Luce, which premiered at Sundance. STRENGTHS: "The most important thing is having room and space to think clearly through all your decisions in post. I love making movies. I love being on-set. But you're at the mercy of the clock and you constantly have to make compromises every day and so much is just out of your control. And I love writing, but it's so solitary. But post brings together all these wildly talented people and gives you more space to really clarify your intentions. And there's just so much you can do to reshape the movie. That's what I think is so remarkable about the process. And if you want to do a quick pickup digitally, you can grab an actor, stick him in a room and pipe that right in, instantly." WEAKNESSES: "I don't know if there are any. People tend to say it's time and money, but typically you have way more flexibility than when you're shooting. Maybe you have too many options now, with all the digital tools, but I'd rather have that available than not." OPPORTUNITIES: "There are so many in post in terms of being able to rewrite and reshape your material. I had scenes in Luce that we completely reworked in post, like one where Naomi Watts' character was driving and having a phone call with Kelvin Harrison, the lead, and we did ADR, replaced the other side with Kelvin by doing a quick pickup with him, and that turned into this whole conversation. And during the DI, the DP, Larkin Seiple, was laughing and pointing out that no one would ever guess that it hadn't all been shot in principal photography, but reshaped in post. We also reshaped the ending of the film in post. So post can be a major life-saver." THREATS: "By far the biggest threat is when that re-working and reshaping is not being done by the people telling the story. When outside agendas or expecta- tions are thrust upon it, it invariably hurts the film. And it's become much easier now for executives and financiers and so on to take control of the film. I'll always remember reading something Hitchcock wrote about how he shot in a specific way to really limit the way outside people could interfere in post and editing, so they wouldn't know how to put it together. The scary thing now about post is that, even if you do that, there are ways to get around it, with all the new digital tools, and totally reshape the artist's original vision." OUTLOOK: "Like so many things in our culture, because of all the new technology, we're now in the midst of this massive paradigm switch. People like to note that we moved from silent to talkies, from B&W to color, from 35mm to Cinerama, but those were just changing one element, a format. What we're talking about now is a complete change of the language of cinema in how a movie is shot, edited and posted, and with the Internet and social media revolution I'm not sure movies will even play the same role anymore for young audiences. There's this big move to stuff like Quibi and :15 videos, and I'm not sure there'll even be a place for movies in the future. I hope there will be, but it's changing so fast." Julius Onah's Luce Scenes were reworked in post.