Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1189824
www.postmagazine.com 42 POST NOV/DEC 2019 Oscar BUZZ There were two editors on this film, what was that relationship like? Buckland: "Mike and I have known each other for a long time and it's pretty fluid in the cutting room in terms of what scenes we work on. We didn't necessarily have an exact plan, because as we're working during production, dailies were coming in every day and there was a lot of material to cut. It was basically whoever was available to do what they could. In some cases, if someone was working on a scene that was more complicated and requir- ing more attention, like a race, as other scenes were coming in, then the other editor would take those. For example, Mike was working on Daytona, and that required a lot of time because they shot a lot for that scene, and of course they're still shooting other scenes, so the scenes would come in and then I would work of those scenes and then vice versa." McCusker: "I think the trick to any sort of team- work in terms of an edit, on any movie, is do you share like styles? Are you going for the same thing? Luckily, it's one of the reasons why Drew and I work together so well, because we really do. I don't think that you look at this movie and think, one editor cut this part and another editor cut this other part. Our approaches are very similar." I would think that could really be a problem if your approaches were not similar. McCusker: "You're absolutely right. And that happens more than you would think. There there cutting rooms with multiple editors that are more team oriented and then they're cutting rooms with multiple editors that are more competitive. I'm not interested in that at all. I want to work as a team and make a holistic movie. But you know, as much as you want, you can end up with people that just have a different approach, a different style, see the movie or the scenes in a different way. And you don't know that until you get into a cutting room with somebody. It's one of the greatest advantages of working with Drew for as long as I have. But also, Drew and I have worked with Jim for a long time. It's one of the great stories behind the story of the movie — Jim's post production team on this has been together for a long time, and we always make ourselves available to work with him because he's a great filmmaker. We also really love the working environment and the working relationship." Buckland: "We all know each other very well. We're all basically friends and it was a very fluid, organic process, and it was very collaborative." Was there anything unusual or groundbreaking about the way the film was cut? McCusker: "We have three major races in this movie and two of them were shot in a much more tradi- tional way. They went out with storyboards and an idea for the story and shot what they though they needed. The Le Mans race was just so complicated and there was so much going on that. I wouldn't say it was groundbreaking, so much as just an example of a sequence that was around 30 minutes long, so a movie unto itself. "It's also a great example of a sequence that was realized through modern technology in a lot of ways. I was developing it with the previs team. I was on the movie about two, two-and-a-half months, before production started and I was working with the previs team, and we were designing shots, designing se- quences in that time. And that's where Jim said, 'You know what we need? We need a story point here. We need to develop an idea around story.' And so that's where the technology really allowed us to nail down what we wanted to achieve when we actually turned to the camera and it served as a roadmap for the production units to go out and say, 'This is what we want to achieve.' For postvis, we worked with Clint Reagan with Halon [Entertainment], who is a great collaborator. He's done a couple of movies with us. So again, it makes for a very collaborative and challenging environment because we are always challenging each other." You cut the film on Avid, was that a personal editing preference? McCusker: "There are a few reasons for it. It's ac- tually the platform that both of us know the best, but that doesn't preclude us from using others. But the one thing that Avid currently is more advanced on than the other platforms is the shared projects. When you have a movie that is this complicated, and you have sound designers and visual effects artists and tons of other folks working on it, you're hanging like six or seven workstations off of it, and everybody has to talk to each other, it's just the Avid process right now handles that better than the others. With these larger movies, Avid has the corner on it right now." Did the film turn out the way you hoped it would? Buckland: "Oh, yeah, definitely. When we nailed down the structure of the film, especially in the beginning of the movie and how the movie sort of reveals itself with the characters, it definitely was really an exciting thing." McCusker: "Something that was a concern for us was that the movie starts off kind of small and it grows into this great big scope. Le Mans is a behemoth of a sequence, and frankly, we were worried about time. Is the audience going to want to go along on this ride? It certainly isn't a short movie. You know for sure when you do the test screenings and people come out of the movie going, 'That didn't feel like a two-and-a-half-hour movie.' That's sweet, sweet music to an editor's ears. I'm just very happy that people are having that reaction. We were successful in giving them something that's entertaining." McCusker Buckland Mangold onset with Damon and Bale. The film was cut on Avid. The races were almost movies unto themselves. Stars Damon and Bale.