Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1256765
DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 11 POST MAY/JUNE 2020 offered my first showrunner job, I had a very candid talk with the executive who was offering me the job, and said, 'I don't know of many happy showrunners and I don't know if I want to live that way.' And he agreed with that. And over the years I've seen so many people doing this job, and luckily I've been fired many times, so I've worked with a million showrunners, and so over time I've had a chance to decide how to do the job as opposed to being just thrust into it and having to figure it out." What are the best parts of the job and the worst? "I love the writing and working with the actors and crew, and I both love and hate the fast pace. It's an extremely time-con- suming job, with lots of other jobs attached to it." Where do you post? "We always do all the post at Take 5 Productions in Toronto, and they've won a lot of awards for their great work, and they do all of the editing and finishing. I love post and I love our post team and spending time with them creatively. To me, post people are the unsung heroes of TV shows. And I love editing, which I approach from an emotional, storytelling angle. I never say, 'Cut three frames here,' I just say, 'Make it funny.' I'm a fussy per- son, and fussing over post seems more reasonable than fussing over a script. So polishing a moment and making it great just serves the show and makes it better." Talk about editing. You have several editors, I assume because of the time factor? How does that work? "It's like the cast — we have a great group of four editors who've all been with us since the very start of the show, and they're all so talented. We block shoot but edit one episode at a time, with an editor assigned to it. I don't talk much to the editors during shooting unless there's a problem and they call me. But that's very rare. So the director does his cut with the editor, and I don't see anything till that happens, and then I get involved and start working off the director's cut. But often I'll go back to the assembly and earlier versions of the cut to see what they envisioned for the show. Basically, I really like to empower the editors and encourage them to make decisions that'll impact the show. There is no 'undo' button in production. You have to keep going. But you have that option in post, so I encourage them to be bold and even add music they feel is cool, and be as creative as possible." This show has a great score and great sound design. Talk about the importance of sound and music to you, as I hear you're very involved. "I am, but like with the editing, I want all the sound guys to be empowered as storytellers and to really be creative and imaginative. And I often feel that sound doesn't get the full attention and rec- ognition it deserves, and I love the fact that Gilead has its own sound. We try to extrapolate Gilead out to a sound level that fits the story. We're not just adding sound for fun or scares, but adding sound that tells story. For example, I want to hear more birds in Gilead than actually live in Massachusetts now, so we bring up the levels in the mix. And the whole con- cept of the book and show is that it was a found recording, so at the very start of the whole thing you hear the 'click' where June presses 'record' to tape her voice- over. And it's that attention to detail that I feel today's audiences, who watch and re-watch episodes, and stop and start, really appreciate, along with all the craft that goes into it. And Adam Taylor, who scores it, is a genius. It's his first TV gig, and he was Emmy-nominated last season, and he doesn't read the scripts or watch dailies. So the first time he sees it is at the music spotting sessions, and I just let him get on with it." What about VFX — what's involved? "We do a lot of them — everything from fixes to creating big set pieces, like a huge graveyard for handmaids, and Mavericks VFX does them and we have an on-set VFX supervisor. We use VFX and post work for two big areas; first scale. We shoot for scale and then add or take out stuff. Second, we use them for location specificity, like when we created Fenway Park. They let us shoot there, but we couldn't build huge sets there, so we had to combine plates with CGI to create that reality." Where do you do the DI? "At Deluxe Toronto, and from the very start there was a lot of talk about the look I wanted, and we did a lot of color work and camera tests, with input from all departments, and I really love the way the show looks." Where do you see the show going? Are you already planning Seasons 5 and 6? "I have a shape of the overall story, but I don't want to box myself in yet." Will you be adapting and incorporating Atwood's latest book 'The Testaments'? "I hope so. It already has been a big influence, in that we spoke a lot while she wrote it, so I knew what to do and what not to do — who not to kill, basically." Four editors cut the series, each working on one episode at a time. The Handmaid's Tale's DI takes place at Deluxe Toronto.