Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1451742
have any authenticity to it. So, in terms of falling in love with a temp track, we kind of fell in love with the track of silence. Nothing. Just naked." Where were you working during production? "We were shooting out of the Netflix tu- dios in Toronto, and we had all these sets built, mostly for Buffalo. Some carnival stuff. But the big marquee set piece was the carnival grounds, which was shot just north of Toronto and Markham. And then all the Buffalo exteriors, and some of the massive interiors were all shot in Buffalo. "They went down there for a week, mid-shoot, just before COVID, actually. When COVID hit, we had basically the majority of the back half of the film shot There are a couple of peculiar moments where we finished shooting. hey decid- ed to shut down production amid 'the lie detector test' (sequence). And when we came back, I thought maybe Guillermo might just go and reshoot the whole scene again. But we picked it up halfway through, and it's amazing! "And then there's another scene where Rooney Mara's running from Stan, where they shot in Buffalo at a train station. She runs through a door, and that cut, we pick up six months later, on a set in Toronto. And she's now had a kid in her own personal life! We do a bit of a wipe through the door." So you were close to set for much of the production? "We were kind of embedded with the pro- duction offices, so I was actually next door to the production designer. Dan Laustsen had an office next door, and Guillermo's office was next door…And my assistants were nearby. We had a pretty decent setup. We were all running off a NEXIS cutting Avid DNx36. For me, (between) DNx36 and 115, I am doing a show now with 115 and trying to take hard drives and copy footage to cut off a lap op...With the amount of time it takes to copy and access the material, I just prefer 36. And I can go to a soundstage with my laptop and can quickly have the entire show sitting there, so storage isn't an issue." Can you talk about the camera media and dailies process? "Dan shot Arri Alexa 65 with prime lenses, and he also shot with the Alexa Mini with primes. There was a DIT on-set. He would work with Dan and basically deliver the DaVinci file o the lab and then, overnight, they would transfer, sync and Aspera us the material. As soon as it arrived, Harrison Perez, my second assistant, would copy locally to our NEXIS, and basically stream me out the sequence of the dailies, and then have the script supervisor's notes. And I'd just start watching, and while I was watching, he was starting to build the scene bins." Was the footage given any treatment? "Basically, the LUTs that [Dan] uses are as close to what you see in the final pi - ture. I was cutting with that LUT." How did COVID affect the timeline? "COVID, obviously, presented some is- sues. There was one advantage: we were allowed time to really go through and mine all the material that we had shot from Buffalo. So in essence, we could see where Stan was going to land as a char- acter. And it helps kind of give a beacon or North Star for where he may have come from. So when we came back, we finished shooting a ound Christmas. "Guillermo and I were working remote- ly. And then as soon as he was able to get the vaccine in Los Angeles, he fl w down. We continued working remotely through Evercast. And then when he was set up, I came down and we worked mostly in Los Angeles. We did go to New York for a bit to cut…And we finally fin- ished and came back in June for a temp mix, which we had a screening in mid-Ju- ly. We did about four weeks of mixing. "At that point, we (didn't have) a score yet. We had some other scheduling/ COVID issues with our fir t composer, so we temped that and then screened it, cut again…We had a very sobering fir t screening, where you think everything is working, and then you realized that it's not. We started in January of 2020 and finished almo t at the end of 2021. We screened in New York. The premiere (was) December 3rd, and we had just finished t o or three weeks prior." Is Avid your editing tool of choice? "Yeah, for sure. Avid is my go-to tool. I started learning how to cut in Premiere, way before the Premiere it is now, and then I went to Final Cut. I knew Avid was the industry standard and by far is, to me, the most powerful. And so, yeah, I defini ely dictate that." You mentioned how production stopped and picked up months later. Is there a scene that was challenging from an editing standpoint? "I think it's a hard question to answer, be- cause most times, Guillermo is very spe- cific about h w he covers the scene, so it doesn't really overlap the camera that much…He defini ely is cutting in-camera, but where it gets tricky is when we get to the edit and we decide for storytelling purposes (that) we have to start losing lines, or we're going to re-shuffle t order of the scene in particular. That happened all over the film. But the la ger, more complicated thing was, it was a 155-page script. "One scene in particular that stood www.postmagazine.com 15 POST JAN/FEB 2022 McLauchlin points to the 'therapy session' as an editorial highlight.