Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1451742
out for me the most was the fir t time Stanton and Lilith — Cate Blanchett's character — have that therapy session at night. That was the one scene where I cut it, Guillermo came in, and we kind of tweaked a couple of things, and then it didn't change basically for the rest of the movie. I thought, 'This is going to be the one thing we spend the most time on.' And it just worked! I would say that's mostly due to the performances and the choreography of the camera work, and obviously the set design. It was just a magnifi ent piece of everyone's work." What was the level of VFX involved? "It's interesting. I kind of like these films where you don't know what the VFX are, but when you see them, you're kind of bewildered because they fall into the storytelling so well and so cleanly. "Mr. X was our VFX house, and we've worked with them solely for the last three films n w — Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water and this one. We have a really good relationship with (VFX su- pervisor) Dennis Berardi there. They are mostly set extensions, sky replacement, adding clouds, lightning. And there was a lot of split screen that I did, and some fluid morphs th t couldn't be done in the DI, so they had to tackle set augmenting and time warps that I did. The biggest things that you can see are probably the bus station exterior, when Stan gets his ear shot off. It's all in the frame, and it's very seamless. It just registers as a real, which I think it's so great." You prefer working on a laptop? "I really like being able to be mobile. I've cut on an airplane. I've cut in the back seat of a car, and cut on the floor o Guillermo's living room and dining room table. I especially like to be mobile for the mix, because I like to be able to reference the Avid sound. Also, Guillermo cuts up until the last second, where you need edits on the stage, so it's nice to have the fl xibility if you need to pivot. When I had to go to LA, it was just me for a while. My assistants stayed (in Toronto), so I was running off a ha d drive and we were using Dropbox for the project." Are you using an eternal drive? "Yeah, just a LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt. We would DCP off the vid for our test screenings — we did two. And we would project the Avid DNx36 QuickTime in the mix theater, and it holds up fin . It's a great codec. It's very mobile. You can manage the fil . It doesn't take forever to copy, if you need to do a clone, and running off a lap op." What's next for you? "Guillermo has a Netflix series and I' cutting one of the last episodes for it… It's called Cabinet of Curiosities. It's an anthology genre series. He picked who he thinks are sort of the next wave of interesting directors. It's their stage. It's their cut. He weighs in very minor (and) lets them do their thing. "Ana Lily Amirpour is directing. We're just started yesterday. She fl w up here to Toronto, so we're going to do that. And then I'm going to cut a concert movie for a band, because that will be something different." www.postmagazine.com 16 POST JAN/FEB 2022 Arri's Alexa 65 and Mini were used for the shoot. Shooting of 'the lie-detector test' was interrupted due to COVID.