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ver the past few years, British director Dexter Fletcher has seen his career get turbo-charged, thanks to such acclaimed global hits as Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman. His new film, Ghosted, streaming on Apple TV+, is a romantic action adventure starring Chris Evans and Ana de Armas that takes audi- ences on a wild ride around the world. The multi-faceted Fletcher started as a child actor, appearing in such films as Bugsy Malone, The Elephant Man and The Bounty before graduating to adult roles in both film (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Layer Cake) and tele- vision (Band of Brothers). He made his feature film directorial debut in 2012 with Wild Bill, and has since made a diverse slate of films, including Eddie the Eagle. Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, I spoke with the director about making the film, editing, dealing with the visual effects and his love of post. Was this a nice change of pace from films about gay British glam rockers? (Laughs) "Yeah, it was. I'm not saying that door's closed, but I wanted to try something very different." So what sort of film did you set out to make? "Something big and brash and a lot of fun that was engaging and entertaining. I think I also wanted to get into a project that had a lot more visual effects that I could mix with practical and special ef- fects, and I liked the idea of doing some- thing on a very big scale. I always wanted to do an action movie, as I love films like Indiana Jones and Close Encounters, which really fired up my imagination back in the day. But it didn't have to be fantasy-driven, just away from the music genre and biopic stories, and this afforded me that opportunity. It mixed it up, and there's a good role reversal in it and a couple of good surprises along the way." Casting the right leads must have been crucial? "Right, and Chris Evans and Ana De Armas are so good together. Evans isn't so Marvel-ed out, not so Captain America. He's far more down-to-earth. And she emerges as something wonder- ful, and I found all that really interesting and exciting." How early did you integrate post and VFX? "With these kinds of films you have to start planning all the visual effects and post workflow right away, and it was all going on as we were shooting, as all that had to be integrated with our sets and all the locations. We built some very big sets, such as the market at night in Afghanistan, and then we had to add a lot of VFX to it to extend it and surround it. It was the same with the restaurant scene at the end. You can't actually spin a restaurant, so it takes a lot of visual effects and practical stuff, and it was a nice marriage of the two. Same with the big bus chase — we tried to do as much of that as possible in-camera without injuring our movie stars, and then did the rest in post." Did you do much previs? "We did, and that was all pretty new to me, as I didn't really need it in most of my other films. We did do some visu- alization and drawings for Rocketman, but not previs per se, and I did some previs on some projects I developed that ultimately never got made, so actually getting to use previs on this was really enjoyable for me. I really like the process and would have liked to have done more. Not getting it all done made it all more difficult for sequences like the restaurant, for example. We had no previs for that and could have done with it." Talk about how you collaborated on the look with DP Salvatore Totino, as before you've worked with George Richmond, who's shot all your films up until now. "George wasn't available, and I'd met Sal when I directed a couple of epi- sodes of The Offer, the streaming show on Paramount+ about making The Godfather. He was the DP, and it was a great collaboration. When I got offered Ghosted, I talked to him about it. He got excited, and I ended up bringing him with me to shoot this. So he gave me a fresh set of eyes on this." How tough was the shoot? "Very tough. We had script changes, actor changes — Ana took over when Scarlett Johansson had to drop out — lots of locations, and just 12 or so weeks to get it all shot. We prepped as much as we could, but there's never enough time to prep or shoot or edit. The mantra I live by is: 'You never finish. You just run out of time.' But once we did the assembly, we had no pickups or reshoots, which is amazing for a film this complex and so full of action. I'm very proud of that." Where did you post? "All in LA. We had offices on Sunset DEXTER FLETCHER DIRECTS GHOSTED CREATING APPLE TV+'S 'BIG, BRASH AND ENGAGING' FEATURE O DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MAR/APR 2023 BY IAIN BLAIR Pivotal Post provided Avid editing systems.