Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1496872
www.postmagazine.com 16 POST MAR/APR 2023 better with story and character: The power of the close up…save that one shot. Let is savor. And he got that as well. "When I'm shooting, I'll scale through the dailies, but I think I've spent so much time in prep that I don't really sit and study dailies. I'm not trying to cut as I go. Nate is assembling as we go, and he'll drop me a question, but I don't spend a lot of time on that when I'm shooting. I think we know the movie so well, and I got it good enough in my head that I can keep moving it at a pretty good pace. "Then, on weekends, I'll catch up with him a little bit and he'll show me a little piece, and that's great, but we won't go into detail too much because for me, I found out I want to finish the film. I want to make sure I have the coverage I need. I want to finish. I want to get my head around this. So much changes in production, and Keanu and I are always rewriting. We're always redoing. We're always restructuring, re-choreographing. And then when I get done, I take about three weeks off. I don't even go near Nate. He does his assembly. Then the post process really starts for me after that. "I think our assembly was three hours and 45 minutes. And the way we do it is, we start slowly hacking away at the main thread. We stay with the John Wick story. Then we'll do the other stories, almost like three or four different little mini movies. And then we start the Rubik's Cube of putting the sequences together. And while Nate is working on specific scenes, I'll be working on the action scenes as well. So then we'll start putting our stuff together. It's very much a 50/50 process with my editorial team." You're actually editing? "I have my own Avid system, even though the boys lock me out so I can't mess it up too bad. Interestingly enough, just to give credit, on all the John Wick (movies), I've always had the editors do their passes of the action. Some people think it's always just me doing the action. If I did, every- thing would kind of look the same. I want other people's opinions. Nate and my assistant editors on this are phenomenal. They're really great, with good eyes. I want both my assistants and my main editor, Nate, to do their own version of an action sequence. I've made them all edit each ac- tion sequence at least two or three times, plus me working on my thing, because there's always that different perspective. I come from a very stunt/ action background, so I'm looking at different things, where my editorial team, they're looking at it from a character (perspective). They see things completely different than I do. And there hasn't been one time in four movies, and literally dozens of action sequences, where someone hasn't add- ed a little something that I wouldn't have seen. I think that you have to keep a fresh perspective, even in the action." Do you recall what camera Dan Lausten was using for the shoot? "I think we had the (Arri) Alexa LT. It was right before we got the Alexa 35, which I hear is a step up. Dan, right now, is working on a show and he's using the Alexa 35, which I think he prefers. I'm fine with the Alexa, as I've always had a pretty good pretty good relationship with them. You can beat them up. They don't really die. I think the new ones are getting so much better with the color range, which we like…but I'm definitely more into the lenses, and definitely more into my DI process." Where is editorial taking place? "I have Nate and one of my assistants with me on-location, so they're setting up in the cities I am setting up. And then the main group is back in LA." Let's talk about visual effects. I understand the Arc de Triomphe sequence took weeks alone, and was actually shot at an airport? "We did a lot of plates, a lot of LIDAR. So we did have film units go to the Arc de Triomphe and film the heck out of it — both aerial drone and on the ground. The real VFX come in with putting it all together. I mean, that's Keanu Reeves driving a real car. That's stunt guys getting hit by real cars. That's Keanu and Marko (Zaror) weaving in and out of real traffic. They are all of our main stunt drivers — we call them 'interactives' — the things that we actually hit and touch. And then we have some digital background cars to fill in the set piece. So you have to put the digital cars in the background. You have to put the plate shots of the Arc de Triomphe. And then you have to put the real interactive and the cobblestone in. Rodeo, the VFX company, did the majority of work. It's just putting it together, you know, defeating the parallax problems that you always have in these situations. It took a way longer than we thought. We felt confident we could do it, having done the early tests, but there were problems we didn't anticipate. A lot a lot of work went into it." What other studios provided VFX services? "I think, by the end…we had 13 total. I think there were 11 main vendors throughout the movie, and I think we had the 13 at the end because we had so (many) overflow shots. It ended up being 13 total throughout the film, which is quite a bit for a movie our size. I don't want to mess up, but I know the good call outs are Rodeo FX, Mavericks VFX, One of Us, Atomic Arts." There's another shot that's interesting. It's is kind of a 'god's-eye view' in a building, where the action moves from room to room. "That was fun. That was a little tricky...We're doing it on a four-point flying system. It's like a cable camera like the NFL uses, but, when your roof is only 40-feet high — it's the only soundstage we could get — and you build a setup 18 feet, and you have a staircase in it, and you have to put the rafters up…you run out of space really quickly. It took weeks to figure out how to build the sets and put it all in. And obviously, you have Keanu, who's got to remember 100 moves. And the stunt Director Chad Stahelski Lighting and the color grade were key in shaping the look of the film.