Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1501110
advised on all of them, and he's very experienced and brilliant, and fun to work with. Then Stephen and the others collaborated closely with Leo, and didn't mind getting feedback from Leo, so it was a great working relationship." Given that it spans different time periods, features a large cast and has a lot of moving parts, what were the main editing challenges? "It all goes back to the original concept and the fact that we never intended the show to be opaque or confusing. It was always intended to be very accessible and clear, and we were always looking for moments of emotional clarity and through-lines that you could follow. What we were trying to say is, 'This story con- nects to this story, because that moment you saw back in the class impacts the way people behave ten years later, and this moment in the present gives them the chance to become this person in the future.' So the big editing challenge was how this puzzle unravels, and our guiding principles were clarity, emotion and the most interesting points of connection. "For example, in Episode 5, we see Brian Tyree Henry's character first fall in love, and then in the present, we see how that marriage is under great strain, illus- trating the journey of life, as well as the individual characters' stories. And then we're also trying to tell the evolutionary story of the FBI, which is like another character in the piece. So it is complicat- ed, but we didn't want the audience to feel that, and so finding the right balance and flow to it was a big challenge." There are quite a few VFX. Was that also a steep learning curve for you? "It was, but we had an amazing VFX team, headed by two supervisors — Keith Kolder and Mark Savela, and our whole approach was to always be grounded with the VFX work. We couldn't do that thing where you create all kinds of VFX and people accept it because they know the situation isn't real. We wanted everything to look real, like the big fire scene in Episode 2. All that was really interesting to work on. The big VFX challenge was that we shot it all in Atlanta, but it had to feel like ev- ery state and the whole country was in the show. So we had to create all these different landscapes and looks, ranging from mountains and snow in Montana, to urban areas and cityscapes, and that visual contrast was partly done by cleverly choosing locations, but mainly by VFX and post. And it was quite hard editing all that stuff till we got the fin- ished shots, as so much of it still looked like Atlanta to me. "Then you get the final VFX shots and suddenly, it all comes alive. We end- ed up using a lot of vendors, as there were so many different components, and the VFX industry is so busy these days. FuseFX did our destroyed FBI HQ exteriors, Lennix's arm, most of the snow at the ranch, the AI Judge, several sky replacements, and many more odds and ends. Crafty Apes did our Processing Center avatars, all of the basement fire, most of the series' gunplay, all the blood and gore, and a lot of the very hard shots with invisible work. These guys are the unsung heroes on the show! "Folks VFX did all of our FBI drones, exclusively — great work on their part. Varnish Bros. did Poet's Eye, a lot of the future graphics, the Philadelphia precinct exteriors, the Future Highway Checkpoint, some sky replacements and the Future FBI HQ shots. Muse VFX started the snow at Tupirik's ranch, but were unable to complete when we pushed delivery dates. They're respon- sible for the big, sweeping shot of the burning compound with the chopper. Scarab Digital did the remainder of our GFX, plus the 108 News montage. Rogue One VFX was primarily responsible for invisible work, like paint-outs/crew/rig removal and monitor comps, but they did also do Lennix's CG arm stump from the present timeline. 1.618 VFX was also another 'invisible work' vendor, but most recently was responsible for the din- er GFX. For me, a lot of VFX can look too glossy and perfect, but we wanted to keep a real sense of physicality and grittiness to our VFX, and everyone did a great job." It must have been fun creating the soundscape and music? "Great fun. We mixed at Warners in New York and in LA, and the sound team was so creative. For example, for the burning ranch, they made it sound like a creaking ship, and they found all these very unusual sounds, such as making the code scenes sound like centipedes mov- ing around. So that was another great aspect of post, that we could make so much of it tangible, as if you could smell it and touch it." Do you want to showrun again? "Yes, I loved the whole experience, especially post, which was such a joy, but having gone through this, I wouldn't consider doing it again without having finished scripts. That was the big lesson I learned." www.postmagazine.com 11 POST MAY/JUNE 2023 FuseFX handled the destruction of the FBI headquarters. Shooting began in October of 2021. Leo Trombetta oversaw the show's team of editors.