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page, making sure we have the same thing as Ridley is wanting to get." Aer production wrapped, the team moved to the South of France, where Scott lives, to spend 10 weeks on the director's cut. "And then aer that, the final six months, the finishing process, was in London," notes Restivo. Simpson and Restivo had three assistants helping to prep ele- ments for the edit. They cut the feature using Avid Media Composer with NEXIS storage. The film had an IMAX release, but the editors worked at HD resolutions for the initial edit. "We are not working in 4K, or something like that, just because of the amount of footage," Restivo relates. "[With] 12 cameras on everything, [there's] not a chance we could we deal with that band- width." Simpson recalls the way the film came together, with many of the action sequences being among the first they got their hands on. "They did shoot the baboons," she recalls, pointing to a sequence in which the slaves fight flesh-eating wild animals inside the arena. It is here that Paul Mescal's Lucius character attracts attention for his courage and combat skills. "It was the first thing shot in Morocco," she recalls. "And also, the opening battle sequence—the Numidia battle. We got pieces really late on in the shoot. Some additional things of soldiers falling over and dying, and arrows flying through the air. These things came in in dribs and drabs, so it's quite complicated, really. We just try and keep up with everything. That's why it's brilliant having the two of us working together, because I don't think that one editor would be enough because of the volume of work and the way it comes in. It's not sequential and the scenes aren't complete." Restivo says Simpson is a fabulous collaborator, and that the fa- miliarity they have from working together on so many past projects with the filmmaker has helped to establish a reliable workflow. "The way that we have set it up for the last few movies is that we will watch the dailies together in the morning, once the assistants have prepped everything," he reveals, giving huge thanks to his edito- rial assistants, who do a lot of the heavy liing, syncing sound for as many as 12 cameras, and handling all the different frame rates. "Then [Clair] and I will watch [it] in Media Composer in the nine-camera format, so we're watching everything at once, making notes, making comments," notes the editor. "And then, usually on the day, we'll just kind of divvy it up. 'Do you want that scene? Okay. I'll take this one.' With this particular show, since we knew that there were two gigantic sequences, starting with the Numidian battle— and the baboons—basically, we just had to kind of split that up and start assembling those sequences separately." The duo would come together once they had an initial cut to share for feedback. "And then, later on, as the shoot progressed, if there was another battle sequence or something that was going to take multiple days, one person would work on that sequence and the other person would revise the other cuts," Restivo reveals. "We would have had Ridley come in too, to give us feedback on things that we had already done." The film begins with a detailed sequence that provides much of the backstory about Rome, its battles, and the path that brought to power its current leaders—twin emperors Caracalla and Geta. Simp- Up to 12 cameras were operated simultaneously during battle scenes. 16 cgw j a n u a r y • f e b r u a r y • m a r c h 2 0 2 5