Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546075
34 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Fall 2026 it. He's worked it out beforehand and then we go through it. You do get a couple of good rehearsals in there. It's not like, "Let's shoot it and see what happens," very seldom with him. I think because on some of the stuff that's more elaborate, he wants to be there for the moment because he's so much about the choreography of the people and the camera. The camera itself is a player... Was there a lot of VFX and CGI? Steven leaned into doing a lot of practical effects. Not necessarily to fight against the CG tidal wave, but I think that he felt that it was a film that had a lot of stuff going on, and by grounding it in real effects, it would help sell that there's a certain element to it that is not of this world. There were all these car chases. It's an action movie, it's a thriller, and it has to be really grounded. There's the scene where the train and the car crash, and the car is pushed under the train and dragged along the tracks, and gets squashed and then blows out the windshield and people climb out and get onto the train to get away. It's very beautiful, crazy choreography. I wanted to do some effects recording and I tested the Tascam 32-bit float tiny recorder, the Tascam FR-AV2. I got a couple of those just to try them out because in the past I am guessing how loud something's going be and have to set a setting on a recorder. The 32-bit float recorder gives you a giant dynamic range. I used DPA lavs with the Ambient EMP5S Electret power adapter to power the mics into the Tascam recorder. Steven doesn't do much 2nd unit, but I brought in Danny Nydell, a New York Production Mixer who I like, and is very game for all sorts of craziness, to do that stuff. We used the Tascams in most of the stunt scenes. For example, when a car gets driven off of a cliff into a quarry. We put the recorder near where the car hits. It was stuff like that was fun to be able to make a bigger series of recordings. With the car chases, some of it was car-to-car shot with a Russian arm and then we would be in either a lead or follow van. We had big antennas on the roof and we made it sort of a command van that Steven liked having that whole setup with big monitors and sound. We would be zooming around either Colin Firth