Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1547041
And you learn a lot, particularly on some- thing like this, which is technically really challenging. You have an idea of what you want to do, but then maybe it doesn't work and you need to revise the way you're shooting things. You're inventing as you go. "And the other big challenge is when you've got a twist ending, which this film has, you need to set up enough clues that when you get to the twist, audiences get it, but not so many that people figure it out too early. So, it's that fine balance that took quite a lot of surgical precision editing." Talk a bit about the visual effects, as there's probably more than people realize, right? "Right, and Goldcrest VFX did some shots and clean-up, but 1920 did most of the heavy lifting, as well as some clean up, as they had to create some buildings, do lots of set extensions and all that stuff in the tunnel. When she gets out of the train, there was no train there, so they did quite a lot of invisible stuff and did a great job. And then we also worked with Mac Guff, a French company, who did some tricky face replacement for the scenes where we had the stunt double running instead of Gal for the most intense moments. So, all the face replacement had to be totally invisible, and they did a very good job. I think most people don't even notice that sort of VFX, which is the goal." Tell us about the importance of the sound and music, as the propulsive score is a key player in the film. "Absolutely, and from the start I wanted to use the sound and feel of tribal drumming. That organic energy level of someone playing a drum felt like the right kind of vibe for her, so for our temp music we used a track of somebody drumming frenetically, and we looped it repeatedly. And then Tom Hodge, a really inventive, great composer, who I've worked with quite a lot recently, came in and recorded some tracks with a Senegalese drummer, who did a brilliant job. And then Tom took that and played around with it, and came up with these themes played on a broken down piano. "And then we started to experiment with breathing sounds, and Gal recorded all sorts of variations. Then we used them as a percussive element. It's a very mainstream movie, but we had a lot of fun experiment- ing with some of the picture and sound choices. Then we worked with sound de- signer and sound editor Glenn Freemantle and his team at Sound 24 at Pinewood, who I always work with. They did a mag- nificent job of reconstructing and mixing the whole soundtrack, because there was so much of the live sound we couldn't use, and that was a very intricate, big job." What did the grade entail? "We did it at Goldcrest and Adam Glasman graded it. I've worked with him several times before, and Anthony has worked with him a lot, and it was actually a tricky grade just because of all these different cameras and formats we used — and particularly the Leica, because nobody had really used that before, as that was a brand-new camera. Anthony was given it as a trial prototype, and we liked the way we could move around with it and that it looked like a stills camera. But it was very tricky getting that to match with other things, and it's one of those problems that you don't think about too much in advance until you get to post. "We were using an Alexa as the A camera for most of the shoot, but we used all sorts of other bits and pieces as well, so that took some work to grade it all correctly. And we have a movie with quite a naturalistic visual approach, so when you've got a lot of visual effects in there, you want those to really bed in, and that obviously takes a while to grade as well. I basically left them to it for a week and then I went in for the second week, as I think it's quite good not to be at the ses- sions every day, as you can very easily lose objectivity, watching them work for hours at the grade. I much prefer going on the first day, and we'd chat about it and they would get on with it, and then I'd come back in a week or so and give my notes if I felt a scene was too dark, or maybe too light, and they'd fix it." Did it turn out the way you hoped? "Nothing ever turns out the way you have it in your head, but then the whole process of post production is an acceptance of what you've got to work with and finally realizing that the beauty of what you have is almost better than what you imagined beforehand." www.postmagazine.com 11 POST SEPT/OCT 2026 Arri's Alexa served as the feature's A camera. Previs helped in planning the action scenes. The color grade took place at Goldcrest. Actor Damian Lewis portrays "the caller." Director Kevin Macdonald JANUARY IMAGES/TODD WILLIAMSON