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cover story Green Hornet’s stinging humor C By RANDI ALTMAN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF raltman@postmagazine.com ULVER CITY, CA — Veteran editor Michael Tronick and his editing team have taken on the task of helping director Michel Gondry bring the Green Hornet and his trusty sidekick Cato to the big screen.While there is plenty of action to go around, the film stars Seth Rogen, bet- ter known for his comedic work (Knocked Up, Superbad,The 40-year-old Virgin) than his crime fighting abilities. In addition to starring in Green Hornet, Rogen also gets writing and producing credit, so his funny hand was in just about everything. Shot on 35mm, Green Hornet was undergoing its conversion from 2D to 3D at the time of this interview. Below, Tronick discusses the process, Editor Michael Tronick walks us through his process. using Avid Media Composer Nitris DX to cut in DNxHD 36, and working with Gondry. His team was headed by Dylan Quirt and Aaron Brock, the latter of whom pops in for a visit below. POST: Is this a comedy or an action film? MICHAEL TRONICK: “My priority was Media Composer Nitris DX was used to cut the film. comedy. Seth’s character was the backbone of the movie, and I personally find him very, very appealing, and his humor very effective. In order to set the movie apart from the typical action genre, playing up the comedy was the direction I was going with.That was confirmed after our friends and family screening — a small screening on the lot here at Sony. Everyone wanted more com- edy. I also spent some quality time with Seth and (writer) Evan Goldberg, really going through a comedy pass. “Seth isn’t a martial arts expert. He doesn’t have superpowers, he’s just a nor- mal guy who inherits a lot of money.Within the action sequences, whether it was a fight or car chase, I would look for those mo- ments that had a humorous element to them and try to extract and incorporate that into the action sequences.There are big set pieces as far as crashes and explo- sions, and fights and things, but setting it apart with the character was my priority.” POST: There are a lot of visual effects in the film. How did you work with those shots? TRONICK: “Jamie Dixon was our visual effects supervisor, and he wrangled all the ef- fects from the many vendors. [He] was the point guy on set, and I would interact with him in the cutting room. My policy is to keep things as open as possible with visual effects because I don’t want to get into a situation 18 Post • January 2011 where I am unnecessarily spending a lot of their money on shots that could be done dif- ferently or more effectively. I try to keep that relationship as close and open as possible. “We had our fair share of previs, which gave me an idea of the direction the action sequences were going. I would also stay in close communication with Vic Armstrong, the second unit director. He actually had a guy on set editing the video tap.That was a helpful tool for me in terms of knowing you are getting just an overwhelming amount of material. Seeing how Vic saw things coming He was in charge of everything, and we had a lot of interaction with Seth Rogen and (producer) Neal Moritz and the studio in the cutting room. It was a pretty active cut- ting room and that could be problematic, but on this movie it turned out OK.” POST: Were you on set at all? TRONICK: “Rarely. I am not an editor who likes to spend a lot of time on set. But when called, I’d go down. A lot of the time, when production sees the editor show up, it’s like, ‘Uh, oh. What’s wrong?’ I want to avoid that.There were other times I went The editing team: Michael Tronick is flanked by Aaron Brock (left) and Dylan Quirt. together was really valuable for me. It was sort of like a little cheat sheet of how he saw things cutting.That’s all second unit, then we had to integrate first unit stuff, which is dialogue and incorporating principals into the action sequences the second unit estab- lished for us.” POST: How did you wor k with director Michel Gondry? TRONICK: “He’s a very versatile director and his primary strengths are in visuals, and honestly that is not my primary strength as far as what the Avid has; I am not a whiz on the visual effects palette. Michel would spend time with vendors or my second edi- tor Evan Henke, as far as dealing with a lot of visual effects and how the special Gondry visuals would integrate. “Michel is very trusting of the process and what I presented to him. When we started cutting things down he had some great ideas in terms of accelerating se- quences or what things weren’t necessary. www.postmagazine.com down to bring DVDs of scenes that I cut for Michel or to the set where they shot the in- terior of the Daily Sentinel, the newspaper that Seth’s character’s inherits; that was re- ally impressive.And I like John Schwartzman the DP, so as much information as I could get form those guys I would. But mainly my time was here because it was an extremely difficult movie to put into first cut. It was very complex in terms how it was shot and the amount of coverage.” POST: Can you elaborate a little on why it was so difficult? TRONICK: “There were a lot of choices, and given the nature of the performances you could see them evolve from take one to take 20. It’s just a matter of shifting through everything and extracting those perfor- mances you think best tells the story, or in this case the things that I thought were the funniest. And as far as the visual effects go, how they were going to be incorporated. It was very demanding editorial. More than