Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/283421
www.postmagazine.com Post • March 2014 13 because of all the remote locations and as there seemed to be no small scenes. Even a street scene would have over 500 extras from the local community, so every day was different and vibrant and very exciting. In some of the riot scenes, cars would be thrown around that weren't meant to be, because of the passion of the people. And as it was a South African indie, we had to move very fast all the time." POST: Talk about the look of the film and working with DP Lol Crawley. CHADWICK: "I had a big fear of it looking visually staid, and I was determined to give it more of an immediate, documentary feel, where everything is real. So if you open a drawer, there's stuff inside. Everything was detailed and populated with real people. The generals who line the corridor and salute him at the end were real generals, and they came with their own uniforms. They've lived the story and the history, and to connect all that to a modern audience, it had to be 360-degrees and visceral. So we used a lot of hand-held and Steadicam, and I brought my own camera operator, who I've worked with a lot, and the three of us strove all the time for that reality and immediacy. But you're also competing against all these big budget Holly- wood movies, so it was also important that the car chases and action scenes looked really dynamic and on a big enough scale. Mandela lived a very fast life before prison, and we had to capture all that." POST: Your editor was Rick Russell. Tell us about the editing process. Was he on-set? CHADWICK: "He cut all my early shorts and I've wanted to work with him again for years, but he went into commercials and had his own company. But I wanted his sensibility, so I really fought for him to do this and he came to South Africa for the shoot and assembled the film as we shot. So as we were so on top of it, the first cut came pretty quickly. And because of our tight budget and wanting all the money to go on the screen, I plotted it all out visually with all these photos I'd taken that we then put up in the offices. And those were our blueprint for both the script and the film, so whatever was going on, someone could just look at it and see instantly what was needed." POST: Do you like the post production process? CHADWICK: "Love it. I particularly love the actual shoot and then post, where you start to screen it and fine-tune it. Some direc- tors hate screening, but I think you learn so much from the audience reaction. Does it make sense? Is it going too fast? Then you go back and change stuff, tweak it, and it's a great way to really mold the film." POST: Where did you do the post? CHADWICK: "We tried to do it in South Africa, but they just don't have the facilities, so we did it all in London, at BlueBolt Post, Technicolor, and Halo. The sound was done at a combination of places — Abbey Road studios and Halo." POST: BlueBolt did all the visual effects shots. How many were there and what was involved? CHADWICK: "They did some of the clean- up work, make-up fixes in the ageing scenes, and there were several hundred in the end." POST: Tell us about audio and music. How important is it in your films? CHADWICK: "It's always huge, but it was even more vital in this film, and culturally so important. We recorded the music live [in] 5.1 and all the protest songs and club scenes, and I got musicians and activists working with the communities before we shot, so on the day those songs sounded amazing and really give the audience that sense of being right in there. Then in post, we started working with the composer, Alex Heffes, and his score at Abbey Road, and then we mixed at Halo." POST: Did you do a DI? Are you a big DI fan? CHADWICK: "Huge. I worked with this great DI grader Jean-Clement Soret at Tech- nicolor, who I've worked with before on The Other Boleyn Girl, and he works regularly with Danny Boyle and is such an artist. I love the DI as you get this whole other layer of detail you capture on 35mm, and I've always been a big champion of HD and shot all my recent projects that way." POST: Did the film turn out the way you first envisioned? CHADWICK: "I wanted the film to be true to the man and his story, and to have a visceral quality. His life was a real roller coast- er before he went to prison, and then when he was released, he was a relatively old man and had to face a very violent time in South African history. We deal with all that, and there's all the action and drama, but to me it's really this love story and about love and for- giveness as much as the political struggle." POST: What's next? CHADWICK: "I'm working on Tulip Fever, based on the book, and looking for loca- tions. It's the complete opposite of Mandela." Editor Rick Russell cut the feature. The film's DI took place at Technicolor.