Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/336911
www.postmagazine.com Post • June 2014 15 did the third act, and then MPC came in and did the final work." POST: Did you do a lot of previs? LIMAN: "Yes, a lot, all done by Third Floor. Sometimes we shot according to the previs, and sometimes it was more of a jumping-off point, and then it was more about me in green suits or sticks with tennis balls on them." POST: Do you like post? LIMAN: "I love post and I loved it in par- ticular on this film, as there was so much creative decision-making and directing to be done in post. My movies have always come together in the editing room and post, as I've tended to work from scripts that are incom- plete at best. So the final writing has always taken place in the editing room, and I love the workshop collaborative nature of that, where you have the ability to try stuff and immedi- ately put it up there and get a reaction. I feel that where I really grow as a filmmaker is in the editing process. That's where I really learn — not just about the particular movie I'm making, but how to make movies in general." POST: Where did you do the post? LIMAN: "It was done in London, New York and LA." POST: Tell us about working with editor James Herbert (Sherlock Holmes)? LIMAN: "He wasn't on the set but he was editing on Avid at Leavesden while we shot and he was amazing, as every night I'd finish shooting, go over to the editing room, and he'd have already cut together five versions from the previous day's footage — quick sketches. And it was such a fast efficient way to understand your footage and it enabled me to give smarter notes more quickly. We also had this great VFX editor, Laura Jennings, and pretty quickly we had — albeit low-res — VFX images we could comp into the frame. That's the biggest challenge of editing a film like this. I don't think I quite understood going in just how challenging it is; editing a scene where half the characters are virtual and maybe the entire environment is virtual. And sometimes the shots don't exist at all until they're ordered. So you're editing with just blank celluloid sometimes." POST: How many VFX shots are there? LIMAN: "About 1,000 — so a lot of work." POST: What was the most technically diffi- cult shot to pull off? LIMAN: "I think they were all equally tough as I didn't want it to look like there are any VFX shots. The Bourne Identity had 200 VFX shots and you can't spot any of them. But that's a far easier situation. Here, once you have an alien, the audience inherently knows the shot's not real, so that's a tough challenge — to make it look real." POST: Can you talk about the importance of music and sound to you as a filmmaker? Where did you do the mix? LIMAN: "We mixed at De Lane Lea in London and we also did a Dolby Atmos mix at Pinewood, which was awesome. Sound is a critical part of any film, and when you're telling a story on this scale, it's even more important. Even with a big budget like we had, there were many things we couldn't afford to shoot, so we had to rely on sound to tell parts of the story. Music is also critical, and the only person who's worked on all my films is Julianne Jordan, my music supervisor. And just as I didn't want to do a traditional sci-fi film, I didn't want a tradi- tional sci-fi action score, so I hired Christophe Beck, who did The Hangover and Frozen. Start- ing with Bourne I avoided all the usual compos- ers who did action and spy movies, and hired John Powell, who'd only done animated films till then, and I took the same approach this time. I think it's because I'm interested in these genres in terms of how they illuminate charac- ter, as opposed to working in genres for their own sake." POST: The DI must have been vital. Where did you do it and how did that process help? LIMAN: "At Technicolor in London, and it's always been very important to me as I DP'd my first films. So the look and feel of my films isn't something I gladly hand off to someone. It's something I have very strong opinions about, but I also love collaborating with Dion and the colorist on the look. The really critical part of the DI was making sure all the VFX shots felt as real and honest as possible." POST: Did it turn out the way you had hoped? LIMAN: "Even better, which is always my goal, throughout the production, all the post and editing, the DI and mix." POST: What's next? LIMAN: "After such an intense two years on this, I feel like I've just come back from a war. It's hard to imagine doing a normal movie. This is my most personal movie since Swing- ers, and while it may look like this enormous production, at its core it was a very intimate, tight-knit team and experience." James Herbert cut the feature, which underwent a DI at Technicolor in London.