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November 2014

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www.postmagazine.com 16 POST NOVEMBER 2014 roducer/director Bennett Mill- er made his feature debut in 1998 with the acclaimed documentary The Cruise, which went on to win the top prize of the International Forum at the Berlin Film Festival. He then fol- lowed that up with 2005's Capote and 2011's Moneyball, both of which were Oscar-nominated and both of which masterfully dealt with true events and explored large themes through complex character portraits of real people. Now Miller has once again utilized those skills in examining the real-life, tragic story of a billionaire and two champion wrestlers in his new fi lm Foxcatcher. It tells the unlikely-but-true story of Olympic Gold Medal-winning wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and his more celebrated wrestling brother Dave (Mark Ruff alo), both of whom come from a blue-collar background. Their lives are forever changed when Mark is summoned by the eccentric, wealthy heir John du Pont (Steve Carell) to move onto his Pennsylvania estate and train for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Here, Miller talks about making the fi lm, his love of post, and the importance of sound. You started off in documentaries. How does that background shape your approach to a fi lm like this? "For me, documentaries should prob- ably feel a bit more like fi lms, and vice versa. So when you're shooting a documentary and there's that great coincidence of an event, composition and light — where it's all happening, it should really feel the same way on fi lm. We went to great pains to really understand who these people were and what the story was, and what the truth was — and to then recreate them to the best of our abilities. And yet to still allow things to be out of control. So it's very controlled but also a careful balancing act between control and lack of control. We used a lot of improvisation, and things changed from take to take, and I told [DP Greig Fraser] from the start, 'It's going to feel like shooting a docu- mentary. You can't assume you'll ever get a second take of a great moment.' And that was often the case." What were the main technical challenges of pulling all this together? "They were mainly logistical, as the fi lm was shot in 35mm entirely on location with no stage work at all, except for the gyms, which we built inside an aban- doned high school. We had a ton of lo- cations, and they were scattered all over western Pennsylvania, and we only had just over 50 days to get all our coverage." Do you like post? "I absolutely love it, as that's really where movies are made, and for me, everything that proceeds post is just about getting all the material together that you need so you can actually begin making the movie. Ang Lee has a great description of fi lmmaking as shopping for all these ingredients, and then you get to post and start to cook them all." Where did you post it and how long was the process? "We did most of it in New York at Pivotal Post. The post scene is very interesting in New York in that it has fewer great facil- ities able to handle a long term, in-depth project than you would imagine, and we actually bounced around a bit before we fi nally landed at Pivotal and felt right at home...the last few months we did in LA. The fi lm was edited by three editors — Connor O'Neill, who worked on Moneyball, Stuart Levy (Savages, Any Given Sunday) and Jay Cassidy (Oscar nominated for American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook. Tell us how that worked? "I started off with Connor and Stuart, cutting in New York, and we worked for many months together, but no one had dibs on any scenes. I'd work with each of them on diff erent scenes, and sometimes we'd all cut together, and there's a very specifi c style to the editing and the way the fi lm's observed. And the plan was to fi nish by a certain date and release it, but [producer] Megan Ellison decided to cut us some slack and asked me if I felt we could take it any further. I felt there was, so we took a break and then moved the operation to LA, and then Jay came in as Connor and Stuart had to leave for other gigs, and then Jay and I worked together for a few more months." It sounds like a very long edit? "We actually ended up cutting for about a year, partly because we had so much material, and then the way we approached the fi lm was really like an exploration that everyone had to be on board for. It wasn't overly scripted and storyboarded. It was really about getting into the room with these actors and Greig and then exploring what the moments are, what the scenes are, and there's a lot of improvisation. It was like BY IAIN BLAIR P REVEALING COMPLEX CHARACTERS THROUGH IMPROVISATION, EDITING & SOUND BENNETT MILLER: FOXCATCHER DIRECTOR'S CHAIR Miller looks at footage on set. The feature was shot on fi lm and cut by a team of three editors.

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