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www.postmagazine.com 18 POST JANUARY 2015 as both continuing Anderson's cinematic language and also expanding it. "You see a lot of Wes's distinctive signatures: the whip pans, the complex dolly shots, the stunning grip work, but the composition is also diff erent, particularly because of the aspect ratio he and Bob Yeoman were working in. There are also some huge action sequences, so the way the fi lm was shot complements that." Sound was done at De Lane Lea in London and the DI was done by Modern VideoFilm and Molinare in London. Alejandro Inarritu was Oscar-nomi- nated for Babel, and Birdman, his new dark comedy starring Michael Keaton and Naomi Watts, is also getting attention — partly for its unusual cinematic approach. "I knew I wanted it to be live and make the audience experience a real point of view from the main character in a radical way," he says. "This represented a com- pletely new approach for me and all the people involved, so the challenge started from the script to the last frames of post production." Inarritu and DP Emmanu- al Lubezki shot the extended, intuitive, unbroken sequences using Steadicam and hand-held cameras, and the blocking and dialogue were precisely timed with the camera movement. "We fi rst blocked, rehearsed and designed the shots in an empty set with stand-ins," says the director. "In comedy, rhythm is king. So through this process, I not only found the internal rhythm of the scenes but the sets and spaces were designed with enormous precision after we all learned from it." The fi lm shot for 30 days entirely in New York City, and was edited by Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise, who have worked together with Inarritu on previous fi lms. "Before cameras even rolled, we had an assembly made up of the rehearsal footage and some of the table read so together with Alejandro we could begin to gauge what the fi lm would look and sound like, where a conversation was redundant, where the moves would be. So we were able to get started very early on," Mirrione says. The editors also partnered closely with Rodeo FX, the visual eff ects team, who organically contributed to the unique cuts in Birdman. While the seamless nature of the fi lm may look and sound eff ortlessly fl uid, the actual assembly was painstak- ingly crafted. "The big diff erence with this fi lm was that we didn't have the conven- tional places where one scene started and another ended. Every scene walks into the next one. Alejandro described it as going down a hill and not stopping. There wasn't really a transition, the characters just keep moving on," Crise says. The editors also worked closely with Inarritu and sound designer Martin Hernandez on an insistent percussive refrain. The process began during production when Crise worked with Inarritu to provide a fi rst pass for the editors. Adds the director, "By editing you can alter rhythm and pace. Not having that tool in a comedy can be extremely challenging. So I thought the drums as the main score would provide the fi lm not only a good vibe but the possibility in helping me fi nd the beat it needed." To this end, the Mexican drummer Antonio Sanchez recorded and improvised 60 tracks based on some objectives or emo- tions the fi lm needed. "That helped me enormously and sometimes I even used it on the stage for the actors to understand the rhythm of the scene. Rhythm is every- thing in cinema," he says. Mirrione reports that, "Once there was a fi rst pass at the movie, with a lot of those drum tracks laid in as an outline," he spent "a lot of time working with Alejandro, to strip layers away, add some in, trying a lot of diff erent beats. Obviously, in every movie, music will have an impact on point of view and mood and tone. But with this I think it was especially important because the rhythm is so tied to the camera and you can't make those kinds of cadence adjustments with as much fl exibility as you can with cuts. We had to lean on the music a little more than normal at times, to push back or pull forward." The DI was done at Technicolor and re-recording audio ser- vices were provided by Universal. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, who steered Matthew McConaughey to Oscar gold in last year's Dallas Buyer's Club, and starring Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line), Wild brings best-selling author Cheryl Strayed's adventure to the screen in this harrowing tale of adventure. After years of reckless behavior, a heroin addiction and the sudden loss of her mother and destruc- tion of her marriage, Strayed (With- erspoon) makes a rash decision — to hike more than a thousand miles on the Pacifi c Crest Trail, and with absolutely no experience. Vallee assembled a crew that included many of his Dallas Buyer's Club collaborators — DP Yves Belanger, and fi lm editors John Mac McMurphy and Martin Pensa, along with visual eff ects The Boxtrolls The Book of Life The Lego Movie How to Train Your Dragon 2 OSCAR PICKS