Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/455278
www.postmagazine.com 28 POST JANUARY 2015 hands-on in the mix stage, as was Angie, who was going through everything with us. Tim and Billy were very involved in making decisions as well as Angie — she's the director and she was right there. It was a great team." Sullivan says, "I've been doing this a long time and I've worked on a lot of fi lms, but I'm extremely proud of this one. Because of where it goes and where it takes you and being true to Louis — he was a real man and these are the things that he went through." As one of the co-editors on the fi lm, Goldenberg agrees, "I think [Angie] wanted to tell this powerful story, but she wanted it to be really emotional. We talked a lot about Louie's spirituality and inner strength and anything we could do to ce- ment that, have that permeate throughout the entire fi lm. That was done by editing in terms of how emotional we made scenes and also done by strengthening the groundwork in the beginning of the fi lm to make that stuff land — and cast a shadow throughout the rest of the fi lm." Shot predominantly in Australia, Unbroken was captured on Arri Alexa cameras and edited on Avid Media Com- poser 7. Squyres, who was involved with the production right from the beginning (Goldenberg joined after the fi lm was in its rough cut to, as he explains, "come in with a fresh pair of eyes and see what I could bring to the fi lm"), explains that both he and Goldenberg worked side-by- side on the same scenes. "We were bouncing things off of each other. Sometimes when you have two editors, one is doing the dramatic scenes while the other does the action scenes, but we didn't do that here. One of the big challenges of this fi lm was just getting the length and the pacing right. The process of working with another editor — it was interesting. Having the two of us bounce things off of each other, working on the same scenes, the kind of thing that could go very badly but in actuality, it went really well. It was an interesting, stimulat- ing experience. We pushed each other. As long as everyone approaches it proper- ly, it makes you re-examine things that maybe you were satisfi ed with and should be re-examined or makes you more con- fi dent that yes, you had it right and we don't want to touch this." According to Squyres, there were a lot of interesting challenges editing Unbro- ken, but one of the standout scenes for him is after Zamperini is picked up by the Japanese and is sent to a series of prison camps, where he is very isolated. "Then, all of a sudden, for the last 40 minutes of the fi lm, he's lined up in this prison camp with a couple of hundred other guys, and this is where we meet 'The Bird,' the main antagonist of the fi lm. It's a great scene. It starts really wide, away from them, and as the scene goes on we kind of get closer and closer. The Bird gives a speech, and, as the scene progresses, we get closer and closer, and the two of them get closer and closer to each other, and eventually The Bird is right in Louie's face. And, challenges him to look at him and then tells him not to look at him and then he hits him. It's a ter- rifi c scene; there's a great build of tension. "[Takamasa Ishihara], is very good at this role and at measuring what he says. He's so in control and takes his time [at] fi nding the pacing in a scene like that. It's not about the pace of the dialogue, be- cause there really is no dialogue. There's no back and forth. Louis just stands there and takes it, so pacing a scene like that is really interesting and I think it's an eff ec- tive introduction to the guy who is going to be our main antagonist in the fi lm." Squyres also explains that the fi lm has several sections that are very diff erent from one another, based on where the main character, Zamperini, is in his life. At the very beginning, there's a fl ashback to his childhood and before the war, and then he's on the plane with his crewmates, and after the plane crashes, Zamperini is lost at sea in a life raft. "That has to have a very diff erent feel," Squyres explains. "It looks entirely diff erent, there's only three guys and what you're trying to accomplish with that scene is very diff erent. And then they're rescued, but by the Japanese. So, [Louie] goes into these prison camps and that's a whole new set of characters and locations and feel — just manag- ing those changes, and making those changes which are necessary from the structure of the story, but making those changes into assets rather than having it be jarring, that was interesting." Goldenberg agrees, "It's almost three fi lms in one. The idea that we made it into one I think I'm most proud of. We were able to fi nd the right formula in terms of making you feel like one epic journey, rath- er than three separate episodes of a fi lm." "It's a very brutal story," stresses Squyres. "Part of what [Louie] experi- enced was a great deal of brutality, but you don't want to send an audience away going, 'Boy, that was brutal.' You want to send an audience away saying, 'Boy, that was uplifting.' So, fi nding the right level of brutality, showing the vio- lence in a way that conveys it without it becoming the subject was something we spent a lot of time on." Goldenberg adds, "I worked on lots of fi lms that were based on true stories and this one we were able to actually say it's a true story, because they stuck so closely to the truth. You get this incredible sense of responsibility when working on a fi lm like this. Louis died when we were making it and his family was very present and Angie had such a close relationship with him. It took on this extra sense of responsibility to do right by Louie and do something that he would have been proud of." Director Angelina Jolie on-set. The feature was shot in Australia using Arri's Alexa. EDITING UNBROKEN