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They don't have to be huge hits, but they have to make a profit." POST: How many visual effects shots were there? PAYNE: "Not that many. Mark Dornfeld's Custom Film Effects in LA did them all and it's my third film with them and they're really good. Visual effects now are what we used to call opticals and I'm pretty old-fashioned about it, except when it comes to digitally removing a boom mic or cleaning up stuff. It's great for all that, and combining takes. "If you're doing 'overs,' and what I do is better in one take on my back, we can switch that out. We can also speed up and slow down performances, which is another great thing. It's really important editorially, so you can combine different takes and overs." POST: Tell us about audio and the mix. How important is it in your films? PAYNE: "It's hugely important, a huge part of any film. In terms of post, I have a really tight team of people I've worked with since the beginning, Election, like my sound designer and sound supervisor Frank Gaeta. It's a big advantage, and we're still happy working together. I love doing all the mixing and I'm there for every moment of it." POST: Did you do a DI? PAYNE: "Yes, and it was my first time. It was great, though to be honest. I think people can go a little crazy with it if you're not careful. You have all these windows and possibilities, and I finally felt I got the hang of it when I just decided to throw away all the tricks you can do and just treat it as though I was still doing it photo-chemically. "So I'd go, 'That shot should be four points more cyan and a little denser,' instead of say- ing, 'Can we make a window there and brighten that one spot?' Because I also wanted to trust what my DP, Phedon Papami- chael, did, and not screw around with it too much. But every once in a while it's great to be able to change the color or de-saturate something that came out a little too vibrant or add a little light to an actor's face without brightening the whole shot — that's when the DI really works for me. And, obviously, DI is here to stay. It's hard to do it photo-chem- ically anymore." POST: Did the film turn out the way you hoped? PAYNE: "My second unit director is a trained philosopher, and he says I have phe- nomenological approach to film, meaning that I'm a bit like a documentarian. You go in to see what's there and then shoot that and order it. I don't have some vision I pursue. But I do have my own innate sense of rhythm which you impose on the project — in all phases, from the writing and directing to the speed of performance and number of angles shot so you can then control all that later in post and the editing. So rhythm is very important, and part of it is being able to find the film's rhythm. There's that great 1956 film, The Mystery of Picasso — not to compare myself in any way with him (laughs) — and you see him painting and it goes through so many different stages until he finally says, 'OK, that's it. I'm done.' It's kind of like that. He's not like Edward Hopper who's painting one thing very carefully that he's had in mind for months and months — he just figures it out as he goes along, and I work more like that." POST: You also co-produced. Do you like producing? PAYNE: "It's the first film of my own I've produced, and it was a good experience — the inmates get to take over the asylum. I've produced quite a lot, but basically for friends and their projects, like King of California for Mike Cahill, an old film school buddy. "We now have a production company, Ad Hominem, under Fox Searchlight, and we have two projects coming out this year. The first was Cedar Rapids, a little comedy with Ed Helms and John C. Reilly, and the second is The Descendents. But I intensely dislike pro- ducing for other people." POST: Any interest in doing a 3D film? PAYNE: "It'd be fun, but here's the truth about 3D — it comes around every 18 years for three years. So it'll disappear next year and be back again in 2030." POST: The digital world rules in post. Do you think film is dead? PAYNE: "I think we'll probably keep shoot- ing film for a long while even as digital cam- eras replace film cameras. But the moment the film runs through the camera, it's all digital from then on. Even projection is going digital finally. I was just in Norway and 99 percent of all their cinemas are digital. I still contend that flicker is better than glow. Flicker is more hyp- notic and compelling. But at least digital gives local projectionists less chance to fuck up the film and show reels that are wildly different in brightness and color." POST: Will you shoot digitally? PAYNE: "Absolutely. My next film will be shot digitally on the Alexa, precisely because I want a filmic look. It's a B&W film, but in order to get the different degrees of contrast and grain structure that I want, we have to shoot digitally because they don't make enough B&W film stock anymore. "So ironically, you have to go digital so you can dial in how much contrast and grain you want. It's a father-son road trip from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, that gets side- tracked in a crappy town in central Nebraska where the father grew up and where he's got some scores to settle, and I thought it'd be really cool to do it in B&W." www.postmagazine.com Post • November 2011 15 This film marks the director's first foray into the world of DI.