Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/491542
www.postmagazine.com 19 POST APRIL 2015 And being in 'the pit' — this catwalk that runs along the front of the stage — my movement was limited as I had to shoot the entire show looking straight up, so it was very physically demanding. But the results were spectacular." Hurwitz and his team used a total of four cameras to record the show, with the film's producer Brett Morgen man- ning one of the HDCAMs. "Two of them were wide shots, and Brett had another tighter-shot set up," he notes." And we just went with the concert lighting on the day." The New York-based DP also used a Canon 20-1mm zoom, "which is unusual for me, as I have my own modified zooms, but I was on the West Coast. But I used my own lenses for the rest of the film." After shooting the live performance, the DP then followed the guitarist on his travels around the world for the best part of a year, documenting everything from his life off-stage to the publication of his memoir One Train Later and a book of photography. "We filmed at his house, at three openings and book signings of his books, as well as two exhibitions of his photography, in New York, backstage with The Police, and walking around En- gland reminiscing about his childhood," he says. Hurwitz shot all this with the Sony F900R, "a marvelous camera that still produces some of the most beautiful images anywhere," he points out. "I love it because I have a huge amount of con- trol of the look. I have my own settings which I've worked out over years, and the color sensitivity is so easily controllable, along with the contrast." With all the raw footage completed, Summers and his team, at Morgen's suggestion, then enlisted Brooklyn-based Emmy-winning editor and filmmaker Andy Grieve to pull the final cut to- gether. "He's a real artist and was able to re-sculpt all the material into a very well-paced, interesting narrative that's also a little bit off-beat," says the guitarist of Grieve whose credits include edit- ing Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure, and working with Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney on We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. "I watched him work and it's very impressive. And I gave him access to all the various tracks I'd done for the score — some rock, some jazzy, some quirky — and he made these very inter- esting choices. He used much darker and weirder bits of the music I'd done than a more conventional editor and director might have done, and I really liked that." Editing and post had originally been started by the concert footage director Lauren Lazin, "but the producers and Andy Summers wanted to take the film in a new direction," notes Grieve. "So when I came on board, I went back to the drawing board by crafting a new script from the text of Andy's memoirs and directing the film in the edit room around this new script and the countless hours of archival material at my disposal. The trickiest part was incorporating the reunion tour into the story since Andy's book starts and ends in the early 1980s when the band broke up. In the end I think we came up with a great way to balance past and present to really tell this story of an amazing musician and his crazy journey through rock and roll." Summers reports that all titles, visual effects, 2D animation and motion graph- ics were done at New York's Edgeworx Studios, along with the additional offline and HD conform. Sound post was provid- ed by Gigantic Studios in New York, and the team included re-recording mixer/ supervising sound editor Tom Paul and dialogue editor Eric Milano. Digital Inter- mediate finishing services were provided by Goldcrest Post, also in New York, with veteran DI colorist John Dowdell. Post work also included Burbank's Cinema Libre Studio (CLS) senior editor Tom Von Doom, who worked with Sum- mers to develop the theatrical trailer, which includes a new guitar riff, that was created entirely in-house with CLS staff and resources, including graphics, transitions and sound mixing to the final DCP file creation. Post on the film also benefited from the input of post produc- tion veteran Todd Brown, a co-founder/ owner of West Post Digital in Santa Monica, who recently joined CLS as VP, post production and business develop- ment. Brown, well-known for introducing new technologies to the post community, oversees CLS's post production capabil- ities in their new location in Burbank, at the former THX offices. The company's expanded 7,400-square-foot facility offers Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve color correction, Avid ProTools sound editing and mixing, Apple Final Cut, Avid and Adobe Premiere editing in 2K/4K, and encoding for delivery to all major digital platforms. Inevitably, the film also focuses on the break-up of the always-combustible and often acrimonious trio. "It's obviously a very painful and poignant moment, when we all realize, 'Well, that's it,'" says Summers of the '08 footage document- ing the band's final dissolution. "The camera lingers on all our faces, and you can see the raw emotion there. It's very bitter-sweet." As for ongoing rumors that The Police may reform yet again for another tour (their 30 th reunion tour grossed over $350 million, making it the third-highest-grossing tour in history), Summers doesn't think it's likely. "But then I never thought we'd get back together to do the last tour, so I never shut the door on anything," he states. The Police: (L to R) Copeland, Summers and Sting. Editor Andy Grieve cut the feature. DOCUMENTARY