Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/511209
www.postmagazine.com 17 POST MAY 2015 geon-type environment where you never see the light of day. We spent about six months there, and now we're doing the final mix on the Fox lot with Andy Nelson, the re-recording mixer, and the other mixers. Post was quite long as I shoot so much extra material, so we do a lot of ver- sions of the movie. I'll start test screening three or four weeks into my director's cut to get a sense of what works and what doesn't. My goal is always to not fall in love with any one cut, which is what hap- pens the longer you work on one cut. So we'll do test screenings every few weeks, and pull stuff out and change stuff. The difference with this film is that as it's such a big action film, Fox post rigged it up so we could have full temp mixes on a stage, as it really needed that scope." Do you like post? "I love it. It's my favorite part of the process, as you have everything, and I go into post with all these choices, and it's where the magic happens. Post is where we're experimenting and building jokes — that we didn't even know existed — in the editing room, just through juxtapo- sition and cross-cutting scenes. I sort of suffer through production a little bit, as every shoot day's a chance to screw it up or miss something." You re-teamed with Heat editors Brent White and Melissa Bretherton? "Brent and I've been together since Freaks and Geeks, and we always use multiple editors and assistants as there's so much material, and they deal with putting effects together in the Avid and building green screens. Brent would visit the set for the big sequences, to make sure we had coverage, but I don't like having editors on location as once I've finished shooting, I'm done. I don't want to then go off to the editing room. So they'd be cutting back here while I shot, and I had my first screenable cut ready in just three weeks." How many visual effects shots are there? "A lot, maybe 1,200, all done by Flash Film Works and Furious FX. I'm a big fan of in-camera stuff that then just needs paint out, as it feels real." What was the most difficult VFX shot? "The whole weightless plane sequence, as we never really had the budget for it. It was originally meant to be a much big- ger sequence with two Lear jets chasing each other through the Alps, but I shot it so the action was all inside the plane, and then when we began cutting it together, we were able to add some exterior VFX plane shots. And I fell in love with the Dolby Atmos system on post, so we de- signed a lot of things flying around and overhead just to showcase it." How important are sound and music? "For me, they're the most important aspect of post, and I've always said that if I wasn't a director, I'd probably have gone into sound as I love sound design and effects so much. And it all starts with the music. Often I'll write scripts around specific songs, but this is the first time I've done a full score. I usually like to find source music, but on this we began scor- ing as we cut." Where did you do the DI? "At Technicolor. I love the DI, having suffered through the old way of color timing. Now you can manipulate any- thing you want so easily." You also produced this under your Feigco Entertainment banner. Do you like producing? "I do, because I know what I want and then bring on people I trust. The problem with most producers is that they just become the middlemen between the di- rector and the studio, and my first loyalty is always to the audience — which is why we have all the test screenings." Bridesmaids was hailed as pioneering a new genre — the raunchy, gross-out comedy for women. Do you agree? "No, I don't really. There's the one scene, but it's mostly implied. I don't see it as a gross-out comedy." There have been rumblings about a sequel. What's the latest? "That all falls on Kristen Wiig really, and if she wants to do a sequel." What's next? "The big Ghostbusters movie, ironically enough with Kristen, along with Melissa McCarthy and Dan Aykroyd, and a great cast. We'll start shooting in June, so it's been really tough finishing post on this and prepping that at the same time, but I'm very excited about it. And I'm also doing this TV sci-fi series for Yahoo! that I created and wrote the pilot for. They wanted to air one episode a week, but I said I'd only do it if we put out all episodes at once. That's what's so great about TV. So my plan isn't to do all movies all the time now. I love TV and I want to go back and forth, although I plan to do very limited amounts of episodic directing now. I'm more interested in creating my own shows again. When you think about it, TV's kind of like long movies that just get chopped up into 30-minute sections. The kind of storytelling you can do on TV now has changed so radically from what it used to be." Spy star Melissa McCarthy has appeared in a number of Feig's films. DIRECTOR'S CHAIR