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www.postmagazine.com 21 POST JANUARY 2016 O S C A R buzz production offices, and was edited by Ryan Denmark and Hye Mee Na, "which made editing twice as fast, with two people cutting, so we could get it out by Christmas," Lee explains. Big Film Design created all the tweets and other graphic elements that pop up in the movie, and the DI was done at Harbor Picture in New York. VISUAL EFFECTS & POST WORKFLOW/EDITING & SOUND When it comes to visual effects, Oscar has usually voted like any fan-boy and gone for the truly spectacular in this category. And the past year certainly saw plenty of spectacular VFX in such global blockbusters as Jurassic World, Mad Max: Fury Road, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Furious 7, Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, Spectre, The Martian and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2. Other possible contenders include Everest, Ex Machina, The Revenant, Pan, Ant-Man, The Walk, Crimson Peak and Tomorrowland. But the winner hasn't always been a big summer popcorn extravaganza. In fact, over the past four years the VFX Oscar has gone to a high-brow fall re- lease — Gravity, Interstellar, Life of Pi and Hugo. And this year, looming over all the contenders, is a little film titled Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with a gazillion VFX shots by ILM, overseen by visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett. In addition to the usual explosions and action sequenc- es full of battling spacecraft, the film fea- tures a spectacular new villain, Supreme Leader Snoke, a hologram brought to life with motion capture and performance by Andy Serkis. And instead of the old Death Star, the new film has a far larger and more destructive planet that's com- pletely weaponized. It's worth noting that all three films in the original Star Wars trilogy won the award, although all epi- sodes in the second trilogy lost. Will the newly rebooted, re-energized Star Wars sweep the field? Probably, but it's also up against some stiff competition. The stiffest might be Jurassic World, the franchise's fourth installment, direct- ed by Colin Trevorrow, who made his stu- dio film directorial debut with the report- ed $180 million production (it grossed a monster $1.6 billion globally). He started integrating post and VFX into the shoot immediately. "Editor Kevin Stitt and his team were in a highrise in Honolulu cut- ting from Day 1," he reports. "Two weeks after wrap, we had an assembly. Our first VFX turnover to ILM was the Indominus escape sequence." ILM ultimately did a thousand shots, and Tim Alexander was the VFX supervisor (he was Oscar nomi- nated for The Lone Ranger). All post was done at Tribeca West in Los Angeles, and the sound mix was done at Skywalker Ranch in Northern California (the team included sound designer and supervis- ing sound editor Al Nelson and sound designer and re-recording mixer Peter Horner). Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 did the DI. Another huge crowd-pleaser, The Martian, also looks certain to grab some nominations in various categories. "It's a sort of Robinson Crusoe survival story, set in space, five years in the future," says Ridley Scott who "almost immediately" began to integrate post and VFX with the 3D production (DP Dariusz Wolski used the 3ality TS5 Technica rigs, with Red Epic Dragons and Scarlet Dragons). "I also board it all myself, which makes it more accurate, and it allows you to pace a scene. They're very instructive and they become the bible for everyone, and you can tell the VFX guys, 'Here's the lead-in, this is the cross-over, now we're in the full VFX shot.'" Scott is also a big fan of digi-data animation. "I think it's essential before you go into anything complex, because first, you see what the problems are, and second, in editing you invariably haven't got the green screen, so digital data enables you to cut it into the film in- stead of having blank space, and it stays there until I get a complete shot." The film ultimately had 1,300 VFX shots, "and we had a lot of companies — Framestore, ILM, Milk, Prime Focus, The Senate, and my usual VFX supervisor, Richard Stammers, who's been with me since Kingdom of Heaven," says Scott. "Funnily enough, the hardest shot to do was the end rescue, with the tape, where it floats around and curls in a rather balletic fashion. That was very tricky to get right." The 25-week post was done in London and Budapest, and "we did a lot of post as we shot," he reports. "I cut as we go, every night, so by the end of the shoot I'm pretty close to the direc- tor's cut. I hate waiting till the end of the shoot to start editing, so [editor] Pietro Scalia just got on with it. That let's me see where I am." Two-time Oscar winner Scalia (for Scott's Black Hawk Down and Oliver Stone's JFK) cut "on Media Composer 7 — not the latest version, but as we were working in 3D we felt it was more solid, as Ridley had used it for cutting 3D on Exodus and Prometheus," he reports. "I was on location in Budapest and got dai- lies and we began a basic assembly, and when Ridley moved to Jordan, me and my crew moved to France, near Ridley's home there, and set up cutting rooms in a farmhouse." Scalia faced a huge challenge dealing with Scott's extensive coverage, he ad- mits. "First off, he uses multiple cameras, and because of the shooting schedule he also shot several scenes several times." The result? Scott handed off 250 hours of principal footage, plus an additional 60 hours of GoPro coverage. To deal with all this, Scalia worked with a crew of 10, using "ten linked Avids, all running on ISIS." Adds Scott, "We did the sound mix at Twickenham in the big new room, a Joy continues director David O. Russell's Oscar worthy body of work Spotlight calls attention to sex abuse and alleged cover ups.