Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/714180
DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 15 POST AUGUST 2016 and if I had it my way, you'd shoot for two weeks and then edit for a week, and then shoot some more and so on. Ultimately we spent six to eight months on the edit." How many visual eff ects shots are there? "A lot — hundreds and hundreds, and Robert Stadd, who worked with me on the last two Hangovers and who's done movies like The Nutty Professor, was our VFX supervisor. We used several companies, including Entity FX, Gentle Giant, Psyop and Artemple, and I'd say that probably 90 percent of our VFX shots were clean up — like erasing a telephone pole or a sign. It's not really a VFX shot, but it is. But we also had quite a few big VFX shots." What was that the most diffi cult eff ects shot to pull off ? "The trickiest one by far was when we had to create Baghdad in the distance, outside the Green Zone. That was tough to get right. And there was a very inter- esting challenge when we changed the order of something in the movie. When Efraim is showing Miles the govern- ment's military contracts up for grabs in his offi ce, on the computer, it's a scene that happened in the script after he'd hired Miles. But then we decided the scene would be far more powerful if we moved it earlier, to when Miles visits the offi ce for the fi rst time. So we had to erase all the boxes of sheets that Miles had moved into the offi ce — because he was selling sheets at that point — and replace them with fi le cabinets, and also change their wardrobe to match the ear- lier scenes. And you'd never know it's all a VFX shot, but that was really tricky to do. And that's something you can only do in this day and age. In the old days, you'd have to get all the actors back and do a big re-shoot." You collaborated with composer Cliff Martinez, who did Drive and The Neon Demon. How important are sound and music to you? "It's so crucial. A director has all these tools with which to paint a scene, whether it's wardrobe, hair, cinematog- raphy and so on. But for me, the most eff ective one has always been music and one great music cue can sometimes do the job of pages of dialogue, as it's the most economical way of setting up the tone of a scene. Tone is really what a director's main job is, and nothing helps you more with tone than a great music track and sound. I've always taken it very seriously. We did the whole mix at Warners with a great crew, led by sound designer and editor Cameron Frankley, who's done my last fi ve movies. Sound is just so interesting to me as you can sneak stuff in that isn't obvious. With sound you can change people's emo- tions without an audience even realizing it. It's like this great short cut and quite sneaky — but in a good way." Where did you do a DI? "At Efi lm with my regular colorist Jill Bogdanowicz. I only began DIs on the fi rst Hangover. Before that we did normal color timing, which I love. The great thing about a DI is that you can go in and surgically fi x anything, and if you have a great DP like I do — Larry Sher, you don't get lost in the maze of possibilities and end up having it all look too fake, and I trust him more than I trust myself sometimes. I wanted a very real, glossy look for the fi lm, and I think it looks really good." You also produced this under your Green Hat Films banner. Do you like producing? "I get why producers love it — it's their job. But I don't love producing, and when directors produce, it gets frustrating as you don't normally take a back seat. It's a lot of work. Would I do it again? Yes, but it's not a goal of mine, to produce a ton of movies a year. Green Hat really exists as a development company for my own projects. I have no real interest in spreading myself too thin with outside projects. Writing and directing are my main things. That's my focus." Phillips (inset) says a director's main job is to set the tone of the fi lm.