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DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 16 POST SEPTEMBER 2016 or so in the end, with a lot of clean up, which is always a big thing when you're doing a period piece. We built quite a few sets up to a certain height, and then filled in the rest with VFX. For instance, we shot all the Carnegie Hall scenes at the Apollo, Hammersmith, in London. It was the perfect size, and we built some of it out and then used VFX for the rest, and you'd never know it wasn't the real thing." How important are sound and music to you? "They're both hugely important, even though I don't really know much about music or sound mixing and just depend on my team, which includes sound editors Ian Wilson, Becki Ponting and mixer Mike Dowson. We mixed all the music at Abbey Road, and then we did the final mix at Twickenham Studios." Did you do a DI? "Yes, at Goldcrest, with Danny and col- orist Adam Glasman. They're very clever, and I just don't pretend to be technically clever enough about the DI as mine is a layman's approach to it, so they do all the work and show me everything, and then I give any suggestions I might have. I remember that there was one specific shot in the credits that I didn't like at all, whereas all the rest looked terrific, and they fiddled away with buttons and then it looked wonderful (laughs)." Having made this film, what do you think about Florence now? "It's easy to be cynical about her, but I am not at all cynical about her. She was a genuinely-lovely woman — but the trouble for me is, now I can't separate her from Meryl. In my imagination the gap between them completely closed." So what's next? "It's another terrific script, called Victoria and Abdul, and it's a new genre I've invented — the Queen Victoria film. We start shooting in September and it has all these great locations — Windsor, Balmoral, Buckingham Palace and so on — so we'll be shooting in castles and big country homes in Scotland. Judi Dench is playing Victoria and Eddie Izzard plays the Prince of Wales, and it's about the unlikely friendship between Victoria and a young Indian clerk. You're still working at a very fast pace. Do you ever think of retiring? "Not really. Why should I, as long as I enjoy what I do? I make a new film about every 18 months or so, and people like John Ford made three or four movies a year — all masterpieces in 1939 and 1940, very good years! As long as I keep getting great scripts I'll keep making films. What am I supposed to do? Say 'no' to them? As my mother used to say, 'I didn't raise no stupid kids (laughs).'" You've been making films since the '70s. What's the state of the British film industry today? "If you find it, let me know (laughs hard). But all the studios are so busy — with big American productions, like Star Wars — and have been so for the past decade or more. So the franchises are fine. But it's far tougher for the rest of us." Carnegie Hall scenes were actually shot in London. The film's DI was completed at Goldcrest.