Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/825852
www.postmagazine.com 17 POST MAY 2017 DIRECTOR'S CHAIR with natural light, and 16mm unlike 35mm doesn't need to be threaded — it just pops into the camera very quickly. And there's a grain pattern to 16mm ana- morphic that isn't like anything else, and shooting in the desert it can make the environment more beautiful, and more dramatic. One of my main goals on this was, 'How do we elevate it artistically, on every front?' I hadn't shot 16mm since I was briefly at film school." How did you avoid the usual war film look and clichés? "I think not moving the camera was crucial. We definitely wanted to avoid that usual shaky hand-held camera war movie look, and we didn't want it to be too stylized. It's more like a documentary look and feel." All the visual effects were obviously crucial. How early on did you integrate post and VFX with the production? "Every film I did before this gave me the experience to make The Wall, because of the crucial VFX component. The enemy sniper is a completely post-created VFX character — every single shot. Obviously, when you do a big sci-fi movie, everyone knows that the alien is a VFX element, but the best and most effective VFX shots are the invisible ones that the audience never notices. We had over 200 VFX shots in Bourne, but no one ever noticed them [they were] so good. Even people in the industry didn't realize that Matt Damon's fighting scenes were enhanced with VFX. And for many of my movies I've shot in the real locations, under very tough conditions, so when we decided to shoot in the California desert, I'm finally not shooting in the real place, but nature put us all in the mindset of being in Iraq, because it's just as hot in the California desert as the Iraqi desert, with the same dust storms. And then we had a really significant amount of VFX to plan and integrate from the start, and I actually underestimated the amount of post work it'd take to do. When [editor] Julia Bloch showed me her first pass, none of the VFX were there, and usually I cry, I'm so upset, but not this time." Where did you do the post? "All in New York, and we cut at my offices." Do you like post? "I love post as my movies have always come together in the editing room and post, especially as I've tended to work from scripts that are incomplete at best. So the final writing has always taken place in the editing room, and I love the workshop collaborative nature of that, where you have the ability to try stuff and immediately put it up there and get a reaction. I feel that where I really grow as a filmmaker is in the editing process. That's where I really learn — not just about the particular movie I'm making, but how to make movies in general." This was the first film you edited with Julia Bloch, who worked on Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. Tell us about that relationship and how it worked. "Again, I like to work with new editors, and sometimes that means hiring people with more experience, and sometimes less, where they're more open-minded in their approach to storytelling. When I met Julia, I saw how smart she was about storytell- ing, and I felt she'd be a good match, as I don't do traditional movies, with tradition- al storytelling. And she instantly got that this, also, wasn't your usual, traditional movie. As it was, I underestimated what a huge editing challenge it was, having a movie that's this relationship between two characters, and one is just CG — and there's zero photography to work with. It's taken a lot of work." How many visual effects shots are there in the film? "Several hundred, and Molecule did 80 percent. We're still working on them." Can you talk about the importance of music and sound to you as a filmmaker? "Sound is a critical part of any film, and so is music. I always try and mix it up. Starting with Bourne, I avoided all the usual composers who did action and spy movies, and hired John Powell, who'd only done animated films till then. I think it's because I'm interested in these genres in terms of how they illuminate character, as opposed to working in genres for their own sake." Where did you do the mix? "At Harbor [Picture Company] in New York, and we're still working on it." Where are you doing the DI and how does that process help? "Also at Harbor, and it's always been very important to me as I was also the DP on my first films. So the look and feel of my films isn't something I gladly hand off to someone. It's something I have very strong opinions about, but I also love col- laborating with the DP and the colorist on the look. The really critical part of the DI is making sure all the VFX shots feel as real as possible. I'm very involved, but I'm not done learning from Roman." What's next? "I did American Made with Tom Cruise, a thriller about the CIA and drug running in the '80s, which comes out in September. I'm actually editing and posting that, along with a TV project, while I'm posting The Wall." You also produce a lot of hit TV shows. Will you keep doing that? "Yes. I love TV. And it really celebrates the unconventional in a way that you don't get much in movies now." 16mm film captured the action Post took place in NYC