Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/94072
director's chair "I love editing — in fact, I own an Avid. When I was younger I tried to make money by selling nonlinear PC-based editing sys- tems using Adobe Premiere, but the drives were too slow and they'd drop frames. I was trying to cut my friends' acting reels. But I kept up my interest in nonlinear editing, and eventually saved up enough for my own Avid. On Gone Baby Gone, I had an editor but we parted ways in the middle of production and I hired Billy — but he was booked and couldn't start immediately, so I got an HD Avid, which at the time was con- sidered unnecessary — 'You don't need to cut in HD. It's ridiculous!' Editor William Goldenberg cut Argo using an Avid Media Composer. POST: Do you like the post process? AFFLECK: "It's my favorite part of making a film, for sure. Prep is always very anxiety-rid- den, and shooting is this mad scramble to try and get the material you need. Then in post, you're in the cool, dark editing room, calm and focused, and if you don't figure out the solution to a problem, you just come back the next day. You have the chance to calibrate the film in tiny little ways; you have the ability to make massive changes and completely re-arrange stuff — and then you get to look at it and study it. "I screen the movie a lot — I like to make changes and then show it to an audience of a few people, and get feedback. Then I'll go back and make more adjustments, and keep getting that feedback. I have a screening room at my house and I really like to watch it with an audience because it gives me a better feel for it and how post is going. So that whole pro- cess of cutting, changing, correcting, experi- menting and screening, and then going back to the drawing board, is just wonderful. For me it's the big reward for all the hard work getting to that point." POST: Tell us about working with editor William Goldenberg, who received Oscars nom- inations for The Insider and Seabiscuit, and who cut your first film. How does that relation- ship work? AFFLECK: "He came on set a couple of times. He's very talented, low-key and coop- erative. You don't have any of those situations where the editor and director get into a toxic battle about who's right. He's very accom- modating and respects the director's vision, but has great input. So it's a great relationship and Billy made the film so much better. He's willing to put in long hours unlike some edi- tors, and put up with my micro-managing! 14 Post•November2012 So I began cutting it myself and got halfway- through before Billy came on board." POST: Who did the visual effects work, and how many visual effects shots are there? AFFLECK: "Method did all the VFX, and we probably had over 600 shots, including all the 2D stuff. A lot were clean-ups and wipes and so on, and we also hired a guy in-house who did a lot of those, which was a smart move in terms of the post budget. The whole process was a tremendous education for me. "Probably the smartest thing I ever did was to make sure I learned from every experience. I turned my acting career into a free film school, and I've now turned my direct- ing career into a free course in post production. I've picked up so much along the way, and you can't learn enough about visual effects since the tech- nology keeps progressing so fast. I find it fascinating and an amazing tool." to you? AFFLECK: "They're so critical because they're the part of film that affects the sub- conscious so powerfully. For me, all the visuals are like the meat you toss to the guard dogs while the sound burglars sneak into the sub- conscious. I do feel that you can have too much music if you're not careful. You just become inured to it and it loses its impact, so www.postmagazine.com POST: Did the film turn out the way you originally envisioned it while writing the script? AFFLECK: "It did. I was able to keep it pretty much in line with what I'd imagined, and there were some wonderful additions made by people like Billy and Rodrigo, and so on. Like I said, it's always a big collabora- tive effort." I try to use less and more silence — so when the music comes in, it's more effective. I like it to creep in around the periphery, rather than barge into the middle of a scene, where you begin to wonder, 'Is there some orchestra here I'm not seeing?' (Laughs) "I had just one classic movie score moment when the plane finally lifts off at the end and they're all celebrating, but mainly I kept to nuance and subtlety as much as possible, and kept paring it down. As for all the sound design, it was so important to scenes like the embassy take-over, with all the chanting, glass breaking, tear-gas canisters popping and roll- ing down steps. It's a score in itself, especially when you have period and international loca- tions. You get so much information from little touches, like the call to prayer, Farsi conversa- tions, sounds of older cars and foreign horns. We did the mix [John Reitz and Gregg Rudloff using a Neve Gemini console] at Warners in Method provided over 600 visual effects shots, many of which are invisible to the viewer. POST: How important are sound and music a fantastic room [Stage 10] and I was very pleased with the results."