28 minute read
WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE
DESTINY’S CHILD
By Oliver Webb
Leos Carax’s debut English-language feature, Annette, tells the story of Henry, a stand-up comedian (Adam Driver), and his wife Ann (Marion Cotillard), an internationally-renowned soprano, whose life takes an unexpected turn after the birth of their daughter, Annette, who has a mysterious gift.
Remarkably shot by Carax’s go-to DP Caroline Champetier AFC, Annette features songs from the American pop and rock duo Sparks (who also cowrote the script), and opened 2021 Cannes Film
Festival in-competition for the prestigious Palme d’Or. Champetier has contributed to more than one hundred films since starting her career in 1979. She won the César Award for Best Cinematography for her work on Of Gods And Men in 2011, directed by Xavier Beauvois, a film that also earned the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2010. Her other collaborations with Carax include the low-budget odyssey Holy Motors (2012), for which Champetier won the Silver Frog at Camerimage in 2012. She was president of the AFC between 2009 and 2012. Who are your DP inspirations?
My heroes include many of the DPs I have worked with over the years, such as Nestor Almendros and Bruno Nuytten. I directed a documentary about Bruno, Nuytten/Film (2016). Then come the American DPs, such as Vilmos Zsigmond ASC HSC, for example. I remember the first time I saw McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971) and The Long Goodbye (1973), both directed by Robert Altman. I was amazed by the atmosphere and the texture of the photography by Vilmos in those films. How did you get involved with/ first meet Leos Carax? Fourteen years ago Leos asked me to come to Japan to shoot Tokyo (2008), a triptych made by three directors – Leos directed the Merde segment, Michel Gondry did the Interior Design segment, and Bong Joon Ho directed the Shaking Tokyo segment. I went there with a beautiful little camera, the Panasonic DVX 100. It’s the same camera that the great Wang Bing used for West Of The Tracks (2002). I was using it like a violin and I think Leos fell in love with this camera. Some years after Tokyo, he wrote the script for Holy Motors (2012) and asked me to shoot it. We shot Holy Motors together, and then he asked me to work with him on Annette. What were your initial conversations with Leos about the look of Annette? What did he want to achieve?
I didn’t speak with Leos a great deal about the look. He sent pictures and references that were so sharp, so moving, that I understood the emotion he wanted. After I started working with Leos, it was never really a conversation, it was always simply to achieve a challenge. Each direction is a very technical question and a problem which you have to resolve. With Leos you don’t speak of general ideas, you only focus on your craft. What creative references did you look at?
I know that Leos saw Phantom Of The Paradise (1974, dir. Brian De Palma, DP Larry Pizer) when he was very young and was absolutely amazed by it. He always wanted to do a musical. We also looked at stand-up comedy for Adam Driver’s character Henry and some opera for Marion Cotillard’s Ann. The references and influences are not only one style, we took from everywhere. What did these creative references inspire aesthetically?
In one of the stand-up shows we saw that the audience were lit with some colour spots falling on the audience. We kept that idea for all of Henry’s shows and to have the same colour spots on the audience. Each character is represented by a colour. For example, Henry is green and Ann is yellow. Almost all the movie takes place during night so there is a lot of black. I put colour here and there to awaken those blacks. What was the most challenging sequence to shoot?
There is a storm scene in the movie. We made a lot of tests, using reflections, for this scene. We had the boat on a gimbal and then, as in Holy Motors (2012) we added a screen with projected waves on the screen. We had real water around the actors on the boat. It’s difficult if you haven’t seen the sequence, but all of these decisions took three or four months. The actors also have to dance, so it was all about finding how much room they needed to dance. What is more interesting is to have this situation of danger. I was very clear that this situation of danger was more important when we are not necessarily on the boat, but outside of the boat, observing with the camera. Each sequence in the movie needed this kind of reflection and it took a lot of time to do the prepping. Did you encounter challenges with the different locations?
Absolutely. It’s a clever question, because there was never one kind of location, it was always different type of locations. We had lots of spaces – a theatre, a real hotel, a studio, everything. The challenge was to keep an artistic line in all these different locations though the photography and the rhythms of framing. This line was mostly achieved by the colour and movement. There were lots of movements with the actors and most of the time the camera is in movement too. It sometimes could be very large movements, or very small movements. There could be long, travelling movements, or Steadicam, and sometimes, but rarely, handheld camera. I always had a little dolly with me and we used lots of dolly shots. Was it mainly a single camera shoot? Did you operate?
I operated, but we also had several Steadicam operators during production. We shot with Sony
Venice and Sony a7 Mark III cameras. We used two Sony Venice cameras shooting at 4K in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, using spherical Zeiss Supreme and
Angénieux Optimo zoom lenses. I also used an old zoom, not a modern one at all, the Angénieux 25250mm that gives heavy blacks. I loved using that lens, and in the final grading I went closer to the texture I got from that lens with the shots that were done using the modern lenses. Did you work with a DIT or a colourist onset?
I don’t work on-set with a DIT because I think it’s not the right time to do colour work. That really needs to be done with a colourist in post production. However, we did send the rushes every day to the lab and got back stills from a very smart dailies colourist working there. If I was not sure of the result on the dailies, or if I could not see the emotion I put into the cinematography, I asked them to process the footage again.
In France we don’t really work yet with colour scientists – that’s really missing from the process, and some colourists are more able than others to work on the curves. For Annette I asked for only one curve, because my concern was the blacks and darker areas of the picture – as you know all the movie is set in a theatre and or at night. I worked
Photos: BTS shots from Annette.
with a freelance colourist, Peter Bernaers, for the final grade. What were your working hours like during production?
We worked between 11- and 14-hour days. We shot in Belgium and the prep was really a technical challenge. There were almost two hours of briefing and work every day before shooting. I think that without the prep we would not have been able to shoot the movie, as we shot with only €16m euros. With the amount of time of prep and all the reflections, we saved almost €5m. What’s your mantra? Or best advice you ever had?
Always take risks. Where do you get your visual / creative inspirations?
Everywhere: paintings, photos, and movies.
What challenges do women face in France pursuing a career as a cinematographer?
There are more and more women in the business, but not many of them work on large budget productions. The CNC (Centre National Du Cinéma et de l’image Animée/National Centre For Cinema And The Moving Image) is an agency of the French Ministry Of Culture, and is responsible for the production and promotion of cinematic and audiovisual arts in France. CNC is working for parity and gives bonuses to movies where parity is respected. There is an organisation called 50/50 working for parity too. On Annette there were lot of women in the production crew, hard workers and smart, and I am very proud of that. What was it like being AFC president?
It was a strange time because I was the first woman to have this responsibility. Managing men is not easy all the time! I did some good work with my colleagues and made more contacts out of France and helped create more solidarity.
+6 +5 Over Exposure Light Skin Tone Range Dark Skin Tone Range Under Exposed
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EXPOSURE CONTROL
By Michael Goldman Cinematographer Ed Lachman ASC explains his EL Zone System, already incorporated into Panasonic’s VariCams, which has the very real potential, the revered DP insists, to become the foundation of an eventual universal standard.
The question of how best to properly control exposure values on-set has vexed cinematographers for generations, and veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman ASC, was no exception. In Lachman’s case, however, he decided to do something concrete to help modern cinematographers address this challenge by coming up with a new exposure tool for digital camera systems based on an analogue approach to the issue. He calls it the EL Zone System, which he has patented and already got one major camera manufacturer – Panasonic – to incorporate into some of its digital cinema camera systems.
EL Zone is based on a concept that percolated with Lachman for over 30 years before spending the last five years formally developing it and introducing it to the cinematography community.
“This is a system based on the way I was taught to think about exposure from when I went to school,” Lachman explains. “I wanted to figure out how I can control a negative on-set and get a look that would let me precisely understand what I was photographing. I referenced in my mind Ansel Adams, the famed landscape photographer, and the way that he understood exposure in his work, basing it on 18-percent grey in order to comprehend how far he could go with over-exposure to read full detail, or how under-exposed he could go to still read shadow detail. I thought, that is something I wanted to do in cinema.”
Lachman is referencing Adams’ Zone System photographic technique for figuring out the best possible film exposure for still photography – a technique Adams developed with fellow photographer and collaborator Fred Archer in the early 1940s. Lachman’s notion was to bring to the world of cinematography their idea that reading the direct relationship between light and lens stops could provide better exposure data. Now, he is working to bring the concept into digital cameras as a more accurate tool for determining digital exposure compared to using the concept of false colour or relying on waveform monitors.
“I long ago came up with my own personal zone system – shooting B&W Polaroids and marking them up based on the film stock, the ASA range, the light meter’s reading and rating, and how the lab developed the negative,” he says. “I looked at all those things to figure out where my 18-percent grey was coming out. When the digital world came along, I would still shoot a Polaroid on-set, write the stop values on the Polaroid to keep a record of exposure on-set, and help train my eye.
“In other words, I was basically training myself to pre-visualise what the negative was representing, and now, in the digital world, what you see on the monitor. But in the digital world, I had to be beholden to a digital imaging technician to help me calculate this, yet exposure is supposed to be part of my job. So, I wanted to know why I couldn’t bring this analogue technique into the digital world so I could see it in the viewfinder.”
Lachman elaborates on the limitations of the digital world’s options for “seeing” exposure by noting that false colour and waveform readings are built around IRE composite video signal units.
“IRE readings are based on voltage measurements, which are linear, not logarithmic – a process designed by engineers,” he says. “But IRE stands for ‘International Radio Engineers’ because they were the ones who developed the concept for radio signals in the 1800s, not for anything related to photographic exposure.
“So, for cinematography, there was a discrepancy. IRE units don’t precisely translate and aren’t consistent with stop values or light meter readings,” he continues. “That’s because IRE readings change with the stops. In a logarithmic system, if an image is at F2, and then you go to 2.8, you need to double the amount of light, but that is not something that would be apparent using IRE values. Yes, the waveform monitor shows you the general range of your negative, but it does not show you specifically where the highlights are or where the shadow is on the frame.
“And with false colour, there is no standardisation across the industry. That means Red’s depiction is
different than ARRI’s or Sony’s, for example. Everyone has their own interpretation of what false colour is.”
Therefore, Lachman felt it was better to revert to his understanding of Adams’ concept – to control exposure using an 18-percent grey baseline.
“It was really simple. I asked myself why not just find 18-percent grey in the digital world, and base my exposure off that, and try to get the camera manufacturers to work from that premise?”
Lachman says five years ago, when he first began trying to introduce the concept to major camera manufacturers, “I was up against the wall. They didn’t want to change. They had instituted false colour and histograms already, and then some cameraman like me
comes along and tells them to use something else?”
However, Lachman patiently drew-up proposals for the major manufacturers, “virtually everybody,” he says, and drew them into discussions on this issue that are now on-going in many cases, and which have more recently expanded to include monitor manufacturers and post houses.
Panasonic was the first to formally incorporate EL Zone into certain systems – currently as a firmware addition to its VariCam LT and VariCam 35 Cinema Camera models, allowing cameramen to see each stop of exposure represented by a particular colour through their viewfinder when they activate the EL Zone setting. Barry Russo of Panasonic’s product development and engineering division explains that it was “basically a no-brainer” to add such a tool to cameras whose operating platforms already supported false colour.
“The system made sense because it was very simple,” Russo says. “It’s easy-to-use and understand, and gives useful information at a glance. We originally called it ‘Exposure Map’ in the VariCam menu,
meaning you can actually see a map of the exposure on the monitor when enabled. While we offer false colour in select camera models, it is limited in what it offers for exposure information and can be more difficult to read based on its very limited range of four to six stops versus 15 stops in EL Zone.
“Useful exposure information at a glance was a key consideration. In particular, one of the biggest issues we see with customers is getting skin tone exposure correct. EL Zone makes this simple by having half-stop and one-stop increments above and below the 18-percent grey. From our point-of-view, that makes it hard to miss getting the correct exposure on skin tones. Beyond skin tones, EL Zone uses one-stop increments up to plus/minus six stops.”
Indeed, Lachman explains that “the face, in particular, is the most important part of exposure. Once you get that right, you can base the exposure of the
actor’s surrounding areas – windows, the floor, doors, whatever – based on where you place the exposure for the face.
“Now, it’s true that manufacturers may well produce cameras with more than six stops latitude from 18-percent grey. But that isn’t really a problem with this system, because 18-percent grey remains the most important part of the exposure, and that is largely because that is what will affect how the face looks the most.
“When you move out to extremities of the body, therefore, you can just make those two-stop values – minus four can represent two stops, and so on. The reason I felt there was no point in going further is that, if you have too many colours in the viewfinder, it can get confusing. So, the cinematographer can just designate
and say the important area is where I will lose or keep detail, and they can calculate from there.”
Lachman emphasises that he expects other camera manufacturers to incorporate versions of the EL Zone system, and adds that it has relevance for monitors as well, and most importantly, big advantages for endusers, including documentary filmmaking applications, still photography, and more.
“The beauty of this system is that you can shoot with different camera manufacturers and they will have a standard between them to understand exposure,” he says. “I’ve made it very clear to all the manufacturers that this is not a proprietary technology. I’m very interested in it becoming a universal standard. I view it as a grammar, a shorthand, to communicate about exposure with the manufacturer of the camera, the cinematographer, the gaffer, anyone working on light levels on-set, and in post.”
WAKE-UP CALL
Richard Crudo ASC says the madness of abusive working hours needs to change. This may seem a strange topic for a period in which the film industry has been running far below its capacity for a while, but what better time to tackle such an important issue?
Let me start with a quotation. “Our responsibility is to the visual image of the film as well as the wellbeing of the crew. The continuing and expanding practice of working extreme hours can compromise both the quality of our work and the health and safety of others.”
When the late legend Conrad Hall ASC issued this statement in 2002, he had just survived a punishing schedule on the feature, Road To Perdition (dir. Sam Mendes). His purpose was the reform of a policy which had become a type of sanctioned abuse.
Today, everyone is aware of the Sarah Jones tragedy. But they should also remember assistant cameraman Brent Hershman. In 1997 he was killed while driving home from a shoot in a sleep-deprived state. Countless others have barely avoided a similar fate. It remains a black mark on the industry that to date no substantive action has been taken to reignin the thinking that leads to excessive working hours.
None of us are lazy. In fact, no other occupation puts in the time we do – and in so many volatile combinations and environments. But while the human body is resilient and capable of staggering endurance, no one should have to call on those reserves to make a living.
Consider this common scenario.
Rise at 5:00am to be at the studio for a 7am call on Monday. But, instead of finishing an eight hour day at 3pm like most people, you work until 8pm. And you’re not done yet. There’s off-the-clock consultation with the director and producer, travel time home and perhaps a meal. No one jumps into bed the instant they walk through the door, so add at least half an hour of decompression time. Maybe a few minutes with the family or tending to other responsibilities. Now, you’ve been awake and at it for nearly eighteen hours. Then gradually push that 7am call forward each day so that by Friday this crucible begins at 5pm and ends at 7 or 8am the following morning. You’ll start all over the same way at 7am on Monday. I haven’t even factored-in overtime. Working on location? It’s worse. Now repeat that pattern for months on end.
It’s like living in a state of constant, impenetrable jet lag. Health, relationships and quality of work suffer; safety on-set is dangerously compromised. Would an insurance salesman agree to this pace? A grocery manager? An accountant? I promise you that the clerks who came up with this devilish design rarely approach a productive eight hours in their warm, dry offices. They probably don’t find themselves nodding-off behind the wheel during the drive home on the San Diego Freeway, either.
When you strip away the emotional and artistic attachments to what we do, the object of our passion is seen for what it really is – a job. It’s the best one in the world for many of us, but is it worth life and health? How this lunacy of abusive hours became standard procedure and why it’s allowed to continue are of no significance.
What is important is that it needs to change. For a deeper dive into this issue, check out the documentary directed by Haskell Wexler ASC and Lisa Leeman, “Who Needs Sleep?” http://whoneedssleep.weebly.com/ https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whoneedssleep
Richard Crudo ASC
Richard Crudo ASC is a cinematographer/ director with over 40 years of experience in feature films and episodic television. He is also a six-term Past President of the ASC and a Past Cinematographers Branch Governor of AMPAS.
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BIG, LOUD AND EXHILARATING
Movie franchises have helped to boost box office receipts for many decades. In 2021 they might just prove the rejuvenating shot-in-the arm the industry needs at a time when cinemas are struggling to survive.
Never was this more true than Universal Pictures’ F9: The Fast Saga – the ninth main instalment, and the tenth full-length feature, in the Fast & Furious franchise – which yet again delivers another breath-taking, action-packed, highoctane adventure, brought to the big screen by director Justin Lin and his go-to cinematographer Stephen F. Windon ACS ASC.
Photos: F9: The Fast Saga.
All film Images (c) 2021 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Photos: F9: The Fast Saga.
All film Images (c) 2021 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Let’s break down some of the figures. Every Fast & Furious film has returned at least $200 million from box offices worldwide, and six have made more than $500 million. The most successful movie, Furious 7 (2015), took $1.5 billion, and made more money globally than Skyfall (2012), the most successful 007 James Bond movie, which itself raked-in a staggering $1.1 billion. Including the spin-off Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), the family of films has grossed over $6.1 billion to date, placing it comfortably in the top five highest-grossing franchises of all time, with two more films set to come.
F9: The Fast Saga follows Dominic Toretto, played by Vin Diesel, and his family as they seek to stop a world-shattering plot headed by Dom’s estranged younger brother Jakob, himself a quick-witted assassin and hotshot driver. The film, co-written by Lin and Daniel Casey, also stars Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and John Cena, along with special appearances by Charlize Theron, Cardi B, Kurt Russell and Dame Helen Mirren.
The film is Lin’s fifth Fast & Furious movie, Windon’s sixth, and depicts increasingly imaginative plot lines, deepening character developments and daredevil driving, all designed to keep audiences coming back for more.
Made using some of the latest state-of-the-art techniques combined with traditional filmmaking technology, F9: The Fast Saga ricochets around the world with action sequences taking place in London, Thailand, Georgia and Edinburgh, and, for the first time it even propels two characters into space in an effort to destroy a satellite.
Ron Prince met-up with Windon over Skype, as the Australian DP was taking a day-off from shooting The Gray Man, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo in Prague, to discover more about his recipe in serving-up another beguiling blockbuster.
“The mandate from Justin and the executives at Universal was to ‘go big’, to press the pedal to the metal, and to deliver a film that would look amazing and sensational – that was the basic brief,” laughs Windon. “Trying to find the next visual experience for the franchise is always a task in itself. When you start reading the script, and consider a particular stunt, you often think, ‘How the hell are we going to shoot that?’. Whilst these films contain a visual interest from frequently shooting in multiple international locations, it’s getting much harder to close down a city for long periods of time. They have all been like that, and it’s challenging.
“However, we always try to create energy and excitement, that’s what we do, and it’s actually a lot of fun taking time to break down each sequence into what’s practical live-action, what’s VFX, and what rigs we can use to make things happen.
“Of course, there are different storylines, and along with the stunning locations, there’s now a lot of backstory to each of our characters, some are having existential crises, and all that helps to bring a certain uniqueness to each film, especially with F9: The Fast Saga. And there’s a lot of both traditional and ultra-modern technology – in the form of capture media, cameras, rigs, VFX and lighting – that can help you move things along visually.
“I went from shooting The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) on 35mm to Furious 7 (2015), which was the first digitally-acquired movie. F9: The Fast Saga was always going to be a digital production, but as the narrative contained flashbacks to the very first film in the series, The Fast And The Furious (2001), I thought celluloid film would be great to evoke that period. So I suggested to Justin that we shot those moments, around 25% of the movie, on 35mm film. He liked that idea of very much. So F9 became a hybrid of analogue and digital from very early-on.”
The flashback sequences, including an early exciting car chase sequence, were shot using Panavision Panaflex Platinum XL2 cameras fitted with uncoated Panavision Primo lenses, which had the effect of helping to desaturate the image and encourage halations for a more classical look.
However, Windon did not stop there. “Film grain was a subliminal part of the picture when we went to watch movies at the cinema back in the 1990s, and I really wanted encourage this texture in the movie by using film. During my career I have shot Kodak Vision2 5218 500T and, more recently, Kodak Vision3 5219 500T, more than any other celluloid filmstocks. These
We always try to create energy and excitement
days only the 5219 500T is available. It has a nice level of grain, and it is incredibly flexible for all types of situations – you can mitigate against the light in bright circumstances using NDs, and it is fabulous for dark and night-time scenes.”
But Windon did not stop there either in search of his desired filmic aesthetic, as he explains. “To achieve the look I wanted, I used the technique of making an interpositive (IP) and then an internegative (IN) from the circle takes shot on the original 5219 500T negative, and then had the dupe negative scanned back in. Doing this gave a lovely rich grain, plus real crunch and contrast, to the image, that looked like it really was filmed back in the 1990s, and this became our tone and palette for the flashbacks.” Film processing was done at FotoKem in Los Angeles and Cinelab in London.
The rest of the production, set in contemporary times, however, was an all-digital affair, but not, as you might expect using large format cameras. Windon instead went with the traditional ARRI Alexa SXT, shooting at 3.4K in ARRIRAW, using the same Panavision Primo lenses used on the 35mm-filmed parts of movie.
The whole movie was framed in widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio, “as we like the widescreen thing, and to me it suits the shape of a car,” Windon quips. “However, Justin is not a director who likes the
wow, perfect, high-rez, edge-to-edge snap of the digital image. He much prefers a certain softness to the picture. Although we shot tests with large format cameras, the images really did not suit our story. I set some basic LUTs during prep for the ARRI Alexa SXTs, and there was something far nicer and filmic in those pictures, which just seemed better for our story. We were very happy with our hybrid combination of IP/ IN second generation 35mm film negative and ARRI Alexa SXT as our looks for the show.”
Having shot so many films in the franchise, does Windon still feel the need to look at creative references? “Yes, I do,” he declares. “I am always looking at other images, films and photography. Even if they are not directly connected to the movie, they might give me an idea for a mood or an atmosphere.
“I’ve watched pretty much every classic car chase sequence at least 20 times over the years, and you always see something that will inspire you! Whether it’s Bullitt (1968, dir. Peter Yates, DP William A. Fraker ASC), The Italian Job (1969, dir. Peter Collinson, DP Douglas Slocombe OBE BSC ASC), or The French Connection (1971, dir. William Friedkin, DP Owen Roizman ASC). One of my favourite recent action films was Ford v Ferrari (2019, dir. James Mangold, DP Phedon Papamichael ASC GSC) – a very beautifullycrafted and entertaining film in my opinion.”
Windon also offers some tips for anyone wanting to convey the idea of fast and furious car action
on-screen themselves. “If real estate is tight and you need to sell speed, I have a checklist: add foreground where possible, check; place the camera low to the road, check; shoot at 22fps, check; sharpen the shutter a little, between 145º and 90º, check!”
Principal photography on F9: The Fast Saga took place over 90 shooting days, between May and November 2019, presaged by 16 weeks of prep, during which time Windon, Lin and other key crew members, including VFX supervisor Peter Chiang and second unit DP Igor Meglic, went on extensive scouts.
Shooting locations included Los Angeles, plus Krabi, Ko Pha-ngan and Phuket in Thailand, Tiblisi in Georgia, and Edinburgh, Scotland. Studio shoots, including the movie’s underwater sequences, were undertaken at MBS in LA. This was followed by a lengthy stint at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the UK, where the production made extensive use of the facility’s 360º backlot and recently-built S and V stages.
The shoot predominantly used three cameras. Geoffrey Haley SOC, recent winner of SOC Award for Cherry (DP Newton Thomas Sigel ASC) operated A-camera/Steadicam throughout, with Windon himself on B-camera, and Matt Windon, his brother, on C-camera. Peter Byrne was first AC, with Peter Chrimes working as key grip on the US and Thailand shoots, and Steve Ellingworth the key grip during the UK leg of production. Michael Ambrose was the gaffer on the US shoots, with Perry Evans gaffer across the UK shoots.
A key collaborator was second unit DP Igor Meglic who played a crucial role, along with second unit director, Spiro Razatos, in shooting the car/ stunt sequences in Thailand. In Edinburgh Windon’s first unit shot simultaneously with this splinter unit, photographed by UK-based DP Callan Green and directed by stunt co-ordinator JJ Perry.
“I enjoy operating and did more on this production than I have done on previous films,” says Windon. “Although these are big machines, and you have to deal with so much – like managing the schedule with the first AD, liaising with the VFX supervisor, the director and the second unit – I now feel comfortable with that level of management. I also had full confidence and trust in my amazingly-talented and dedicated crew to do what was needed.”
Indeed, that level of trust played a huge factor in another idea of Windon’s to move the action to an altogether different plane.
“One of the exciting things we did on F9, that we had never done before, was to tie-together the
