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00:00Well, I'm lucky enough to have a great collaborative relationship with all the directors I work with,
00:04but it's even more so with Paul.
00:07He's depending on your opinion and calling you in the middle of a shoot day
00:10and saying things like, I'm about to roll the camera and I think I'm going to take this shot
00:14and go move from here to here and then pan.
00:17And the first time he did it, I was thinking, you know you're talking to the editor, right?
00:26My name is Andreas Wiseman.
00:29I'm the international editor at Deadline and I'm delighted to be with you guys today
00:35to talk about Apple and Paul Greengrass's powerful, immersive, inspirational movie,
00:44The Lost Bus, which you can all see now on streaming.
00:48It's incredibly immersive, as I say, very heart-pounding movie.
00:53It follows the true story of a down-on-his-luck school bus driver
00:57played by Matthew McConaughey and a courageous teacher played by America Ferrara.
01:04They're in Northern California.
01:06They have to come together to overcome this escalating inferno
01:10that would soon come to be known as one of America's deadliest and most destructive wildfires.
01:18This is the 2018 campfire and obviously the movie has taken on even greater resonance
01:26since the fires that damaged L.A. so badly since then.
01:31I'm here with four of the key creatives from the film to discuss it.
01:36A very esteemed panel, Oscar winners, BAFTA winners.
01:41First of all, we have Billy Goldenberg, editor, who is, as I say, Oscar winner,
01:49well-known for movies such as Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, The Insider,
01:54collaborations with Paul Greengrass, such as News of the World and the 22nd of July.
02:00So, Billy Goldberg.
02:01Billy Goldenberg.
02:04I think you're going to sit here.
02:07Billy Goldenberg.
02:09I got your name right.
02:11I'm going to sit here.
02:11Next up, we have Charlie Noble, VFX supervisor,
02:16who is an Oscar BAFTA nominee known for Jason Bourne, Captain Phillips.
02:23These are movies that he's made with Paul Greengrass
02:27and a host of other very well-known movies.
02:31Charlie.
02:31Charlie.
02:38Next up, we have Rachel Tate,
02:41supervising sound editor who is BAFTA winner for 1917,
02:47the great 1917 movie, also well-known for No Time to Die,
02:52and also worked with Paul on News of the World.
02:56So, Rachel.
02:57And finally, we have Will Miller, re-recording mixer, BAFTA and Oscar nominee from Paul's News of the World.
03:13Will.
03:19We're first of all going to watch a quick clip,
03:22and then we'll jump in.
03:23And then we'll jump in.
03:24Charlie!
03:25Charlie!
03:25Charlie!
03:25Charlie!
03:27Yes!
03:28Okay, okay, okay, okay!
03:32Oh, no!
03:36Go, go, go!
03:42Okay, get down, get down!
03:44We're going through the fire!
03:45Billy, the pacing of this movie, I was watching it, and we were talking outside,
04:01I was saying my heart was kind of pounding throughout,
04:03not only because I have young kids, and young kids are very involved in this,
04:07but it's a very propulsive movie, which is quite, you know, which is very Paul Greengrass-esque, right?
04:14How did you go about, you know, working on that pacing?
04:18How did you find that rhythm with Paul?
04:20Well, Paul's really great about putting the audience in the seat with the character,
04:25so, you know, the pace of their performances sort of dictates the pace of the editing,
04:30and the pace of their experience dictates the pace of the editing.
04:33You know, we're trying to keep the audience fully immersed,
04:37which is, you know, big credit to everybody here on my left,
04:40who are, you know, because it is a team effort to make the, you know,
04:42the visual effects and the sound and the editing all sort of come together to create that experience.
04:49So, you know, you're trying to take the audience on a ride,
04:52but you can't do it nonstop, so you have to find the places to slow down
04:58and then speed up so that it doesn't get monotonously just fast,
05:02because I think that would be too overwhelming for an audience.
05:05So we try together to find that right balance of having, you know,
05:09the introspective moments with the characters and then, you know,
05:12the rest of it being the thrill ride of trying to get out of that fire.
05:17You've worked with Paul on a couple of movies before.
05:21How would you say, how would you describe your kind of collaboration,
05:25your dynamic with him compared to other filmmakers?
05:27Is it a similar collaboration and rhythm,
05:32or are there particular things about how you work with Paul, would you say?
05:35Well, I'm lucky enough to have a great collaborative relationship
05:37with all the directors I work with, but it's even more so with Paul,
05:41because he's depending on your opinion and calling you in the middle of a shoot day
05:46and saying things like, I'm about to roll the camera,
05:49and I think I'm going to take this shot and go, you know, move from here to here,
05:52and the first time he did it, I was thinking, you know you're talking to the editor, right?
05:57Because usually I don't get those questions, but now I'm so accustomed to it.
06:00So it is really a collaboration from the script writing process
06:04where I'm reading draft after draft and then through the shoot and then through the post.
06:08And it's why I keep coming back.
06:10And he's an extraordinary collaborator.
06:14And through the process of post, we just go back and forth with things.
06:19You know, he likes to keep his distance and not come to the editing room all that much.
06:25He just likes to see screenings and give notes and feedback.
06:27So he remains objective, which is really thrilling for me.
06:31So he lets me have a lot of free reign.
06:33And, you know, Paul's an incredibly intelligent guy,
06:37so I'm learning something from him every day.
06:40Great.
06:42And, yeah, and also going on to direct yourself as well, right?
06:44You've already directed and now you're directing again, right?
06:47Yeah, I directed a film last year called Unstoppable, and it's on Amazon.
06:53And I'm hoping to direct a film later in the late spring.
06:58Great.
07:00Charlie, let's talk about the authenticity, you know,
07:04because these fire images are incredible in this movie.
07:07The VFX is truly something.
07:10How did you go about achieving that authenticity?
07:14What were the kind of key points there?
07:17We were lucky.
07:18We had about four or five months of prep, basically, before the shoot, pre-production, really.
07:25And we managed to assemble about an hour's worth of footage from this fire itself.
07:32Pretty harrowing stuff.
07:34And we got a lot of, we got quite a bit of material from John Messina,
07:43who was the Camp IC commander on the day of the fire.
07:46So he gave us a wealth of advice and reference material.
07:50Also got quite a bit of stuff from Mary Ludwig herself, who was actually on the bus.
07:55So she was great to talk to, and she gave us a lot of really good reference.
07:59So, you know, before we started shooting, I had about an hour's worth of material,
08:06which I could point to any of our vendors who were producing the lovely work and say,
08:11make it look like that.
08:12That's where we are on the road.
08:14That's what it's got to look like.
08:16And we spent a long time planning.
08:17We produced a map of Paradise and the route that the bus took, laid the clips from all along that route,
08:28from reference clips from the fire itself as to, OK, at this point, this is what the fire looks like.
08:33Further on, this is what it looks like.
08:34So everyone knew, the cast and the crew knew what they were going through.
08:38And then when we were actually shooting, you know, SFX could, we could all collaborate.
08:43And so the lighting department knew what we were aiming for.
08:47SFX would, gave us as much fire as they could.
08:52So I think we probably exhausted the whole supply of propane for New Mexico.
08:57I think that we sort of, it burns it all.
09:00But, and it was great.
09:02It gave us good interactive lighting and really good, something that the cast could bounce off and react to.
09:08Because obviously, you know, it's hot.
09:10You can't get too close to it.
09:11And it's quite important when you're, well, obviously, for the actors to have that immediacy.
09:18But the, I think.
09:24What was the biggest challenge?
09:26Yeah, I mean, I was going to say, I mean, obviously we had all this lovely stuff and the material looked great
09:30and the interactive light was great.
09:32But we had to inevitably replace all this propane fire because it's all clean.
09:37It doesn't emit any smoke or embers.
09:39So we were then pasting over the lights and the clean propane trees that were metal trees that we had burning
09:45with flames, CG flames that could emote, could emit smoke and embers.
09:52I think embers were kind of constant presence throughout the movie.
09:55There's, even with some shots where there's no fire, you get the old ember coming through.
09:59And immediately it's threatening.
10:00Yeah, well, that brings us to Rachel, I think.
10:05And just how you went about creating this soundscape, Rachel, how you managed to make it quite as immersive as it is.
10:14I mean, embers felt like part of that, but, you know, real fire, you know, real radio, you know, interactions.
10:20Can you tell us a bit about that?
10:22Yeah.
10:22Well, as some of you might know, Paul Greengrass is from a journalism background.
10:26So he has this unique way of approaching his films that other directors just don't have.
10:33He comes from needing this sort of kernel of truth at the heart of all his films.
10:39I've done five films with him now.
10:41I'm about to start a sixth.
10:43And it's true.
10:44It's common across all his films.
10:46And what that means is he needs it to be grounded in reality.
10:51Then he can add in the tension and the emotion around that.
10:54And as sound people, we have a huge job with this.
10:58And a major breakthrough we had was when I came across five hours of real radio communications from the day.
11:07So that's starting in the initial reports of the fire.
11:11It runs for five hours until eventually the transmission towers burnt down and the radios cut out just like they do in the film.
11:19And you have this timeline then that I could put up against our film and using key points, any time checks they did on the radio, I could lay it up exactly as it happened.
11:31And any time on the film when you watch it, any time you hear a walkie-talkie or a radio going by, what you're hearing is from not just a real person, but it's a real person trying to save real lives at that point in time in that location.
11:46And you can't beat that.
11:48You can't get more real than that, you know.
11:50And this grounds it in reality.
11:53But the cool thing I thought was that it's kind of like a time capsule then.
11:58These voices are now preserved in a sort of living memory.
12:03They will always be there.
12:05And they don't keep these for more than a couple of years.
12:07So this is now in there forever.
12:09And this is the kind of thing that a Paul Greengrass film demands of us.
12:14We need that thread weaving through of truth and realism.
12:20That was so key for me.
12:22That was almost one of the most important things we can add.
12:25Yeah.
12:25And, Will, you know, talking about weaving through, we were outside talking about, you know, in terms of memorable elements of this movie, memorable things that you guys worked on.
12:35And it kind of crosses, this element of the movie crosses across all of your work.
12:41But I think you talked about the campfire and getting inside the campfire, getting inside this raging inferno, which is quite unusual.
12:49The camera really getting inside this thing.
12:52Maybe you can talk a little about that and how you managed to achieve that.
12:55Yeah, of course.
12:57Yeah.
12:57In this movie, not only do we have Kevin and Mary as the main characters, the fire itself is another one of the main characters.
13:04I think for the first time in one of Paul's movies, the antagonist is nature.
13:09It's not a person.
13:10And we wanted to, I guess, characterize this in a way and sort of track it through its unpredictable nature and how fast it was growing.
13:20We wanted to be in touch with it throughout the entire time.
13:23So even when we're not inside the fire itself, where other, you know, where other places around the community of paradise, we're always have a sense of it.
13:30Whether that's the kind of the really heavy winds that might be kind of jet pain like in the way that it's kind of blowing through the town, kicking up all the dry pine needles, blowing against the windows.
13:40We wanted to create this sense that you're always in touch with it.
13:43And then when we're inside the fire itself, yeah, this is a kind of a unique thing where we're trying to sell the idea that the embers that are being blown around in the fire itself could start new fires.
13:55So visually, Charlie has come up with, you know, the fire itself that we're inside, the embers blowing around, we have the winds kicking up.
14:01We wanted to create this kind of danger that's almost this unstoppable force.
14:05It's a bit like the Jaws POV shots in those films.
14:10That's kind of how Paul described it to us.
14:12I mean, at the peak of the fire, it was moving, growing at a rate of about a football field a second.
14:18So that's like just you can't imagine that in real life.
14:22So as much as possible, we're trying to put you in that place.
14:26And without, yeah, it's kind of one of those tricky things, really, like the whole time we want this sense of danger with the embers flying around, almost like that feeling that it could catch your skin and burn you like that feeling you have as a sparker when you put like times a thousand, like the danger of it constantly being on top of you.
14:46Yeah.
14:46Yeah.
14:47And there is the message, of course, from the fire chief at one point in the movie that, you know, we've got to this is happening more often, guys.
14:54I mean, we've got to stop this happening.
14:56And that's that's there over this movie.
14:59And you were making we've got to wrap up, actually, but just quickly.
15:01I mean, you were making this movie as the L.A. fires were going on and you were all, you know, a number of you were impacted.
15:07Right.
15:07Well, I was in L.A. the night of the on the 7th of January.
15:11I was in Los Angeles because of the holidays and we had to evacuate our house and didn't get back here for about three months.
15:19Luckily, it didn't burn.
15:20But I didn't really I came back here and I didn't know that my house was standing for about four days.
15:24And then we were mixing the movie and we came on.
15:28I came out of the mixing stage and it was one of the huge fire scenes.
15:31And it's so real and so overwhelming.
15:35I had to step off the dubbing stage and take a moment for myself because I didn't know if my house was there.
15:41And, you know, my family was safe, thank God.
15:43But it was very terrifying.
15:44And the realism of the film really came through.
15:47Yeah, absolutely.
15:48Well, look, Billy Goldenberg, Charlie Noble, Rachel Tate, Will Miller.
15:56Thank you so much for being with us.
15:57Thanks.
15:58Okay.
15:58Thanks for being with the right here.
16:00Thanks.
16:07Thanks.
16:08Thanks a lot.
16:08Thanks.
16:09wife.
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