One Battle After Another

Today on Art of the Cut, we speak with three members of the post team for Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, One Battle After Another. Joining us are editor Andy Jurgensen, associate editor, Jay Trautman, and film assistant editor, Andrew Blustain.

The film was shot in two different film formats including VistaVision and the film was finished in a variety of formats, leading to a complicated and fascinating post process.

Andy Jurgensen has been on Art of the Cut before for another Paul Thomas Anderson film, Licorice Pizza, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA and an ACE Eddie.

Andy was also an assistant editor on Phantom Thread, Bombshell, Trumbo, and Inherent Vice.

Jay Trautman was a Visual Effects Assistant Editor on Dune 2, an assistant editor on Oppenheimer, first assistant editor on Licorice Pizza, and was an assistant editor on The Book of Bobba Fett, Grey’s Anatomy, and House of Cards.

Andrew Blustain was an assistant editor on Tenet, visual effects assistant editor on Dunkirk, an assistant editor on Oppenheimer, and second assistant editor (film) on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

The movie was inspired by a novel by Thomas Pynchon called, Vineland. Did you read that?

JURGENSEN: It wasn’t even written on the script that it was inspired by or based on anything. As the shoot was going on we were hearing rumblings that there were similarities, but it wasn’t something that Paul asked me to read.

TRAUTMAN: It wasn’t part of our research. I had read it many years ago, but it seemed to be all original. It had echoes of the story. But no, it wasn’t something that we were looking at.

JURGENSEN: And I didn’t want to read it, unless Paul had asked me to, I would, but I wanted to treat the movie as its own thing. We stayed objective in that way to the tone that Paul was going for this movie.

Andrew, this was your second film with Paul Thomas Anderson with you as the editor plusat least four others that you did as an assistant editor. How has that relationship evolved?

JURGENSEN: I started on Inherent Vice as an assistant. I guess that was 2013. So it’s just evolved. Paul likes to use a lot of the same people. Like in his crew. It’s like a family.

And so I, you know, just sort of was lucky enough to be brought onto that project and lucky enough to have continued on as an assistant. I worked on Phantom Thread.

I worked as an editor on a bunch of his music videos. It’s just that there’s a trust there, and learning Paul sensibilities, learning how he likes to work. There are a lot of specialized things that we do on his movies: cutting negative and making film prints and doing dailies, so I’m used to that process.

I was lucky enough to be bumped up to editor on the last movie, Licorice Pizza, and it went well. I think it just evolved to working on this movie.

I was looking back at my calendar this morning. We were doing camera tests for this movie back in the summer of 2023. That was our first test with the cameras and the look of the movie. So we’ve been working on this for a while.

With some of those specialized ways Paul works, how does that affect what you’re doing as an assistant or associate editor to cope with those methods?

TRAUTMAN: It starts right away, with dailies, because Paul likes to screen film we print dailies every day at the end of the day or the beginning of the next day, whenever they can get printed and back to the set.

So a lot of what Andy and I are doing during production is preparing for those dailies screenings, so it’s much more focused on that than sort of a normal assistant editing job where I would be preparing Avid bins or to be cutting every day.

We’re much more focused on making sure the dailies get screened on film and that the film looks the way it’s supposed to look. That everything has gone through the lab, and that it looks the way it’s supposed to look.

Then we don’t even make the Avid editing material until after that’s screened and Andy looks at the color.

We make sure that the dailies colorist got it to look the way Paul wants it to look, and he works with the lab to make sure that the Avid media matches the print as closely as we can.

We found that that facilitates having Paul looking at something that looks like what his film is going to look like down the road when we get to printing from negatives.

So really, post production is a totally different thing than most jobs that I do.

BLUSTAIN: I came on after wrap, for the conform. We were working with two different film formats, the eight-perf VistaVision and the four-perf Super35. Because we had two different formats, we had two different sets of conformed work picture reels: one for the eight-perf and one for the four-perf.

During the course of any given reel - because we would cut back and forth between the two formats - we would like put in a slug as a placeholder to denote when  the alternate format footage would be.

So that was kind of different, but some things were just like any other show with pull and change lists that Jay would generate for me out of the Avid, as in a normal workflow, save for the two formats, of course.

And that was a constant set of revision and changing as Andy and Paul would recut and then once the reels were locked, we marked them up, the work picture from the negative cut and sent them to the lab.

But in terms of working with Paul, he worked at home with Andy, so I personally didn’t get a lot of one-on-one interaction, with him until we got to some of the timing  sessions and some of the work picture screenings.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the editing. One of the things when you’re editing a film like this: sure, the pace inside of a scene is important, but also the pace of the overall film is important. I was interested in finding out whether you felt like you needed to get to a certain point in the story quicker or slower - like the birth of Willa or Willa becoming 16 years old, or any of those other milestones?

JURGENSEN: Definitely. This movie is relentless. So much happens throughout - even just in that prologue. But then once you hit that prologue, then you go off in another direction and it’s a whole other movie, basically. We were very aware of the length of the prologue.

It’s tough. You don’t want it to be too short where it’s not impactful. The actress that plays Perfidia is so great, and she’s really only in the prologue, so you want to make sure that her character is established as the movie goes on.

There are these peaks and valleys. It was it’s sort of the Christmas Adventure scenes (the story of the antagonists) that give you those moments - those valleys - where you can kind of breathe a little bit.

The shots are super stable. A lot of them are played in close up. Usually there’s not music or anything going on, so it allows us to kind of have these moments where the audience can take a breath.

So as we were building the movie and screening it, we were always aware of the pace and what we may need to cut out so that we could get to just a moment of breathing and some comic relief.

It’s really the kind of thing where you have to just watch the whole movie and get a feeling that a section is working.

For example, the area that we worked on the most and went through the most revisions was the DNA test sequence and everything that happens there at the Sisters of the Brave Beaver, because you want tension, but you also want there to be some comic relief.

You also want there to be a bit of a valley before we get it into the final chase sequence. That was one part of the movie where we went through a lot of revisions and it took a little while to get it perfect.

What were some of the creative discussions around trying to perfect that section? Trying to keep it moving along or was it more tonal?

Editor Andy Jurgensen

JURGENSEN: What’s interesting is we actually didn’t have the scene between Deandra and Danvers; the military guy who’s interrogating Deandra. We didn’t always have that scene in there.

We were able to use that scene to cut away from Willa and Lockjaw waiting for the DNA test to be done. Intercutting with that scene unlocked something there, because we could skip time a little bit.

We actually reordered a bunch of the lines in the DNA scene, taken from totally different parts of where they originally were in the script and when it was shot.

Like when she makes that comment about his shirt being too tight, there’s that laughter that you feel - the audience needs something there because it’s so tense.

So it’s just threading that needle of where you had the laughs and where you have the tension and not overstaying your welcome too long and then getting to the end of the scene and getting on to the rest of the movie.

TRAUTMAN: Initially, didn’t Lockjaw say, “t’s going to take 20 minutes.” Then that scene – without intercutting - really was 20 minutes long.

JURGENSEN: Exactly. And you don’t want it telegraphed to the audience: “Oh gosh, we’re going to be sitting here for 20 minutes in this scene.” So we had to take that out.

TRAUTMAN: And you were able to cut it down quite a bit and sharpen it. There were different emotional journeys with Willa and Lockjaw where you ended up.

Do you remember any of the creative reasons or story reasons why you would have juggled lines around from that scene?

JURGENSEN: We just had to try stuff. We had tried it as scripted and it was feeling long and it just didn’t feel right, so then you basically target, “What are the lines that we want her to say? ‘

Did you love her?’ ‘Did you rape her?’” And him asking about her father. It’s those things.

They’re both sitting in their own areas, so you can cut back and forth even if those are completely out of order to how they were shot. We just were able to find good performances and make it work.

We really just had to kind of distill it down to what are the core lines, what are the best lines, and then figure out how to make the scene work.

TRAUTMAN: There is a calibration of Lockjaw trying on being a father and sort of asking her fatherly kind of questions and how she was responding to that - either making them more sinister or more empathetic. You sort of push that both directions and settle on a a place where it works.

JURGENSEN: The Lockjaw character is very larger than life, so there was stuff that was even more over the top that we tried, and it just was maybe a little too much. So you really have to make sure you gauge it so that it seems still somewhat grounded in reality. We definitely experimented with that section a lot.

I want to jump back earlier in the movie. After Perfidia gives birth to Willa there’s a scene where Perfidia jealously narrates about Bob’s affection towards the baby while we see him being affectionate and fatherly. Was that planned as narration, or was it actually two different scenes that you intercut?

JURGENSEN: Perfidia did improvise a bunch of lines. There’s a scene where he is listening to Perfidia through the door.

So in that scene she did a lot of improvising, and there was a lot of really good stuff in there, so what we ended up doing was pre-lapping a bunch of it over where she’s sitting on the couch looking at him, and he’s rocking the baby.

I don’t believe it was really scripted specifically or exactly to be how it was. Paul does like to pivot on the day and say, “Maybe we should try some things - try some different shots - just see what happens” knowing that some of it won’t be used.

So I think that was maybe an experiment when she was sitting on the couch looking at him, rocking the baby. And it just ended up being a very impactful moment.

TRAUTMAN: Sometimes with his scripts, it’ll I’ll just say something like: PERFIDIA WATCHES PAT HOLD THE BABY or something like that, and you don’t know what that’s going to be until the footage comes in, because he’s writing and directing so he sometimes just puts in a little note for himself and doesn’t flesh out the scene. Then we find out what that means when we see the footage.

JURGENSEN: He really wants to get feedback from the actors of how they’re feeling - involving the actors in how a scene might play out. It really helps the performances.

Is that difficult to edit that way because you’re not getting something that was written in the script necessarily.

JURGENSEN: Not really. I mean, with Paul, things evolve. Things that get shot that are alternate ways of doing a scene. Kind of going back to the dailies discussion that Jay was saying, I’m on location with the crew.

I was there with Paul as we’re watching the dailies at the end of each night projected on a big screen. Paul was playing music - either songs or score that Jonny Greenwood, the composer, sent.

We were experiencing the footage and then that sparks another idea for Paul to say, “Maybe let’s reshoot this at a table instead.”

Things sort of evolve, and I’m part of the discussion. and he knows that if we end up cutting this other thing out, we have an alt version where we can still get to the meat of the scene some other way. So we just cover ourselves with different things.

TRAUTMAN: The lined script becomes much less of a roadmap than the notes that Andy’s taking during the dailies screening process. We’re not off on our own blindly putting together a scene without knowing what the director’s thinking.

So many of the older editors that I’ve interviewed who screened dailies back in the day where you’re screening with the cinematographer and the director and other crew, say that they miss that so much. Tell me a little bit about the value that you see in doing that.

One Battle After Another post crew at the premiere

JURGENSEN: Having a communal screening of dailies does so much not only from the technical side - because you are checking the cinematography and the focus.

And since we’re shooting on Vistavision, which is a format that hasn’t been used in a long time, there were technical things happening with the camera or flickers or all sorts of things, so there’s that technical side of it.

But seeing dailies on a big screen in a communal room, it gives you that experience of seeing the facial expressions, you can see all the little details.

This is a very funny movie, so it shows when jokes are landing. What are we getting out of certain performances?

It just gives that confidence that we’ve got the scene. It gives the actors and Paul and some of the other department heads that are there, the confidence that it’s working. “Job well done. Now let’s go for the next day.”

We have some very small intimate scenes. But we also have these big car chases. We had to see that stuff big just to see whether it was impactful and working.

It’s the best thing that Paul does in the entire process. It’s so valuable and he’s never going to change. It’s always going to be like this.

VistVision Projector

Do you have an assistant editor that’s there with you to take notes, or are you taking notes?

JURGENSEN: No, I’m taking notes. Jay was back in LA. We also had Cathleen Murphy, who started out as a PA, then she was one of our other assistants.

We also had a projectionist, Richard De Armas, who was carting around a Vistavision projector to all of our locations. We’d set up a screening room and we’d get the prints delivered each day by a driver.

I have a big binder that I carry with me. Jay will send a template that we have of all the takes and which ones are the selects. I would choose which takes we’re going to watch that day.

Then I’d take my notes. And during the day, when they’re shooting, I will mark up the dailies from days and days ago as we get the Avid media. Then I’ll just start making string outs and assembling scenes and start putting it together.

Paul doesn’t really want to see edited scenes immediately. Weeks later, he’d say, “Okay, show me the scene.” Unless it’s something that we are worried about, he’s not wanting to see complete cuts every week with temp music and sound effects.

Workprint on the KEM

Andrew, you mentioned this eight-perf and four-perf difference and what you were doing on the film, what are the technical aspects of that and how you had to work on the film?

BLUSTAIN: Both formats - the eight-perf Vistavision and four-perf Super35 – are both printed on 35mm stock, so it’s not that we need special equipment for each format, save for that I had an eight-perf sync block on the bench, and we had a VistaVision eight-perf KEM that we used to check the sync on a reel when the changes were done, or something like that.

We also had a 35 four-plate to check the sync on the 35 reels as well. The biggest challenge was they’re both printed on 35 stock, but they’re both running at 24 frames a second and VistaVision - because the frame size is larger, horizontal and twice as big - runs at eight frames a foot, as opposed to the normal 16 frames a foot that the Super35 runs at.

As a consequence, for a given amount of screen time, you’ll have twice the amount of VistaVision footage running through the projector as you would with regular four-perf.

So Andy and Paul and Jay had to keep this in mind, and we would calculate the Super35 sections that would eventually be filmed out and printed into eight-perf. We would have to think, “Okay, this section is 70ft in 35, but it’s going to be 140ft in VistaVision.” So you’re always doubling the footage.

And those calculations had to be carefully factored in by Andy and Paul when they were editing and deciding where the reel breaks would be.

For somebody that might not be familiar with this process. Andy was cutting in Avid, then what was he delivering to you to be able to conform this on the film side

BLUSTAIN: Jay would output from the Avid lists for me, whether it was “I’ve got some eight-perf list for you” or “I’ve got some four-perf lists for you.”

Though it’s not common anymore, it followed a normal work picture conform workflow. I would just switch back and forth depending on the format: “Let’s get the four-perf synchronized. Let’s get the eight-perf synchronized.

So it was pretty straightforward. There was a lot of technical challenges, but I was really surprised at how straightforward and simple and bug free, the whole process has been.

JURGENSEN: We should really call out FotoKem because they were the ones that really did such a good job printing our dailies.

They bent over backwards to convert a laser film recorder to the VistaVision format so that we could film-out the sections.

They had to get a projector at FotoKem so we could do the color timing. Then they also blew up the film to 70 millimeter. FotoKem and our Post Supervisor Erica Frauman were on the ground the entire time and we could not have done it without them.

I want to get it back to some of the editing challenges. Structurally, there are a few scenes that - at least into my mind - could have gone anywhere. One of them that I’m thinking of is the Christmas hymn when Tim Smith shows up at the house. That didn’t have to go right there. It’s not chronologically linked to scenes before it or after it. Talk to me about deciding where those kinds of scenes went, and did they usually just go where they were scripted?

Workprint on racks… it looks a lot different when it’s not on a hard drive.

JURGENSEN: I think that goes back to my previous point about the peaks and valleys, because prior to that scene, we have just followed Bob and Sensei driving the car through the riots to the perfume shop, then upstairs on the phone, then Bob going up to the rooftop. It’s like a 25-minute sequence.

Just after he falls on the ground, that’s just a point you just need a release. You just need to take that all in and just sit there for a second. You transition to the Brave Beaver so you can get Deandra and Willa to their destination and Willa into her bedroom.

But at that point, you just need to sort of step away and you need a moment of relief again. I don’t quite remember the script - if it was supposed to be there or not - but, it just felt like a good moment to breathe.

There’s a scene where Bob gives Willa the letter from her mom, which is intercut with the disposal of a body – not to do a spoiler alert… Were they scripted as intercut? Did you find that there was some reason why that body disposal or the letter reading needed to be intercut?

JURGENSEN: It wasn’t scripted that way. Originally, we were following just one side of it, then the other. We screened it like that for a long time.

The body disposal scene used to play completely dry, so when we moved it up, that really sweet song that plays over the letter reading scene sparked something when it was intercut, so we decided to see what would happen if we intercut Bob’s discussion with her. I think it’s just a nice juxtaposition.

On one side - the side of the like oppressor - then we have this other side of this family unit which has more of a hopeful tone to it.

So I think with the combination of the music and seeing the resolution of these two storylines, it also brings you back into it because the story really starts with this triangle between the two men and it shows what side she’s chosen as the father figure.

Board with workprint into

Needle drops. You talked about music a little bit. How many of the needle drops were scripted? How many of them got found by the editorial team or the music supervisor and how much did they change?

JURGENSEN: The Steely Dan song was always there at the beginning. In fact, even when we were screening dailies, Paul was playing that song.

That was kind of always our way to start, like the second chunk after the prologue. It was supposed to be kind of this epic ending and then begin the next section with Steely Dan to kind of show the difference 16 years later, so that was in there from the beginning.

Then the Jackson 5’s “Ready or Not” - he was playing with that a little bit during dailies, but we didn’t really know where we were going to put it.

I do remember the day that we were working on that scene when he leaves the hospital and escapes, and we tried that song there and I think both of us got a smile on our face and it felt it just felt right to do, to have this great song.

It’s fun watching screenings and seeing people perk up at that part because it kind of launches you into the last third of the movie.

That’s another big point with something like a needle drop is the kind of energy it can inject into the film at a point where it needs air, because right before that’s really tense and difficult.

One Battle After Another film cutting room

JURGENSEN: Yes, it is before that, but we do go to the second Christmas adventure scene and then we go back to the Sisters of the Brave Beaver where they’re shooting the machine gun and talking to Deandra, asking whether her mom is a rat.

After that, we go to Bob when we get the big reveal of sensei in the car down below. It just feels right to have a great song there.

TRAUTMAN: Andy mentioned that Paul plays music during dailies. He always has a playlist that is shared with me, and so I’m just trying to collect all the stuff that’s added to that playlist and get it into the Avid so that when they start cutting, we’ll have it.

But Paul’s so into music that he knows what he wants and we’re probably not going to find something that he hasn’t thought of to pitch to him.

And how are you organizing all those needle drops, if they don’t have a specific place to go, for example, like this Jackson Five song?

TRAUTMAN: We just have a bin of Paul music that we add stuff to, then it goes from there.

JURGENSEN: Paul can be sometimes a little impatient with me cutting a song and he’ll say, “Just play the scene” and he’ll pull up the song on his phone and just start playing it.

We watch the movie on a big projector and a really nice sound system. So he could just be sitting on the couch and then I’ll hit play and he’ll use his phone through the speakers, or he’ll just put it up to his ear and audition stuff.

TRAUTMAN: That brings up another point about the way we work in the Avid. We work with Direct Out, so we have our tracks going into a mixing board, and we send the dialog, the effects and the music to different channels on the mixing board so Andy can just mute the music on the mixing board if Paul wants to play other music from his phone to audition. It makes it easier to just not have to do anything in the Avid.

VistaVision screening at the Vista

JURGENSEN: And we have screenings also in this room, so let’s say if the sound isn’t perfect yet, like the music was maybe a little too quiet while the movie’s playing, and Paul just wants to boost the music a little bit, the mixing board’s right there, so he can just pump up the music a little bit, or for us to pump up the sound effects.

Then he can just do it there and after the screening we’ll have a discussion and I can actually do it with rubber-banding.

There were a couple of places where I felt like the volume of the music or the volume of the sound, the dialog, was used almost as a tool. Loudness as an editorial tool.

JURGENSEN: It’s just creating these peaks and valleys, just in a different way, audibly. Paul’s always talking about dynamics, “How can we make this more dynamic in either the camera movement or the way things are edited?”

At the beginning of the movie there’s that really big, loud orchestra sound at the beginning. So we always wanted to have a really strong first note at the beginning of the movie. Then that continues throughout.

We also have that same note play after the first Christmas adventurers scene when Lockjaw was walking down the hallway and he’s realizing what he’s going to have to do, and then we play how to play again when Willa and Lockjaw meet before the DNA test and are looking at each other in profile.

There were motifs of these really strong chords getting really impactful at important parts of the movie.

VistaVision workprint bench

Another audible thing I can think of is in the final chase scene. About halfway through what we call the River of hills sequence and Willa’s looking at the rearview mirror, and she’s looking at bits of the road in front of her.

We dropped out the car sound there, and we’re using the beats in the music and there are these percussion moments and we’re just doing these whoosh sounds where everything drops out for a second.

Then when she looks in the rearview mirror and sees her pursuer, then we ramp it up again to have that impact, creating these dynamic moments that Paul is really good at, and our sound team - including Christopher Scarabosio is our supervising sound editor and mixer. He’s worked with Paul for years and years. He’s great.

Tell me about score a little bit and how you temped or was the composer giving you stuff throughout? How did that work?

JURGENSEN: The composer, Jonny Greenwood, was giving us stuff throughout. In fact, even during dailies, he was sending ideas to Paul’s phone. They’re not written to specific scenes. Paul would play that sometimes to some of the dailies as we’re watching.

Then there was a point in which we did send a really long cut to the composer, so he watched that and played with that. For the big Baktan Cross section it was this piano piece playing for 25 minutes.

I think Jonny sent us something that was maybe ten minutes long, so I cut it up and laid it across the entire sequence, because there were obviously some ups and downs and more quiet parts of it. Then we sent that to him, and Jonny cleaned it up and was able to fix it.

For the later part of it, when it kind of ramps up, he added more instruments as a way to layer things. So it’s constantly evolving. But we really didn’t use that much temp music on this movie. It was just using what Jonny sent. There was one kind of ethereal temp score piece we used.

Jay can you describe how you organized this music?

TRAUTMAN: It always went to Paul first. He would audition a lot of the these ideas from Jonny, and it would only ever make its way to the Avid if it was something that he was interested in really using on a temporary basis.

So we didn’t have an overwhelming amount of material in the Avid from him, so we would tend to organize it just by when it was sent to us.

What about music-less scenes? There were several of those. Was that just part of the dynamism? Or why were you choosing specific scenes to play without music - to play dry?

JURGENSEN: Definitely it was part of the dynamic nature of the peaks and valleys. For instance, the scene in the prologue where Profidia is leaving Bob and the baby, she has this monologue where she’s talking about why she’s doing it.

There was score there at one point, and it just didn’t feel right. It was maybe pushing it too hard, so by playing it dry, it just makes it more real. That particular scene and then the first car chase.

Also, we didn’t do any music for that. We were trying to go for a French Connection thing there, so, really following the car, just letting it be more about the metal crunching and the revs and crashes and the helicopter sounds.

Then the Christmas Adventure scenes you need a second to kind of breathe. So just having them dry and let these creeps do their lines and just soak it all in makes it more effective.

The reason why those scenes work so well and why they’re funny, is that those actors are committing 100% to those lines. They’re not hamming it up. It just works better to have it dry.

Speaking of tone, let’s discuss determining or balancing the seriousness of the topic and the peril with the comedy elements. Were there things that had to go just because the tone of it didn’t set right in the place that you were working?

JURGENSEN: It really always was sort of a balancing act. We always were aware we don’t want to be too preachy. We don’t want to be too political. The message of the movie is more effective because we are making light of certain things. It could have definitely been a different kind of the movie if you wanted to just be fully serious.

Andrew, anything else that people would be interested in about how the film part of this all worked?

BLUSTAIN: One of the really fun things that happened - actually quite recently, because it was at the end of the of the process - is when we finally had a complete VistaVision print, and we showed it at the Ross Theater on the Warner Brothers lot, and we plattered it.

At some point someone said “This had never been done before.” Back in the day when VistaVision was coming in the 50s, it was done with change-over reels. It was the normal way of theatrical presentation. But a VistaVision print had never been plattered! That was a really exciting moment.

Can you explain what it means to platter?

BLUSTAIN: Plattering the film as opposed to having reel changes where reel one is on Projector A, and reel two is on projector B, and it goes back and forth.

Instead, you take all the reels and you make a giant reel and put it on a horizontal platter that feeds from the platter over rollers to the projector and then takes up on a separate platter underneath. It’s usually this giant three level platter set up.

So what it basically means is that there are no changeovers of reels, there’s no changeover marks, there’s no projectionist getting it wrong. It’s a smooth transition. Basically, the whole two hours and 40 minutes is in one seamless reel.

JURGENSEN: For me this is the first movie I’ve worked on with so many different versions. We have the digital version, which has both DolbyVision and Imax, the different aspect ratios, but we also have 70 millimeter Imax, which is the full 1:43 size.

We have regular 70, which is the 1:85 pillar box. We have the VistaVision. We’re maybe making 35 millimeter prints.

We’re doing, Four-D which is the moving seats. There are so many versions that you can experience this movie.

TRAUTMAN: Just along the lines of what we were just talking about all the different formats. Andy mentioned starting to do camera tests for the Vision cameras more than two years ago.

The camera was a big part of it, but also figuring out how we were going to be able to finish the film, along with FotoKem and Erica, our post supervisor, we did a lot a lot of testing, like, can we convert VistaVision optically into 70mm or is our hero format going to be 70 millimeter?

Are we going to optically blow it up to Imax? Are we going to take a visual effects and film them out to  IMAX, then optically reduce the VistaVision?

Because nobody had tried to finish a film in VistaVision in a really long time, since digital visual effects were possible, so we finally got there and it’s a whole other podcast to talk about all the steps, but it is a very, very long, complicated thing.

When we talk about it here, it’s doesn’t quite do justice to all the hard work that everybody put in to make it happen.

Thank you so much for talking to us.

JURGENSEN: Thank you, Steve

BLUSTAIN: Thank you so much.

TRAUTMAN: Yeah. Thanks, Steve.