Director/writer/producer Steve McQueen’s latest film,Blitz, follows the journey of George (Elliott Heffernan), a nine-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) sends him off to safely live in the English countryside during a pending German bombardment. George, however, is defiant and determined to return home to his mom and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller). Rita, a factory worker and aspiring singer, soon hears that he’s gone missing, and sets out to find him as London comes under fire.
McQueen’s team included Academy Award-winning production designer Adam Stockhausen, cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst and editor Peter Sciberras. Here, Sciberras shares with Post details on his first time working with the filmmaker, and how he put together some of the project’s most interesting sequences.
Photo: Editor Peter Sciberras
Hi Peter! Had you worked with Steve McQueen in the past? How did you get involved in this project?
“I had not, this was my first time, yeah. I guess the main contact main connection was Tanya Seghatchian, who produced The Power of the Dog. (She’s) known Steve for many years. She's a producer and one of those (people) who everyone respects. The film was looking for an editor, and I kind of got on the list and did an interview…I really got along with Steve and kind of understood the film.”
Was this before shooting started?
“It was close to shoot. The shoot hadn't quite started yet, but it was closer than usual. It was like a few weeks before.”
Photo: Director Steve McQueen during production
What kind of conversation did you have about the film. Did Steve McQueen have a specific editorial vision?
“We didn't really talk about [00:02:10]that. We kind of talked more about the human kind of story - the kind of relationships and the characters, and more the conceptual idea rather than the visual language or anything like that. It was kind of more about the humanity in the film, and the truth in the film is what he was really talking about. And then juxtaposing that with the epic scale of World War II.”
Are you working alongside production in the sense that you're dealing with dailies and putting pieces together as the film is being shot?
“Pretty much on the day kind of thing. Some days…I'm literally cutting it while they're shooting it to make sure we have everything, like the flood sequence and things like that. I was on-set. We're in the studio for that. Steve would actually pop in between takes and just kind of come and check it out and then go back…And then chatting with Steve very regularly. He really likes to have a chat with the editor and see what, what's happening and check out stuff while it's shooting.”
Where was your edit space set up?
“When we were on-stage, I had an edit suite, which was like a two-minute walk from set. When they were on-location - I wasn't. I would only go to location occasionally, so usually I'd have a an edit suite in Soho, and kind of be there and just receive dailies the old fashioned way.”
How much material are you receiving each? What was a typical day like and were they shooting multi-camera?
“It's never multi-camera. It's very much single camera…It all depends on what they're shooting. The dance club, for example, that was one of the rare multi-cameras, because there's just so many extras. (That would) be like a four-hour day. But the regular day, probably more like an hour, hour and a half. More like in the way you'd shoot on film – not just running and running. It was quite traditional in that sense.”
Was the film shot linearly as far as story?
“No, definitely not linear. I think the first thing I saw was actually the piano flashback, with all the family kind of coming around, and George is kind of learning how to play the piano, and Gerald's kind of teaching him. That's quite a loose scene. It was great for the chemistry of the three - kind of a good starting point. And, that was the first thing I put together. That and the subway dream sequence was one of the first shots I saw, which is when George walks into the tunnel, into Stepney Tube station, and the girls are singing, and there's all the extras. I hadn't seen the sets, so I kind of got a sense of the scale of the movie in that moment.”
Blitz isn’t necessarily a visual effects film, but there are a number of them. Can you talk about how that affected your edit?
“Mostly, it wasn't a ton of blue screen. There's some set stuff. A lot of it was Adam Stockhausen just kind of doing his thing, in-camera. So much of that was the bombs, and things like that. We kind of talked about what these things could be, and so they developed as we went. It wasn't even in the script. That was kind of very much part of the edit and VFX working together to figure those things out. And then the big the big tracking shot through the water.”
That is an interesting sequence that is used a few times in the film. It starts off very blurry and then the viewer realizes it’s the incoming bombers crossing the English Channel.
“There was no filming in that whatsoever. That's all (visual effects supervisor) Andrew (Whitehurst). That was Steve's brief to him. Essentially, as you know, it's something that starts out completely abstract and becomes more and more figurative as you as you get through the shot. And he kind of modeled that all himself upstairs, because we're all in the same building. VFX was at the top and sound was at the bottom. So we'd just talk about it, see versions and then can start cutting it, and then kind of got (the) timings. It was really an amazing sense that the edit and VFX and sound all blurred together on this, where we were kind of all working simultaneously on one thing. The bombs were the same…We kind of have this shot that Andrew put together for the start, and we were cutting the ballroom scene, and we kind of had the bomb on the way in, and we kind of needed to get out. And a cut to black really was really effective, so we kind of cut the black and then faded out. Then we had this shot that was floating around that Andrew had whipped up. And it was just this kind of plane, kind of cross in silhouette going through the air. And I kind of went, ‘What have we put that there?’ And then it reveals when the bombs go off that it's actually an aircraft. You see figuratively what happens.
“In nearly all those full VFX shots, (they) were very much coming out of the edit…with Steve and kind of going, ‘Okay, we need something here.’ And then, not only do we need something here, but we just kind of there's an element that we're missing, or there's a there's a tone that we want to find that we kind of need some help with.”
What does the script reference in case like that. It is something like, “bombs incoming?”
“Sometimes, or sometimes it's just a scene break, and it just goes into the next scene…One of the things that felt most important was to connect Rita and George. That's our through line. Their stories are so separate, but to feel their emotional connection all the time. So just shifting things around so that it always felt like it was a conversation between Rita and George. Even though they were in totally different places, they're quite connected in thought and through thinking about each other or through the circumstance. Seeing Rita in a certain situation kind of just kind of heightens that feeling of of tension and going, ‘What's going to happen to this boy and what's going to happen to Rita if something happens to this boy?’ You just kind of explore what raises the stakes? What raises the tension? It's a film set in London, with Londoners going about their business. Shots like those bombshells really put you back in the fact that we're at war.”
Tell us about your editorial setup? Are you using an Avid? Do you have assistant editors?
“Avid. Two assistants. A VFX editor.”
What were your assistants handling?
“Generally, just getting everything in in the early part before sounds on. Although we had sound come on really early on this because it was (the) kind of picture where you just needed the sound of the subway, so they started earlier than normally. But yeah, transcoding, getting dailies read, getting the continuity on the table, keeping up with all of that stuff. Communication, I think, beyond the nuts and bolts, is the number one job of a great assistant. The better they can communicate, (the better) they are at their job, like talking to set and just any anything that needs to be sorted. Being able to do it well and keep that fast is key.”
What resolution are you working at?
“We're at DNx136. It's HD, but quite chunky compared to (DNx)36. 36 is that kind of proxy version, and 136 holds together on a big screen a lot better.”
Is your media local or on some sort of cloud storage?
“This was this was all the first time I actually used this thing called Salon. The company that was renting us the gear has their own system, which is it's called Sync Box, because we were cutting in Amsterdam in Steve's suite, and in London here and there, so it kind of keeps up with everything. You don't need to carry around hard drives. It's essentially a remote working media station. Everyone's got essentially this box next to the machines, including the assistants, and it just constantly updates, which is amazing.”
Do you have a favorite scene?
“I really love when the film becomes kind of like a silent movie at the end - the flood. Essentially, from when George escapes from the robbers onwards. I just love the feeling of that sequence, the third act, essentially, how we enter a kind of slightly more abstract place, and then just sheer terror, which is always fun too.”
There’s another scene that was quite jarring, where the boys are in the train yard.
“That was a tricky one actually. That was a tricky one, just to get the timing right on that was really, really tricky. We kept on showing it to people to kind of see if we had just enough time for you to clock it without it being slow. It need to be like, blink and you miss it, but don't miss it.”
What's next for you?
“I'm taking a break. Starting to read a few things now. I do some commercials on the side, so kind of starting to do a few commercials here and there, and just spending lots of time with family.”