Behind the scenes: The Lost Bus

IBC

article here

White knuckle ride disaster movie with burning environmental message plotted by editor William Goldenberg and director Paul Greengrass

Despite best efforts to contain the wildfire engulfing the Northern Californian town of Paradise, the local fire chief, exhausted, admits defeat. At a press conference he declares, “We're creating more fires, bigger fires, every year. We are being foolish.”

It’s the nearest The Lost Bus comes to damning us all to hell for the environmental damage that helped turn Paradise into a tinderbox in the real life story depicted in the film.

“We went back and forth with this line and almost took it out but then when the fires happened in the Palisades and Eaton we just had to leave it in,” explains William Goldenberg, the film’s editor about the wild fire that destroyed large areas of Santa Monica in Los Angeles last January.

At the time, Goldenberg was in postproduction on The Lost Bus with director Paul Greengrass.  “We were very worried. I was wondering if my house was still there, which it was, but I got lucky. I have a lot of friends who lost homes, but life goes on.”

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company were found culpable for the 2018 Paradise fire which cost dozens of lives, caused an estimated $16.5 billion in damage and for which PG&E had to pay $13.5 billion in restitution - as the film makes clear in an onscreen coda.

“We didn’t want to cross the line into preachy or being too on the nose but it was also too important to leave out,” Goldenberg says. “I appreciate the fact that Paul, as a writer, is able to have this strong message in the movie without hammering you with it. First and foremost this is a great yarn and a movie celebrating heroism.”

The Lost Bus recounts the events from the point of view of Kevin, a bus driver played by Matthew McConaughey, and Mary, a primary school teacher (America Ferrera) and their attempt to save 22 children from fire in the forested and hilly neighbourhood.

It is filmed with the signature kineticism that Greengrass brought to the Bourne franchise and Captain Phillips with shaky handheld camerawork and rapid cutting that intend to leave the viewer with the feeling of fighting for air.

“Paul and I are instinctual filmmakers,” says Goldenberg who won the Oscar for editing Argo. “We’re constantly asking, ‘Is it exciting? Are we getting the story across? Can we tell multi-layered stories at the same time as being clear?’ You use your best instincts but you can never know what's in the mind of someone else.”

The first third of the film establishes the geography of the forested and residential area including where Kevin’s yellow school bus is in relation to the fire, the evacuation zones and how quickly the fire grew out of control. It’s a constantly shifting series of events that underlines the scale and force of the natural disaster.

Test screenings were invaluable as a way of checking if the audience were too disoriented by the blizzard of information presented via maps, TV and radio reports and first responder communications.

“You're constantly surprised by what people get and what they don’t,” Goldenberg says. “A lot of times what you think might be clear is just confusing and other times something you think is going to be completely confusing, people say, ‘No, I saw that one blink of an eye and I knew exactly what they were thinking.’”

For all the apparent complexity of the edit the story itself is a simple ticking clock of survival. “The fire crew are trying to put the fire out. He's trying to save the kids. At a basic level, even if you don't get every detail, you understand the story.”

An example of the complexity with which Goldenberg had to grapple is a scene of first responders gathering around a large table to coordinate their response to saving life. Greengrass shot it in one set up with all the characters talking at the same time.

“Everybody is individually miked but when you hear the mix track you can't hear a thing. It’s just noise,” relays Goldenberg. “There’s at least seven people around that table talking at the same time so you have to watch the dailies seven times because you have to listen to the Chief’s dialogue and then the deputy chief’s dialogue and so on. There will be a gem of dialogue that you might miss otherwise.”

Greengrass shot several scenes in this fashion to encourage improvisation from a cast that included actors (such as Yul Vazquez playing the fire chief Martinez) and non-actors like John Messina playing Martinez’ deputy and himself a former fire fighter who actually led the response to the original fire on that day. Goldenberg also interweaves about 15 shots of real news footage from the Paradise fires.

“We had a tonne of video from mobile phones but the vertical format kind of pulled us out of the movie so we rejected those whereas video shot in landscape format blended better.”

A scene in which Mary leaves the bus to go find water for the children is depicted almost entirely with black silhouettes against the dark orange of the blaze.

“At this point they are inside the smoke column and all daylight is blocked out. It was supposed to be impressionistic and abstract.  We added a lot of smoke and the sparks and embers in post because  obviously we couldn't have real fire around those kids. We were able to dial the effect up or down to make it experiential because that's what it is really like if you’re in that situation. Some of the shots were spectacular but we also had to trim it down and use the pieces that were the most story illustrative. The pieces of film that would tell the story the best.”

Goldenberg was finishing work on his directorial debut Unstoppable for Amazon when filming began on The Lost Bus. Two other editors worked with Greengrass to assemble dailies and to cut the first pass.

These were Paul Rubell, with whom Goldenberg had worked on Miami Vice (2006) and whom Goldenberg says has a similar editing style, and Peter Dudgeon who assisted Goldenberg on two previous films for Greengrass, 22 July and News of the World.

“While they were shooting, I was constantly looking at dailies and giving feedback because I didn't want to just drop into the production cold without having seen anything. Every weekend, Paul would send me a cut, and I'd watch it or he’d send scenes as they got bigger and bigger which I’d give feedback on. When they were finished shooting I took over and did the post-production part.”

This included integrating the sound effects of the fire and the score by James Newton Howard. “As we're cutting supervising sound editors Rachael Tate and Oliver Tarney are delivering us tracks. They're taking scenes and cleaning up the dialogue because in production there were a lot of fans and bus noise rendering some of the dialogue inaudible. We'd give the cut to Rachel and Oliver for cleaning and it would come back and we could magically hear it all.”

According to Goldenberg, this process happened earlier on in postproduction than is normal. “What generally happens is that you only get here to the sound mix on the dubbing stage and it wastes a lot of time. Here, Oliver and Rachael got going right away so by the time we were start screening for people we had a nearly fully developed soundtrack.”

The same happened with the score. Newton Howard, who also composed for News of the World, began writing as soon as principal photography had finished. “We were constantly putting his material in, giving him feedback and developing it so the sound of music has a chance to evolve, as opposed to being added right at the end of the process.

Goldenberg says the concept for the film’s music was to begin with it feeling very subdued and as the film goes along, it grows and swells with the emotion “so by the end we're playing the music full-on but hopefully it just kind of evolves naturally.”

As propulsive as the action is there are moments in the film when the camera is still and the soundtrack falls silent, such as when Mary and Kevin try to comfort each other in their darkest hour.

“In film theory they call this dynamic range,” he says. “Part of the job as an editor is to figure out where the film needs to stop and breathe and where it doesn't. If you go like a freight train all the way through then it's going to get boring. So, we're very conscious of having those moments for the audience to come up for air before we go dive down again.”

Filming fire in magic hour

The initial plan was to make the film virtually, on a Volume stage. Greengrass envisioned something with the immersive scope of the Sphere in Las Vegas.

“That was my first instinct. I went to see the U2 show at the Sphere and it was absolutely extraordinary. You're in this huge theatre with a wrap-around screen and you feel like you're in the desert.”

Given all the safety issues with fire and a cast of kids, shooting on a stage seemed to be the only way to do it. They made lots of tests and were pretty far along the process when Greengrass got cold feed.

“I just felt it wasn't who I am as a filmmaker,” he says. “It didn't feel ultimately real enough for me.”

Instead, they located the production at an abandoned campus in Sante Fe (New Mexico) in an area several times the size of Pinewood Studios. It had roads and the space to drive a bus, create traffic and lay gas lines to burn controllable jets of fire.

The fire from the gas burners was augmented in CG at facilities including Cinesite. VFX Supervisor Charlie Noble had his team photograph lots of real fires to add to the authenticity of fire enveloping a landscape.

The last piece of the jigsaw was shooting a story in lighting conditions which to be realistic to the experience of huge wildfires, blocked out the light. “It's like being in a deep, deep eclipse,” describes Greengrass.

The solution was to shoot in the 90 minutes or so of fading light at dusk. With cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth (July 22) they rehearsed sequences with the actors including all safety procedures and gas burner FX during the day then shot three takes consecutively in magic hour. The entirety of wildfire sequences, which is most of the film, were shot this way.

Goldenberg says, “They would rehearse during the afternoon and then do really long takes with multiple cameras, maybe two or three passes, and then it got too dark. They would also shoot their rehearsals and stuff that was really too dark but that sometimes we were able to use.”

For Greengrass this truncated film window “created a rawness and immediacy, almost like a stage play where you can only perform once.”

“It gave the film a live, visceral quality — you really feel like you’re on that bus with them.”