Hollywood Production

In mid-February, Duke assembled his post-production team and brought in editor Mike Dawson for their third consecutive collaboration, officially kicking off post-production for Independence Day. By his estimates, the process would take until early June at the absolute earliest; he had allocated a full four months for it.

In fact, if not for the incredibly tedious CGI compositing, Duke was confident he could finish all post-production work by May. Unfortunately, there were no shortcuts for special effects. The team at Industrial Light and Magic had been working on them since October of the previous year, but aside from completing the shots used in the Super Bowl commercial, the rest of the visual effects were still in their rough early stages.

Every aerial combat scene in the film required visual effects, and Duke also had to composite the actors into those CGI shots. Even though the model-making department had built 3,978 F-18 fighter jets, 52,278 pieces of debris, 3,931 alien spacecraft, 1,549 missiles, and 22,014 light orbs during filming, Independence Day still required nearly 4,000 CGI shots. It was a massive undertaking.

Because he had to coordinate with the special effects department, Duke's post-production progress was moving at a snail's pace. Furthermore, when it came to the actual effects production, he constantly felt as if he had plenty of energy but nowhere to exert it.

Computer effects involved incredibly tedious and highly specialized work. Duke could lay out his requirements and point out flaws in the finished scenes, but stepping in to do the work himself was completely beyond his capabilities.

As a result, after finishing his daily tasks, Duke had plenty of time to discuss the score with the composer. Originally, he had wanted to hire Hans Zimmer again to score Independence Day, but after The Rock, the German composer had signed a contract with Walt Disney to score The Lion King.

Duke wasn't too disappointed about missing out on Hans Zimmer. He simply brought in Skywalker Sound, known for their operatic scores, handing the music for Independence Day over to his former collaborators.

Throughout post-production, Duke never lost sight of safety, with fire prevention as his top priority. The benefits of working with both Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox simultaneously were also readily apparent. Almost no one dared use underhanded tactics to compete with the Independence Day crew. Very few people were impulsive enough to provoke two major studios at the same time. This was especially true for a project with a budget of over a hundred million dollars; anyone who crossed the line would face the full fury of Time Warner and News Group.

Compared to all the messy incidents during the making of The Rock, the entire process for Independence Day—from prep and filming to the current post-production phase—had been remarkably smooth.