The Oscar winner thinks like an artist but plans like a strategist. By Hank Sartin.

When we met him on a stopover in Chicago, Argentine director Juan José Campanella was ecstatic, but not because he recently won the Foreign Language Film Oscar for his thriller The Secret in Their Eyes. No, his delight came because he’d just gotten his hands on an iPad. In fact, he’d worked out his travel schedule and, seeing that he’d be in Chicago, he’d arranged to pick one up at the Apple Store. It says a lot about Campanella. A tech buff, he can talk at length about shooting The Secret in Their Eyes with a RED ONE digital camera, the darling of many filmmakers who love its ability to capture images with film-like richness. And he delights in solving logistical challenges, of which The Secret provided plenty.

Because the film switches back and forth between the early 1990s and the mid-1970s in Argentina, you might assume that one of those challenges was getting the look of the locations right. In fact, Campanella caught a break. Much of the film is set in the offices of the court system, where a retired office worker (Ricardo Darín) returns to poke around in a case from 20 years earlier that still haunts him. He’s also trying to work out, at long last, his feelings for his beautiful boss (Soledad Villamil). She’s a judge, and her chambers and her staff’s office look believably cluttered and chaotic.

“We shot in a working court office.… We shot from 6 until 1 in the morning. So we were supposed to leave it every day exactly the way we found it. Well, all we had to do was put the [computer] monitors on the floor, cover them with some files, and shoot. The production designer had an easy job on that location,” he recalls with a laugh. “But you know, I shoot Law & Order: Special Victims Unit [Campanella has directed numerous episodes] in the lower court offices, and it’s the same. You step into a time tunnel.”

Much of the film is shot in a subdued style befitting a psychological drama, but Campanella breaks loose for one bravura chase sequence at a soccer stadium. Starting with a helicopter shot from far above, the entire sequence seems to take place in one impossible shot that plunges us into the crowd, down ramps and finally over a wall as a suspect leaps at least 15 feet to the ground. When we ask him about it, Campanella lights up. “I have five minutes to make you feel something in a foot chase, something we’ve seen a thousand times. Obviously, it’s not one shot. You can’t go from the helicopter down to the bleachers. This was a logistic challenge. I have a saying: I can do well, fast and cheap. Pick any two. If it’s well and cheap, it’s slow. So we decided well and cheap, so it took us eight or nine months of post-production on that scene.”

It’s those kinds of challenges Campanella loves on both sides of his career. He directs television to earn a living, and does a feature film only when he feels inspired. It was almost five years between his previous feature, Luna de Avellaneda, and making The Secret in Their Eyes. “In both cases the fun is how to make the most out of the limitations.” In the interim, he made at least 20 television episodes for Law & Order: SVU, House and even 30 Rock. Does winning an Oscar change that balance? “If you tell me you’ve got the greatest film ready to start next month, I’d be like, ‘Oh no!’ I wouldn’t dare to say no, because I live with the freelance mentality, which is you never say no to a job. But at this time, I really want to slow down and see what I’m going to do next.”

The Secret in Their Eyes opens September 9.