Original subtitles

And now let's talk about something that's very complicated

and very important to storytelling style.

So what constitutes editing style?

Editing style has to do with the rhythm of the cutting,

how fast you cut or how slow you cut.

When you decide to make a cut,

how you use insert shots.

When you cut to wide shots.

All of these elements factor

in to the style of the picture and the style of the storytelling.

In the case of Whiplash, we use a certain sort of nervous cutting,

fast cutting in order to make the audience feel like they have to keep up

or that they can't keep up with the speed of the story.

We use a certain type of nervous

cutting to create a certain emotion

with the audience, emotion that matches the emotion of the characters.

In the case of La La Land, we use more languid, a more languid pace,

we use slower cutting, we rely on longer takes, but then we punch in

for very specific moments to underline a thought.

These are all elements that factor into the style of the movie,

and these are all style choices that we make in the editing room.

In order to determine what the style of the picture is,

the editor and the director have to sit down and discuss.

What they're going for, what

the emotion is, and they have to answer certain questions.

The most important question is, what is the movie about?

What is the theme of the movie?

Style.

And in a way, editing style is, is, I think the reason that

a lot of people have noticed some of the films that I've worked on

because, you know, again, Damien Chazelle is someone who tells his stories

through the editing and it's through overt style.

And so the thing I want to mention

is just that initially,

even though he really knows what he wants, and even though he had

a certain sort of style in mind,

it's still evolved in the editing process.

You know, I've talked about how he's so detailed.

He does storyboards, he preplan so well, which he does.

Usually we put something together to his plan

and sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't work.

And that's when the two of us together come up with the solutions

to make it work.

And that's when I feel like my opinion is trusted.

And that's when I feel like he, as a filmmaker, looks to me as a filmmaker

and an editor to help figure out how we're going to make this story better,

how we're going to keep the emotion in the right place.

Andrew.

Drumming. They have a little exchange.

And then we cut to Andrew, who's dejected by the exchange.

He's he's depressed.

He feels like he's failed.

He walks into the city.

What we originally had, what Damien originally wanted was a very slow,

sort of moody, very depressed, very ominous,

slow,

brooding scene of him rocking in New York.

We did a cut of that and we screened it and it didn't really work.

I think the I think the filmmaker friend said, you know, this doesn't work.

You know, you're trying to be like David Fincher.

We changed it.

And this this this friend reminded us that other parts in our story

had we had energy, we had our own style.

There is this kind of manic energy.

And so that actually inspired us to cut it a little bit differently.

And a movie that I

saw that really, really inspired me and one that Damien and I

sometimes talk about is a movie by Oliver Stone called JFK.

And that's something that was very eye opening to myself

and very eye opening to a lot of ED friends, because

it used different film formats

in a way that was very overt.

It was shot in 16 millimeter, Super eight, 35 millimeter

video, all these different formats.

And the point of it was not to blend those things together.

The point of it was to have every different format,

be a different voice, tell a different story.

And it was the first time that that

that I had seen that used for a big Hollywood movie.

And I think the editing of it

is actually brilliant and now has become very standard in some ways.

So I just want to run a clip to illustrate what I'm talking about.

Oliver Stone knew that.

His storytelling was going to use editing.

And the Toomey.

There's Joe Hushing and Pietro Scalia, both brilliant film editors,

worked together to take hours and hours

of different types of footage, footage that was shot for the movie

and archival footage,

and in this case, the footage of

the assassination of President Kennedy.

That's an event

that was covered with home movie footage, with video footage,

documentary footage and.

I think Oliver Stone's editors knew that.

There would be all these different pieces

to work with and but the pieces would look different.

But if they cut the movie together in such in a certain way,

it would give it a certain sort of rhythm.

And I think the thing that's key about JFK,

which is different from movies in the past, is that

it was not the first movie to use

documentary footage or archival footage and recreated footage.

It's not the first movie to do that.

Certainly not.

But what would often happen with

those films is when you would show

something recreated and then you would cut to the real footage.

The archival footage.

The archival footage always would look more real

and would have more emotional weight.

More emotional weight than the recreation.

Something that JFK did and did so well, I think, is that

it cut the footage together in a certain way with a certain velocity

and a certain speed that actually gave every piece

equal weight.

And that's something that's very different than what had come before.