All language subtitles for Module 41

And now

let's talk about how we alternate
Mia and Sebastian storylines,

what we call checkerboard
ing in La La Land.

And Damien was very inspired by the movie

Citizen Kane for this sequence
in the movie Citizen Kane.

There's a scene at a breakfast table

where two people start off
sitting close together at the table.

They're in love and.

There is a montage of back and forth
between the two of them

and by the end of the montage,
by the end of the sequence of time cuts,

they're sitting at a long, long table

with one person on one end

and one person there on the other end.

And it's to show
that this relationship has disintegrated.

And so Damien was inspired to do that
with this sequence,

to really show the disintegration
of this relationship. So.

He wanted
to checkerboard these two stories.

This was always part of his plan.

This was something that we a moment
that we added.

A beat that we added we.

Put it on a laptop.

We did this in the editing room.

We did this in post.

This was not scripted this way.

This was meant to go someplace else.

And we put this footage into a laptop.

To also tell you story wise

that Sebastian and his band
were getting a certain amount of success.

They were starting to become known.

And then, of course, this moment
is to show that the movie theater

they went to on a date
that Ryan and Emma went to is now closed

. And.

We start checker boarding

these two lives
to show these two separate lives.

When one is asleep, one is awake.

When one is awake, one is asleep.

And there was a moment where
when we worked on a couple of versions.

We thought it made sense to end the scene.

On this last image of

Ryan Gosling lying alone.

And there was a cut
we did where, where, where

we ended the number that way.

And it was very effective

because you felt how alone he was.

There was something very sad to see him
just lying in the bed.

So we had a version where we ended it
that way.

But then.

We realized that it might be stronger
if we actually

went back to them singing together,
which is what we have now.

So what we realize is when we transition,

we dissolve back to them singing together.

And they're still in a place of.

Of happiness.

And they look at each other,
they interact.

They're sitting very close together
by cutting back to them.

You add a commentary

by cutting back to them, you see how far
you really see how far they've come.

It reminds you of where they used to be
and how they're not at that

same place anymore.

So it seemed more fitting
to come back to them

with the new information we've just seen.

And we ended with something
that's very abstract.

You don't know what it is,
but it's some sort of cheering.

And we cut it in a way.

And this is how Damien designed it.

But we cut it in a way where you just see
fragments.

You just see fragments.

First you hear the sound of this concert,
and then you just see a spotlight

and you start seeing pieces of it.

We don't know exactly what it is,
but now we see

Emma is there and it's clear
that they're at some sort of concert,

but we still don't know exactly
the full extent of what we're looking at.

Oh. And now

this,
of course, was done to a prerecorded track

because of the complexity of the number.

And here again

as I mentioned before,
and I don't think I can over stated

this scene is heavily reliable
or reliant on

on the faces,
especially Emma Stone's face,

because you really feel the changes.

The idea was first you would see that

Mia's character and Sebastian's character.

Are looking at each other.
And she's happy.

She's happy for them.

And Sebastian is is kind of happy
with where he's at.

And the idea the plan was to show that

Sebastian remains happy and that the

the concert itself evolves
into something that you don't expect.

It turns into something

that was intimate to begin with, with

smaller singing,
and it turns into a whole big number.

And that's something that we try to make
clear that Mia is uncomfortable with.

She doesn't know what that is anymore.

And the fact that Sebastian.

Is comfortable with
it makes me even more uncomfortable.

So these were things that were important
to get across these points,

and it was important
to get them across to the faces.

In this sequence,

Damian wanted to feel a little bit
more like whiplash.

Not in an overt, extra fast way.

But this is a scene that could be cut.

It could have a certain amount
of muscularity

in terms of the cuts.

Damian wanted it to feel,

especially when Mia got uncomfortable.

She wanted it to have an energy
that was different

than what had come before.

She wanted it to.

He wanted it to feel somewhat vulgar

in a way.

And again, the faces,
the importance of the faces.

We have to clock that. That

this choreography, these

other dancers coming out.

We see from the face that.

Mia's character is

doesn't
quite know what to make of this yet.

But then it's important
that we check in with Sebastian

and see that he actually likes it.
He's enjoying it.

And that makes me even more uncomfortable.

And the moves, these pushes.

Damien really wanted to focus on them
a certain way.

And and again, have them

have a different sort of energy.

He wanted it

to be flashy and overt and garish
the way the lighting is and the way

the choreography of those dancers is.

And somewhere in here,

he really wanted to have a flurry of cuts.

To tee up again
to allow us to earn this moment

where we can hold
just a little bit longer on Mia's face

for her final reaction.

And of course, Damian designed it
in such a way that

when we cut to her face, there's a moment
where the lighting changes

and it goes blue.

And that's exactly the sort of thing
that that is important to Damien.

And those are the sort of things
he plans really well.

But in the editing room, he's very intent

on having that timing
be precise at a certain point.

And there's a way
that when we do these cuts,

when we cut to the overhead,
when we cut to these dancers

twirling around,
this is a place where Damian wanted

to build a crescendo
in one of these shots to be very short

so that you barely see
you barely get all of the action.

The point is not to get all of the action,
because there's a moment

with this crescendo where Damien wanted
the cuts to be overwhelming.

And now we can stay in this long shot

that moves over here
across all these people to.

To Ryan.

And again, we can hold on the face.

And now it's all about Ryan Gosling space.

He's happy with where he's at.

He looks around,

but we don't answer it with a look from

Emma Stone
because it's not about Emma Stone anymore.

It's all about Ryan's character.

She's no longer with them.

And it was important for us to build

the sound of this,
to build this to this shocking cut.

So the cheering that we build.

We spent a lot of time working on that

in the mixing stage.

And that was really important
to Damien to get right,

because he wanted the idea of this
season fall to be pivotal.

Because it's

saying that something
we're moving into a different.

Part of their story,
a different part of their relationship.

So we won't cut to something
that's immediately bad afterwards.

But whatever we're going to cut to

is is going to feel different
than what came before.

And it's key.

The way Damien designed this,

that we do not go back to Emma Stone,
that we stay on Ryan.

The idea is that
instead of the previous scene

where we see them together
in the same frame,

we see them in a two shot at the piano
sitting together.

The idea is here,
they're apart, they're fragmented.

And that's the whole point of,
of, of the editing style.

It's pieces.

Whereas what came before is something
that is whole, something that's one.

So there's a way that Damien wanted to use
the editing style to illustrate this.