All language subtitles for Module 27

And now

let's look at the short film
version of Whiplash.

In terms of creating this sense of dread,

in terms of creating tension, in terms
of creating a monster.

Because the idea is that Damien
Chazelle really wanted this character

played by J.K.
Simmons, the character of Fletcher.

He really wanted this character
to to feel like a monster.

And how do you do that?

You do that in some cases,
by creating mystery.

There less is more.

We found that less was more
with the character of Fletcher.

And so that means that whatever you do see

has to either be scary.

Through J.K.

Simmons is performance
and or you have to see

that monster reflected
in the faces of these other characters.

Hopefully
it's through the character Vander,

but sometimes it's through other
characters.

In the case of that section of Whiplash,
it was through the faces

of the other musicians
looking uncomfortable, looking down.

The other thing
that should not be underestimated is

the power of juxtaposition.

It doesn't take that much in terms
of an expression,

in terms of a reaction
to feel something, to get a point across.

Just the nature of juxtaposing one shot,
a shot of of Fletcher

yelling or saying something and reacting
something and cutting to almost a neutral

or blank reaction sometimes still elicits
a certain feeling, a certain emotion.

This was kind of a new world.

And he knew that a lot of people
wouldn't really understand

and a lot of people
wouldn't really know it.

I think his feeling was a lot of people
would have preconceived notions about

musicians, musicians, jazz students.

And what was really important to
Damien was to to really give people

the same experience that he had
as a musician , which was life and death.

To Damian, it was his experience as a,

as a drummer was,
was scary, was nerve wracking.

He always described it to me
as something where he wasn't as good

as he wanted to be and that his hands,
his his his palms were always sweaty.

He was always feeling
like he was going to have a heart attack.

So it was really important to. To

Damien to really express that.

And he wanted to express
that through the film editing.

He wanted to show you that this character.

Really almost at times

could not keep up
with the pace of this teacher.

And so in a way,

he wanted to present the movie
stylistically

in a way that there are times
where the audience has a hard time

keeping up with what's happening.

Keeping up with what's happening
cinematically.

So early on.

He starts off.

In close up

and close ups.

As you can see from Damien's work
play a big part

in his storytelling more
so and Whiplash more so in First Man,

maybe a little bit less in la la land but

certainly in the whiplash short. So.

You start kind
of abstract, you start close.

You know, Damien

clearly has strong feelings for the drums,
the musical instruments.

He he he really almost fetishizes

these instruments,
the tools that you use to adjust

the instruments.

But again,

this this moment here was very important.

It was very exciting to us
because it was something that presented

a detail, a piece of texture of the world.

It's something that drummers
would recognize.

People who know this instrument
would recognize that.

And that was one of the most important
things that Damien

he wanted to create a movie,
whether it be the short film

or the feature film version
where musicians, drummers in particular,

he wanted them to be able to look at this
movie and say, That's realistic.

It would be his nightmare
to have someone not feel that way.

A drummer. And so.

The reason to have this

is to show texture of the world, but also,
as you can see, to start creating

a feeling, to start creating an emotion,
a rhythm and excitement.

And start playing with sound.

Again.

Damien's storytelling with no dialog,
showing looks.

We see this picture of this drum.

This this drum.

Great. Buddy Rich.

And then we see we see the reaction.

And the directive here was really to

have this almost be an avalanche,
an onslaught of all these musicians coming

in. He wanted in this instance,
he wanted to play

with all the little crosses, people
crossing back and forth.

But also, he made a point of filming
all these little details again.

A lot of this is about giving
texture to the world he loves seeing.

These guys

tuning up and playing the instruments,
but also to create a rhythm.

1075.

And here for the most part in this setup.

Quicker
cuts are things that Damien wanted.

He wanted to feel

not only to show detail,

but he wanted to set up this world
in a way that you felt overwhelmed.

You felt what the character
probably feels that you're

there's almost,
almost too many details to take in.

So the more cuts there are, the better.

And you save the moments where you can
linger on shots for a little bit

later.

And again, Damian really like the crosses
he like to punch in here.

This is a cheat. This is a

not just a cut,
but a little wipe that I did in the Avid.

And again, very, very important.

To set up.

These inserts, these little tools.

Details.

He wanted you to feel like
you were inside this world.

And for Damien, his way of doing
that would be through close

ups and details.

Always the looks,
the quick looks from from

from our lead character.

Not just to draw the eye,

but in some cases just for for rhythm.

And making a big point of this

to really set up a certain idea,

play up the clock, underline it, underline
it so much

that you're going to use
several cuts of it.

You're not just going to show one shot.

You're going to use several cuts.

Cuts to show how important it is.

It's it's it's it's almost it's
an exaggeration of how important it is.

And the important the importance is that

this teacher is so precise and so exacting

that he comes in exactly as this hand hits
that number .

Exactly.

So this is something Damien
really wanted to underline in a big way.

Play up the sound of it.

We're introduced to this character.

We're introduced

not in by seeing his face,
but in through fragments, through pieces.

You want to build up his mystery.

Now we can start to see them.

There's no.

And in some cases with the short.

Again.

We had a plethora of amazing material,
but sometimes we'd have to make do

and that means
we'd have to manipulate things.

We had to have to resize

images, we'd have to reposition,
we'd have to flop screen direction.

We would play around
with the speed of of moments.

I can't remember the reason,
but this is a shot of J.K.

Simmons, which we had to flop
the screen direction he was looking

the other direction, which which

didn't work for us. So we flopped this.

We're blessed.

And you build up the anticipation

by setting up.

And making this whole.

Process.

Complicated.

To show that it's a big deal.

It isn't just
that they're going to start playing.

You have to build it up.

And you build it up for the character,

for the main character.

This is his first day.

I don't know how to read sheet music
because I'm not a musician.

But by showing a triplet of those shots
and showing

a quick cut of those, you see that
there's something noteworthy about that.

There's something that is

that you need to pay attention to.

Again, other ways to

to build up,
to tee up and set up the tension.

Now that you've done a couple of quick
cuts, you see the instruments

and Damien is very good
at getting these little pieces.

Then that means you can hold on the wide
you can hold on this

you can hold on the face more importantly.

And you can hold on this.

Because what's going to come after

will be a quicker cut situation.

And Damien always wanted to.

Have this be?

Action oriented.

He wanted the music scenes to play
almost like an action scene,

and he knew that he would have to do that
through the editing

and through some of the camera movement,
but mostly through the editing.

And that an important moment to show

actually that he's having a hard time
keeping up and.

And this this a great reinforcement
because every time Damien's whole thing

was, every time Fletcher puts his fist
up to stop, that's like that's like

he wanted
that to feel like you're driving in a car

at 100 miles an hour, and all of a sudden
you switch it in a park.

That's what he wanted it
to feel like for the audience.

And so in order to really enhance
that, you tee it up with

with these quick shots of them
tapping their feet.

Quick shots.

Quick shots so that you can really payoff
the stopping.

His critique of that student is so fast,
it doesn't even.

It almost doesn't matter what he's saying.

It's so fast.

It's something you have to keep up
with again.

And these quick cuts to show that that

that our character
almost can't even keep up.

And these these shots here.

Not very quick shots, but shots that
we wanted to link in some way.

So I put a zoom on this one and on the
next one to make them kind of a couplet.

Needed something to bridge.

JC And then this shot here,
which we knew we would always linger on.

And that's the thing.

Even though. Damien.

Even though this is

a very low budget
film, Damien knew that there'd be moments

he wanted to do these shots where where
there would not be coverage for this.

This was a storytelling style
that he knew he wanted

for this moment.

In a very, very overt and.

Almost expressionist.

Cut here with the head turn.

Really.

So that, again,
you get that feeling that you're going

100 miles per hour and all of a sudden
you put the car in a park.

And Andrew is is jerked at the

at the braking at the stopping of this.

What?

You're involved.

And when you have an actor like J.K.

Simmons playing a very written

and a very overt role.

You can really hold on him.

You can really let him play out.

And we were lucky to have.

Really good extras.

Some of them were musicians,
real musicians, some were not.

But a lot of these shots,

we had great covers of them.

I just grabbed whatever moments

I thought looked.

Neutral in a way.

And the juxtaposition with J.K.

Simmons was often enough
to give an impression.

In other words, you didn't need that much
on the faces, the blank, or they were.

In a way, the better, because
it didn't seem like they were acting.

The most expressive person

is the the man playing Andrew,
an actor named Johnny Simmons.

No relation to J.K.

Simmons.

Nobody.

Play.

And so much of them,

so much of the emotion and the anxiety
and the terror comes from faces.

And here.

We wanted to go in tight
because this scene

basically is going to ride on this actor's
face. J.K.

Simmons, his.

His verbal attack

getting closer.

Like a monster.

His face getting bigger and bigger

and really juxtaposed
juxtaposing that with his face.

You're getting all the emotion,
all the anxiety just from this close up

from this guy's face.

And then this great shot
where you cut out this.

And the point here was just to stay

long enough,
just to rack focus, to see that Andrew

is seeing all of this, that he is

that he's witnessing this.

We don't want to have too long
just enough to react to it.

And then you get out of it.

This shot.

This is often
we found ourselves doing this

just to create more pieces.

This is a reaction we wanted.

And again, less is more.

You just want him to stay still and
and have the shifting of the eyes.

And sometimes that's all it takes.

You want something that is is,
you know, you're looking for nuance.

You're looking for subtlety
and performance for the most part.

And in this case,
we needed a shot of Andrew just looking.

Well, we didn't have enough of this.

We had just him looking.

We stole this from some place.

And so this is a shot
that where we're taking the footage

and we're rocking and rolling it back
and forth to essentially freeze

frame it, to hold it.

You can't do a freeze frame
because you're going to know

that you can be able to tell
that the footage is frozen.

So what you do is you take it and you
let it play out until it starts to change.

And we just would rocket and reverse
and for the same amount of frames

and then roll it forward
and keep doing that.

Keep holding it

until until you can actually until it's
as long as you needed to

and then you let it roll
and you can see the eyes move.

So this is something that we found
we had to do in a lot of different places.

But this is, you know, as editors,
we do that to get what we need

out of the emotion,
get what we need out of the characters.

So if you need to hold on a shot,
that means you might have to

have the shot up to a certain point.

And rocket reverse.

Sometimes will
slow stuff down, will slow shots down,

but you always want to do it in a way that
you don't notice that that's happening.

You want that to be invisible.

And this is.

This is.

When I think of editing

and I think of a lot of people say editing
should be invisible.

I do not always

agree with that because there are times,
especially in Damien Chazelle's movies,

where you want to feel the cuts
you cut for impact.

But I do think that you want the

you you want the performances
to be invisible,

you want the transitions,
you want that to be seamless.

So that's
I think there's a distinction there.

You don't want the.

You know what?

The performances,
the characters, emotions, the transitions,

you don't want that to feel discontinuous.

That should feel seamless. The arc.

And again here.

The important

thing to linger on the face. See,

see enough context
and would have been wide enough on this

so we can see that
other people are getting up to leave.

He's still sitting there
and then put a period on the whole scene.

Ended with the book close
and then you cut in again, cut in tight

for a little disorientation,
a little detail.

The most important thing to face.

Go to that.

And it's only when J.K.

Simmons comes into frame.

And again, this using this shot reinforces

this other characters
power reinforces the mystery.

Now we can cut out to the wide.

And we do a little cheat here.

We've cut a little bit of the head
off of this wide shot

so that he can get up much faster.

So it doesn't take as long.

We did. We
we cheated that action a little bit.

And when you change size differences
like that,

you get away with it
doesn't really matter.

Sometimes you can't

always match as well as you want to match.

But if it feels right emotionally,
you get away with so much.

And here, you know, as an editor,
this is something I really value

and love about.

Working on movies
is I love to work with great performances.

And so something as simple as this

two actors face is going back and forth.

I love working on things like that.

It's simple,
but I think it's such an important part

of what we do as storytellers.

And again, you try to make.

You try to make it seamless,
you try to make it.

This is where, as an editor,
you want to fall back.

You want to. You want to be out of you.

So some
of these things, I mean, these days

you do whatever you need to do to make

this drama between the two actors work.

So in some cases, that means
that we have to retain the performances.

We want more of a pause on something.

So that means that we might have to
do a split screen.

We split the screen
because we want the character

on the right side of the frame
to react faster or slower.

We don't have that on the dailies,
but we think it's the right thing

in the moment, in the scene.

So these are things that you editors
used to not be able to do.

We used to not be able to manipulate
the image that way.

Now we can do it and we do it.

It's.

Probably, you know, Charlie Parker

Burke. So.

And here we stay in the singles.

And then you do want to change it up.

You change you for a different
where the conversation turns.

You go into this shot,
this wide shot, the two shot.

And you get to ride on this for all.

You stay on it. Now we come in.

Now we come in to emphasize something.

He tells him to relax.

He tells him, just do it by the numbers.

You're here for a reason.

If we hadn't gone out to the wide.

The importance of of this little exchange

would not be as clear.

That's why.

Pre lap the

the rehearsing to finish that scene

the pre lap is a nice way to get into it

and here the shot used to continue.

But all we needed to do is have the look.

And cut in for a little time. Cut.

Moving in.

And this is something that basically plays
silent.

But you can you have the tuning
so you can play that underneath.

And then you basically cut in
right on the court,

you have that door sound
and that lets you go back to go from

something where it's very dreamy
and where where Andrew is in his head.

You go back now to real time where?

Even.

Okay.

Again.

We're wider.

You punch in to emphasize the look.

He's a little
you're a little tighter here.

And then, look, you. You set this up.

He's ready.

Set up a little anticipation.

And now we get into this exchange,
these exchanges back and forth.

And now.

You want to.

He says he's impressed.

J.K. Simmons is impressed.

And then we cut in.

You want to emphasize this? Underline.

So now we cut in tighter.

Important to cut in tighter.

To really underline the smile.

Why? Because we want to show that he's
uncomfortable or that he's comfortable.

We want to show that he is relieved

and happy that he's succeeding.

He's in his element.

He's virtuosic.

Now we pull back so that we.

So that we sense

that there is a change happening.

In this hand coming up to stop.

That's something
that we played around with coming.

Do we see it from behind him?

Do we see it in front?

That was something that always

we were very careful about
and had to play around with that

to make sure to make the cut work
in a certain impactful way.

But here is where we, for the most part,

stay in this size.

Back and forth.

One shot, one answering the other.

And often as editors,

we try to engage

the audience,
keep them interested in one tool.

One way we do that is by.

By avoiding redundancy.

We change things up, we change the rhythm,
we change the sizes.

We come out to a wide shot.

We do it so it doesn't feel like
we're being repetitive or

or so that we see that things are changing

in this scene.

The redundancy is the exact thing
that we're trying to do,

and that's something
that was very important to Damien.

The whole point
is to stay in the same size

as you don't want to alternate, you don't
want to make the audience comfortable,

you want to build a big build
with these spare units.

And by staying in these same sizes,

you're going to feel the cuts more,
you're going to feel the redundancy.

It's when you go to the other sizes
that actually

you start hiding the cuts, you start
making the audience feel comfortable.

So there's a way that when you repeat
something, you feel

the cuts more and you feel uncomfortable.

Now there is a change.

We go in tighter because now, Sam, now

his playing is working.

J.K. Simmons seems to like it.

And you come out

of course,
you come out wide for for impact

because you really want to sell this chair
being thrown.

And this cutting wise,
we could be a little messy here

and play around with speed.

Speed this up and then this shot
when the chair is thrown down here.

We repositioned and

moved the image around to enhance the
what appears

to be the camera being hit by the chair,
the camera feeling the impact.

We made it messier.

We did that in the editing,
so we moved the picture around.

So that little wobble that that that shake

is added later.

Now we can hold.

We can hold on this.

And now.

Again.

You're the gold in
the scene is the is this character's face.

The panic.

And the terror.

You know, when?

Sometimes.

You know, what you're trying to do
is you're trying to implement theories

that you have.

We we feel that

if we cut this way and that way, that's
going to elicit a certain response.

And hopefully you're right,
sometimes that works.

But the other thing to keep in mind is, is

when you have great moments
in performance,

that will change the way you edit,
that will change your plan.

And so when you have dailies like this,
when you have a shot like this, a two shot

where you have this great performance
by both characters,

but especially by Johnny Simmons,
where you really see the terror growing

and growing and growing.

That's going to tell you
as an editor to not cut this.

This shot is working, stay in it,
and it's going to be more powerful.

What do people do now?

Was I mentioned or was I right?

Right?

I don't know.

Start counting again. What?
Two, three, four.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three,
four, five.

Rushing or dragging.

So you know the difference.

And again, simple coverage.

But now you go back and forth
and it's about matching the performances.

It's about finding the best moments
that express

this emotion.

And interspersing it with within search
shots of the music coming in.

That's just a little detail.

That's just something to add.

More complication to it.

And again,

when you have these strong performances.

You stay in it
because what you're looking for

as an editor are these transitions,
these pieces of performance, where you see

the characters face
go from one place to another.

Those things you want to clock,
those things you want to see.

Finally you break out.

You get out of your singles, your closest.

Just to show, to remind the audience
with a quick

cut of these characters are stolen
for this moment.

These shots were not shot
or intended for this.

These are reaction shots

that we stole from other places
and other pieces of the footage.

They could have actually even been
I don't remember.

They could have been footage pieces before
Damian yelled, Action.

We stole them to open up the room
and remind the audience that

during this whole exchange,
this terrible exchange, uncomfortable.

The whole room is watching this.

We just push. We do this push.

You hear the music playing.

The camera continues to push and push
and push on Andrew's face.

And we see how gutted he is.

We see how we see how broken he is.

And Damian
really wanted to linger on that. Well,

after we

screened it for our producers,
we talked about and we realized that

actually
that is not the best way to end it.

The best way to end
it is to basically go out early,

leave the audience wanting more.

We've made our point.

Set it up. 516.

Something,

just something simple like that actually

was something we kept in mind
and something that really informed us.

Not only informed.

How the feature version of the scene
was going to be, but

really informed how Damon was going to end
the feature film.

It really said a lot about how.

We should end scenes in general
or what was it?

Remind us of what was important
and what wasn't important.