All language subtitles for Module 32

And now

let's look at the climactic
ending of Whiplash.

What comes next, which is in the story.

Andrew has quit drumming the way

a character might quit, quit taking drugs
or quit drinking.

It's his addiction, the drumming.

So he's he's stopped it. He's given it up.

But he's just been lured back by Fletcher.

And he's he's considering this.

And that's when we see him open his closet

door to his drums, which he has given up.

He's vowed to give up.

He's put them away, supposedly forever.

But now that changes
and he pulls them out again.

Well, that used to be.

A longer sequence.

He used to actually take out the drums.

We see him here
considering we used to have

a reverse where we actually push in
and we see the drums.

We had a whole sequence of Andrew building
the kit back up again.

We also had a scene where he sits
at the drum kit and he actually starts

rehearsing and Damian shot
that and we cut that and we had that.

And that scene of him rehearsing

in his own room actually transitioned

to rehearsing with Fletcher

and with other musicians at Carnegie Hall.

Fletcher leaves and says,

Good job to Andrew, which in the

story we've established is.

It's an insult.

And Fletcher's talked about this
with Andrew.

And so the scene was meant to make you
as an audience member, feel uneasy.

Andrew's accepted the job
he's going to play,

but Fletcher's being misleading
is being confusing.

Is he playing mind games?

So it was intended to sound to Tim
to make you feel uncomfortable.

Well, at this point in the story,
it just seemed to make more sense

to get to the end of the story.

And so we did a lot of compressing here.

And because of the style
we had set up earlier with the inserts

and with certain types of transitions.

We felt that we could actually use

some shorthand
to cut through these moments.

And we also felt it very important

to save the drumming for the end

because there's going to be
a lot of drumming at the end.

So we didn't feel that it was necessary
to see him starting to

practice or rehearse.

We pre lap it's Andrew the phone call.

Oh. Hey.

Where?

Miles Teller in law

calls.

I talked to Nicole.

Who? He.

Earlier broke up with Anna in a terrible,

very cruel way.

And now he has some second thoughts.

He tries to connect with her again.

I know.

As I tried to check on my boyfriend.

So this is

a great example of

trying to make every cut count.

And this is a scene
where Damian wanted to stay on

the single shot of Miles Teller.

Walking through the room,

walking through the space.

Disappearing in the frame.

Stay with the frame.

And then at the appropriate moment,
that's when you cut in.

You don't cut in earlier.
You don't cut it later.

You wait for that line.
You wait for that line where she says,

Oh, I basically I don't

know if I can come because
I'd have to check with my boyfriend.

That's a line
that you want to have impact.

That's emotional.
That's the place where you make your cut.

That's where you punch in.

I'd like to check with my boyfriend.

Ban that has impact.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now you've put the cut in the right place.

Now you can hang on this shot.
Just hang in his face.

Let his performance
carry the rest of it for money.

Okay.

Well, I guess they are.

And what came after this?

Was a lengthier scene of Andrew

getting ready to go to this concert.

There was more material of Miles Teller

getting ready, getting dressed,
and what we used to have,

and this is based on Damien's
original script

we used to cross-cut Intercut.

Andrew

Getting ready for the concert and Fletcher
getting ready to the concert.

And that's because earlier in the movie.

We used to parallel
cut their stories more.

There were more elements to Fletcher's
story.

More details, I should say.

We see Fletcher at home eating alone.

It was more color for the character.

Well, in our goal, to make Fletcher

more mysterious, we removed a lot of those
beautiful moments.

There were beautiful moments
performed by J.K. Simmons.

J.K. Simmons writing alone on the subway
in New York City,

him in his apartment alone,
all these great little character details.

Well, it didn't serve what we wanted to
do, which was to make

the character of Fletcher scarier,
more intimidating.

The best way to do
that was to make it more mysterious.

So we removed earlier scenes in the movie,
and we remove this section,

this interchange,
which used to show Andrew getting ready

more going out onto the street
in New York, intercut

with Fletcher,
actually walking in the street,

walking down into the New York City subway
and and then approaching Carnegie Hall.

We used to see Andrew approach
Carnegie Hall and he saw Fletcher.

He sees Fletcher go inside
Carnegie Hall first.

And so there was a time in the script
and in the cut

where we wanted to play with that.

But by this point, less is more.

And so we're able to just
use these inserts to tell our story.

These inserts are the glue that holds
the previous scene and the next

scene together.

And we could do
that because we've established a language

with these closeups, these details,
these inserts, the Band-Aids.

And with the zip,
that's that always makes a good cut

because there's a nice edge to it.

And now you've.

You can now you can earn this wide shot
to establish

where this concert's being taking place.

This scene is really
the reason he wanted to make the movie.

He wanted to to show this battle
between the two characters.

A battle with music being the weapon and.

It really was the reason
he made the movie.

He was not afraid to really commit to it.

And it's a very long sequence.

It used to be longer.

But Damien always said
that he would rather

the scene be excessive,

then be shorter and forgotten.

So he really was committed to this scene
storyboards.

He had animatics that he had created
a very primitive

sort of animatic set to a musical track.

He had put it together himself
with these crude storyboards he drew.

He put them in the final cut
pro and made this, um, this

rough plan for this sequence.

And so I use that as my template
when I got the footage,

when the footage came in.

I cut it really to try to match

as best I could.

The way he had mapped it out.

This scene here.

Where his father.

Greets him.

This used to be a more complicated scene.

His father greets him
and basically said, Let's go home.

And what happened

in the original script
and the way they shot it?

These two security guards approach

and they interrupt this scene
between the father and the son

and and they say, excuse me,
you're not supposed to be back here

talking to the father.

And they look at Andrew and they said,

Is this man with you?

And Andrew takes a moment of beat.

And he looks at his father who says,
Come on, son, you're done.

Let's go home.

And he says to the guards, No, he's not.

And then he turns around and walks
back out.

It really was was just

it was just too much and it was too long.

And again, we found less is more.

You know,

the moment between the father
and son seem like it would be enough.

So the first thing we did
was we cut out the other characters,

we cut out the security guards,
cut out the men who came into the frame.

And then the next thing we needed to do
was just

come up with a line of dialog
that would motivate Miles Teller

to change his mind
after he's left the stage,

after he's been humiliated,
what makes him go back on stage?

So we tried to come up with.

A line that would really motivate

Andrew to change his mind
and walk back out to face.

Fletcher.

And we tried so many different things
and we thought we had it easy

because we were on the dad's back
so we could cheat a line of dialog.

And so we had his father say,

Good Job, which was based on

what Fletcher said earlier, was an insult.

We had him say, You're done here.

We had him say a whole bunch of things to
to motivate him turning around.

And they all were terrible.

They all seemed to specific.

The more specifically specific

we got with the line, the less credible
it seemed emotionally.

And so basically we ended up taking out
all the dialog entirely.

And so what you have here
is purely based on looks

and purely

cinematic.

We hope.

But you know.

So he doesn't need to say anything.

So you just see that.

You see the looks.

And this is the power of suggestion.

The power of juxtaposition.

You assume that there's something inside
Andrew.

The changes
he decides he makes a decision.

You don't hear the decision.

There is no decision.

But you as an audience member
come to that conclusion.

But you could even see him.

When he turns, you can even see him

looking at one of the security guards.

I didn't know.

For this.

Damien really wanted this to feel like
Anders made the decision

to go out in a blaze of gunfire.

Almost like the end of the Wild Bunch,

the Western by Sam Peckinpah,
which ends in a bloodbath.

So this is where all this scene is,
where all the all the rhythms,

all the inserts, all the fast cuts,
all the muscularity.

This is the place where
all of what we've introduced before

is going to come into play here.

And this is where.

Speed is your friend.

This is where

jarring cuts are your friend.

This is where you try to play
every trick in the book.

And also they're very short shots.

As are many shots in the scene.

So we got away with a lot of manipulation

in that way in this scene
when we needed to.

But again,
always at the service of the story

of the moment.

And you know,
when we followed the animatic,

the boards for the scene.

What we realized

was that the scene played fast.

And this is adding a an avid zoom, a push.

In that shot, we found that
when we played this, it had no soul.

It was not organic.

It felt mechanical
when we just matched the animatics.

And the thing that really started to make
this scene play

was when we went through
Damian and I went through and looked

for all of the best performance pieces,
all the great faces and looks

that we could find
from Miles Teller and Fletcher.

And that goes back to something
I've I've touched on and talked about

that I think is really important,
at least in terms of what I believe.

I feel like great action scenes
that I get invested in

are heavily
reliant on the performances of the actor.

They're heavily character based.

So Damien and I spoke about scenes

that we admired, scenes
like boxing scenes from Raging Bull.

We spoke about the famous car
chase in the movie The French Connection.

And what is key about a movie
like in a scene like the car chase

in the French Connection
is that there is amazing.

Pyrotechnics there.

That is to say, there's amazing
stunt work.

There's amazing car work in it. But.

What really gives a scene like that

value is the face of the character
in the scene.

In that case, the actor Gene Hackman.

And half of that scene is Gene
Hackman space.

His performance, a performance
which he won an Academy Award for.

And without that face,
without that performance,

you have something that really does
not function organically.

You don't have a scene that is emotional.

You have something forgettable
when you have the right performance in it.

It makes it timeless.

So we really considered that and thought
a lot about that for this scene,

because Damien is so brilliant
at shooting great shots,

moving shots, shots

that are muscular and virtuosic,

but they really have no value
if the scene is not about the characters.

So we spent.

A lot of time.

Most of our time.

Most of our time.

Teeing up
these looks between the two characters

looking back and forth,
most of the picture of Miles Teller

drumming is Miles Teller in the picture

actually drumming.

So Damian did a great job of teeing up.

Certain.

Camera moves.

And like such as this.

Such as teeing up this move.

Which we always knew
we would tie up with pieces.

So that's why you do a punch in a cut in
like this on this.

On this trumpet.

Because you want to
then be able to stay in the shot.

And again, all about the looks.

This has no value without the looks.

So we had an abundance

of beautiful shots
that we could go to, which Damian planned

very meticulously plan to go to this pan
or this or this move.

That's something that a lot of that
was pre-planned.

But where exactly we made the cut
and what frame and how it was surrounded

by performance is just something Damian
and I found together in the editing room.

But he also, again,

looks extremely important.

Not only do
we have to have the two characters

relate to each other
and look for those moments.

And those moments were not always clear.

We had to scrub through
all the performances to find a look here.

Look up there. And and. And

a look there.

But it was also really important to

show both characters
and their character arcs.

In the case of J.K.

Simmons, in the case of Fletcher,
he needed to start in a place of anger

because his band was being hijacked,
his concert was being hijacked,

and he had to go to a place of of approval

because he likes
he starts to like hearing.

He starts to like what he's hearing.

And in the case of Andrew,
he had to go from a place of anger

and wanting to fight back

to a place where he becomes transcendent,
where he becomes

the drummer
that he's always dreamt of becoming.

He becomes he becomes one of the greats.

So it was really important
through their faces

to track that performance and to clock in
at the right moments to show that.

And these insert shots.

Damian again shot

a whole day of insert photography.

That we knew
we would only use tiny pieces of.

Sometimes these overhead drum shots.

I would flip the screen directions.

So sometimes he's facing one way.

Sometimes he's facing another way,
depending on how things cut together.

Something that played heavily
into the cutting of the sequence

were shots that answered one another.

If we had a shot where something was going
in one screen direction,

we would try to answer it with something
going in the other screen direction.

That's something
that was important to Damian.

That's something that touches on
the Russian filmmaker from the Silent Era.

Sergei Eisenstein.

Sergei Eisenstein
always believed in, in, in editing,

being visible,
cutting things so that there would be

conflict, so that you

would have one image facing one direction,

and then you would smash against an image
going in the other direction.

This right here, these pans

Damien did do in camera,

but we mixed and matched different takes.

We had cuts within the pans
or right before the pans.

So there's different performances.

We picked out the best pieces,
the pieces we thought were the best. And.

This is what I'm talking about
with different cuts

at right angles and different angles
colliding. So.

Having having a wide to a wide
is not something you would normally do.

But for Damien that's part of it
because you feel the rhythm.

This shot, we wanted to last a little bit
longer, so I rolled it in reverse.

I tried to hide that.

I could kind of get away with it
because Miles Teller looks kind of funny.

What he's doing is making a crazy face
and he's doing this crazy drumming.

I tried to hide it by adding a little push
on it, a little zoom, so it feels like

the shot is continuing to move forward.

And this shot coming up here,
a little punctuation with a wide shot.

This shot used to not really be as wide.

I reduce this shot in the frame
and we made sure to

to feather it out with black.

So it truly feel like an epic place.

You'd feel like
the camera was much higher up

than they were actually capable of doing.

Again, this was a point where.

Damian really wanted to.

Commit to this section.

Which.

Uh, there were some people,

some,
some people who we screened the movie

for who actually really always pushed us
to make this scene shorter.

And this scene in particular, this

this part of the scene in particular.

But Damien really wanted to.

Commit to it and hold it, hold it.

Hold it extra long
so it would become less clear.

What the outcome was going to be,
in other words.

Is he actually going
to have a heart attack?

Is he going to die?

These were questions Damien wanted

the audience to maybe think about.

This is a shot that started

slow as a shot that I sped up.

And sped up and sped up.

As we go from slow motion to fast motion.

Same with this.

And this this is, again, another thing
performance

you can hold on this actor's face
Paul Reiser

to really see.

If you hold on onto something long enough,
you invest in it and it has a new value.

When you first see his reaction,
the father's reaction,

you see that there's something that is
that he's shocked.

When you stay on something,
you reinvest in the image

and sometimes
have you get a different meaning from it.

And we will soon get into a very simple,

uh, cutting pattern with,

uh, very simple elements.

You tee it up with this overhead

shot of the drums.

And the goal is to get to this shot,

which will be the key element.

This shot always looks.

These shots were
actually challenging because

these are the hands of a drum double.

Playing to a prerecorded track.

So the prerecorded track was done

by another drummer,
a jazz drummer, professional jazz drummer.

So the audio was playing an on set,
a drum double

not miles
teller tried to match the drum playing.

While the slower the drumming gets,
the harder that is to match the sync.

And if there's one thing
that really had to be right for Damian,

it was the sync of all the drums,
the synchronization.

It's.

So the drum double got it very close.

But even the drum double couldn't
get it perfect.

So that's something
I had to work on in the edit.

And I did that.

It was you, actually.

I couldn't speed it up or slow it down too
much because that wasn't precise enough.

So with jump cuts,

I was able to line up every single hit
so that it would be in sync.

So when we cut to the drums,

there are jump cuts within there
to match the sync of every drum hit.

But thematically,

we're going back to the beginning
of the movie where you hear this same

drumming.

You begin the movie with this
and you end the movie

with this.

But it's all about the

to the looks, the performances
and that shot of the drums.

Now this moment
where we're Miles Teller is going crazy.

We really wanted to show and illustrate

how virtuosic and how animal like.

This moment is where he's going crazy.

So we cut to this wide shot where you can
really see him going nuts, going crazy.

We overlapped

three tracks of this

of this drum flurry, of this drum
playing to make it sound more complicated.

So what you're actually hearing
is physically impossible.

And here you're going to

tie up with a flurry of muscular
cuts, short cuts

you're going to with energy,
you're going to tee up and allow for

make room for

a very key moment in this scene,
which is the looks between

Fletcher and Andrew,

the looks that tell you that.

If you're familiar with the story

that Andrew has become

the next buddy Rich, his idol
and that Fletcher in turn

has found his Charlie Parker,
which is what his life goal was.

And that is presented through the looks

that tell you that they've they've
they've worked together.

And through this synthesis,
this chemical reaction,

they've both reached a place of greatness.

But you tee that up by these cuts here.

And those moments.

With the blood dripping.

Ah, hopefully

will make you think of everything
that's come before all the pain

and all the energy
and all the sacrifices that

that this character
and her had to make to get to this point.

But now he's gotten to a point,
a different level

that he is inspired to get to.

And now we have the looks.

As important

as any of the other cuts in the movie.

The smile.

And important that we cut out that we

that we are wide enough to see this smile.

And there's something
that Damien loved about this because

there's something dark about it, because.

And that's why
I think it's key to have the smile.

Because this.

Tells the audience.

The smile on his face.

The grammar of that tells the audience

that this is a happy ending,
which in some ways it is.

He's achieved his goal, but in other ways

it's it's a dark, dark ending

because he's become something
he sacrificed to become something

that is not simply something good.

And the cut to black

inspired by the cut
to Black from the short film.

So we've come kind
of full circle in that way.