All language subtitles for Module 35

And next up,

the night on the Town
montage from La La Land.

This was another thing
that was important to Damien.

He really wanted this movie to

not only be a love letter to Los Angeles
and to Hollywood.

He wanted this to be a love letter
to editing, in a way.

He wanted this to be a love letter
to old techniques that you see in

in in Hollywood movies
like Dissolves and montages like this.

So Damien shot all of this

amazing
all these amazing little pieces of signs

that he intended to be blended together
like this.

And this is supposed to show the roommates
going out for a night on the town.

He shot all these nice pieces of
of dancing feet

of champagne glasses.

Those are all things that Damien filmed
because he wanted to put them together

to show this Hollywood party
in a very stylized way.

And that was to lead into.

Going to the Hollywood party?

Well, originally.

What used to happen is,

as he originally intended,
we had this footage

which he shot on the L.A.
freeway at night.

We had these signs,
and then it was supposed to translate.

It was supposed to transition to this shot

you see on the backs of the roommate's.

But that was not supposed to be.

We were supposed to come out

of this collage
that was supposed to go back full frame.

So what used to be here was

a full sequence of these long takes.

Following the roommates
through the party in real time.

And it was set to music.

There was no singing.

There was no dancing, per se,
although there was choreographed movement.

And it was a long scene of several

more interlocking pieces

that followed the roommates to the party.

And the original concept
was to have one person.

Pass through the frame, and
then the camera would follow that person

until they hit another person,
and then the camera would switch

and follow another person.

It was very complicated,
but it was very beautiful.

It was another heavily choreographed

musical section.

But the problem is, is that again?

We started to be on the backs

of these characters,
and we lost Emma Stone.

It started to become more about

the choreography
and less about the character.

And but the problem the other problem
is, is that how do you edit that?

How do you how do you get out of that

when you're locked into these takes
and you have to get from point A to B?

Well, what we ended up doing is

we ended up folding those pieces,
those long and broken takes.

We folded them into this montage,
into this collage.

So that's what why you see these pieces

in here instead of playing full frame,

being back in the movie,
they play in this collage and the collage,

the thing that he had only intended
to last for 5 seconds or 3 seconds.

The collage became our solution.

The collage saved us

because we were able to fold
some of the party into the collage.

So you can see this shot of them
approaching the door

used to go all the way into the door
and go into the party,

but now we just have a little piece of it.

And we

transition to these other elements
that he shot champagne dancing feet.

We used to see a whole approach to her
sitting down on the couch.

But now we can just show the pieces
that we need

because we have this stylistic device
that can help us solve that.

So she's uncomfortable
on the on the couch.

And then we can do another transition.

They leave

transit dissolved,
which we're allowed to do

because we're in this stylized montage
before.

We would not be able to do a dissolve

that that would not have been acceptable
in terms of the language,

the cinematic language that we
we have established .

So if we had an unbroken take
or if we had something that was supposed

to look like an unbroken take,
like the roommates number

or the traffic scene,
the traffic scene is a perfect example of

that style.

The style we

set up would not have allowed us
to dissolve from one piece to the other.

That would have seemed like a cheat.

It wouldn't have been right
to the language

that we were trying to establish,
but in this section you can do it.

So we dissolve to this a man.

Trying to hit on her, approach her.

She gets up, leaves another dissolve.

And then she goes into.

And of course, this

this is another great thing of why
Damien is so, so brilliant.

Great.

He gets all these pieces that
that that are so useful to us as editors.

We can.

We can end the sequence with this little.

With a nice little

period or punctuation by these champagne

glasses.

It's a nice way to end that collage.

And we made a

point of playing up in the sound
and the music.

We played up the, the fizzing from the,
from the champagne fizzing.

We played that up and that helped
the whole section end. But.

The important thing about this

collage that you just saw,
it helped us compress

long takes and information
in a way that we didn't think possible.

But also something we really had to be
careful about was the character.

So at the beginning.

Of this little montage.

You can see that

our character of Mia is excited.

She's optimistic.

She's alive. She's full of energy.

She wants to go out to a party
with her friends.

And that emotion segways

into this with no problem dancing feet.

It's an extension of the emotion we have.

She's smiling.

And we see the change is in her face.

She's getting uncomfortable.

And this guy sits down
and she's really uncomfortable.

And she's trying to get someone's
attention.

And she can you can tell that she's trying
to get out of this room.

And so
by the time she comes into the bathroom.

We see.

That she looks pretty down.

She looks pretty much like
she doesn't want to be there.

She's at a different emotional place.

And the reason I mention this is because.

There was a time

when we were working on this collage
where.

We wanted to try some different things
graphically.

We wanted to make it more complicated.

We wanted more things to be going on.

We liked all the signs

overlapping when it was more complicated,
when there were more images.

It seemed more exciting to us.

So we tried different versions
where we had even more champagne glasses,

more feet, more signs, different things.

And other parts of the party happening.

So there was Emma Stone and two
different parts or three different parts.

The problem we found with
that was Emma Stone's face

needed to be large enough in this collage
in order for the audience

to read the reaction, in order

for the audience to understand the changes
that were happening.

That was important.

And again, that comes back to character.

You need to have her

face large enough in the frame
to see the transition

because she has to go from being excited

and alive and wanting to be at the party
to this place where we get

to the end of this, where she is

in a completely different place. So.

So the biggest thing we had to be
careful about was the emotion of it.

It couldn't just be

a formal exercise.

It couldn't just be something
that looked cool or looked good.

It had to function on an emotional level.