All language subtitles for Module 43

And now
let's talk about the use of juxtaposition

and rhythm in First Man.

Something very that was very important

to Damien Chazelle with First Man was.

The juxtaposition of what

Damien referred to as.

The moon and the kitchen
sink, the moon in the kitchen.

And what he meant by that was that
he knew the power of the movie,

from a story point of view, would be how

well we balanced the mission

in space capsule scenes,
the astronaut scenes with.

The kitchen with the earthbound scenes
with Neil Armstrong

and his wife, played by Claire Foy
and his children.

You have.

The space missions, which are.

Fantastic and
and literally out of this world.

And you balance that with things

that are ordinary,
with things that are mundane.

He knew that the power of the story
would have to do with the right

balance of that.

In a way, it's
the oldest film editing trick in the book.

Show the character, show his face.

Juxtapose it with a point of view,
what he's looking at,

what he or she is looking at.

And then go back to it for a reaction.

It's very simple,
but it's extremely effective.

It's an effective way of.

Getting your audience
into the shoes of the character.

And Damien was.

Was great in that
he knew he needed these pieces

so we would get these amazing shots.

Subjective shots that he would hold.

And some of this is

is done in a very

cinema verité documentary style.

And that's the other thing
Damien really wanted.

He really wanted the audience
to feel like a fly on the wall,

eavesdropping in the Armstrong home, but
also eavesdropping in the space capsules.

And so he filmed it like a documentary.

He would in terms of filming.

He knew he would

have to get certain pieces of information,
but he would let his camera people.

He would let Lena Sandgren,
the cinematographer who we worked

with on La La Land.

He would let him capture

the event, capture the action
like a documentary cameraperson.

And that

man, instead
of all the smooth camera moves

we had in la la land,
we had handheld messiness.

But that was okay for this story.

That was okay for this, for this,
the style.

And we again, we took our time with this
and we leaned into the into the subjective

because we knew that that would be a way
of getting the audience invested,

making the audience
feel like they're inside the capsule.

I want you to know.

All the while you hear these radio coms.

Now we start seeing what he's seeing
pieces, inserts, which.

Which

are great

because they give texture to this
to this capsule they've just gotten in.

But there are also important
rhythmic building blocks.

They're starting to create
momentum in a certain way.

So we took our time with it.

It was okay
that the sequence is protracted, is long.

That's okay. That's.

That's all right.

Because we want something measured
because we know that

that creates a certain
sort of anticipation with the audience.

So you're hearing all these radio
comms, these voices from radios.

So that's sometimes
to give us information, like when it says

there's a countdown, but it's also

like here it's information. I.

We also we also want to see
these close ups of these details,

because it also shows us how

primitive these crafts are.

How machine age they are

instead of space age.

And here is something again, these are
this is the use of inserts

to also to show the process
they're being buckled in.

But it's also to do something rhythmic
by by the sound of these things

being buckled in.

Because.

Because

you know that that's going to create

a certain anticipation with the viewer.

And again, when you have a shot
like this, a beautiful shot like this,

I always try to set this up with eyes
or a face.

You set it up.

And the sound.

The sound helps immensely
because the sound tells you.

How heavy the door is.

And this is okay
that it's black for a moment.

We cut it that way.

We let it stay in black just for a moment.

So then when the sound of the door closes
and it disappears, it's

okay that it's mysterious.

And we have P.O.V..

But it's important that we.

We pan over, we see the other astronaut.

It's important.
Now we answer it with Neil again.

Now we can go into his close up,

close up of his eyes.

And incidentally, all this is also led.

So that's led of the gantry
being pulled away

in camera, reflected in Ryan Gosling's

visor, and is ended in his eyes.

We've been in tight.

Now it's time to let us.

We can pull out a little bit
just to establish

enough of the spacecraft,

and we can cut to this angle
and then cut to another.

Why this is the
why the why this type of thing.

We have generally
we have things very tight,

but now is the time to do this
because we're we're we're finishing

a certain section
of being strapped into the capsule

and we're moving on
to a different part of the scene.

So it's okay to put a punctuation on it.

And that's something that we liked.

We liked having the same type of size,
a two shot,

but answering it with a different angle.

On view three, four,
five, five, four, three, three, four

and five.

It's okay to do this.

To cut to these wider shots
at this point in the story,

because we know that
what's coming up with the launch,

you know, we're going
to we're going to do the opposite.

We're going to stay really close.

So to avoid cinematic redundancy, you want
you want to be able

to varied up in a lot of cases,
and this is our place to do that.

We set up a detail of him
putting the mirror

where you're going to see a reflection.

That's going to tell you
when we've launched again.

Sound helps immensely,
but we always wanted this to play

pictorially cinematically.

So we know here when he looks away.

It's key.

You lead the audience with the looks,
with your editing, you lead the audience.

You set up that he's looking at one thing.

And you answer with this look.

Now. Why does he look away?

You're leading the audience
to your next little story. Be.

This also was something.

I had to do
that was different from la la land.

I had to cut the picture

in a way to make room for sound
in a way that we didn't lot of land.

I had to make room
for the sound of the creeks.

And the sound of the fly.

The housefly.

And it's strange.

It's it's it's bizarre.

Did it really happen?

Was there really a fly? I don't
really know. I don't think any of us know.

But it doesn't matter.

It's it's it's strange. It's bizarre.

It helps with the.

It helps with the character's motion.

It's disorienting.

And again, here

we made room for the creaking,

the metal groaning.

The characters can look at each other.

The looks between characters
like that cannot be

overstated.

The 22nd mark.

We've set up the little mirror
that he's put there.

So now we've we've set it up.

We've spent time with it.

So we understand what it is and
that can play out and pay off momentarily.

But also, we set up this countdown.

When you hear the countdown going,
we show these little details.

We stay very tight.

We even punch in close
so that when there's

the impact of the ignition,
we can cut to this wide

or size to open open things up
to feel the impact of that more.

We've set up this
this subjective nature of the P.O.V.

and we've set it up in a very slow,
patient, methodical

way with walking up to the Gemini capsule.

So you would understand
the language of looks and subjective POV.

Now that we've set it up patiently,

we can now
go more into pictorial abstraction.

And it's okay because we've set it up.

This shot, for example,
these shots, I don't even know

what parts of the spacecraft this is,

but we just liked how.

How? Hard.

These edges looked how dangerous
it looked, and we supported that

with the sound
of the creaking at that point.

And here we pick,

we're very reliant
on the storytelling with the windows,

and that's something
Damien and his crew worked very hard to

to get right, which is to show
all the different transitions

outside the window of of the sky changing.

And so we're very reliant on that.

And here again, as in the X15,
the opening scene,

we're very reliant on insert shots
to show you

in the case of this scene,

to show the altitude

going almost into this abstraction,
the altitude meter, they're going there.

They're going up so, so violently
and so fast that you can't even read

what the meter
says. That's part of the point.

And we answer that by cutting

to a shot of a closeup of Ryan Gosling,
where it is abstract.

And again,

what was really important to Damian
was to play this all inside the capsule.

He did never wanted to go outside.

He wanted this to play.

Internally.

And always going back to the windows

to really show the progression
that was important.

And the eyes, of course, the eyes.

Always the eyes.

And this was something that we knew

because the picture
was getting so abstract.

It was a place where we could just build
a crescendo of sound,

which we did with rocket sounds,
but again, with animal sounds.

Yeah.

And we're going to build.

We built a sonic crescendo
so that we could basically tee up

the single insert shot of a switch,
which was going to

take you into
this rollover you had before.

And now we've

earned this place where now we can float.

Everything can float.

Everything can slow down.

The scene has progressed to this.

Again, it has to do with contrast.

The launch builds sonically

in a way that the sound is, is
is deafening.

It's a cacophony.

And because you build that,
when you go to this moment

where things change and they roll over
and you go into everything floating,

now we're weightless.

We see the mirror
that's been blown off is now.

Floating now.

The sound changes
so drastically that you can hear.

The point is the sound is so different.

The feeling is so different.

You can hear
every little move of the suit.

So those things
are very important to hear.

And now we cut to complete silence.

Nothing on the soundtrack.
So we've built to this.

Now we

can have Justin Hurwitz's music
come in, but not right away.

We waited.

We wanted to wait and give
a moment of silence, a moment of pause,

so that you could really feel where we had
come from.

Feel how?

You'd have context for how violent

and and loud.

And brutal the launch was.

And now

the important juxtaposition.

Out of this world into something

very ordinary and mundane is children.

And again, this shot
like a fly on the wall,

eavesdropping in the Armstrongs house.

Now inside the bathroom
and all this material was shot.

This is these scenes are scripted.

They're doing what's the actors are doing?

What's in the script?

But the camera is shooting
in a documentary fashion.

It's very different from La La Land.

It's handheld and.

Part of my editing in this.

Was different

in that with this type of footage

because we were going
for this type of style

and this will play on a little bit more.

I'll show you something.

I'll show you another example of it.

Where I'm allowed
to use certain imperfections.

I'm allowed to use certain messiness.

So because I'm allowed to do that,
it actually allows me

to use performances and moments
that I might not otherwise use.

If the camera's racking focus
or it's rough, the move is rough.

In another movie, I wouldn't
be able to use that because that would be

a different language
than the movie is told in.

But this is the language of the movie.

So it actually allowed us different
possibilities than we had on La

La Land or Whiplash.