Why Great Editing Starts With Sound (One Battle After Another)

- Hi there. Today I am gonna be talking about One Battle After Another, the movie by PT Anderson and edited by Andrew Juegensen who just won for best editing. I wanna take a look at the scene and see what he's doing there. And of course I'm gonna pick the chase scene. I remember seeing the movie in the theater and I love the film throughout, but that scene really stood out to me as something really, really special. So I wanna take a look at the editing and I'm gonna focus on three things that are sort of identified by reading the interview of the editor in The Art of the Cut Block by Steve Hulfish. And it's basically going to very much focus on the sound, how it's being used dynamically in this chase, the car noise versus music and silence as editorial tools. And then finally on repeating musical motifs throughout the scene and then also potentially talk about how it's being used in the film. So I can highly recommend this blog. I just had this pulled out here, but the first thing that I'm going to do is break up this scene through the Da Vinci Resolve detect edit function. And what that does is it's automatically find all the different cut points in the scene and it's gonna sort of help us understand a little bit more about the rhythm, the pattern, and the pacing of the scene. So here we go. It's already done, but let's watch the scene and let's listen to the sound. - Okay. Okay, - So it's percussive. I love these shots of the camera, just sticking with the car and then going with kind of what they call the "river of hills. " So music's been consistently the same with our villain. There's been a slight music change. We're adding a new element to the percussion. Again, a music change, it's quieter now. The music is almost gone. Love this shot here. The camera is just static and then the car appears again. So already there was a lot happening here. So we don't hear the car when we don't see it and then when it comes back up, when it dips back up, we start hearing the engine, hear the car gone and then back there. So very dynamic shift. The music was up to this point percussive consistent with some turns and the turns were happening when the villain was introduced and when she realized, okay, she's being followed. First thing here camera, the camera is mounted on the car door. That's is, that's one thing that happens in this movie quite a lot is nobody's closing doors. It's always the energy of the car driving off that inertia that makes the car door close and then that it creates this new shot. So I find that really, really interesting to start off the scene and unique. And it's interesting how she on the bang of the door closing her expression, probably not a cut there, but it almost feels like it feels as if maybe they removed some frames or just the impact of the camera from the door closing. Da Vinci noticed that there's a cut there

so may or may not be an actual invisible cut there, which would make sense to compress it to give it more energy. Okay. Okay, Cut to Leo cameras following him handheld or steadycam. So music is the same. Let's see where the story turn is. Music just is still slightly low on certain angles I There we see the car first glimpse of it, of the villain and then there is the music change right here. You see they're introducing another instrument, just another percussive, percussive element or it's strings. It could be strings. Then it drops out when we're inside her car, we're closer on her than we were before. So this angle here that's a medium closeup I would say is different from this shot. This is more of a medium shot and it just heightens like we're just rising. The tension is rising. This is a little tighter. Now we're in a closeup. So compare this shot to this shot. See we're a little closer. It's really nice when obviously a filmmaker has the time and money to get good coverage, which means you get a lot of different angles from the action so that you have this as an editor at your disposal as you're telling the story and you're trying to build that sort of rollercoaster ride of rising tension Drops out. That's her car. We talked about the sound that comes back on. There's a little whoosh sound here. Could almost been taken from like a, a train horn distant. No, this is really interesting. I mean we're closer again on the mirror, but the mirror is soft, right? But before the mirror was still kind of in focus right there. Well I guess it's soft too, but we're definitely closer and closer on these mirror shots as well. So there's a clear pattern of getting closer and closer in terms of the framing, this is also a different lens in terms of this versus this. This is a wider lens, this is a longer lens. If you shoot with a longer lens, like anything beyond 50 millimeter traditional, so like 80 millimeter or more, the background start to compress and create sort of a different feel and look emotionally. Okay, little wider relationship shot. It's important to see relationship shots when two people are interacting with each other. Chase fight and that kind of stuff to get a sense of how close they are and estimating how long it's gonna take for the villain to catch up with her. Again, this "river of hills," this is the first push-in that I noticed on him. So this is a medium shot. We're going slowly into a medium closeup, love his expression on his face. To a very stoic, very neutral face, which is good for if you think about the Kuleshov effect, what is he reacting to? Now we're not seeing his point of view directly

because that would be cutting basically to the camera in front of the car looking at her car. But you can definitely tell that he's zeroing in on her. Literally the shot is mirroring that there. The strings again. Now I haven't really listened to the sound until since I pointed it out over here that the strings are here when we see the villain. Let's see if that idea predictably continues on. So there should be no strings here. There was that train horn. Okay, we definitely notice a change of music right here, heightens this sharp and the strengths come on him. So I mean we haven't really talked about two films that come to mind or two filmmakers. First one is Dual by Steven Spielberg, which is one of his earlier films and probably the film that sort of set him up to become the Steven Spielberg that we all know and love. And then who did Steven Spielberg work for before that movie he worked on? Wasn't it a Hitchcock episode of his TV show back then? I'm also thinking about Hitchcock in this scene because it's pure cinema, there's no dialog. All the information that we're seeing is being visually told and that's how cinematic storytelling in the best case scenario should be. That drama and the information that we're receiving emotionally is being just told through visuals, Relationship, boom, triple. We only set up Leo at the beginning of the scene as he was running to the car right here and then we kind of forgot about him. Sometimes this is a call, a setup and then sometimes you need a reminder of that's still going on. And I would actually call this a reminder that Leo is also taking part in this chase and it's gonna play a critical role in the rest of how this unfolds. Let's see if sound wise, something changes when Leo appears. Definitely music change but it's just more a heightened feel. It's not like he's getting his own instrument or his own a motif. It's more that string motif gets to another level. It's faster and higher pitched, but his car has a different sound than the other ones. The other ones were like muscle car sounds. This one obviously is, it's more like something is broken inside. The rotator is maybe hitting something inside the engine. Again, a very long lens here, which compresses everything. We think things are much closer than they really are or we can't really tell how close they really are because of that compression "river up hills. " See how close the camera got to the street there? Right there. And the focus point is like where is it? Nothing is really in focus. Mirror to mirror as if they're looking at each other. She's looking camera right. He's looking camera left.

It kind of almost cuts as if they were having a dialog scene and they were looking at each other camera left to camera right? Notice the focus pull. So on him it's out of focus. First we see her car in focus and then the rack-focus to the mirror. That's his POV kind of, it feels a little closer than what the car is. The villain's car, another relationship shot. She's quite far away from him, which is an important piece of information to understand for what's gonna happen next. So she's coming down a big hill, he's not in sight for awhile and then he comes. And then the other thing that I noticed the first time watching it and I almost didn't see it now because I was focused on something else. Do you see those little road runners or birds or what that is? I wonder if this is a happy accident or this is planned. So if it was planned, then obviously they would have an animal wrangler there that put them there or it could even potentially be a CGI, which I hope it isn't 'cause I mean the whole film just feels very and a analog in the way it was shot and I believe it was shot in super 16 and all kinds of real film formats. Ah, might be a CGI the way the bird moves. If you know how they did that, let me know in the comments. I'd be really curious to find out how if these birds were real, this is a profile shot and I believe it's the first time we're cutting to a profile shot. They shot the entire scene with this camera angle as well as a setup and the editor decided to use it here. And this is a critical moment where things are about to change. So maybe there is some, it could be just instinct and intuition that the editor used to decide when to cut to what angle or it could also be a very deliberate strategy that he discovered or thought through when cutting the scene and again, profile to profile and he's closer to profile. The editor probably saved this angle for this moment because it's building up the sort of cept, is that a word? The three characters all looking in the same direction. You could almost have this as a laid out split screen. 1, 2, 3. And there are some movies from kind of, it has aesthetically that feel of the seventies, even though I don't think this is taking place in the seventies. Obviously this is present time, but in terms of the like the texture and the colors, it does look kind of older than what the time is that it takes place. My point being in the seventies, they would've had a split screen there between the three. But it introduces another element of style that might take away from the actual emotional enjoyment of the film. If you introduce style, especially if you haven't set it up as a rule in the film before, it draws the attention to the filmmaker and that's the last thing you want in this moment. You want to have the audience be dramatically engaged. Slight push-in. I don't see a push-in here, did I, did I get this right? Is there a push-in maybe a zoom-in? Push-in is when the camera's actually physically moving and zoom-in is when you rack zoom on the lens, which they might have done. It's hard to tell in this particular one. Could also be a digital zoom where they did it in the Avid. Okay, what is she seeing in the mirror that she has to look three times she's making the decision. Okay, she senses an opportunity based on this hill right there. We don't know that yet, but that's what's going on in terms

of directing the actress right now, probably the direction was, oh it just happened that the editor decided to use this moment where she's like reassessing her situation to have her make a decision there will understand what that decision is in just a second. We're haven't talked about the sound for a while. This is a dolly shot. That's the first dolly shot in this scene. Okay, before we get into this, let's talk about everything that happened so far. She saw an opportunity, she's evaluating that opportunity to stop behind this hill. The sound just keeps going like it's rising, rising. The springs are getting higher and faster. Also the rev of sound of the engine is higher than it was before, which implies that he's going faster. Full fire shot and we have this whip-pan right here of the villain's car. Again that throws a lot of energy into the action dolly shot. So camera's on tracks and is moving slowly and panning at the same time. And this is the longest shot we've had in a while. It's about as long as this sort of triple relationship shot here that introduces Leo. Both of these shots in terms of story turns, I would say are the most important shots in that sequence in terms of things are changing. Okay, she's hiding behind the sign. We're learning about the sign. Obviously I almost wish that there wouldn't be this sign or whatever. There's this kind of like a fence post thingy that marks like a state line or something. She's not running behind it because it's there. She has not made the decision to stop because of that fence. She's stopping because she knows that she's gonna be out of sight on the street and there's an opportunity for her, opportunity to create an advantage for her. Music has calmed down quite a bit. Engine is going really strong. And then we'll get into the next scene, which I won't show here because this is already a lot. Let's look at that one more time. Lots of cuts here. Big dramatic change. So on impact, we have a lot of fast cuts. I love that he doesn't even get to finish what he's saying because he doesn't have time for that. So we see him looking at the car. We show him again, this is, this is classical Kuleshov, him reacting and then the car collides. So how close is he here versus here? This is what, 10 feet, the camera is 10 feet away from her car. Boom. So it's already basically connecting with the car in the shot and then there we have another 10 feet or even more 15 feet before the car hits. What does that do? It magnifies the impact because we have a double action. Sometimes we even do a triple action when that happens. One, two, let's look at this. So the car is what

that's about seven feet apart? Yeah, that's about the same. That matches in this shot as well. I love how the camera can't quite keep up with the impact. So it's trailing behind where the cars sort of trailing away right there and then we cut to a dolly shot that kind of mirrors the car's movement as if we're looking towards her from somewhere that is moving, just like the car. I mean obviously it's not his point of view or anything because he doesn't even know that she's there yet. And then we go into the next scene. The music stops on impact, I would assume. - Yeah, - And then it just goes to quietness. Must be a fun scene to cut. Action often is a lot of fun to cut and it's actually not that difficult. Sometimes, cutting a dialog scene takes a lot more time, lot more effort to really finesse. I'm sure there are also many, many different versions of how this was cut and probably at the beginning everything was way too long and the energy wasn't quite there. But this is an example of how you use editing to create dynamic shifts and the energy that we're supposed to feel with the cars movement, the impact as well as the emotional energy in that scene. So very fun. I mean that's just one scene taken out of context, but throughout the film you can tell that they were really shaping the dynamics of the entire film and the experience so that the audience overall is very much engaged and has the opportunity to breathe and the opportunity to just be at the edge of their seat just at the right moment so that it never gets boring and it's always engaging. So there's always a balance in terms of energy has to do also with plot and humor, these kind of elements. But on its own, this scene is really, really fun to look at. I don't see any obviously flaws in terms of how this could have been done. I think this is a perfect execution of that scene. What did you think about the film? this scene in particular? Why you were watching in the theaters? Did it stand out to you as something that you like hold onto and remember as you walk out of the theater and even remember days later? For me, definitely that was the case. It's always fun for me to look at these scenes because while I'm watching the movie, I'm not thinking about editing at all. I'm just, when it's a good movie, I'm just in it. But after the fact to look at this stuff and think about like the closeups and when he chose to use the profile shots to set something up that later pays off even more so is really, really interesting for me. If it was for you, do let me know in the comments and let me know which other movies I should be looking at, especially now that it's Oscar season. Maybe I'll do all of them. I just did Sinners the other week. If you haven't seen that one. I'll post it here and in the video description, but at least three more films that I should take a look at. Happy editing and Cheers.