Creed III

Today on Art of the Cut, we discuss Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut, Creed III, with the editors of the film, Jessica Baclesse and Tyler Nelson, ACE.

Jessica is currently editing the film Rez Ball. She was an assistant editor on Captain Marvel and has edited numerous short films and the TV series Breakwater, Play By Play, and In the Vault. Her commercial editing work has been nominated for numerous awards.

Tyler has been on Art of the Cut several times, including for his work as an editor on The Batman and the TV series Mindhunter. He also edited TV series including Love, Death and Robots, Shadow and Bone, and Tales from the Loop. As an assistant editor, he worked on Gone Girl, The Social Network, and the TV series, House of Cards.

The first question I had was about the flashbacks. Were all of the flashbacks scripted, or did you find that you wanted to change things? 

NELSON: No, there were actually no flashbacks intended in the movie. 

Pretty much all of the prologue leading up to the liquor store is more or less what was in the script, but where we cut out was always in question, we tried multiple ways to get out of it and I think we took three or four different approaches to how that scene would then push us into the Cape Town fight. 

The first scripted version was Adonis running down the street, which we don’t see until the montage, but once we saw how the dramatic beats of the film were unfolding as a whole we just wanted to find moments to pepper in where these flashbacks could fit and better tell Adonis’ story. 

So, we took all these moments of Leon, the caregiver at the group home. There was some amazing photography, some shot on films with hand crank cameras, and I think Jess — you took the first pass at all the flashbacks.

Ultimately, we had really thoughtful group conversations about how many flashbacks we were going to show, how often we were going to show them, and what information we were going to tell in each one. Then, we shot some additional photography to tell some of those beats a little bit more dramatically.

BACLESSE: We felt like the response we were getting both from the director and editor’s cuts and the first preview cut was simply that we needed the audience to be on the emotional journey with Adonis throughout the script and that whenever the audience had all the information upfront, it wasn’t unfolding as satisfying as it could.

By allowing the audience to slowly learn more and more about what happened that night, they were becoming more and more engaged emotionally with Adonis and where he was emotionally, and why the character of Damian coming into his life is so disruptive and so upsetting and by letting these flashbacks happen it seemed to give everyone more of a feeling about where he was emotionally and then why he makes the choices he does throughout the movie.

NELSON: Yeah, because as it played out originally we know everything that happened and there’s nothing dramatic about that. Withholding the information from the audience is what actually makes the dramatic storytelling more impactful. 

If we played it the way it was scripted from the prologue where he beats the hell out of Leon and then the cops come and he runs away, we understand exactly why he does what he does when Damien arrives.

When he sits down and talks to Bianca and confesses to her, we should be getting more information than the audience is already aware of so that was part of these round table conversations that we had in the cutting room between Michael the producers and Jess and me and we would just try to map out where we want to put all this stuff. 

BACLESSE: Yeah and how much does the audience need to know when, how much is emotionally satisfying but also how much keeps you engaged and wanting more? So it’s that tightrope.

NELSON: The way the flashbacks are ultimately edited in the end, they’re like little peppered pieces of information. We tried to insert very specific things to make sure that the storytelling was not too much, not too little. 

How did you map that when you were having those discussions? Did you do storyboards on the wall or were you just mentally?

BACLESSE: Tyler and I used dry erase boards. A lot of dry erase boards. 

NELSON: We kept asking the company to get us more. (Laughing) 

BACLESSE: What we actually started with is “What is the maximum version that this could be?” “Where could these go?”

We ended up with five places we felt they could go and then we actually cut it so that it landed that way, we then watched it were like, this is way too much but we like this shot from this one, and we like this beat from this one so then we ended up with this bin of the bits and pieces that we felt were the best storytelling and then we stripped back how much and how often we wanted to see that so that when we landed in the montage, you had what you needed but you were still gaining new shots, even in the montage.

Jessica and Tyler

Is it challenging? Cutting scene with asl? Because I interviewed the Coda editors and they were like, “Yeah you can’t do a reaction like you’re used to doing because you don’t see the signing”

NELSON: I do not recall it ever being a big concern.

BACLESSE: Yeah, I think the main thing that we just tried with the ASL was we were very careful to make sure that when we were cutting it together, we were preserving, as much of the view of the hands and giving the audience time to read the captioning and to make sure that like for a traditional hearing audience that you are still being immersed in that scene and still know that it’s important.

I remember looking at the pacing and you and I being very careful. Is there enough breathing room around the closed captioning? Do we feel like we can comfortably read this? Is this working? 

NELSON: The biggest one was the teacher scene, the teacher was played by the ASL consultant for the movie. He was there every time there was

ASL being used to communicate and we also sent all scenes to him to review and he just made sure all the signs were accurate and that the translations were proper.

He was a really good advocate to make sure that the ASL translated properly but that being said . That scene was probably the most complicated ASL scene because it’s a communication between a teacher and the parents realizing that their daughter is having some trouble at school.

It was a lot of the teacher signing to the Creeds and cutting it such a way that both of them absorb the gravity of what he’s signing.

Then Adonis, who is normally the alpha kind of has to step back and realize that as a parent he needs to make sure that he’s doing what’s best for his daughter.

I love the sequence of introducing our villain Damian elliptically. Was that always the intent or did you find that there was other coverage that you could have used, or it was always, or you thought, let’s not show him? How are we gonna reveal Damian?

BACLESSE: Yeah, that was always Mike’s intent that the villain comes into town, old West style, “High Noon” type references of entering the world and Puncturing Adonis’s Perfect world.

We did play with the placement of that scene and the scene had been longer at one point also, there was a lot more coverage of him on the bus and then once he exited the bus him on the street but what we found was that you wanted the story to continue with Adonis and the big intro needed to be whenever they meet each other face to face.

By introducing him behind it gave the audience a sense of “Okay, something bad is coming into his perfect world”, or “There is trouble on the horizon”, but not giving away the whole game until the audience can see it with Adonis.

So there’s two sets of matching edits: the clapping at the end of the KO going into the clapping in the car and the punching in two different punches.

NELSON: The punch from him beating the hell out of Leon to Cape Town. Jess is the one that found the clapping from the end of golden gloves to them celebrating the car. 

BACLESSE: For the movie to work, the audience really needs to be invested in these two boys as friends, right? This moment together, this celebration together, this joy they have you need to have really believed that there was this intense friendship between these two for all of the rest of the decisions to make sense. 

What we’ve found was everyone just loved this performance of young Adonis just going crazy for his friend.

So by keeping that energy going and hard cutting between the two scenes, the emotion is exactly the same, even though you’re just juxtaposing the two scenes up against each other.

Then you get a solid laugh by playing that shot long. People also love that he tells him “You put him to sleep!”

NELSON: Always gets a laugh!

Creed III Avid timeline

I got to see it in the theaters Wednesday night and that section definitely played well with the audience. 

Damian goes back to his apartment early in a film and he’s angry and I love that montage of his anger. Can you talk about constructing that? When you’re building a montage, how long should it go on for? How do you create a tone of that angriness? 

NELSON: The challenge of that was there was so much good stuff and I think this is a testament to Michael’s trust in Jonathan Majors as an actor.

Damian was hoping that Adonis would actually go to bat for him and here he is being a punching bag, so that’s all his rage boiled up and why he starts slamming bags against the walls. 

There’s a lot more story beats behind his decision making that were ultimately omitted because they were unneeded and we didn’t need to underscore what he was doing because it’s better to occlude as much information as possible from the audience. 

BACLESSE: The other thing that worked very well about that sequence was the fact that he’s not just a rage monster, he’s not just in there ripping apart his room and punching a mirror.

It’s like he has this moment of fury up against the wall, throwing the bag and then after that all of his rage gets channeled into these specific activities, and I think that really works for his character because he’s a very smart person and he is very focused on what he wants.

That might have gone longer in your initial cut. I remember I cut an action scene at the end of a movie and it was 12 minutes long, and when it aired, it was 2 minutes but 12 seemed perfect for the first cut.

NELSON: I think the ultimate run time is relatively similar because luckily we had Joe Shirley, who was our composer, he sent us tracks relatively early on. We were able to work with those, but the length was relatively similar.

The thing that changed though is they shot it at 48 and my initial cut was all 24 frames per second. So I did a little mix and match to make a nice balance of the two but I just wanted to make sure certain hits in the music were happening with certain things on camera.

At the label party you’ve got this song being performed by Kehlani. It’s important to the plot, but it isn’t the point of the scene. So how long should that song run? What’s the thought process? 

BACLESSE: The way that it played out in the script was actually different then how you see it in the movie. So during our sort of reorganization and splitting up of different beats to make it feel more party-esque was when we just kept trying to chip away at the Kehlani aspect of it because originally we didn’t start it with Kehlani.

You would meet everybody at the party, performance, then chat and it just felt weird like there was something off about it.

So then we moved Kehlani first, we get what they’re all doing there and we don’t have to sit here and explain the situation. You just instantly know what’s happening and so when we moved it to the beginning of the scene, then we were like we can start the song here and then we have this beautiful shot up at the lights and it feels very glamorous.

Mix stage for Creed III

Then the attack on Drago was there. I’m thinking in my head as a writer do you preface that? Do you let the audience know that something bad is gonna happen? But you didn’t. It’s shocking for him. It’s shocking for the audience. 

BACLESSE: Yeah, that was the intent, that you see Drago in a third person point of view, he walks by somebody starts attacking him, and then people notice but who’s watching this? From whose point of view is this happening?

What we found is we really needed to put things in Adonis’s point of view to make the audience feel the most attached to him. 

That’s the way I remember it as a viewer is seeing it through his eyes.

NELSON: One thing that I would like to add to that is during the original photography there was like a little bit of uncertainty of what actually happened, who was doing what.

So we got the attacker back in additional photography and shot like a little piece to be more focused on his face because we wanted to make sure the audience was aware this is the guy that did the attack.

Then we go to the news story to see the big old mugshot of him and then the third “Aha” moment is when Adonis looks at the photo of Dame with his cellmates when Maryanne gives him the photo.

So we just wanna make sure there’s enough information to tell that story because that was lost on a handful of people.

I’ll also say that there was a cut of this movie where we shot a temp where Jess is attacking our VFX editor with a paper towel roll and then scampering off. 

BACLESSE: Yes and it was in the movie for quite some time!

We needed it for pacing and we didn’t want the audience to get hung up on “What happened with who and what?” We needed them to take in the information but then move on because we need the story to move on.

How much of the attack do you see? How much do you hear on the news report? Cause then we also wrote that whole news reporter in post so that the audience can clearly connect that stuff, file it away, and then move on so that we can keep moving forward with the storyline.

You’ve got what everybody probably knows has to happen in a movie like this which is the fight preparation montage. I’ve got to ask about building that, because it’s not really a montage. It’s more like a series of short scenes. How would you describe that?

BACLESSE: Yeah, it was interesting with the montage, it went through a lot of transformation. 

So Mike had a lot of very beautiful ideas, and when we first got out of principle photography, we had some shot footage, but not everything.

So we actually put together the montage about three different times, depending on different photography available to us. 

Our first preview screening used all the principal photography that we had and then they went back and did another section, primarily photographing Mike’s side so then when that was done, that got put in and then our final round of photography actually was quite delayed because of actor availability.

So we had just finished our last preview screening, we were entering additional photography and we were careening towards our final deadline and we were still getting pieces and then the idea was we’re still gonna get more pieces for the montage in that last photography. 

So we actually got really lucky because Michael Shawver, who had worked on the first Creed and on Wakanda Forever and Black Panther became available.

Michael Shawver for those who don’t know him as an editor.

BACLESSE: Yes, a lovely editor. He came aboard and helped us out for a couple weeks, just trying to get all of these pieces in. We had many versions of the montage and then he came in and did another pass on top of it.

Then we kept moving forward because the music was also an ongoing conversation. So the montage was really something that we worked on from principal photography all the way through till the very last day that we were editing this movie. 

Mike did a phenomenal job because to direct a montage, to act in a montage and to see the pieces that you need of the montage was a lot to ask of a director, and I think he really did a great job. 

What is it like working with the star of the movie, who is also the director?

NELSON: The biggest challenge I’ve faced working with Mike as a director is he’s very critical of himself. This is the first time having those hard conversations of what it is he needs to do in editorial, how to get rid of certain things he loves.

The greatest part about working with him is he had a vision and he knows this character inside and out. This role was not new to him, but this is a new side of Adonis Creed that nobody’s seen, which is much more emotive and tapping into those emotions as an actor and trying to craft that story as a director is also a big challenge.

I will give him credit that he really was able to have those tough conversations about what was necessary for the character and how to craft that as a tea

BACLESSE: We had a lot of conversations like, “I really like this”, or “I really love this thing” and then we would get these feelings of something’s not quite working, we’re getting this note from the preview audience. So something that I think that Mike, Tyler and I all just kept going back to is what’s best for the movie? 

Not what do I personally like? What do I think is the most fun? We all have those feelings about certain things that we really love and really wanna hold onto.

NELSON: One thing that I also loved is the fact that we knew that additional photography is coming and actor availability is a thing, but when your director is an actor, you can get him.

There are some pieces of additional photography that are integral to the storytelling of this movie and it was just nice to have those conversations and even shoot temp stuff with a DSLR and insert it in there, we did that several times and also he’s there doing ADR in my room, to make sure that the articulation of a certain thing is conveyed properly.

It was just incredibly great to have the star be there every day to help craft his vision of the movie.

Talk to me about pacing or molding those fight performances and the combinations of punches that get thrown and creating dynamics?

NELSON:  We had an amazing stunt coordinator Clayton Barber who was the stunt coordinator on the first movie which had all these very unique fights and he wanted to do something similar for this movie so if you look at all the fights, they all have a very different feel to them.

The final fight actually used to play a lot longer than it actually does. Right now it’s currently round one, round two, then we go into the void which is a mashup of all the rounds in between and then we’re gonna come straight out to round 12.

Isn’t it still 11? No eleven’s like the ghost round, isn’t it? 

BACLESSE: It’s kind of built into the void at this point. We used to have a whole separate round for it, and that was actually something we worked on, we felt like we needed a big finale to the void. How are we gonna enter the void and how are we gonna exit the void?

Were two very big conversations and we actually ended up taking the centerpiece punch and making that the end of the void with the big double punch to then get us out to land us into round 12 so that they could have the conversations in the corners, those classic boxing moments.

NELSON: That double punch used to be a really important part of round 11 but at the end of the day there was too much starting and stopping and the propulsive nature of what this fight needed to be needed to start halfway through round one.

There’s a lot of “shaking the rust off” is what the play by play guys say. 

Adonis hasn’t been in the ring for three years and there’s a lot of boos that come from the crowd because this is not the fight that they expected and once he actually builds up the willpower to get back in and actually fight then that’s when things like start 

When he decides to get back into the fight, did it also trigger a pace change of the editing? 

BACLESSE: I think what we found was that we had to be very careful because built into the choreography were these moments of pause for dynamic things because you cannot just have people punching each other in the face nonstop, it is exhausting to watch but we did have to be very careful about where we use the clenches or pauses on the ropes or even just people dodging each other or cutting out to the wides because we would feel like the slack of momentum and pace.

Sometimes we need that as an audience break you need a moment to breathe, you need to understand what has just happened fight wise but overall like we tried very hard to use those in very specific places other than that, just to keep the momentum going, keep the pace going because it’s like that’s ultimately.

What the audience has been waiting to see is these two guys going for it.

NELSON: There was actually an interesting cut we had where the punches were essentially subtitles so as there was a pause in between the punches. You’d have this little subtitle, like them having this conversation but at the end of the day, we decided that there was no need for the actual words, because you could feel it on their faces both Michael and Jonathan are such amazing actors that, you know what they’re saying. 

BACLESSE: Mike’s a huge anime fan, so he has a lot of anime references built into this movie, that was one of the anime concepts he wanted to explore is if we were to subtitle, two men fighting with their hands, similar in some ways to the ASL talking with your hands, but they’re talking with their fists. What would that actually look like? 

We carried that in the cut for a while and then at a certain point, I think we did all feel like you just wanted to be with them in the ring, you could feel everything that we were saying in the subtitles through the performance and honestly, as a viewer you would miss some of the fight beats because your eyes would be dropping to read and you just wanted to live in the fight.

Working on VFX

Do you remember who said, let’s watch this without the subtitles? 

BACLESSE: Yeah that came from Mike. Mike was really experimental when it came to the void. We worked a lot on the question of what does it look like when they go into the void with VFX?

We had a tremendous VFX supervisor, Jennifer Meislohn, who you know, really worked with Mike to develop a lot of ideas about what could it be, and then ended up settling on this empty, very stark, emotive feeling. Then the subtitles came from Mike and then I think we carried that way for a month?

NELSON: We did two previews with the subtitles.

Oh really? Wow. 

BACLESSE: Then one day he just said, I think I wanna watch it without it and we turned it off and I think he felt at that point, being immersed in a different way was the way to go. 

How much does sound play a part of that? And did you build those sequences without the sounds?

NELSON: We built them without for sure but they were quickly temp sound designed by our amazing team.

Samantha Lerman and Michael Vu did some amazing temp Sound Design and Aaron Glascock, who is our sound designer, was on Creed II so he basically gave us his sound effects library of all these punches and that includes crowds and this big cache of things we could pull from. 

I was very specific about the cadence when I was trying to speed these fight beats up and that includes speed changes. Sometimes there’s some speed changes there to make sure that the cadence of how these punches are unfolding could play out.

Editor Jessica Baclesse and director and star Michael B. Jordan

We talked about it. I was calling it the shadow round. What did you guys call it? 

BACLESSE: We called it the void. 

So we’ve had a bunch of flashbacks we talked about at the beginning of the movie and then at the end of the movie, there’s flashbacks when Adonis goes back to the liquor store. Can you talk to me about building that? Because that’s an emotional part of the movie. 

NELSON: We knew that we had to go back to the liquor store and when that was devised we were trying to figure out what that was and I went on this website called Shot Deck which is incredibly valuable for filmmakers and DP’s and I think it’s great as an editor but ultimately for people that don’t know, it’s a website where you pay a license and you have access to really high res images of beautiful photography from movies and TV shows, and it’s searchable. 

I basically searched for liquor store exterior, daytime, driving, and I created this boardomatic of Adonis driving to the liquor store and basically what in the movie is not too far off from how it was boarded. 

BACLESSE: Then we dropped in the existing flashback material that we had, and then we were able to drop that into the cut and show it to Mike as like a proof of concept before he went to additional photography. 

This is how this would fit in pace wise, this is the scene it would come off of, this is the emotional state that it would fall into and it ended up being a really good visual tool for him to see what this could look like and this is how the pace of it would fit into the end of Act two.

NELSON: It’s a much more powerful tool to actually see photography and choose coverage if you are lucky enough to find those images.

I found a whole bunch of stuff from Atlanta.

On the DI stage for Creed III

BACLESSE: Thank you Donald Glover! 

NELSON: Yeah, thank you, Donald . 

It was really great to see it unfold and for Mike, who’s a very visual storyteller he needed to see it. It couldn’t have been a text card that said “Adonis is driving with sad music playing” , “Adonis gets out of his car”, “Adonis walks up to the liquor store.” That just didn’t work.

Somebody important in Adonis’s life dies and there’s an instant cut to the funeral and then the funeral acts as the audience’s ability to grieve that character, which I thought was lovely. Can you talk about how that was either scripted or how you edited that? 

NELSON: Jess did the initial edit on that and it was just absolutely beautiful and I think most people cried every single time that they saw it but how we actually transitioned to the funeral was always a big old question.

This really important person passes away and then we go from the deathbed to an empty bed and the shot that’s in the movie right now is like we start on the bed and it pans over and ends on Michael’s face.

That shot actually continued on and it was Adonis searching through closets and finding keepsakes and it was really a very emotional journey for him. 

We then cut to the funeral, we tried to even incorporate some flashback material from the previous movies to try to bridge some of the cuts because I think the first cut may have been like two and a half minutes of walking through closets but at the end of the day, we decided it was much more emotive to cut from his face to this coffin. 

BACLESSE: The funeral stayed pretty stable and I think what also really worked for us is once Joe, our composer, landed on that gospel music sound with Mike and that dropped in.

You understand what the empty bed is, you see the impact of that on Adonis and then to go right into the funeral and let that gospel music carry you in just really felt like it made that cut work.

Editing this movie was a great experience, we had a wonderful team and everyone showed up to work and worked hard. Everyone was so respectful of each other, so caring for each other and it just really was a pretty phenomenal experience.

Another image from the Mix Stage on Creed III

I love it. I think that’s one of the advantages to our profession is that we’re all empathetic and that plays out in the relationships at the workplace. Hopefully. 

NELSON: No, definitely I couldn’t agree more with what Jess just said because we had an astounding team and the support we got from all of our assistant editors and the VFX team. 

BACLESSE: Our music editor Nick was phenomenal. 

NELSON: Oh yeah Nick Fitzgerald! He was wonderful. 

Shout out to your assistant editors AEs!

BACLESSE: Yeah we had Samantha Lerman who was my 1st and then Michael Vu was Tyler’s 1st. We also had Diana Yip who came in and did the turnover rescue.

NELSON: Yeah, Justin Barham too!

We had a good team. Fantastic. Just lovely people and that’s what made the long night’s worth it. It was the amount of laughs, how many times did we laugh? Lots of laughs. 

BACLESSE: Lots of laughs!

Fantastic and a lot of laughs in this interview! So thank you so much for a great interview.