Weapons

Today on Art of the Cut, we speak with Joe Murphy about editing the new Zach Cregger movie, Weapons.

We last spoke to Joe and director Zach Cregger about their last collaboration, Barbarian. Joe’s other editing work includes features like Swallow, Don’t Come Back from the Moon and Beach Rats. His TV episodic work includes A Friend of the Family.

Any film school nerds who see this film will recognize the story structure as Rashomon-like. Did you and Zack talk about Rashomon and did you watch it?

We didn’t really talk about Rashomon, but I have seen the movie, obviously. One of the interesting things about the film is how it plays with perspective and its story structure. Rashomon is one of the classics to do that from four different characters’ perspectives.

There wasn’t a lot of dialogue around other models for this project and we didn’t really deviate from the scripted story structure in the edit.

The few times we did experiment with moving scenes between chapters, we would see that the piece would quickly unravel because it was so well thought-out and well-planned beforehand.

I wanted to ask about the opening narration. It’s played over black.

That was also the way it was scripted. It’s an opportunity for the audience to lean in. You have a black screen with voiceovers.

You can really start to grab people’s attention and set up the nature of the story. I think the effect is something that is very helpful for us.

Let’s talk about that opening music montage right before you show the opening title. How did you decide how long that should be? Was the music scripted?

Actually, yes. The music was also scripted. The timing of that was really beholden to the music, but also to figuring out how to pace the kids running and what we needed to have there in the best order of those shots. We did some experimentation around how we were going to create the most effective flow.

I like talking about leaping forward in time. There’s one of those moments when Justine is in an auditorium and all the parents want answers about their kid. Josh Brolin’s character wants to hear from Justine. There’s no walking up to the podium. There’s no formal invitation for her to speak. It’s just boom she’s at the podium. Can you talk about that choice and that idea of let’s just move forward in time?

This was part of the visual design. Zach wanted to have some harder ellipses. We wouldn’t necessarily see the character walking up to the stage, but you cut hard into the middle of that next scene, and that was definitely there from the start that Zach and Larkin - the DP -had conceived of that transition.

Finding the timing of that transition was part of the trick that we had in the edit. Where would we come in on that and how to handle that with sound?

There was a build in the crowd noise that we built to a crescendo right on the cut to a silent auditorium, and she’s already standing up there. So we have a nice juxtaposition there with sound.

Let’s discuss overlapping dialogue. There’s a scene where Justine and Paul talk over each other at a bar. What are the challenges or tricks to editing overlapping dialogue?

I think one of the nice things about overlapping dialogue in a scene is that it does give a sense of naturalness. It lets the actors have some more freedom. They’re not waiting for someone to finish and start the next beat. It’s definitely a really useful tool in the scene.

We have both clean singles and over-the-shoulder shots for this scene. For the over-the-shoulder, if there was a beat that wasn’t matching, the camera was locked down, so I was able to do a composite with part of the shot from Justine’s angle placed over Paul’s shot.

So if I really did want to preserve continuity there, I had some editorial tricks that I could use to help.

We didn’t really do it on this film, but if you needed to use overlapping dialogue that wasn’t working, you could just ADR with the actors later on and clean it up.

But I do think creating an environment on set where they have some freedom and the ability to explore and to really be in a scene is very helpful.

It lets them find their moments, then it’s my job in the edit to carve those up and figure out the best way to help in terms of shaping their performance.

The best beats are not something I ever want to discard if there is some particular technical issue with it, so we always find some sort of editorial solution in order to save them.

Preserving the quality of overlapping dialogue for me is something that’s very nice, and I think it actually adds to the real sum of the scene.

That bar scene is one of those scenes that gets replayed from the boyfriend’s perspective. Originally, you’re looking at Justine’s perspective. She’s waiting at the bar, he shows up, then later on you show him coming into the bar and she’s waiting for him. Did they just create the scene once? Or was it slated as two different scenes?

They were always slated separately, so I knew what was intended for a different character’s scene. Sometimes we would have the entire scene from the other character’s perspective, but there was the potential that we needed to see it and learn something new about it from their side of the story.

In this case, that was the only shot that was planned for that moment. But there were some tricks in other parts of the film, particularly when you’re working on dailies and the footage is trickling in, and you haven’t really seen that much of the film.

When you’re working with footage ostensibily tied to a different character’s perspective, you’re building each scene differently, and sometimes building to a different peak moment in a scene.

I had to remind myself while I was working on the first cut of the movie – moments I might have traditionally wanted in a scene, such as cutting to a character’s reaction shot, had to be saved for the scene when it’s replayed.

Sound design is big in horror film. I love the sound design in Weapons. One of the places where I noticed it is when Justine first goes to Alex Lilly’s house and she goes through the back gate, it sounded like you were in a different place. And after a big scare, the sound design changes again. Talk to me a little bit about what you did in your picture cut with sound design.

It was a process of experimentation and trying different things.

We had access to our sound team pretty early. Luciano Vignola and Filipe Messeder were our team for this one.

We had dialogue with them and they could build out stuff for us, like how can we address some of our background sounds to make that part of what’s helping create tension?

There was definitely some attention to that in the edit as it progressed, but it was part of a dialogue with the larger team to see how we can effectively utilize sound.

Can you remember a specific example?

When Justine gets out of her car at night and she’s walking to her house for the first time, right after she’s picked up booze at the liquor store, and she’s had this unsettling school meeting. She gets out of her car and we have crickets in the background as she’s exiting the car.

Night sounds. One thing that we did - which was fun in the sound edit - was we changed the texture of the crickets and the cicadas as the camera is racking and she’s looking into the distance.

So there’s a slight shift in how the crickets and the backgrounds are sounding, depending on when we’re focused on her compared to when we rack to the background when she’s looking out.

So then we let her take us into the house. If you listen in that section you’ll hear there’s just a gentle shift in the background there. I think it creates a layer of tension and anticipation that something may happen. So you’re kind of teeing up some suspense for the audience by letting them know things are not normal. You don’t want to overuse those things.

I think as a viewer we can get really conditioned to devices and techniques. If you start to replay them too much, it will cue people in pretty quickly, it’ll start to telegraph something.

In this case there’s something really subtle that helps us get another beat of tension with her walk to the house.

Is there a key to maximizing the effectiveness of a jump scare?

I don’t think there’s a general rule for jump scares. You have to employ both audio and visual techniques, and both the set up and reaction to the scare are key.

In this film, we employ a number of different strategies to make the scares work, sometimes through sound design (such as dropping background sound a bit, when Justine is peering into Alex’s backyard window, creating some quiet in the lead up to a reveal of the parents on the couch, accented with a music sting).

The best scares for me though are the ones that are rooted in your character’s experience. For example, when Archer is searching for his son in the basement, you’re hopefully so with him as he feverishly hunts for him - you really want him to find his son, so you’re completely caught off guard when Gladys jumps out of the shadows and becomes an obstacle to that.

A loud music sting on Gladys jumping at him also adds to the visceral experience of surprise and fright at the moment, making the scare satisfying.

Images of Gladys are used in a number of scares in this movie, and we found that when a shot of Gladys was used as an element of surprise, (such as Gladys in the ceiling, Gladys in Archers’s son bed, or Gladys jumping out of the shadows in the basement), that the shot of Gladys needed to be brief for it to be the most effective it could be.

For example, I think the shot of Gladys in Justine’s bedroom ceiling is maybe only 12 or 13 frames. Amy Madigan - who plays Gladys - was fantastic in those moments so there was a temptation to hold longer, but giving the audience less, letting their imaginations do some work, really ups the fear factor.

We also knew we were going to using images of Gladys repeatedly in this manner, so you don’t want this image to get stale, just a brief taste is enough.

The reaction shots help a lot too, right?

Oh, 100%! It’s totally the reaction. It’s not just the moment of surprise. They have to be grounded in character. That’s part of what the reaction shot is giving you.

Did you have any rules when you started telling the story from multiple people’s perspective about music or shot use, or how to make them different from each other or perspective?

There weren’t any rules that we had established in the edit, as that was really establish prior by Zach and Larkin and their design for the shots and coverage choices For instance, Zach wanted to start each chapter from behind the head of the character.

When we meet each character for the first time, we’re behind them. Alex’s chapter, for instance, musically, there’s a more child-like quality to the score. You can definitely hear that in the compositions.

You mentioned score a little bit with Alex’s story - how it was a little more child-like. What did you temp with? I noticed the score had a lot of percussion in it.

This was one of the great things about this particular process. We were working in New York on this movie and our visual effects, assistant editors, our composers, and music editor were all on the same floor in person at an editing facility.

It was really easy to have an organic conversation with people - to dig into stuff face-to-face, have ideas, show experiments quickly and efficiently. So it was a really a great vibe for cutting the film.

Zach was one of the composers, along with Hays and Ryan Holladay. Zach didn’t want to temp the movie. He wanted to use the original score from the get-go.

There was one section of the film that – just because of time - we had to use some temp, during the final action scene we needed to put some stuff in before we did a friends-and-family screening. So we had some temp music from our music editor, Lightchild.

She had put together a bunch of stuff for us, which was really helpful. But in general, everything was original from the get-go, which was great.

When I first showed Zach the assembly, it was completely dry. There was not a piece of music in it. That was his request. When I was cutting scenes for myself, I did have to throw in occasional stuff in the background just to help me find a rhythm to some of the shots, but I pulled everything out when I first showed the cut to Zach.

Pretty early on, we started feeding scenes to the composers and they would start building out stuff. During Zach’s director’s cut, he spent part of the day with me, then would go hang out with the composers and work on music.

We had a really nice vibe of being able to ping pong between picture, sound, and music during the creation of the director’s cut.

It was unusual in that sense, especially the composers were on and so intimately involved in the process.I think they found that percussive background pretty early, to try to create a sense of propulsion in the score.

Obviously, when you see a scene with music, it really changes it in a really great way. If the scene already holds up when it’s dry, then when you add music to it, it can really start to sing.

We didn’t get temp love because we weren’t temping, which was really one of the most gratifying things out of that process, because you can just get so attached to your temp music. It was nice to not get locked into that and having something that’s unique, responding to the film itself.

You were talking about having all these people on the same floor and accessible to you face-to-face. Have you done remote editing? What’s your opinion of remote work compared to what you just experienced on this movie?

I’ve worked remotely a number of times, and I think there are ways to create that intimacy and environment with your team and collaboration remotely. It’s not a requirement to have that connection with people.

The fact that we were able to develop a real sense of a team and camaraderie in person was great. Besides just working on the film, there is also downtime that you get to spend together. It’s also easy to grab someone to show them a scene instead of doing it over Zoom.

I like to integrate my assistants into the process. I think it’s additive for the film when you’re creating a sense of collaboration and utilizing people’s brains and creativity.

I like to grab my assistants and show them a rough cut of a scene and hear their thoughts on it. It’s much easier to do that when you’re on the same floor together. You can just pull some people in and have a nice dialogue. There are extra hurdles when you’re remote.

The post team is the first audience. I think it’s a really easy way to get eyes on things in person and actually feel someone’s response to something, no matter how close they are to the film. It’s very different than doing that remotely when someone’s watching something at home without you there.

I think that that’s one of the benefits, but for me, it’s really communication. There’s communication that happens in person that’s non-verbal. You just can’t recreate that when you’re remote.

When you’re picking an assistant editor what are some of those things that you are looking at: skill sets or things that you’re looking for so when it comes time for them to watch something, they’re going to be able to give you good feedback.

I do like to find people to work on the film that are very passionate about movies. Besides having a good technical background, it’s nice to have someone who has a little bit more VFX skills in their back pocket and someone that may have some more temp sound skills…so kind of dividing up the skill sets for your AEs: having some complementary skill sets is definitely great.

But I just think finding people that have a sensibility about films and that are really passionate about movies, too.

If someone’s logging the footage they’re going to see things as well as the editor, and it would be a shame to not utilize someone else’s perspective or their creative abilities.

There isn’t always time to necessarily dive into the whole cut together and really talk about: “Did you see a moment here that was really cool?” You don’t want to cut off an idea that can make the film better. You’re all trying to make the best movie possible.

One of the good ways to do that is to get people on the same page knowing what movie you’re working on. In the cut, I’ll frequently throw the sound design to one of the assistants. If you’re going to have to sound design a scene, you need to have some dialogue around what we’re looking for.

It’s not just filling in what’s natural. We need certain qualities in our temp sound effects, for instance, and you have to get people on the same page for that, so you’re all working towards the same main goal. Fundamentally, we’re trying to figure out the best way to articulate Zach’s vision.

You mentioned “making the same movie” and I’ve heard people discuss that before because a lot of times people can give you feedback on a scene or on the movie as a whole, and they are thinking about a whole different movie than what you’re trying to do.

100%. 100%. That’s also something that - when you’re getting notes from people – you have to always consider. There’s an art to giving and an art to taking a note.

A lot of times it’s finding out what the spirit of the note is, rather than the literal elements of the note.

I like to also discuss how something makes someone feel. What are their gut reactions to things, rather than getting into the nitty gritty of “have you tried this shot or that shot?”

It’s more helpful to the film to just try to figure out what kind of feeling is this sequence giving you? When were you leaning in? That’s a big question for me always. I’m trying to figure out when people are engaged and when they’re leaning back and they’re not as interested.

There is a sense of actually leaning in. I’m participating in the movie. And that’s definitely a good gauge for me to get a sense of.

Even just vibing it out when you’re in a room with people. In terms of working with your team through the process of if you want to give someone some sound work on the scene, you would let them try it out, then watch the work, then give some feedback, then have them revise that work.

Through that process and that dialogue, you start to communicate how we’re getting on the same page of what this particular film is, and it happens instinctually that way.

What’s the art of receiving a note?

You don’t always want to take the note literally. Obviously there are some times where someone is mentioning something that’s really problematic, but if someone watches a cut or the audience gives you feedback and they say, “It’s really slow when you get to this point of the film,” it may not be slow in that specific part of the film.

You have to watch the film and analyze: “Why are people having this experience there?” It very well could be 20 minutes before that is where you’re finding that there actually is an issue that’s leading up to this general feeling of drag.

I think that that’s part of the interpretive art of looking at notes. People are trying to translate their experience for you to be helpful, then you also have to translate what they’re translating back into: what is my experience of the film?

Knowing the film so intimately, how can I pinpoint where we may need to try some experiments to address something that seems to be globally agreed upon to improve the film? That’s part of the process of learning how to take notes.

If someone is saying, “I can’t understand this line and it’s killing the joke” then definitely we need to clean up that line.

But when you’re talking about experiential stuff, sometimes something could be cut too quickly, which actually makes it feel slow. You may not be milking some of the beats.

You can’t take things too literally in that sense. You have to rely on what your experience is watching it and go back and read and try to rewatch things and figure out where you may be able to help make the film better based on the responses you’re getting.

You’re in a time-based medium. You really need to watch with a lot of “handles” around something if you want to make a change. Quite frankly, watching the full film from start to finish really is always going to be your best guide, particularly if you’re working on something later in the film.

If you make a change two thirds of the way into the film, it can be really hard to judge how that’s working without watching a significant portion of the film beforehand.

Watching the film as a whole over and over again, really is informative, because you start to get a sense and feel for the flow and the pace. It may be counterintuitive in a way, because you feel this crunch of time. You can be surprised, particularly when you get near the end of an edit.

Sometimes if you take one line or one shot out, it has a trickle-down effect that you didn’t even realize without really experiencing the whole film. It’s one of those things that I always try to save time for.

If I’m working on trying to figure out the pace of something or the pace of the ending, I’ll have to give myself enough run up to really evaluate and assess it. I’ll need to give myself enough of a run up of the film to get a vibe. Is the pacing of this actually working?

One of the tricks with this film in particular, finding the pacing, there’s another Japanese movie that came out recently called Monster that has a similar effect, where you’re telling a story from a different perspective and you’re learning new bits of a story.

Once you go into a different character’s perspective and you’re getting different emotional shading on that particular character, there’s a fine line you’re walking between how much exposition you’re going to give around a new character.

When you’re getting their story at the top of their chapter versus taking us out of the film and making it feel like we’re restarting from scratch each time. That was one of the things that we worked on a lot was that we need to have an ability to learn about these characters and to attach to them.

We need to know certain things to make the ending payoff. For instance, we have to have enough of Justine and Paul in order to have it mean anything when Justine shoots Paul. You can’t take out too much of those human moments and that set-up. But you also have to be careful when you’re doing this on an ensemble piece.

There are so many characters. How much room does the audience have to keep resetting, really learning and getting more information about characters at the top of each chapter?

I’m really happy with the balance that we found. That was definitely one of the questions that came up. We definitely did some chopping in that regards, toggling between setting up the characters and their backstory then also how we actually deal with keeping the forward momentum of the film.

You’ve done a bunch of different types of movies. Some of your most successful have been horror films. Are you working with your agent to lean into that and take advantage of it, or do you feel like you don’t want to be pigeonholed?

I really love the movies that I’ve had an opportunity to work on, and particularly with Zach, he’s such a great collaborator. I’m not really afraid about being pigeonholed. I think for me it’s: is the project something really interesting? It’s a joy to have been able to do Weapons and Barbarian.

It’s really great material and challenging editorially. We’re still working with the same nuts and bolts here: How are we finding the character beats?

What are the characters journeys? What are the nuances of these performances in these scenes? You’re still needing to do that in horror, or you’re not going to care.

You’ve worked with Zach twice. Have you worked with other directors multiple times? What is the benefit to a longer relationship?

I’ve worked with other directors before, multiple times. One of the nice things, about that repeat collaboration is that it can become more intuitive.

There’s trust, and it’s easier to connect with the director’s sensibilities and instincts. The director may have. You’re really working towards trying to help them articulate the best version of their vision.

Your job as the editor is to try to bring that out and really craft something that makes it feel like you’re in good hands when the audience is watching it.

They feel an assuredness to the directing. It definitely is helpful if you’ve worked together before, because your first cut can get a little closer then maybe if you have a different way of looking at things than a director you don’t know, and until you really get in the room together and really start to have dialog, you may just have a little bit more ground to cover when you’re working with someone new.

One of the great things about having done these two films with Zach is I had a good sense of what types of tools, for instance, that he likes to use in the edit for shaping timing for what he gravitates towards performance-wise. 

I didn’t really have any suggestions for set, but if I do ever need to call the director during the production and say, “Would you consider this shot?” or something like that, you develop a sense for how someone shoots.

That also is something that can make that part of the collaboration more productive as well. So you may be able to catch something for them or not, because you know that they don’t tend to - say - shoot a lot of coverage – so there’s a reason for that.

That’s definitely something that I think is valuable. Over time, you start to work with people repeatedly. You start to see those kinds of patterns, and it it’s helpful.

What were some of the complex creative challenges on this film?

The most tricky thing about this film was really figuring out how we paced the film. As I mentioned, when we’re re-starting the film - in some ways over six times - really being attuned to what that experience is when you’re watching that, it’s not enough just to watch a single chapter.

You really have to watch multiple chapters in the run up to the chapter that you’re working on. I think that the pacing was the challenge on this one. The structure really was set. We never really deviated from it, per se. It’s just fine tuning.

There were some scenes on the cutting room floor, but not too many. It was more about internal changes within scenes - things that we would lose in a scene, how long we’re holding certain shots. Those really were the big challenges.

The thing that was unique to this movie is having to feel that out and understand and let the film’s own logic speak and not try to impose something on it.

For instance, we need this moment of breath and reset at the top of these chapters. It’s kind of in the design of the film. So try not to force something so we have to ramp up the pace right away, for instance, in those opening scenes of each character.

Joe, thank you so much for talking to us about this movie, and congratulations on its success.

Thanks so much, Steve. I really appreciate it.