Post-Production
Justin Benson: On our first movie Resolution, we had this amazing production assistant named Michael Felker. He was an old film school friend of Aaron’s, and he eventually became our closer collaborator. He constantly gives us notes and feedback on all of these scripts. He ended up becoming our “third editor,” which sounds a little demeaning. He’s actually more like the first editor. Basically, the way he works is, he comes to set with us and as we’re shooting, he starts editing together the first assembly cut of the movie. He’ll oftentimes tell us on set, “Hey, I really think you’re missing this two-shot right here.”
Aaron Moorhead: We reshot the whole end of The Endless because of his thoughts on how
the scene was coming together. And we don’t have money for reshoots. I thank God we actually were still shooting so we could slide in an extra hour-and-a-half to reshoot it.
Benson: On Synchronic, he was with us editing at the other half of our shotgun-house duplex. He was there editing the whole time. Usually what happens is a few weeks after we wrap principal photography, he gives us his first edit of the movie. We all watch it together, give some feedback, and then Aaron and I each take half of the movie, arbitrarily the first or second half. We edit our halves, and we trade halves, and polish what the other person did. That’s what we’ve always done. And that gives us like the direc- tor’s first cut. And then we send it o to friends. We get feedback. And then we go back in the edit and Aaron and I start retooling it more. Two halves, trade the halves, polish it up, show to people, get some feedback.
Moorhead: We get Felker back in at that process, so he sees what we’re doing and why.
Benson: He comes back and gives us feedback, and then usually in the final edit, since he knows it better than anyone else besides us, he just does some last things and smooths it out.
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
David Lawson: Felker adds a level of objectivity that you guys don’t have because of your closeness to the material. Where he knows all the material, but he still can step back and be like, “Oh, no, no, there was a better shot or a better sequence. What about this?”
Moorhead: It’s one of those rare times where, because there’s so much preparation and so much development, so much conversation, that we very rarely get to experience, what people call movie magic. We experience it when a performer nails a take that we absolutely love. … We get that when we first start hearing our composer do work because we’re not very musical, and we don’t really know what he does completely.
When Felker surprises us: That’s movie magic.
Lawson: I don’t feel like that trading halves method should work at all. But God, does it always work, and so I’ve stopped even trying to say, “Don’t do that.”
Moorhead: It’s purely logistical. We could leapfrog scenes, but that doesn’t really make sense. Because you’ve got to marry the scenes together, and they have to talk to each other. And doing it in the same room is something that we eventually have to do, but before that, it’s just kind of a waste of time. … I do not want to watch anyone edit, and I don’t want somebody over my shoulder watching me edit.
Benson: One of the one of the scary things about editing is you do a cut, you send it to people to get some feedback, and everyone flags a scene as being too long: “It really slowed down for me right here.” And then you cut that scene as best you can. And then you go show the movie to the same people. And they’re like, “I just don’t feel anything at the end. It’s really weird. This movie doesn’t land for me anymore.”
It’s this weird thing. If you ask people to tell you where the movie is slowed down, or where that’s happening, they’ll tell you which scenes it is. That doesn’t mean you should cut the scenes necessarily. Sometimes they’re the emotional part of the film.
On our first movie Resolution, we organized a cut screening and brought everyone over to Aaron’s house. And we realized we were getting a certain degree of groupthink.
Moorhead: We have a lot of friends who have gotten to direct major studio movies, and they talk about the notes process, and some of them love it, and most hate it. But they’ve said, it actually, weirdly comes down to the location of your test screening, but also specifically who your moderator is, because they’ll ask exactly the right questions, and they’ll understand your movie.
Really it’s about identifying the right problem, and is it even a problem? Or is it a strength? Because you’re telling people, this movie isn’t done, tell us how to fix it. Those things that stood out might have been seen as flaws then, but once you lock the picture and say, “This is the finished product,” people say, “Oh, that’s a choice.” All your flaws become choices.
Dennis (Jamie Dornan) kicks back with a brew in Synchronic
Lawson: Part of getting honest feedback is giving honest feedback. The three of us have given a whole bunch of notes on a whole bunch of our friends’ films over the years, and we believe in giving honest feedback. … When you give that honest feedback, you can expect to get that honest feedback, because art at its core is subjective. So there aren’t any hurt feelings. … There could be something that we just never thought of.
Continue for Synchronic moviemakers Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead, and producer David Lawson on Distribution
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