- [Narrator] I just locked
picture on my latest film, a German crime thriller
directed by Udo Flohr. - [Woman] Legally, Bremen
was still living in the age of The Inquisition. - [Woman] Trials were not public. - Take one. - [Narrator] The picture
was shot in Germany. - [Narrator] I cut it here in LA. - We're gonna make this happen. It just needs to be tighter. - [Narrator] The score
was recorded in Prague. The mix was done in Germany, and the final color correction
happens in the Netherlands. - [Narrator] Truly a global collaboration, and I think it's becoming the
new norm, even for Indy Films. - [Narrator] This is by no
means a big studio production, yet thanks to technology,
it can pull together an international pool of talent, from the director of photography, the composer, and all the
other key crew positions. - [Narrator] I invited
Udo, a first-time director, by the way, to tell us
how he made it happen. - I started with the Effigy
project about three years ago, and this is my first feature. One thing that I did is that
I didn't really do any shorts before I did this feature. So I've done some exercises and so on, but I've not really done
any proper shorts before. - How come? - Mostly the reason is
there's no market for shorts, and I don't think, necessarily, the feature is gonna be nine or ten times more expensive than the short. - Yeah, I did the same.
My first directing effort was also a feature. - How are they handling it? - (phone bangs loudly) - But I do think there's some
merit to making a short first, or a couple. - Absolutely. - Because, as a first-time
director, obviously, I made so many mistakes, and I haven't figured things out as much. So you're kind of learning
as you're already presenting yourself as a filmmaker, and
you're exposing yourself. So before we get into the nitty-gritty, just like a quick synopsis of the film. What is the film about? - [Udo] So the film is
based on a true story and it's about a serial killer who was identified and sentenced
about 200 years ago in a Northern German city called Bremen. About 200 years ago, this woman, her name was Gesche Gottfried,
and she was identified and eventually sentenced
for killing 15 people, including her three children, her parents, her twin brother, and three husbands. - [Udo] It's not a docudrama by any means. We did try to tell an interesting story, and of course, you had a
very important part in that. During the edit, we were able to redefine the story structure to some extent. - Yeah. (dramatic music) - So let's talk about
this process of editing. What were the steps of
getting to this cut? If you could, describe like
the different rounds of edits. - There are three steps in editing. The first step should actually be that you work on your assemble cut, you do a first rough cut. You try to build the film, pretty much, as it was intended during the shoot, and it was intended during
the writing of the screenplay. I did that with Andreas Farr,
who is our assistant editor, and he already started
doing that during the shoot. So every day, he was sitting in the digital image technician's room, which is another job that
he did during the shoot, and he started editing scenes already, which helped us make sure that the scenes that we had already shot were okay and usable. And then, together with him,
I did the first rough cut. The reason to do that is
that you get this rough cut because you need to get
it out of your head. So, to some extent, during the rough cut, you realize that some things don't work. - I'm actually going to have
to re-shuffle this scene, figure out a different
layout or different blocking than what was originally shot,
and I'm gonna explain why. - I think the second part
is that we talked a lot about some general guidelines. Basically what my intention
was with this film. You occasionally showed me stuff, but mostly you also started implementing your own idea of what the
story structure could be. - The director gave me just
some initial notes right here, So he was actually
flying over from Germany, and he came here, we
watched the film together, and he gave me some more notes. (suspenseful music) This balance between the editor's cut and the director's cut, that can be a really scary situation when you do it for the first time. Like the relationship between
the director and the editor, because you have to figure out, how much freedom should I take, and how much do I need
to include the director in the process. - And it really was helpful
to have that rough cut that was very faithful to
the script at the beginning. I think you were able to just sort of let me do my thing for a while and not worry about it. Because you had this other cut
where you could always say, "Well, I really liked it
the way it was over there." - Yeah, basically I always had a fallback. - And there were a couple of
moments that we discovered now in the final phase where
we spend three days going over scene by scene by scene where Udo said, "Well take
a look at the old cuts." And there was shots that, at the moment, it didn't resonate with me, and that we brought back into
the scene, so that was great. (dramatic music) - Can you talk a little bit more in detail what we did in the last three days. How did that work? Like what was our, sort of, process? - The intention was that we
would watch the film first, take some notes, and then
start working on those notes. And what happened, actually, is that you immediately started going in and make changes, which
ended up becoming our MO. We found out that we were
not able to sit still and watch the film and take notes, so. - Because there was so minutiae stuff. Like add a couple frames
here, keep this moment. Keep a breath or take breath away. And so these are the little things that very hard to write down. - Sometimes I felt like I was nit-picking. Like I shouldn't be on
your case about it so much. But at the same time,
we always felt rewarded because we realized even if
you made a very minute change, that it still helped, sometimes. There's some suspends where
you can actually stretch time a little to keep the suspense, and then at other times
you want to speed it up because otherwise, it could
start to get a boring moment and so on. - Did you find yourself in
a situation on this film where you think like nothing
that we tried worked? - I don't think in this
film that really happened. But it certainly could happen on a film. I mean, there were one or two aspects here where we said it might be
good to reshoot some pick-ups. I think you found solutions for everything where we could use,
pretty much use this cut. - Yeah, I think you are in a situation where you hired the right people. I think you had an amazing DP, - I think so, too. - On the film that just made the film - [Udo] Thomas Kist. - Look incredible, and he
actually has an approach to shooting that I'm now a total fan of, which is multi-camera. Like embracing multi-camera
as a way of shooting scenes in a way that you can
really get the most of it. You always think if you
have several cameras running at the same time, you're compromising because you can't find the perfect angle, you might not be able to light it perfectly
for that single shot, but he takes it as a creative
challenge to make that work. - There's some advantages, in my view, to shooting with three cameras. The most important one is
that the actors like it because if you have different, if you have a multi-camera situation, then everything always counts. You don't do a different
setup for the reaction shot, but the reaction shot
is actually being filmed in the same, being acquired in the camera in the same scene. - So they're always on. They feel like everything they
give to the project matters. - Yeah. So the actors really
like working that way. It helps with editing a little, you can probably talk about that. It helps with continuity a little, and it also helps save some money. And the big disadvantage
that most people see is that it's not really possible to have optimal lighting for all three cameras. I think this is where Thomas Kist comes in because before I even contacted him, he was actually famous
for having worked on feature films with three cameras. - I'm sorry, I have not
seen any of your films. - I think we'll just
get the check, please. (funky music) - So one of his films that's
probably the best known one that he did that way is Interview with Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller. - Watch it! (car tires screeching) (crashing glass) - [Udo] Another one is blind
date with Stanley Tucci. - May I make an observation? - Certainly. - You seem to have nice breasts. When did you get them? - When I started my period. I got ice cream and tits. - Yeah, so my thought was
you hire very talented people, actors, production,
design is amazing. I mean, the people
there, they actually had a TV special on the making of the building that this is shot. We used one large manor
house that they bought and then they renovated it
and the production designers, their names are Christina von Ahlefeldt and Knut Splett-Henning. So they bought the manor house, which is a big manor
house with many rooms. We ended up building 17 sets, I think, or 16 sets in that one building
and that building stands in for three different buildings in the film. For example, they changed the windows and they even put different
windows in that part of the manor house, which
is all the same building. But they put different
windows in different parts of the house to make sure
that it didn't look like the same building because
when it was supposed to be the courthouse, and the
other one was supposed to be the private house where the
murderer lived, and so on. So if you look up, it's by
the drama TV station NDR, if you look up the NDR
episode called Nord Story, and it's Heppy End im Herrenhaus, and there you can watch the whole thing. - So I'm gonna bring you back to editing. It is storytelling, and
it's like these moments, these shots, they're
really building blocks, and you can't just document
a performance that happened in front of a camera and say okay, edit, I just documented what they shot. You have to take that, and each
set up is a building block, and you have to say, "What is the story?" - And now, I'm gonna get a little crafty. They're already gonna be
here over at this table. Before I commit, let's see the other take. - How can we make the story work? How can we engage the audience? How can we solve certain problems
that may be in the script? Because sometimes when
you write the script, you put everything in there
because you don't know whether the audience gonna
understand it or not. And then when you shoot
it and you edit it, you realize, oh it's so on the nose. It's like so obvious what's going on because the actors are
bringing subtext to every line. The audience is ahead of us in the story, we need to pull back, we
need to keep it more mystery. - How does that feel to
you, when you see scenes that you worked on in the
script phase for so long, and you sort of thought,
"Yeah, this is working," and then when you shot it, sort of kinda becomes a little bit of a discovery again. And then when you see it in the editing? - Yeah, it does happen
that stuff just falls flat, that you had this great idea
and during the screen play it doesn't turn out like that at all. And during the edit, you came up, or often you came up with a different idea and suddenly there's a solution where the intention is realized, but in a way that I, as a director, never thought of, neither during the work on the screen play phase,
nor during the shoot. - I hope I'm gonna get away with it because the way that I cut it now they're kind of looking
at a different body and that might be a problem. I'm gonna find out down the road. - You had a couple of times where like, what if we cut it this way? What if we try this? And then you already almost
said, "You know what, it's not worth our time,"
to make that extra step and say now let's take some
time and explore that idea. And many times we actually
took those ideas and - Many times we took them. There were like two or three times where I led you down the
garden path, so to speak. - Yeah, there were two moments where we spent maybe half hour or an hour and then just said, "Okay, we tried it, it doesn't work." Giving the director
permission to see that then builds goodwill
where it doesn't feel like I'm trying to like be overbearingly put my ideas into the film so that whenevery there is a moment where we have a strong
disagreement creatively, we're at a point where
we can then talk about it and say, "Okay, I feel
like this is important, you feel like this is important, let's hash it out." And we don't have to make it about who's in charge at that moment. Because ultimately, the
director's in charge so once I present my idea and say, "This is what I think," director says, "I thought about it. I don't think this is what I wanna do, let's go the other way,"
then I just have to shut up and be okay with it. - Do you make decisions for the film based solely on what you like, or on what you believe
the audience will prefer? - I do think about the audience. I guess I don't believe in
art for art's sake that much. You know, it's a little bit of both. So you do have to have an artistic vision. If you keep worrying about
the audience all the time, then the film will not have your own greatest mark on it. - And for me, as an editor,
I'm all about the audience. If I feel I can connect the audience, if I can find that thing
that I envision in a scene and I sit in an audience
and it actually works, like they're laughing, they're crying, they're gasping, they're quiet, for me, personally, it's
almost more important than actually what I'm making. It's does it work? Does it connect? - Yeah, editing, it really is
the invisible art, isn't it? - Yeah. Great, I have one more question for you. You went from not making a
film to becoming a filmmaker. How did you get to that point? Like how did you pull it off? Like how did you get the money, get all the people to
actually believe in it, and then made it happen? - One strategy that worked really well, there was a point when I
started telling everybody that this project was really happening. (suspenseful music) - It told them that it
was like a moving train, it was happening and I
was gonna make the film no matter what, with or without them, but they could be part of it. For me, this worked for investors, this worked for talent, this worked for creative
people like even yourself, to some extent. Where you are too
experienced to fall for this in some way, because you told
me that when we first met. You weren't sure that
it was really happening. - FOMO, fear of missing out. If you don't say yes, you're
not gonna be part of it. You're gonna feel bad
about not taking action two years from now, or one
year when that film comes out. (dramatic music) - In the end, it comes down to there's many people who
talk about making a film and they never do it. If you look at the situation, you can pin it down to, they actually, they just didn't do it. They had this attitude where they wanted all the pieces to fall into place before they got to the point where they said, "This is happening." I think in the end, it comes down to if life hands you lemons, as a filmmaker, you have to be willing to eat the lemon. Some people can't even watch somebody else eat a lemon, but if you want to make a film you have to make sure
that not only can you see somebody else eat
a lemon, but you have to be able, if life hands
you lemons, to eat it. Are you able to watch that? - Yeah, I, um, I'll take half a piece. (chuckling) - You made films before I even met you. - Okay, we're filmmakers. We're doing it. - We're doing it. - So if you wanna become a filmmaker, get a lemon, eat it in its entirety, and then you're ready. Udo, thank you so much for coming today. Thank you for actually showing the process and me maybe saying,
"Okay, this doesn't work, so I'm gonna go over here," and that requires him to be okay with it. So I wanna thank you for that. (pulsing music) - [Narrator] If you want to
get a deeper understanding of how I completely transformed
the key scene in the film, you can watch a free editing session by clicking the link in
the video description. I think I solved it. I solved the puzzle in the rough. If you happen to be in LA, catch Udo and I when we present the online collaborative workflow of the various post departments at this
month's creative pro user group in Hollywood. Info also in the description. Thanks for watching. (melancholy music)
