Wes Anderson's Editor Breaks Down His Unique Style

Wes Anderson is the most imitated filmmaker ever yeah oh uh but there's always been something missing it's not until Wes is happy with the scene that we know the timing's right time was never right you're saying our mother died 3 weeks ago woodro and his three sisters everything about them is split and comped so there's always a bit of retiming every corner of every frame and every action and every prop is is ripe to get changed and you know what if you talk to Wes he doesn't think he has a style I are you my life you are my dear friend and pro you no you absolutely have a style she's my Rush ma yeah I know she mine too I love you too but I should to actually make a movie like West you have to understand his meticulous craft and technique so to break it all down we invited Wes Anderson's longtime editor Barney pilling who cut masterpieces like The Grand Budapest Hotel aisle of dogs and most recently asteroid City we get a deeper understanding of Wes Anderson's timing why the first step Barney makes in any scene is the sound design the mix of stop motion animation and live action and understanding how Wes Anderson explored grief in Asteroid City this is the editing podcast and it's interview was recorded with Riverside the all-in-one video podcasting toour if you're new here please subscribe West Anderson style is like I think one of the most talked about Styles in in cinema today but I think there's a many elements I don't think people particularly understand because it is quite hard to explain what is the timing of a West Anderson film it's to the metronome that only he hears is the ultimate truth to that would love to find out how you managed to make all of that timing work this was on an old rooll I forgot to develop in the glove box self-portrait with shrapnel do page 45 you did that czy you just said it perfectly that was perfect like you know this instinctually then but like for you when you're in editing how did you make that timing work I don't know don't know I mean he has to think something's wrong we have to take it in like he's doing there's pills on the floor there's a beautiful bottle of perfume there she's wonderfully made up it takes you a while to take in what you're seeing we're uping the stakes there to have that big pause before Scarlet responds self-portrait with shrapnel do page 45 there was just Intrigue to doing it that way when we first watched it we put it together with the sensibility of of how we've normally put his stuff together which is it's coming at you at a million miles an hour and keep up cuz we're not stopping what have you done how could you say shouting and crying uhhuh so shout and cry how could you we had to really have a word with ourselves and go no don't don't be afraid of just silence how could you how couldn't I we ER on the side of putting a little bit of air in there sometimes quite a lot then it say I smash everything off the shelf so smash everything off the shelf I mean we're we're we're obviously upping the speed of it so to have that pause we cook to him and it has a little snickety clack Rhythm to it which is West End humor it reminds me of what personally for me one of my favorite West Anderson Cuts is in the aisle of dogs wait a second before we attack each other and tear ourselves to shreds like a pack of Maniacs let's just open the sack first and see what's actually in it it might not even be worth the trouble hi a rancid Apple Core two warm meat and banana pills a moldy rice cake a dried up Pickle tin of Sardine bones a pile of broken eggshells and an old smooshed up ratten gizard with maggots all over it okay it's worth it this kind of felt like that communic cut hair where like it kind of comes in a bit too fast here like old smushed up ratten gizzard with maggots all over it okay it's worth it and then it says I smash everything off the shelf smash everything off the shelf this would straight into it I just like those types of differences ultimately I'll keep saying it it's not until Wes is happy with the scene that we know the timings right you know when he's happy with the metronome that's in his head then we're done I think it's interesting that you talk about a metronome in his head do you feel like there is a a distinct Rhythm equal spaces between Every Beat and there's you know like a distinct musicality to it no no because how could you put a metronome on Jazz for instance I don't I think within his within his words it would be impossible to put a 44 beat to it or or anything like that I could wrap my instinct it's I'm more instinctively in tune after doing this amount of work with it it may only be three frames that way and two that way but until it's been through his filter I can only get it close Wes is able in a superhuman way to realize when things are off by even a frame you know even a mistake you know sometimes I don't know if editors make the same mistake as me sometimes where you're in and your out Point actually can grab a frame that it shouldn't depending on where you park with so I put one of them back in and missed the missed the last frame of the sequence and the and he noticed he noticed this it's not like every mistake like that gets pulled up on but that's the kind of standard of timing that we have to work with uh on a Wes Anderson movie think of the people think of the places think of the world use your grief for a rehearsal I'm not even in this picture I'm a war photographer use your grief right the music's doing a lot for us here too how so you know this sort of Moody odling from the time period just drifting in on the airwaves of someone's radio three shallal [Music] down I value those things as a as a filmmaker very very very highly it doesn't have to be dialogue we don't have to be making edits just you know whenever I set out put a scene together for wor I don't even start putting image on it until the sound bed sounds like I'm actually there if it sounds like you sat there with them your illusion is is is almost already done the music is our character at that point and it's an important one most editors probably make the mistake of let's say finding a temp track from a soundtrack and put it underneath because they want to help get into the scene they want to create the atmosphere as well but then they start timing it towards the music track it's it's quite a common I would say probably rookie mistake but in this case the advanced technique is actually if you can get the sound environment put all of that underneath then start editing in the dialogue that gets you into the environment and the atmosphere of the scene that's interesting like if we played the offline of this it wouldn't sound hugely different but I think it was even more fed and even more on the Wind when I did it it really was just a little flavor out there wow here's your grief even out a small touch just a little sound effect as she hits her head on bathtub you know we have lovely discussions about that and I'm going right what's the bath made of West are we ceramic is this cast iron would what we that you know we'll have really nice discussions and say how do you want this to sound how should this sound if we we talked about with quite a few editors always love talking about the micro movements they find those more important than dialogue [Music] sometimes such a sickening waste think of the people think of the places think of the world you could have seen Dolores some directors choose a push in on different moments of the scene and then they choose in the edit it's off center Framing and then it goes into Center does West like no this is the line I want to push in and in fact this scene was shot straight down the barrel so when this scene first came in he was sent to frame they were looking directly at each other in the classic center framed West and we offset it the building of the cottage and the offset was done in post production why did you make that choice to change it I think there was always a plan that we'd have a bit of depth it was to give it to give depth to the shot and also a bit of Storytelling I think this is a wonderful rumination on Grief he is your grief and anytime we can see real grief in orgie being straight on is an exclamation point such a sickening waste you know I'm very classic we we save the sort of close-ups for when it matters and I mean just listen to what he's saying it's beautiful think of the people think of the places think of the world you could have seen Dolores it needs to punch that way in this particular moment because he is using its grief he is taking it seriously and he's obviously moved by it by the end of it it feels very classical to do that at this this particular line think of the world you could have seen Dolores and there were no other movein on any of it was only ever uh for this little bit that we yeah we're going to do this and he's he is going to dig into his grief uh then uh the and the coroner comes in orders me out of the room I slowly turn away and close the door scene my sandwich is burning That's a classic wonderful example of how Wes chopped sentimentality off at the knee o hm they then play out the most important dialogue scene of the whole movie this isn't the beginning of something ay isn't it is it probably not unless maybe it is I don't like the way that guy looked at us what guy the alien how did he how look like we're doomed maybe we are he's moved on and she's left there pondering their their potential existence together they get to a point where it starts to feel like this could be an emotional conversation this isn't the beginning of something Augie isn't it is it probably not unless maybe it is so both making their excuses and backing the way out of it I don't like the way that guy looked at us what okayy the alien how did he how look like we're doomed it's just another instance of him just avoiding and confronting the emo of it it I need to change the subject what did you just do I burned my hand on the quickie gridle why it's not clear show me he is just not ready to talk about how he feels and so he hurs himself which is again I think that's just a visual representation of where he is he doesn't know how to because he's been damaged by by war is a kind of a metaphor for one of the main themes for West that that's what happened to America it didn't know what the hell to do with itself cuz everyone's smiling along pretending everything's great and a whole generation was totally traumatized you really did it that actually happened so we've been using Riverside for over a year now and it's simply because they've been a great support in making sure that our show gets made not all of our guests can be in person so to make sure that we can still make our show we've been using Riverside for our remote podcast interviews their video quality is bloody excellent you can record up to 4K and we've mentioned multiple times before the ease of use of their multi-rack recording system and now Riverside has changed the podcasting game again with a new AI enhanced video editor that radically cuts down your editing time this just knocks so many hours off like instantly riversides editor means you can make your entire podcast just on their site such as their transcription based editing you can simply search a section to cut and delete it in your video immediately you can also remove silences with just one click that's like half the podcast already edited you can automatically add captions and use AI to clip with magic clips Magic Clips uses AI to identify the best parts of your podcast and then shares them across social platforms you can create those shorts of your podcast with just one click growing your show has never been easier if you're making any Show online you do need to be using Riverside start using Riverside for your show and use the code editing podcast for 20% off one of the things I did notice in Asteroid City sometimes working with children can be a bit more tricky especially of getting their timing can be incredibly difficult oh I've got a story for you here the spell Mama back alive but you may have already answered my question I could tell because of the way that the girls were framed in ashard City they're framed very clearly separately we hived off a two we period out there on location to work with them under slightly less pressure and figure out how they were going to be together we also you know had backup plans if we thought no this just isn't going to work you know because they were kind of feral as you would expect and they'd Goof Off they'd get tired they'd argue they'd tell each other off that goof around we'd have to deal with each child individually yes of course destroying the the rotting car what they're doing is probably 3 hours apart wow in real time we took this little bit that stone throw M that off choose the very best bit that they did and stick it all in the frame all at once what do you little princesses want to drink oh we're not princesses I'm a vampire I'm my mom in Egypt to got be alive and came back alive with his head off I'm whenever they have dialogue they are dealt with completely separately and and often most times they weren't even on set together when that was done there was just one of them and just west there's quite a few shots they weren't separated where orgie is telling them that their moms died you saying our mother died 3 weeks ago yes when is she coming back she's not coming back and the over the shoulder shot or the coverage shot of Woodrow and his three sisters everything about them is split and comped you now have to cut around the curly hair there because in the take where we wanted this beautiful bit from the sister in the middle the sister on the right is complaining to the mom and actually talking over it and looking off set so we've got to slice that bit of the image off it was incredibly Mosaic like that because you know they get they get bored and they get tied and they get hot and yeah you know you sort of would have a magic two minutes where the three of them would be sort of acting together but there's some Dolly moves and there's some tracking shots where they're just sort of following along in the distance or their periphery and they don't have dialogue where it is the three of them just doing what naturally came to them at that point and it always that always seemed to work but yeah whenever they have dialogue they are dealt with completely separately and then it was no okay split them off take two of them away and just concentrate on one sibling at a time and you know go back and forth prescribe things look at me now Look that way and all the wise keeping his head his knowledge of what they need to be doing and reacting to and timing it out as well as getting the The Sibling to behave in a way that uh that we can deal with in The Cutting Room you're saying our mother died 3 weeks ago yes is she in there yeah she's in the Tupperware created in that scene you cut to a wide and then a dog just passes in the background yeah he's separate too we really edit shots before we edit the movie when there is wide shots and there's like all of these people are very well timed in camera it's all done in camera because they're all from takes that we've done that day it's not like we'll go back the next day and go right let's get this dog 10 times we did everything in one morning the dog was on set with a Wrangler it was always supposed to be running around the place or the cleaner switching the Hoover you know all of these crazy distractions that are not helping him be emotional in that moment they were all done on the day every corner of every frame and every action and every prop is is ripe to get changed the dog I can I can picture the matte shape I had to put on the dog already still I mean I can still see that mat shape it has to go to some really quite individually skilled people to deal with that and make it look perfect on film I'm curious about some of the shots that aren't static the opening shot where you're just going through the town and all those camera moves are very incredibly well done is there any retiming you do on that it's the desert what' you expect I don't know if I expected one thing or another but I'm witing like a cunia humans don't wi you dare me dare you what tweet this hot pepper it's an experiment no don't do it that opening shot itself the 360 is as we called it I think it's actually broken up into maybe five segments because you they perhaps did three versions and by the time we got around to there the lighting had changed or there was a little Bobble on that so we perhaps did that 25 times and we go okay this section from there to there we want from this take oh and by the way can we just replace the sky completely with the sky plate we shot the next day because the sky was spectacular the day after we shot it and W saw the sky why didn't we have the sky yesterday weedo the shot just for the sky it's almost the first thing I'm looking at if it's not a performance piece is where can I split the frame cuz I know we're going to do it some somehow how do you make those cuts invisible is that primarily you is that predominantly VFX well I'll give them the road map if it can get past Wes in the Avid then the chances are it's going to work it'll still be paying for them and they'll still have a lot to do we don't use digital camera moves you know it's sanj Samy his grip of many many years so there's always a bit of retiming nobody unless you see it would realize just how much work goes into this I mean it's bunkers hey hold up let's take a quick music break this is nice isn't it music is such a key source of inspiration for me lots of times I put music on and I just sit and I think and I listen I'm like is this going to work for a scene on my next project is this going to work in this YouTube video and doing that research ahead of time is a big deal and when I find something that I know I'm going to want to use in a scene I get pretty stuck bro I it's kind of exciting music bed is that source of inspiration for me and recently I have made the switch to music bed for my music needs the reason why I like to use Music bed as opposed to anybody else is that their curation level is absolutely ridiculous I've heard that they literally only let 1% of the music submitted to them on their service if it's not a Bop it's not a cop if you know what you know what I'm saying they have any kind of genre any kind of mood and the producing quality is absolutely ridiculous like off charts it sounds so Pro So Pro that you might even find artists that you already like on Spotify and you could use them in your next video with music bed so make the switch to music bed today and experience what is only on musiced check the link in our description and get a 14-day free trial right now back to the conversation cremated are we orphans [Music] now huh are we orphans now no because I'm still alive when I was a lot younger my mom passed away and I specifically one of my earliest memories but it's one of my earliest memories of my dad also telling me that my mom passed away and so for me that scene was a very emotionally impactful for me it also then took me back to that feeling of like a toughness of a responsibility of a dad and then just the children sort of Simply struggling to comprehend what had just happened Time Heals all wounds no maybe it can be a bandaid these are the things that I do my job for is to touch people to bring meaning to stuff to expose Human Experience that you might not be able to explain but let's share it you know yeah I'm glad to hear you say that I think that scene in itself as well as sort of being the classic tragic comedic Wes Anderson irra I mean it sort of represents what the whole movie is about it really is a rumination on Grief and if you have been able to ruminate on some grief of your own and feel moved then that's worth more than the box office to me I was watching with my brother and we had the exact same experience and as soon as that scene ended I turned to my brother and said you felt that right and he went yeah I felt that so it's wow that's great but I just want to say thank you for that you've mentioned that I think West Anderson kind of goes against naturalism like a lot of the presentation of of the movie is very unnatural but in a very stylistic way but for us to have moments where which challenge with grief or a challenge with an emotion that we need to uh sort of tackle despite the unnatural ISM of the presentation the characters are still very natural go these main sections where all all of them are on stage kind of traditionally shot wide shot is completely composited the coolest thing about it is is the alien himself and the spaceship you know they didn't exist until probably three or four months after we' WRA principal photography because they're models it's all stop motion animation and it's you know a good 10 to 12 passes of that thing know six lighting passes six more passes in different lighting for the outside in the structure and then an exhaustive process of approval to mix all those together so that it kind of looks how we want it to look you you talked about having different layers with the stop motion I'm a little bit like could you just explain that for people who aren't familiar with with stop motion and and how compositing all works this is motion control oh is it like Star Wars It's a Stills camera that's used because it's all stop motion it's that classic um motion capture in that you can get the Stills camera on a rig that will perfectly replicate the same moves twice in this case it's not the camera that's on the rig it's the ship itself so the camera is staying underneath this ship and the ship is on a rig which you can have it move in exactly the same way 10 different times or 12 different times it's possibly 6 foot six foot across you know there's it's very intricate in there so every element of that had to be done in different passes it was shot in Full full like which full sunlight or fully lit so you can see every single piece of Machinery on its outer layer perfectly and they'll put the rig back up again and they'll turn one set of interior lights on which instantly then makes the exterior skeleton disappear a little bit photographically and then redo it they'll they'll do it around around 10 to 12 times for for every single little element so that we have then have the ability to composite those and take layers of each one of them take lighting uh characteristics from others to give it depth to give it Shadow to give it translucent see to give it scale to give it more of a 3D feeling so if you just did it once it would probably look exactly like what it is which is is you know a model so each time you see the spacecraft there's an inordinate amount of layering and compositing to do to give it that kind of luster and depth I mean you can still see it's kind of a model there we're not trying to kid anybody [Music] necessarily I I think I did forget to breathe during this right and that's kind of what we wanted and you get the sense that they're all doing the same thing I mean they're helping with that there's almost 2 minutes and 50 seconds of absolute zero dialogue right which instantly makes it unusual for a Wes Anderson movie absolutely again as long as you capture the feeling of all of us we're holding our breath alongside the audiences we're in there with them we're in that crater with them this scene was so much longer than the cartoon version really yeah yeah once it became real we're like no no no we need to hold on this this needs a lot more space and a lot more air in it the uh aliens stole the asteroid and I think also especially since you're talking about timing so much did you have the music earlier on or was the music made afterwards no we had the music earli on I mean we were due to start filming right when the pandemic hit we couldn't film the thing you know nobody had anything to do so they began working on the score remotely and when alexand delivers music to The Cutting Room we get all the stems so we'll get all the elements we'll get the strings we have it all split if need be you know we work fast it's it's a demanding environment technically for me to be working as fast as we need to to get the Rhythm right and to sit back sort of pull your head out of the crazy 20 steps you just did in the last 30 seconds and watch it it's apparent that he's right you know I watch the cple sh sh by yeah well that's that's that's funny now I think it was a 2018 iMac Pro eight core so the lowest level and 32 gigs of RAM I thought this this will be smoking this will be no problem and it just couldn't cope and after the first after the first six days get on the phone I need 16 gigs of video memory I need 128 gigs of RAM I need faster chip I need 10 cores everything needs to take a boost here because because of the processing that's involved just in even what appear to be simple shots that's the best uh proof of it like oh it's it's West like a lot of it's probably done in camera I probably don't need that much for processing power but no if you have potentially what I'm getting out of this is sometimes eight layers of the same shot essentially on top of a mast all around each other that is so much power huge demand it's forced me now you know what editors are like we're we're a bit wary of change and we like our environments and you know the whole sort of debate between 2018 media composer and everything that came after that and most of the editors I know including my whole team on asteroid were clinging to 2018 cuz we like the interface and we were all on Mojave by the end of the project I thought this can't continue but we're leaving way too much performance on the floor with with the new silicone Max and thought yeah we could we're gonna have to do this now so we we did I got a silicone Mac and upgraded to the latest version of media composer and already I can tell it's going to be a lot easier on the next one because we we've got a lot more power now the transition is so terrifying it's I've been hesitant on the N that I'm I'm I'm stuck with is like having to make that change and especially if you're jumping project to project having to relearn everything and we need this we need this editing software to fade away into the background we need to forget that we're using it and so we can completely other was your brain switching into Technical and and being frustrated that it's being slow but that transition suck that transition sucks you I when I did it and it was towards the end of the job so I was sort of attending mix sessions and grade sessions with Wes wherever Wes goes the whole movie has to go so I have a very compact 96 tbte four Drive raid Thunderbolt 4 you know really good transfer speeds and it fits in a small Cal lens case and I have a laptop and two 4K flat screens that work off bus power so I can take a three editing setup with me wherever I go I mean it took me a day to go how do I make the New Media composer look and behave more like the old one but once you've done that it's just been glorious since then I wish I'd done it sooner to be honest with this as we've mentioned multiple times this movie is very much uh exploring grief and how we're handling that and also how we're sometimes avoiding it and then coming to terms of it and then learning how we can grow through pain I think how important for you was this movie and for wi Anderson to really be exploring the story and representing grief and also the creative process it's strongest uh characteristic the movie and I know you know he's become very polarizing W you know he's got his stor supporters and then it it seems almost dur girl now that there's a bunch of people in the press and they're just say ah I'm kind of done I'm done with that now I'm just going to Chu bricks at it because it looks like another West Anderson movie but I strongly refute that I mean there's elements in Gran Budapest towards the end when you know Gustav H is murdered on the train and we come back you know it's that's a profoundly moving part of that film you godam ass he was one of them the West Anderson style is often the most like celebrated but I think you're right in terms of this storytelling and what he's trying to explore narratively and emotionally is often overlooked because they're often distracted by The Unique Style and you know what if you talk to Wes and and he honestly stats this he doesn't think he has a style you know Spielberg would say no I don't have a style you know I'm very natural and you're like no you absolutely have a style but he doesn't see it that way that's just how he sees to tell the story and Wes is the same it's still ultimately absolutely full primarily the words and the characters and the story so it's our burden in many respects if we can't get past that certainly not [Laughter] [Music] his

Channel: The Editing Podcast

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Length: 31min 14sec (1874 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2024