(projector whirring) - [Sven] This video is
brought to you by Skillshare. Get a two-month free trial by clicking the link in
the video description. - All right gang, Whiplash. (sheet music rustling) (drum thwacks) - [Woman] And the Oscar goes to. - Tom Cross, Whiplash. (audience applauding) - [Announcer] This is the
first Oscar and nomination for Tom Cross.
- In 2014, Tom Cross won the Oscar for best editing. He went on to edit Joy. - The world doesn't owe you a thing. - [Sven] 2016's
multi-Academy-Award-winning hit, La La Land. - You either follow my
rules or follow my rules. - [Sven] And most recently, First Man. - There are risks, but we have every
intention of coming back. - [Sven] What many people
probably don't know about Tom is that prior to Whiplash he was working primarily as an assistant, and as a music video editor. Whiplash was, by far, the
biggest project he had worked on at the time. Sometimes one can turn from an assistant into an A-list editor when opportunity meets skill and passion. This is Coffee With Editors. (cheery music) - Ah!
- Hi, welcome to this episode of
Drinking Coffee With Editors. Aaron, how did we meet? - I reached out to you because I really liked
your YouTube channel. - And our conversation sort of
immediately went into movies, and specifically to Whiplash. - [Aaron] Whiplash is the story of an aspiring young jazz drummer. While in attendance at a
prestigious music conservatory his abilities and ambition are
tested to the absolute limit by his demanding, and
often abusive mentor, who is determined to
either make Andrew great or destroy him. (frantic drum music) - I loved this movie, and I actually, when I'm
teaching at a college, I use a scene in there as an example of really
interesting editing, and I thought we should
really dig into this movie and - Yes.
- Figure out why this is potentially a real classic, like maybe one of the most
significant movies about editing in the past 10 years. (driving big band jazz music) Well, let's start at the beginning. How did this movie come about? (whooshing) - The director, Damien
Chazelle, was, at the time, just like a ghostwriter. - I wrote the script
pretty quickly on my own, and then just kind of put it in a drawer and didn't really know what to do with it, and when I finally started
showing it to people, I mean, it was this sort
of obvious challenge of convincing people that a
movie about a jazz drummer could have any sort of broader appeal. - How do you know who wins
in a music competition? Isn't it subjective? - No. - And so the idea was to do a short for me to prove myself as a director. (tentative band music) (clock ticking) (door creaks) (footsteps clomping) - Well, we should take a look at, really, the editing of the short versus
the editing of the feature and see if they just shot it shot-by-shot, or if they evolved on the storytelling. (driving big band music) - I saw the feature
first, like most people. (tentative band music) (clock ticking) (door creaks) (footsteps clomping) The camera setups are mostly the same. All the focal lengths
are pretty much the same. Most of the actors are the same. They've lifted shots from
the short film, several. I mean, there's a couple
that you can just, looking like they just color-graded
it, that's all they did. There's a line where he says, I'm gonna gut you like
a pig, in the script. When they were shooting
the short he said-- - I will fuck you like a pig. - He wouldn't do that line reading again, but Tom Cross, the editor, they just lifted it right
out of the short film. - I will fuck you like a pig. Now, are you a rusher,
or are you a dragger, or are you gonna be on my fucking time? - I'm gonna be on your time. - Miles Teller coming in
as the new counterpart, 'cause in the short film it's
a completely different actor, the dynamic changes. Tom Cross, the editor of the film, said that they tried to cut the feature exactly like the short, but with different actors
and different performances they found that it didn't
have the same rhythm and soul, and that the feature film would
require a different approach in the editing room. - With Miles, he's just
such a good combination of a trained actor, but a
guy who lives in the moment and can be very spontaneous, both in terms of what he's
giving and how he's responding. (frantic drum music) - In the script and in the editing it's reflected really nicely, sort of just like a really
basic filmmaking principle, which is just to always
keep escalating things, escalating things, escalating things. A lot of people will
visualize this sort of concept as a graph moving up like this, where there's like it
comes up to the climax, and then there's a little
denouement right afterwards, and then the next scene
is up a little bit. Yikes! I am doing a horrible job
of explaining this here, so let me give you an
outline of the scene, and try and show you
what I'm talking about. The sequence starts with Andrew
waking up late for his class because he was out late on a date. This causes tension to rise, but when he gets to class no one is there. More tension. When he checks the
room's schedule, though, he realizes that he's actually early, and the class doesn't start for a while, creating a downbeat, or
a release of tension. Then the band files in
and tension rises again. The first-string drummer
asks him to tune the kit. - Yeah, I'm Andrew Neimann. - Tune the set to a B flat, then you'll turn my
pages during rehearsal. - [Aaron] Rising tension. Then Fletcher enters the room and the tension reaches a new high before he addresses Andrew. - We got a squeaker today, people. Neimann, 19 years old. Isn't he cute? - [Aaron] And creates a small release. - And I think that downbeat
is really important for great storytelling. Yes, you need to keep rising
and rising and rising, but having these moments
of recovery before you rise makes this dynamic
range even more extreme, and it takes the audience
on a bigger ride. - [Aaron] Then Fletcher
humiliates a student for being out of tune and
sharply escalates the scene. - Do you think you're out of tune? - Yes. - Then why the fuck didn't you say so? - [Aaron] Later, during the
break, Fletcher corners Andrew, and after what just
happened we fear for Andrew, but the scene turns again. - You're here for a reason. You believe that, right? - Yeah. - [Aaron] Release, then, back in class, Fletcher praises Andrew for his playing, - Got Buddy Rich here. - [Aaron] which is really just a setup to contrast the rest of the
scene, which climaxes in this. (cymbal crashes) - You are a worthless, friendless, faggot-lipped little piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he
wasn't Eugene O'Neill, and who is now weeping and
slobbering all over my drum set like a fucking nine-year-old girl. - [Aaron] So we can see, by plotting out the
escalation of the scene through ascending turns
of tension and relaxation, the way that the scene's structure pulls us deeper and deeper into the emotions and
relationship dynamics of the characters. (driving big band jazz music) - He's asking him a couple
of times during the scene. - Were you rushing or were you dragging? - Do you think the audience knows? - Uh, I don't know. - The truth of the moment is. - [Sven] Before we reveal if Andrew is actually on time or not, I wanna take a brief moment to thank Skillshare for their support. It's an online learning community
with thousands of classes in filmmaking, editing, writing, design, business, tech, and more. I came across a cool tutorial
on vlogging by Sara Dietschy. Sara is an authority on YouTube, and I'm a long-term subscriber of hers, so I was happy to see her break
down her filmmaking process. - Typically, people
associate this with vlogging. It's basically picking
up, maybe, a small camera, and walking around, and filming yourself, but it's so much more than that. - [Sven] In this 30-minute tutorial, she takes you from camera
work, storytelling, editing, to publishing on YouTube. If you wanna get into that game, and any aspiring filmmaker should, I do recommend checking out her course, so the first 500 viewers who sign up get a two-month free trial. Now, back to Whiplash, and let's find out if Andrew's
drumming was right on time. - The truth of the moment is that at first he's totally on time. - Mm-hmm. (driving big band jazz music) - Fletcher just does it to fuck with him. - You're rushing. Here we go. (drum bangs)
(hands clap) Uh, ready, okay. Five, six, and. (driving big band jazz music) Dragging just a hair. (tentative drum music) Wait for my cue. Five, six, seven. (driving big band jazz music) - I think this scene is about
him proving a point to him, is that you think that you know, and you think that you
have this confidence, but I'll show you how easily I will throw your confidence off, 'cause in the beginning of the scene he sort of illustrates this point, where he says, "Somebody's out of tune." - We have an out-of-tune player here. - [Aaron] Then says that it was one guy, and ejects him from his classroom. - Why are you still sitting there? Get the fuck out! - [Aaron] And then,
once he's out, he says. - For the record, Metz wasn't out of tune. You were, Erickson, but he didn't know, and that's bad enough. - That's really interesting that they actually created
a sublayer to this premise: there's a deeper motivation there than what, on the surface,
is being played out. (frantic drum music) It's kind of a fight scene. - Damien always wanted to
make an action movie first, an action thriller first,
and a music movie second. He said he wanted the musical scenes to feel like the boxing
scenes from Raging Bull. (cymbal crashes)
(water splashes) - Can't you even fucking read music? What is that?
(fist slams) Yes, what is that?
(fist slamming) Sight-read measure 101. - Buh-buh-buh-buh.
(fists slamming) - What are you in, a
fucking a cappella group? Play the goddamn kit! (tentative drum music)
(fists slamming) Now answer my question. Were you rushing or were you dragging? - Jump cuts, smash cuts,
jumping the line intentionally, all these kind of techniques that are used to disorient,
sort of, the viewer, and give it a violent sort of tonality. (frantic drum music) - As an aspiring editor, what are the things that
you should be watching for when you see this film for the first time, or when you're gonna
watch it again now knowing that this is the most
important film about editing in the past 10 years? (vehicles roaring) - Yeah, I mean, I would say
for the first run-through, don't watch for anything. Just let it work on you the way
that it's gonna work on you. (title whooshes) - That's a general rule,
I think, for any film. I never watch a film
and start analyzing it. - It's really worthwhile to read the script and compare that, sit there with the script in hand while you kind of go back and forth and see some of the
choices that were made. (title whooshes) I think that, honestly,
to glean anything new that you can't just read in
any textbook about editing, you have to get into
the scene-by-scene level and break down, like when you get to a
cut, stop at that cut. You're pulling it back like five times. You're like, why did they cut there? How is this cut motivated? (title whooshes) Your analysis isn't gonna
be, necessarily, right. I mean, you're really just guessing, but if you do it as an exercise you're building up sort of
like a catalog in your head of, if it makes sense to you, right, and it's a tool that you think
is working in a certain way, then it's something that you
can use in your own editing, and when you come into a similar scenario, where you have a goal in mind, and you think that it was accomplished well, like, steal it. (laughs) - [Sven] If you wanna steal
some more editing goodies, my podcast buddy, Tyler, and I take an even closer look
at the not-my-tempo scene. Feel like he's not. - [Tyler] I'm focused
on so many other things. - [Fletcher] I will fuck you like a pig. - [Sven] Yeah, we're super-tight now. Nothing else matters,
just the two of them. - Or are you gonna be on my fucking time? - And if you wanna take a
deep dive into scene editing, you can virtually hang
out in my editing bay as I'm cutting my latest
feature film project. Each episode is an
editing session of a scene based around a specific
concept or technique. So, I wanna withhold showing
what is going on over there as long as possible, building suspense. So, shadow me over on
Patreon, ask questions, and give feedback on the progress. - All right, gang, Whiplash. (sheet music rustling) - [Sven] Really happy that you came by. Thank you so much.
- Yeah, it was fun. Thank you for having me. - So, this is, like,
kind of an experiment, Coffee With Editors. Let us know if you think
this is interesting, if this is something
you'd like to see more of. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you so much for coming,
- Thank you, Sven. - and see you guys on the next one. Cheers. (driving big band jazz music)
