To hear the full podcast interview with editor Bob Ducsay, click here.
Matt Feury
All right, Bob. It would be kind of strange to start a discussion without acknowledging the impact the coronavirus is having on everybody and certainly in post production, because that’s what we’re here to talk about. And if you’re able to talk about it, I’m just curious to know how it might be affecting you and your work and what changes you’re having to make.
Bob Ducsay
Well, I mean, it’s a crazy situation, because it reaches everyone in the world and our little world is really so unimportant in so many ways and it’s so out of proportion to worry about what difficulties we have. But, obviously, this is a podcast about editing, and so it makes sense to talk about it. I’m working on a movie called Space Jam 2 right now, and stars LeBron James and Don Cheadle. And we’re deep in it. And it’s become apparent over the last couple of weeks that it was gonna be very hard to continue working on the movie as the pandemic and the crisis got worse and worse. So, we tried to mobilize and get ourselves in a position where we could work at home. And for editorial, it’s actually hard to work at home because it’s a very collaborative thing. We all share a project and we share storage, and for us to go to different places is really complicated and cumbersome. I mean, I dealt with this with my assistant on other occasions in a much smaller way. I mean, I did this movie about 12 years ago called GI Joe and we had a cutting room in Los Angeles and we also had a cutting room in Prague while we were shooting the movie, and so we had to deal with some of those complexities on that film as others have. It’s not unique to us. Even on The Last Jedi, I stayed in London while Sam, my first assistant, went to Ireland with the shoot. So we had two cutting rooms there too. So, it’s something that you deal with, but it’s really a pain and it’s really complicated. And I guess I’m just happy that we were able to get set up and have enough time that we’re able to continue working because there’s a tremendous momentum that happens when you’re in post production as you’re putting the movie together. And to have to stand down for any length of time is bad. But to stand down for what would likely be months would be, I think, sort of devastating creatively. So I’m very grateful for the fact that it looks like we’re going to be able to work with multiple people in multiple places. We’ve got the VFX editor where he lives and I’m in Encino and Sam, my first assistant, he actually has familiy up in Seattle. So he’s going to go up there and we’re going to be all spread out and we’re going to make the best of it. Starting tomorrow I’m going to be working at home, as are many other people in my line of work.
Matt Feury
Yeah, no question. And I absolutely echo your sentiments that, clearly, the bigger impact on humanity and on the economy and all that stuff is…what we do and what you do, as much as I love it, is so minor in comparison.
Bob Ducsay
It really is. It really is. But the one thing I would say, is, and this is true, that goes beyond our job is that any pockets where we can keep the economy going, I think is a good thing. So we’re able to keep our group of people, and it’s not a huge bunch of people, but with Space Jam, with the animation side and VFX side, it’s a decent number of people. It’s not five people it’s actually quite a few between the various departments. So I think that that’s good. And I think that that’s good everywhere where people are able to work safely and without spreading the virus. And I think there is a worthwhile part of it. But in the total scheme of things, I mean, we’re just making a movie. So, it isn’t important. But as I said, from a personal standpoint, I’m grateful that we’re able to do this.
Matt Feury
We’re all making adjustments and, again, this is very small, but this time of year generally is when I’d be getting ready for the the NAB convention. And two years ago at NAB we had you there with us talking about The Last Jedi. And you gave some great presentations. Each one I learned something new from and enjoyed. But the thing that really stayed with me is something you said as an offhand remark you made that wasn’t during our presentation. We were actually watching Steve Audette, the editor of Frontline, doing a presentation. And you said as you were watching him, “I could never do that”. And not in a way like you would NEVER do that. Just saying like, I couldn’t do that job. And in the moment I sort of nodded my head, but then the more I thought about it I thought, isn’t editing, editing? And it’s been in the back of my mind to ask you to elaborate on that.
Bob Ducsay
Well, what he does is essentially making a documentary. And the benefit that I have in my job and the way that I think, is in a very narrative oriented way. And it’s what I like and it’s the reason that I got into what I do, and I have an aptitude for it to some degree. And so I understand it, and I’ve honed my skills, and I have the experience and everything. But the main thing about it, is that we have a starting place and the starting place is the screenplay. And then after the screenplay, we have scenes and dailies and there’s a structure. It doesn’t start with having to find the structure in the story. And (with what Steve does) you might get to the very end of it and there is no good structure and no story, which is the truth of documentaries. And I think it’s the editors job on a documentary, and I’ve not done it myself, so I’m speculating. So, I think in many ways, it’s much more complicated than what I do, because we start with something finite, even though it’s a complicated “finite”. And then in the documentary world, it’s really just kind of infinite, you’re really making everything up. And you don’t even have control over it. Because the story is unfolding, because it’s real and that’s what you have to work with. And sometimes there’s not a good story, and you still have to find a way to make it work. So I think that that’s really the reason that I reacted that way. But I also feel the same way with other disciplines too. In our line of work, and this happens on so many movies where the marketing department will deliver a trailer, or two or three, and the director or producer gets unhappy and then they always want to bring it into editorial and we’ll recut it. And I love advertising. And I love trailers. I mean, they make these connections that don’t exist in the movie and it’s brilliant. But I just don’t think that way because, to me everything is “narrative, narrative narrative”. We’re telling a story. So to me, it’s (trailers) just a completely foreign world to me. And that’s okay. I mean, I’m so glad that there are these incredibly skilled people that do these other amazing things. And so for me, I don’t want to say ‘stay in your lane’. That’s not really what I’m trying to say because have skills that go beyond that. If I had to, could I cut a trailer or a documentary? Well, probably ,but I bet it wouldn’t be that good. Like I said, the connections that they make in a trailer, I would never think of because I’m thinking about the story, not how do you sell something. They’re different pursuits.
Matt Feury
Well, in a case of tremendous synergy, I actually talked to Steve the other day and I told him what you had said. I didn’t tell them who said it, though. And I asked him what he thought of a feature film editor watching his presentation and saying that. And he said similar things to you. That the difference would be that he doesn’t have a place to start from. But he also, in a way, paid the compliment back saying that in scripted work, if what was written or what was shot wasn’t done well, you have to go and fix that. He doesn’t have that burden where he’s actually going in and finding the story himself. Sometimes you are given a story, given material to work with, given footage that is not optimal. So I thought you’d be interested to hear that.
Bob Ducsay
I mean, that’s great. I still think his job is harder. Well, at the same time, it’s not a contest, right. I mean, that’s the other thing. His work is to be admired. And it’s impressive. And I hold things like that in awe because I don’t do them. And I probably don’t know how to do them. And that’s really not that surprising. I mean, I love basketball so much. That’s why I was so happy to work on Space Jam. And I go to games and oh, man, it’s just unbelievable what these athletes do.
Matt Feury
By the way, you totally torpedoed my last question. The last question on my little sheet here was, ” So, Bob. What’s next for you? I know you love sports. I know you love the NBA. Is Space Jam in your future”? That was literally my last question and you come on now with, “I’m working on Space Jam”.
Bob Ducsay
I did ruin it, but I had to talk about what we were doing. By the way, “Go Heat”. That’s the main thing I have to say. For those of you who don’t follow basketball, that’s the Miami Heat. I’m from Miami.
Matt Feury
Is that a Dwayne Wade framed jersey in your editing room that I saw on the on the extras for Knives Out?
Bob Ducsay
It is. That’s number three himself. My favorite player on my favorite team. And, interestingly enough, you know, he obviously played with LeBron James in Miami for four years and so it’s great to be reunited with LeBron and in “Laker-land” on Space Jam.
Matt Feury
I’m very happy for you about that.
Bob Ducsay
I know it’s actually very meaningful to me.
Matt Feury
It’s the little things in life, no question.
As long as I’m on that thread of “extras on Knives Out”, one of the things that jumped out at me was something that Rian Johnson said. He was quoting Don Johnson, and that Don Johnson said that Knives Out was an editor’s movie. And Ryan agreed with this. And I knew what he meant. But then the more I thought about it, I was like, “No, you don’t really know what he means”. So, my question to you is, what do you think Don Johnson meant by saying that Knives Out is an editor’s movie?
Bob Ducsay
First of all, I just want to say how much I love Don. Because, again, it’s the Miami connection. You know, it all comes back to Miami. I mean, it’s unbelievable, right? I mean, you know, Sonny Crockett, Miami Vice, can’t beat that. And he’s great. He’s great in the movie. I mean, I seriously love him. He’s such a great actor and he does such a great job on the film. You know, I never talked to Don about about this. Well, he may have mentioned that once, actually, but we never really got into it. And I think the thing is, because there’s a complexity to the film and there’s a lot of characters, and how you balance all those things is inherently editorial. And I think that that’s really the point of it. I mean, it’s a really fun movie to cut because of that. And it kind of has, in a way, multiple timelines, because we get to have different looks at the past. And that’s also really fun to do. So I think that’s what Don meant. But I think the main reason that I loved working on that movie is because it was really fun to do. For me it was a dream job because it’s really funny and it’s got the complexity of all the characters, so figuring out how to balance everybody’s time on screen when you have so many significant things and characters is sometimes a little bit difficult. But it was just a blast dealing with it. So anyway, thanks Don.
Matt Feury
Leading up to Knives Out, a lot of your work has been in action and adventure where the film is constructed of these big set pieces that each require a little exposition. You have to set up what the goal is, what the mechanics are behind achieving the goal, and then you also have to set up what the consequences are if you don’t achieve that goal. In Knives Out, the only real action sequence you have is so simple that it’s even called out as a joke in the film – the car chase.
Bob Ducsay
That’s really hilarious, isn’t it? I mean, it’s like it’s a slow chase. Por Marta, she’s got the worst car in the world.
Matt Feury
Well, she makes it work for her. You start off the movie, having a lot of characters to introduce and then manage over the course of the film. And it all really starts with this interrogation sequence at the beginning of the film. How tough was that to work through, laying all the groundwork for those characters without weighing down the start of the film and getting things off to a slow start?
Bob Ducsay
Well, you know, I would say that’s probably the most difficult sequence in the movie, because it’s so essential. And at the same time, you plop the audience in the same room for a really long time. And so pace becomes a very important part of putting that sequence together. Now, I have to mention that Ryan wrote just an absolute, incredible Swiss watch of a movie. And the screenplay is so good that it solves an enormous number of problems right out of the gate. So he’s done a lot of heavy lifting, before anything has even been photographed. Because the screenplay works so well on its own. But of course, things change. There’s the movie that’s written and then there’s the movie that gets shot and then there’s the movie that you edit. That sequence, in particular, was something that we spent a lot of time working on and some things got moved around a little bit in there, which is always a complication, because the screenplay is so tightly put together, sometimes that was difficult and ugly. But more than anything else, it was written a good deal longer than what’s in the movie. So it took a long time for us to figure out exactly what needed to stay and what needed to go because, again, I mentioned earlier one of the things was having a lot of characters. With characters it’s a very nuanced and complicated part of the editors job because small changes have big impacts. And you always want to do everything you can to make all the characters as strong as they can possibly be and to be as interesting as they can possibly be. And sometimes taking out something small or leaving in something small, has a negative or sometimes positive effect on the character. So in the process of getting that sequence down to a better running time, and having it paced well enough that we don’t lose the audience, it was complicated to do and probably the area that we spent the most time working on on the film. So it was hard, but it was great.
Matt Feury
Well, if I’ve learned anything from you, or any other pro editor, it’s that your role, the editor’s role, really begins when you read the script. And I think my first introduction to that really was the commentary track you did with Steve Sommers for The Mummy. You let Steve know that, upon reading the script, you identified some things that we’re probably not going to work in terms of either production or in post production or just general storytelling. And what I want to know is, when an editor reads a script for the first time, what should they be looking for?
Bob Ducsay
Well, I think it depends on the movie and it’s a real variety of things for me, and I think that one of the things that I love about reading a script for the first time is that I don’t know what’s going to happen. And it’s literally the only time that I’m involved in a movie that I don’t know what’s going to happen. Because one of the difficulties of the job is that you know everything (about the story) inside and out. So you’re constantly trying to force your brain into being someone who’s seeing this for the first time, because that’s how the audience sees it. So I find reading the screenplay for the first time exceedingly important because I really try to remember exactly how I felt about everything in the movie from the first time I read it, because again, it’s this experience that you can’t ever have again, because now you know the story and you know the characters and, certainly with something like Knives Out there’s a lot of delights that are quite intricate, and you really can never experience again another time. This isn’t really your question, but it’s part of it. Because I think that having that knowledge of that first time going through the screenplay, informs my job a lot because if I felt something was really strong or really weak in the screenplay and you’re dealing with that same area again when you’re cutting the movie, I try to bring what I initially thought about it into the sequence so, if something’s not working and something really worked great in the screenplay, you have to revisit that. An example from Knives Out would be, because I didn’t know what was gonna happen, when Ransom, the Chris Evans character, picks Marta up in front of the house after the will has been read and everybody’s so awful to her. I was like, this is fantastic, because I never imagined that this character was a good guy. Because he seemed like such a dick when we meet him that I just love what Ryan’s done here. He’s a good guy! This is fantastic. And he takes her to the restaurant and he breaks things down and he tells her, “I’m gonna help you here”. And then it turns out that he’s the bad guy. And so for me, that was a really crucial focus when we were putting the movie together because again, it has to do with sort of the nuance of character, what you let the audience see and what you don’t let them see, because I thought this worked brilliantly in the screenplay, and it had better work when we show the movie to an audience, because when it works that well, and of course, it did actually work that well with the audience, it makes the movie amazing. And so that’s an example of something that was extremely meaningful to me and a real focus because I know that the screenplay solved the problem. Because it did all the things that it was supposed to do. So in cutting Chris’s performance and the little things that we might leave in and lean into, or take out, that experience of watching or reading the screenplay and understanding the story for the first time as a new viewer really helped. So that’s true of every screenplay that I read, and I really love that opportunity to know nothing about the movie because it’s the only time it’s going to be that way. But then there are other things, there’s structural things you’ll see. I mean, a good writer sees them also, but occasionally you catch things where you think, well, this scene seems like it’s in the wrong place, or it seems like you don’t need this because structurally, it doesn’t fit in here. Frankly, I mean, it depends on your relationship with the filmmaker. You know, you mentioned Steve Sommers, and certainly this relationship that I have with Ryan now after three movies, is that you’re a trusted member of the team. So maybe you’re not exactly involved in specifically developing the screenplay, but you’re getting versions of the screenplay early on and I think that’s extremely helpful because you’re going to be doing the work and you can help point out things from your perspective when you’re working a director that you’ve worked with before.
Matt Feury
Well, it’s not my intent to make this whole interview a “point, counterpoint” with the work you do on features and the work that Steve Audette does on Frontline in documentary, but since it’s fresh in my mind, I was talking to him about how, in feature films the editor comes in, reads the script, talks to the director. I asked him, “Where do you start in your role, Steve” and he was lamenting that he used to start at the beginning, much like you do, but because of certain procedural changes, he now starts later on. And he said, for the most part, he doesn’t enjoy that. But what it does do is it gives him fresh eyes. He’s not already leaning one way or the other in terms of how the story is going to play out. So for you, that first reading of the script, you enjoy that because it is new to you. Once you’re into post production, are there any ways that you can sort of cleanse your mental palate in terms of terms of editing? Is there a way to get that fresh perspective back?
Bob Ducsay
I don’t think so. Because you know everything, I mean, there’s no way you can pretend you don’t. But I think all experienced editors develop a discipline, I know I certainly do. This is when I’m working on the film, cutting it, but this is also especially true when you screen the movie for an audience. And I’ll be sitting there thinking, “What must they be thinking now? I know what they’re thinking. They must be thinking this because they don’t have this information”. You know, you have to sort of take it to a different level, meaning you have to be extremely analytical about the nature of storytelling and what information the audience should have. What happens sometimes in the process of cutting a movie is you’ll say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. They don’t even know this now. So how can this thing work? It can’t”! So you just have to constantly be absurdly analytical about what it must be like at every moment. It’s kind of more math than emotion. That part of it, the discipline that is required to see the movie with fresh eyes, even though you can’t see it with fresh eyes. Related to this, by the way, because the important part of what I’m talking to you about right now is the actual job of putting yourself in the audience’s place so that you tell them a good story, or you understand what the audience thinks of the character. You know, if you watch a movie 30 times, it’s sometimes hard to be enthusiastic about things that are really great in the movie, or really understanding of things that are bad. Again, this has to do with discipline. If you don’t remember how great something was when you first saw it or read it, that part the way the audience experiences it because they don’t watch the movie 30 times, you need to remember those things because we all get bored with the movies that we’re working on at various times. And it comes and it goes in waves. But the discipline that’s required is to not change things that are great. Because boredom sometimes creeps in and allows you to go screw around with something that’s been working since day one, and because you haven’t really anything to it since day one, you think, “Well, there must be a better way”. And sometimes there is, but often there isn’t. And when you have things that work and they’ve been working, you just have to remember how much you love them, or how you felt the first time you saw that and stick with it. And I think that’s another hard thing to do. So those are the those are the complications of knowing everything.
Matt Feury
I mentioned your relationship to Steve Sommers and, if research serves you guys met in film school.
Bob Ducsay
Yeah, that’s right.
Matt Feury
The thing with film school, if I can think back to when I went so many years ago, you get a healthy dose of film production, and also a dash of film theory, where the stories are analyzed and picked apart to determine the meaning of the film, beyond just the theme, there’s got to be a meaning. And it seems in the modern world of social media, and YouTube, everyone is a movie critic, and that a movie is never just a movie anymore. It has to have a meaning or an intent beyond just entertaining and informing and even moving the audience. As an editor, do you ever feel conscious of that when you’re cutting the film? Like how much of the theme, if there is one, or the underlying intent of the film is coming through?
Bob Ducsay
I’m sure there’s examples where I’m wrong about this, but I think any great movie is thematic and true to its theme. I mean, there has to be some subtext to a film. And so I think about it all the time. By the way, this could be in a big commercial movie. You know, what’s the idea that you’re trying to communicate. You can have giant creatures and some sort of alien spaceship, all kinds of things that we think of in tentpole movies. But at the same time, there should be some type of universal truth or idea below all of that. In films that are great, they all have that. And so it’s absolutely something that you think about and it’s something that, if the film isn’t highlighting enough you try to bring it to the forefront because people connect with those ideas. And they don’t have to be complicated ideas, it can be, “be yourself”. That’s a great theme. And that’s a theme that people can walk into. I mean, it’s common and it’s been done a million times. But hopefully your movie is trying to say something, even if it’s filled with pyrotechinics and costs $200 million. So yeah, it’s on my mind all the time. A lot of this comes from character. I think character and theme are pretty interactive.
Matt Feury
As long as you’re talking about film school, one thing about people starting out in creative fields, is that they emulate and imitate the things that have inspired them. You’ll even hear established people give that as advice to them, to start out by copying the styles and the techniques of the people they admire. But even as you move along in your career, that whole model of referencing artists and art that’s come before actually never really goes away. When filmmakers develop a movie, they often have films that they reference or even outright pay homage to. In the case of Knives Out, Agatha Christie movies get brought up a lot. And I think even in the DVD extras, there’s some talk about the blocking and the camera work being reminiscent of those type of films. What I want to know is, how do you edit in a style reminiscent of a certain movie or movies?
Bob Ducsay
I think the style of editing in the movie is almost completely driven by the movie itself, and what’s appropriate. And I think that how a director has staged and covered sequences within the movie really leads you to how it should be put together. I mean, you can force a style on a movie, but it usually comes off poorly. I think that the film itself will tell you what the style should be. You take something like The Last Jedi, I mean, it’s a very classically made movie. We use the wipes that are common. I mean, these are obvious things, but the overall vibe of the film has the nature of the movies that preceded it, because they’re sort of classical sci-fi adventure movies. I think that, if the director has directed it in that style, editorially it’s going to work in much the same way. I have no interest in inserting a style on a movie that is not inherently there. And sometimes you might do it out of desperation. I mean, it happens sometimes with films that aren’t so good or aren’t working. You know, the camera department could do it, editorial could do it, you can just sort of push your way into the forefront and try to make something where there’s not really anything there. But I don’t think that it ever would make sense to try to force a style on the movie that’s not already there. So, in the case of Knives Out, if Rian had shot it all handheld and long lens and four cameras at a time and that’s the style in which he did it, I don’t think it could ever be sort of tilted back to an Agatha Christie type style. I don’t think that could happen. So because of that it’s sort of inherent in what the director is doing. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think my place is to make the audience aware that I’m there.
Matt Feury
Well, you brought up having to have the discipline to keep the audience in mind as you’re cutting. And to remember what they should know by that point in the story and what they don’t know. They often say that the secret to writing mysteries is to start with the ending and work backwards. Are there any parallels to that with editing a mystery? Do you start at the end and go, “Okay, this is where we end up. Now I have to know how to get backwards from here”? One example would be the whodunnit flashbacks that are classic to mystery movies at the end when you reveal who the bad guy or gal is.
Bob Ducsay
Well, I think that for me, all movies that I work on, on a scene by scene basis, work that way because you look at a particular sequence and you go, “I have to get to here” and the “get to here” isn’t necessarily at the end of the sequence, it could be at the beginning of the sequence or in the middle of a sequence, but there’s usually something that you need to have happen in the sequence. And I think, “Oh, this is how I’m going to do this, this thing right here is really important” . And then the rest of the sequence lays out based on that. In the case of Knives Out, I would say no, that’s not part of what I did, because the screenplay already does that. The screenplay already has determined how that works. And so what I’m doing is I’m supporting what the screenplay is doing now. Now, you mentioned the flashback things. Some of those things were created. Some of those things weren’t designed, many of them are designed, but some of them were created so, there actually are some things that came out of the editorial process and were not something that were specifically imagined in the screenplay, or maybe even when Rian was staging and shooting the movie. But the broad part of it and many of the details are determined by the screenplay. A while back I described his screenplay for Knives Out as being the sort of perfect Swiss watch of a screenplay. And it really is. I mean, the complexity of that kind of story and the number of moving parts that have to work. You can’t wing that. So he’s figured a lot of that out before he even shot a frame of film.
Generally editors talk about part of their job being to reduce confusion for the audience and to help lead them along through the story. In the case of a mystery, you actually do need to do a little misdirection. You even brought up the scene where Ransom picks up Marta and you’re delightfully surprised that there’s more to his character and he’s not the bad guy. But if you don’t misdirect the audience, it’s not going to be as enjoyable a payoff. Did that come as an easy process for you? Or was it tricky in that you had to massage and nuance the edit so that people didn’t always have such an easy time of following where things might be going?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we put an enormous amount of effort into that. And again, it has a tremendous amount to do with character because so much of it is little details and little things that are, you know, the choices that are made that keep the audience from knowing things that you don’t want them to know at a particular time. But again, the idea of how it works, the structure of how it works, a lot of that is in the screenplay. So where the focus is, is in the nuance and in the the details of the character. But sometimes there are other things that you might reveal or not reveal, that have an impact on what the audience knows at a certain time. But I have to tell you, one of the things that’s amazing about this movie is, when we watched the first cut of the movie, we’re like, “Oh, yeah, this is good”. I mean, this is a very rare thing. I mean a very rare thing. Even for movies that turn out well, this is a very rare thing. And the movie was a joy because there weren’t any gigantic problems that had to be fixed. What we spent a tremendous amount of time doing was making everything that was there even better. And so the difference between the first cut of the movie and the movie that’s in the theaters is significant. The very first version of it just worked. And that’s kind of a miracle for the complexity of the film. And again, a tribute to the screenplay. So I would say to anybody out there who wants to be in the editing business, and all editors know this, if you read a screenplay and the screenplay’s great, you’re probably going to have a pretty darn good movie. And if you read the screenplay and it’s tons of trouble, every single place that there’s trouble when the movie is put together will be there. Almost all trouble leads back to the screenplay. And so in movies that I’ve worked on that are just so hard, everything about them is hard, everyday is a slog, everything is a fix…it always goes back to the screenplay. I mean, there are other contributing factors, but the main one is the screenplay because the screenplay is the place that greatness comes from or where problems hide and so, my advice is just work on movies with great screenplays.
Matt Feury
I think that’s good advice.
Bob Ducsay
Yeah, I’d like to do that myself sometimes.
Matt Feury
Well, not to turn this into one big ad for the for the Knives Out Blu-Ray, but I’m going to do that anyway just because I love these kind of things and there’s so much great content for somebody that wants to make movies or interested in editing. But going back to that concept of managing misdirection, something that really jumped out at me was you had to pull back on the dogs barking. There’s a scene where the dogs come bark at Ransom as he comes up to the house. And in the mix, you guys pulled back on the barking a little bit just because you didn’t want that sort of hint to be there, that this really is the bad guy. Is that something that you managed in picture is whether using temp audio or was that something that just wasn’t realized until you were already in the actual mix stage?
Bob Ducsay
We do all that stuff. I mean, sort of the big picture narrative ideas, those things all get worked out while we’re cutting the movie. That’s in no way to minimize the contribution that our incredible Skywalker Sound crew put into the soundtrack, but just to say that something like that, we felt that it was crucial that the audience not suspect him, or suspect him at the same level that they suspect everyone else. And we worried about those dogs a lot because they make a real meal out of that moment. And what we worried about was, when the dogs are heard later in the movie, that people might remember that. And we even did a version where the dogs don’t don’t come up to him at all when he gets out of the car. So it was an area that we really focused on a lot. And ultimately what we ended up doing is we used the cut that we liked, because we like the dogs harassing them, but we just simplified the soundtrack and made less out of it editorially. And then the sound team, they took it from there.
Matt Feury
So something I couldn’t quite tell in watching the behind the scenes stuff with you and Rian in the editing room…by the way, the one thing I did notice is both of you were wearing sports coats, so you two are the most dapper editor/director team I’ve ever seen.
Bob Ducsay
I don’t understand it. It’s hilarious. I have no idea how we ended up together. I’m serious. I wear a jacket to work every day and so does he and it’s like, what is up with that.
Matt Feury
Some things are just meant to be.
Bob Ducsay
I guess. I guess.
Matt Feury
Anyway, the thing that I couldn’t quite pick up was your audio setup. Somewhat of a recurring theme that we go back to on the podcast lately has been about what kind of audio people do in post production, whether it’s just stereo, LCR or 5.1.
Bob Ducsay
I’ve been cutting in 5.1 since Godzilla. Which we must have started that movie in 2013. So it’s been, you know, seven years right now. I love sound and I’m really sound-centric in my process. And I had always wanted to work in 5.1, but it was quite cumbersome. I know that Craig Wood was doing it before anyone else was, when it was impossible to do. I still don’t really understand how he managed to do it, but then, right around 2013, Avid made a change to the software and 5.1 was now usable. And it was a real breakthrough for me because one of the things that we do and one of the reasons that 5.1 matters, for those of you who are interested in this minutia, is that it means that when we put the movie up in the theater, it kind of works like it’s supposed to in a theater. Because the center channel is where dialogue usually is and so because of that, the experience of cutting in the cutting room is a lot like being in the theater, in the movie theater, and it just makes a big difference and it allows us to really explore the sound in much more nuanced ways. So I really love working that way. It’s a big part of my process.
Matt Feury
Well something I remember from our Last Jedi presentations in Vegas a couple years ago, and then I noticed again in the Knives Out extras, is that your Media Composer timeline is basically stock, there’s no real customization, no apparent color coding. You often see these editors that have timelines with many, many layers and they’ve color coded everything down to the nth degree. And some have literally hundreds of versions of their sequence. Looking at your setup again, it’s very utilitarian. And so I’m just kind of curious what method works best for you, in organizing your material and keeping on top of things.
Bob Ducsay
Well, I mean, the reason that it’s like that for me is because I think, and I’m certainly not criticizing the way anybody works. But for me, it’s a bunch of visual noise, having all those colors and everything. My first assistant, he has a setup where things actually are do have colors, because the assistants have to deal with big complexity when they output reels. They have to keep the music and dialogue together. And we don’t have enough tracks that we can be super clean about that. I mean, typically speaking, the dialogue is on the first four or six tracks and they’re monos, so there is a layout, but stuff gets kind of messy. So this color coding really helps and the assistants use that and all the stuff is actually color coded. But for me, you know, I just have a very simple gray and. I don’t want all that visual noise. And our track layout is such that I know where things are. And it doesn’t really make any difference to me, in that it’s not important for me to have that color and I don’t want to be distracted by it. That’s basically the problem and that’s the reason that my timeline is so simplistic. But the soundtrack is not simplistic, it’s just the layout. Or I should say the the representation of it in the timeline.
Matt Feury
Well, speaking of keeping things simple and organized, and again, something else I just couldn’t help but notice in those behind the scenes visits to your editing room, you have these three notebooks just sitting there on your desk. What are the notebooks for?
Bob Ducsay
I just use those for notes like when I go into a screening. I got stacks of them. I probably can’t even imagine how many over all the films that I’ve done.
Matt Feury
Do you save them all?
Bob Ducsay
I’m sure they’re somewhere for sure. They’re in a box in storage somewhere. I just, you know, sit there in screenings and scribble, although I have to say, I found that sometimes it depends on the type of screening because if I’m sitting in my cutting room everything goes into that book. But when we’re screening in the theater, I end up sitting in the back and I found that sometimes using my phone is simpler because I’m sitting there sending emails to the poor first assistant so it kind of speeds the process up. But generally speaking, 75% of the time I write in those little books. It just says things like, take six frames off that closeup of Don Johnson.
Matt Feury
So, I trotted out that old cliche about how with mystery writing you work backwards. There’s another one that says that the best acting is reacting, or that acting is all about reacting. And as you’re watching Knives Out, the reactions are a lot of what carries, to me, the momentum, the humor. Are those reactions where you find the story, are they pieces that tie the story together?
Bob Ducsay
Well, you know, when you have the cast that we had on Knives Out it certainly is. There’s so much good stuff. And so many jokes that are created in editorial. I mean, the screenplay is funny as hell. But the actors did so many great things that you just couldn’t get enough of them. And so in that movie in particular, I think it was an embarrassment of riches. So I generally agree with the idea about reactions, but, you know, sometimes the dialogues important, sometimes there’s good stuff in there too, and sometimes it’s even good to be on screen when somebody’s saying something! I think it sort of depends on the moment. But I will say one thing that’s related to that, though, is that generally I’m always looking for places to eliminate dialogue. And I don’t mean that suddenly nobody’s talking. I just mean, sometimes you find that something can be done with a look better than with a line of dialogue. And it’s something that I’m always thinking about and something that I certainly try to pursue. So that’s kind of related to your question. And on that basis I think that what you were pitching is actually true.
Matt Feury
Leading up to Knives Out, the lion’s share of the films you’ve done have been big action, visual effects heavy movies. Certainly, you still have VFX in Knives Out, but not to the same degree. For you, was there a noticeable difference in your workload or your day to day duties, without having to devote the same amount of time to that VFX interop component?
Bob Ducsay
Oh, my God. It was so good. It was unbelievable. I mean, seriously, it was unbelievable. Because, again, going back to what I said about how we watched the movie the first time and it was good, right? The other thing was, you could watch the movie and it was actually the movie. I mean there’s a few hundred visual effects in the movie, but they’re mostly really simple things. Like there’s some rig removals and there’s green screens. Harlan’s painting, you know, that painting that’s throughout the film, wasn’t finished. So it’s a green screen everywhere in the film and that was probably like 60 or 70 of the shots. But the point is, you could watch the movie. There was no c-stand with a tennis ball on it, there’s no mo-cap guy. It’s wonderful. It was wonderful to not have all those things, as much as I love doing these sorts of movies and I’m doing one of them now, it’s just this whole other thing that you have to manage. And the thing about big visual effects movies is, I’m gonna sound lazy here, but I can’t be lazy though, right? Because I keep doing those movies. But the thing is, is that the shooting never stops. Because if you have 2000 visual effects in a movie, which is the way it is on a lot of the films that I do, what happens is that those 2000 shots, they just keep coming in, you keep getting iterations. So it’s like the shooting never stops. And because of that, it’s a big drain on your day and an enormous amount of time spent not editing. And an enormous amount of time is spent dealing with all the things come with visual effects, review meetings and time with the visual effects editor and all of those things. And so, doing something like Knives Out was a great change of pace. And I just love doing it. And the other thing too, by the way, is just the amount of time involved because, you know, Knives Out from the time I started to the time I was done was eight months. And then to take, The Last Jedi as an example, it was 19 months. So there’s a radical difference in what you’re doing on those types of films. And also don’t get me wrong, I love doing them and The Last Jedi was just absolutely fantastic from from tops to tails, everything about making that movie was a dream, not only because I love Star Wars, but I love working with Rian, and it was really fun. And we had all these resources and it was cool to work on and then it’s just great, but it’s a very different thing than Knives Out. Except for this part, which is what I was mentioning earlier and that’s, it doesn’t matter if it’s Godzilla or Knives Out or The Last Jedi, all of them are trying to tell a good story. And all of the same considerations exist, regardless of the scale of the movie. Because if you have a big movie that’s got a lame story with bad characters, it doesn’t make any difference how cool the visual effects are. I mean, nobody wants to watch that. So you still have to put in all that time on the things that really, really matter; which are story and character and theme.
Matt Feury
This is your your third film with Rian. And I’m aware there’ll be a fourth because they’ve announced there’s going to be a sequel to Knives Out so, I’m looking forward to that and I’m gonna make the leap that you’re gonna get the call for that.
Bob Ducsay
You know, directors are fickle people. You never know but, yeah I think I’ll be doing it. But I don’t want to put words in Rian’s mouth.
Matt Feury
Well, aside from a shared sense of style, how has your working relationship evolved to the point where there’s a sort of shorthand that you have between each other, and what have you learned from him and and how has your practice or your process changed over that time?
Bob Ducsay
I think one of the most interesting parts of our relationship in how it’s evolved is, Rian edited his first two movies himself. He did Brick and then The Brothers Bloom. So, when I joined him on Looper, this was the first time he worked with an editor. And it was the first time he didn’t cut the movie himself. And I think that it was initially very difficult for him to sort of get his head around it because, if you like the process of editing, which he does, and you know a good amount about it, as he does, I think it probably was very difficult to make that adjustment. But he did and we get along famously and I think the main thing that happens over the course of three movies is that you get to know each other really well. And as you alluded, you develop a shorthand. And the shorthand is great, because I know what he likes. And the more time you spend with somebody, the more you understand the nuance of that. And so your ability to make choices that are servicing his point of view and his vision becomes easier because you just have a, you know, larger data set. And I think that that’s a great thing that time does and experience does. It just makes working together more fun. And the thing about making a movie is that it’s really hard, you know, and you work a lot of hours. And there’s a lot of pressure because people spend a lot of money. And so you’re always trying to at least, I shouldn’t say always because it’s different with different people, but what matters to me is cultivating a fun atmosphere. Because, you know, I kind of love movies. So it would be good if the thing we were doing was kind of fun. And one of the things about getting to know somebody really well and providing what they need is that it makes everything all that much more fun. And we have a blast working together. And I think that that’s a really big deal.
Matt Feury
Did you edit it all on location while they were shooting Knives Out?
Bob Ducsay
Yeah, the movie shot in and around Boston. And we were there and it’s a very small film. So, making the Rian Johnson “tent pole” comparison, compared to The Last Jedi, it was really just me and my first assistant and a production assistant. And that was the crew. And Sam, who’s my first assistant, and I were both out in the Boston area. And it was a quick shoot. I think it was 38 days, which is quite fast. I think we started at the end of October and finished right before Christmas. From the moment I started on the film to the time that we were completely finished was eight months, which is extremely short.
Matt Feury
So, you were editing in Boston. I live in Boston. I guess you just didn’t have time to call me but, you know, okay, moving on.
Bob Ducsay
What I was afraid of Matt, is that I would have to do one of these interviews!
Matt Feury
We could have worked something out Bob!