Chaos Walking

Editor, Doc Crotzer ACE

Chaos Walking editor, Doc Crotzer ACE would be the first to tell you that most of the time when you’re working on a movie or tv show, you’re trying to remove noise; audible noise, visual noise, story noise.  But in his new film with director Doug Liman, Doc and his team worked very hard to add it in.  Why would they do that?  Because the noise in Chaos Walking is the outwardly expressed thoughts of the characters.  It’s literally their thoughts in words and images that float around their heads, for everyone else to see and hear.

Think about what that would be like to convey in editing.  You have the spoken words in production audio and ADR. Then you have the characters true thoughts in a voice over that’s happening a few beats after the spoken words.  Then you have this purple cloud of visual imagery that ebbs and flows depending on how strongly they feel about something, all the way up into actual images representing their thoughts. That’s a lot of work and a lot of timing and a lot of creative thinking, and Doc tells us all about how he and his crew “brought the noise” to Chaos Walking.

Editing Chaos Walking

In our discussion with Chaos Walking editor, Doc Crotzer ACE we talk about:

  • Using ScriptSync to quiet “the noise”
  • Why such a large post team was assembled for this film
  • The challenge of editing a film over several years
  • What makes a good assistant

The Credits

Visit ExtremeMusic for all your production audio needs

Listen to the Little Fires Everywhere podcast with Doc’s former assistant editor, Amelia Allwarden

See the latest Special Offers for Avid Media Composer and Media Composer Ultimate

Learn Avid for free with Media Composer | First

Subscribe to The Rough Cut podcast and never miss an episode

Visit The Rough Cut on YouTube


Download this episode