Author: Peter Tongate
In his new feature film “Here,” director Robert Zemeckis chooses just the right angle to watch thousands of years of action unfold.
Adapted from Richard Maguire’s graphic novel, “Here” compresses millions of years into a series of short scenes that unfold across an astonishing range of eras, including the age of the dinosaurs, the eve of the Revolutionary War, and the dawn of human civilization. dawn. However, Zemeckis limits his view of each era to a solitary patch of North America, including major storylines from the 1940s to the present day.
In the script by Zemeckis and Eric Roth, baby boomer Charlie Young (Tom Hanks) and Margaret (Robin Wright) meet, court, marry and start a family. Their joys, challenges, and frustrations all play out in this modest two-story home that rises on the land where so many people have lived, loved, and died. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reduce the ages of several actors, including co-stars Hanks and Wright. The film was released on November 1 by Sony Pictures.
Beyond this, in a very strict aesthetic experiment, Zemeckis respects the visual concept of the graphic novel by shooting each storyline from a matching camera angle: from one scene to the next, the angle does not change , and there is no internal coverage. This bold approach presented photo editor Jesse Goldsmith with unique challenges and opportunities.
“Editing the film ‘Here’ was creatively and technically challenging,” Zemeckis said in a statement to CineMontage. “Jesse’s encyclopedic knowledge of the art of montage is invaluable.”
Unable to edit on set due to the nature of the shooting style, Goldsmith initially served as an assistant editor on several of Zemeckis’s films before later co-editing the director’s 2022 remake of Pinocchio”.
CineMontage recently spoke with Goldsmith about editing a film that stands out from the crowd.
CineMontage: This is your fourth film with Robert Zemeckis as an assistant editor or picture editor. Why did you two click?
Jesse Goldsmith: Bob liked to do as much as possible in the editing room. If you’re editing Bob, you’re doing more than just traditional editing. Sometimes you’re a music editor and you contribute to the preview process and help create effects. He enjoys doing the best he can in Avid, with a lot of help from other departments. I have an adaptable skill set, so I was able to do a lot of temporary effects work that he really enjoyed.
CineMontage: So he likes to see an approximation of what the movie will look and sound like?
Goldsmith: That’s right. For example, in the big opening sequence in “Here,” which we call the big montage, he would describe in the editing room what shots he wanted and where he wanted each element to go. action, and then we’d go and work with the preview team: “Okay, I need you to give me a big comet on the blue screen that we can relate to the dinosaurs that are coming in.”
CineMontage: How was editing “Here” different from editing a regular film?
Goldsmith: I’m still figuring it out. There is no roadmap on how to do this. When the movie was initially described to me, before I read the script, it sounded like a shot. When I read the script and heard how Bob wanted to shoot it, I quickly realized how incredibly challenging the editing was going to be.
There are two parts to what complicates things. Once you enter a scene, you’re there and there’s nothing you can do about it. Getting from one scene to another was a huge challenge. We conducted a lot of experiments. We tried a lot of different ways to figure out how to get in and out of the scene. Bob filmed a rehearsal of the film from an angle, and Bob and I took it to the editing room and started playing it. It served as a preview, but it was live action.
CineMontage: Videos use “panels” to switch from one scene to the next. In other words, a “panel” showing the next scene’s action will appear in the larger frame, and the film will then transition to the next scene. How did you arrive at this approach, as opposed to having hard cuts between scenes or other ways of transitioning from one scene to the next?
Goldsmith: Conceptually, there was always the idea that one time period would somehow filter into the next, but the idea for the group came very late. We started doing more sophisticated and complex things. We see time passing outside the window, or the walls of the house disappearing. It’s all very cool, but when we sit down and watch the entire movie like this, everything slows down.
CineMontage: Will you shoot the entire movie using backup transition equipment?
Goldsmith: Oh, yes. We could have a full version of the movie with completely different transitions. When we realized we were slowing down, someone suggested, “Well, maybe we go back to what we did in the graphic novel.” Bob thought about it and said, “Let’s give it a try.” We tried three at the beginning of the movie to four transitions and then presented it to our team. Everyone agreed it worked well and didn’t slow us down.
CineMontage: Was pacing one of the biggest challenges when editing Here?
Goldsmith: This movie is really a brain teaser. We experimented a lot with the placement of the scene. Many editors have a stack of scene cards so you can see how the movie will be laid out. We went through a phase during the director’s cut where every day we were rearranging, rearranging, rearranging. We discovered early on that we needed to keep each family’s story moving forward chronologically. At first, the movie was even more non-linear than it is now. You might know the end of someone’s story before you see the beginning, but we’ve found that doesn’t work. There’s so much going on in the movie, not only jumping back and forth in time, but also jumping back and forth in the story of a family.
While we were doing it, we were also trying to figure out how to make the transition work. Luckily, we figured out the transition as soon as we started feeling good about the scene sequence. At some point, everything works out and everyone is very happy.
CineMontage: Since each scene is presented from a single camera angle and there is nothing to cut, what tools can you use to manipulate a single scene?
Goldsmith: You can do some things with sound and music, but other than that, there aren’t a lot of options. There are two things. First of all, one of the advantages of having a still camera is that you can do things like segmentation very easily. Every once in a while, we can sneak in some time changes. Another thing that really saved us when we wanted to keep things going was the idea of panels. If you can find the right spot, you can start playing another scene to divert the audience’s attention to something else. In a way, these panels can function like coverage.
CineMontage: How is the digital de-aging of actors accomplished?
Goldsmith: It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done working in the editing room. Every day, I get the actual raw dailies from when I shot them, and then, if the scene requires it, I get those dailies that have been preliminarily de-aged. And it always works. It helps remind us of where these characters are in their lives. It’s preliminary, but very, very good. This is one of the best temporary visual effects I’ve ever used.
The film involves a lot of unconventional thinking about what cinema can be. Many members of the editing and visual effects teams had a huge impact in cracking the story and transition design, so I just want to thank them for their contributions. Without them, this movie wouldn’t have been possible. By the end of the article, it really feels like editing and visual effects are the same department.
CineMontage: Did Zemeckis shoot a lot of footage in this movie?
Goldsmith: It depends on the complexity of the scene. There are a few scenes that may require 25 or 30 takes, and so on. There are a lot of people in these scenes, like the Thanksgiving table scene, and there are a lot of different actors doing a lot of different things for a long time. Of course, you watch everything, but you know that if you have 25 shots, it’s probably at least the first 15 that Bob won’t be happy with. You can narrow it down quickly.
CineMontage: Does Zemeckis enjoy working in the editing room?
Goldsmith: Bob loved the editing room. When he was filming, he would spend as much time as possible with me. For the first week or two, when they started shooting on set, I was mostly working on my own, sorting out the editor’s cuts and trying out ideas for transitions. Soon, he started spending an hour with me, and we worked remotely maybe three out of five days a week. [Note: The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in England while Goldsmith was cutting in Los Angeles.]
CineMontage: What is the approach to music in the film like?
Goldsmith: From the beginning, we knew we wanted the entire movie to be period-specific, not just to be funny but to help sell where you were in time. Bob loved music. Music is an important part of every film he makes. When he walked into the editing room, he knew exactly what he wanted, maybe not exactly what song, but he knew the tone, he knew what he wanted the music to do.
CineMontage: “Let It Be Me” by the Everly Brothers is a Richard and Margaret song – was that something in the script or was it something you came up with through trial and error?
Goldsmith: We tried a few different tunes that could be used as Richard and Margaret songs, and some of the tunes were either not in the right key or were so recognizable that they dominated the scene. We found that “Let It Be Me” worked on several different levels. First, it’s romantic yet slightly melancholy, capturing the mood of Richard and Margaret’s relationship. The song is also soft enough that we can let it sit in the background and set the mood without being distracting, and then we can turn it up at the right moment when we really want it to pop.
Peter Tonguette is a freelance writer.
