David Fincher’s Editor Reveals The Key To Make ANY Edit Work

having prepared myself for this moment for so long I failed to believe that it would ever arrive she's doing all the verbal wrestling to try to get her way out of this situation and fast Bender is stonewalling her you don't want to Blink through that to talk about this Advanced Technique we brought in one of David Fincher's collaborators editor Kirk Baxter who made masterpieces like The Social Network gong girl girl with a dragon tattoo and most recently the Killer in this masterclass interview Kirk breaks down his signature David Fincher editing style how he choreographed The

Brute fight scene in the killer how he uses music to raise tension and how vertical sound editing creates Dynamic transitions he explored how he overcame the challenges in the sniper sequence of the Killer and explained how David Fincher's massive volume filming style is perfect for an editor this interview was recorded with Riverside we use it to record every remote interview for our show it's an absolute necessity it's been one of our most reliable tools for our workflow this is online software that records your screen your camera and audio all separately and uploads it to the

cloud that means you can end up with multiple files that you can edit separately giving you full creative control in the edit it also doesn't give you bad recording quality like other video call softwares do it gives you 4K footage it looks professional as Frick also if your connection drops during the interview it doesn't matter because Riverside records locally so no footage will ever get lost more than just recording Riverside has amazing post- production tools as well to help you create your show as fast as possible Riverside generates AI transcriptions which you can use to

then do text based editing on your show and if you want to introduce the guest you can pop your script in a teleprompter and off you go and lastly you can use Magic Clips basically you can automatically create shorts from your long form show right in Riverside with the click of a button you can do everything from pressing record to pressing publish right in Riverside you can sign up to Riverside for free and use the code editing podcast for 20% off the paid ver back to the conversation in talking about the killer I think we

should probably suggest blinking more than Michael fast Bender did in the killer did he really only blink once in the entire movie one of the many and no there there's there's blinks in there we're conscious of blinks not to turn up in the wrong places I don't think there was an effort to remove them through the film it's just the nature of how his performance was but there's been an effort to remove them in previous films when they're all kind of Landing off Rhythm and it's mostly about when you get into the meat like the

point of a scene and you're in closeups and you want something delivered with intention and purpose someone blinking all the way through it tends to dilute what they're saying I'm not the Zodiac and if I was I certainly wouldn't tell you if the blinking doesn't happen in a rhythm of the words and it's sort of separated from what's being communicated it starts to sort of turn into Donald Trump's hands where it doesn't have a rhythm of what's being said that's the main thing we're looking for is is for everything to feel like as intention is

there a moment in the killer that that that that was really important for you to make that Lu when he sits down opposite Tilda wait she's you know doing all the verbal wrestling to try to get her way out of this situation for what it's worth I would never have involved your female friend and fast Bender is stonewalling her you don't want to Blink through that I objected to his methods and I told him so so until decide when she's scrambling blank are fine you're here because you couldn't help yourself so much of it he

locks off so we've got the ability to control the frame and take out what we don't want in the background and it's is sort of reduction so that all that's left is what's intentional um and anything unintentional tends to stand up it's something that we discussed with uh the Star Wars Andor editor about a year ago he's also very conscious of blinking and he would sometimes cover up someone blinking and so they are kind of St in throughout the whole scene are you potentially going to that maybe that deep level of uh covering up with

someone blinks we we digitally remov them in Dragon Tattoo in a couple of spots with Rooney when I'm in sort of coverage and I'm sort of you know selecting listening shots things like that then I can just you know choose the ones I'm naturally going to be gravitated towards the ones where it's not there but if it's a a performance where it's also dialogue that I'm looking at the best deliver is going to win the day whether there's blinks or not yeah yeah of course of course yeah then you'll move to digitally removing them but

that wasn't the case in the killer we never went that far I want to think about the what has been attributed to the editing style that you have developed with David Fincher I think people have said that the exact precises as you've said and like intention I always felt like there's this like hypnotic feel how would you describe the editing language of David Fincher and for you what David does for sure always is provide a lot of coverage that gets misinterpreted as a lot of takes what he's extremely good at is making sure that I've

got the pieces to be able to move around as needed or to keep something exciting or to allow yourself effortlessly um be editing pretty aggressively so that you can use just the best pieces of everything David knows these rhythms he shoots for an editor so if it's a really long scene you I'll find in the wide shot that there'll often be blocking you know somebody's coming into the room so you've got a camera moving to set it up you sort of work your way in as everybody's in a stationary position in choreography I can kind

of work my way into closer coverage someone stands and moves now I want to be out of close-ups because there's too much movement in them I don't want cameras traful with people in a close-up size so I'm now going to bring my myself out wide and then slowly work my way to that closeup I'm curious I break into your home in the middle of the night with a silen pistol and you have no idea why I might be here and so that closeup tends to be safe for something important and you don't want someone doing

this all the way through it and messing up the dance because he's filming from start to finish in a scene You' can be in the closeup at any point that you want anywhere but I'll try my my hardest not to use it until it is the main sentence in the [Applause] scene you know so you work your way into it he loves to shoot over shoulders and they're a lot harder to get because you got to get you know your foreground working as well it's just if you're in a single it's just much easier I

think for a director or an actor to perfect it because you're isolating how much is out of your control you're you're isolating the amount of humans um but over shoulders they're just a bit more wriggly and they take longer to get on the set he loves them and I love using them it means you can sit in shots longer cuz you you can kind of enjoy the foreground talking and you get a sense of the other person you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd and then it

also gives more impact for when you choose to go single frame and get closer it'll be because you're an so that generally is what's happening with scenes with Dave is is where trying to remain loose until there's a point to get in tight another thing we do usually letting typically I'm letting the dialogue lead the picture adits if someone talks I'll be going to them after their sentence has begun is this your wife's handwriting he's not a handwriting I think so it looks like our experts thought so too you want to play a little trer

false I look for opportunities where it's not just cut on the line cut on the line where where I can cut to someone where they're listening and then you know and information is being delivered to them and then they speak or someone that I can hold on for series of lines so I'm looking for those gaps so it doesn't become the edit doesn't become predictable pretty much unlimited Freedom make sure you get everything you have so you really can make sure that those choices are intentional as you said when you do want to cut to

a closeup or you do want to be it's like J cutting into dialogue it's like you still have as much Freedom as possible and to really make sure that that story is told it's all choreography it's kind of working out what can be out wide what deserves to be in close what you know scrubbing through everybody's best listening moments marking out how to exploit actors performances that aren't just about talking it's all of the above you mentioned choreographing a scene what what does that mean to you how would you define choreographing what are the steps

that you take to choreograph a scene in your edit when you've got a 100 setups that there's this sort of dynamic thing that that it's you sort of almost instinctually know what to do with it it just takes a long time to kind of compartmentalize it all and and suf the thing to kind of get it all ready for that one big cook fight only the battle you're paid to fight in The Brute scene it was about the killer losing control when it's his process when it's the Killer's process it's exacting we stretch and when

he is not in control of process we start jump cutting and and the camera becomes handheld that was a sort of a general note with Dave about how to approach the cutting in the movie so it was the contrast of what leads up to it which is the stretching stick to your PL man as he sort of works his way slowly into danger anticipate don't improvise and then it exploding into violence fight only the battle you're paid to fight and I'm slightly clipping action I'm just clipping things that just like eight frames faster it's just

little tiny bits to sort of go this is spilling he does not have a handle on this yet the fight scene just there's lots of little stages to it it's its own little mini movie each sort of room that they're in has its choreograph of the fight so you're going to get it in a wide and then certain closeups have impact so it's like building a series of little scenes and joining them all together [Music] then that the last little bit is the flare of um you know how do you want to present this thing

do you want to slow it down do you want to speed it [Applause] up it's so relentless that fight that Dave planned for sort of moments of quiet get a gag in there like reaching for the weapon which turns out to be a cheese grater I call the Indiana Jones moment and the the soundtrack Tren attic is scored to the cut on [Applause] that the music tells you where those gaps are in the same way people sort of view choreography almost as song as you think of it on stage but if you listen to the

music of what it's doing through that scene it's it's perfectly on a graph showing what the choreography is stretch stretch stretch explode give us a pause explode give us another pause exposee so it's literally almost following song form it's it's following you know that rise and fall and that break and that building the tension and release all of those things yeah and it's part of what the philosophy was with the film in general let's try to do it as a silent film the slower parts we sort of built without music and then later um we

started to add sort of boiler Frog music which was just that the undercurrent of O this feels icky where we're not going to rely on music during process and it's only going to be once something kicks [Music] off so you guys know me as the the guy who edited these music videos but what you didn't know is that in this music video I use story blocks to make it happen story blocks is the secret weapon among editors because of its unlimited assets to footage sound effects music graphics and more in this gez and tiga music

video I needed a sports graphic of two teams going head-to-head but we didn't have time or budget for a graphics artist so what did I do I went to story blocks and checked out hundreds of different versions of exactly what I needed I grabbed this stock graphic really quick changed the fonts and colors and boom it was good to go you can access sound effects footage Graphics everything you need right from within your nle with story blocks' plugin it's probably my favorite way to work everything you downloaded from story blocks is 100% royaltyfree with no

restrictions on where you can distribute your finished projects put it on your YouTube channel put it on your next music video your commercial it doesn't matter story blocks lets you use assets however you want to get started with unlimited stock media downloads at one set pro price hit the link in the description another thing we've really noticed is just an overall in your films is the first 5 minutes especially of David's films are like capsules of the entire film itself like for example in the social network you got the bar scene which suggests like it's

a talkie Shakespearean film you have gone girl with the petting of the hair so how is that determined and how do you guys find those first five minutes per se I mean that script it's David knowing that you got to hook them you come into these things and there's a preconceived intention um there's an order that the writer's brought to it and unless something's going horribly wrong I usually don't need to mess with that a lot of what's what I'm up to is reducing scenes and getting out of them earlier and you know best intentions

with dialogue you don't need all of it sometimes we mess around in order in the killer we certainly messed around with what the voiceover was it kicks off as when the camera comes down and lands on it it comes much earlier now as one of that doing nothing is incredibly difficult it's amazing how physically exhausting it can be to do nothing that became important to bring that line earlier to allow the audience to sort of go Not A lot's going to happen for a while if you're unable to endure boredom this work is not for

you and it's their intention so you can kind of relax into that so things like that need to be discovered you mentioned something about intention what does what does that mean to you in terms of how you approach the editing of the opening you do sort of have to remind yourself what its point is so that it's not all tossed away in a wider shot that I allow the choreography the angles to do a lot of the work so you can move your way into the point of a scene and it's not always that the

point of a scene wants to be a closeup it just naturally works out that way by the language of Cinema does it kind of go into like each scene before you even kind of begin is like what is intention what is is where is it starting where is it ending and then this is the intention of this scene and then are you using that to help guides the cuts that you're looking for yeah I mean look it's sort of I guess hearing that said back to me it just sounds so Pony mostly just surviving we

end up in the positions we're in not by some sort of formal training but just by the 10,000 hours and most of it still to this day I begin kind of going I don't know what the to do but I'm going to learn the footage I'm going to start working out what what pieces are essential and what bits can I definitely make decisions around and then once I start making those other bits start to fall into place and then once you've got it built out and working you can then sort of look back and go

okay now it's easy to pick on what's not smooth or what feels sloppy or what's got too busy what's over a cut in order for me to get to this good bit here I've got to cut back and forth five times and there's too much ping pong going on how do I eliminate the editing and stay in one side for long it it's it's just that it's just massaging and sticking sticking to it I find music a useful distraction the sniper scene came in where all I had was the interior of where the killer was

working a focus to I had nothing across for now I just have a script saying maid walks in Target arrives prostitute walks in room I just have written word and I'm filling out the other side with these written words and I'm just sort of going oh he's going to sort of follow them over here he's going to follow me it's all a bit of a guess but I can build something with a title card in between and typing up the shots that I'm missing at first I go through and I'm selecting it they can get

a bit abstract when there's a lot of coverage you know you've got fast Bender with his sort of eye going up to the scope and doing this slowly and back and a series of focus pulls from the scope to his eye to his back and you'll get five or six takes of that then there'll be one that's slightly closer again five or six takes of that one that's slightly wider one that's wide from the side so you just got all of these pieces doing these long blocks of action and you just got to start saying

when did it look its best when was it smoother and building little piles and blocks um and the wide shots can tell you what the intended choreography was the best of the big fat closeups it's like when do I have to use that it's like there's a wonderful shot of his head slowly coming down to meet it the scope that's beautiful then I know once his eyeball first hits it now I want to want to use one of those big fat Subs so finally when the other side comes in and I've got in the way

that I first built it out with just the the written cards as I start replacing them I can blow his head off 15 times cuz he's wandering back and forth across this thing and you could kill him straight away so we've got to now hide it and disguise him I have to sort of throw out what I did earlier and start rearranging it so that I just want to use him for this bit where he's tucks the the target tucks in behind a wall or as he's moving from this side of his living room to

the other side I want to be an extreme wide shot rather than a closeup where you could go bang bang bang bang bang so there's ways of starting to disguise the point of the scene which is to kill the guy so that he can stretch it all longer David would text me and go hey try the Smiths how soon is now on [Music] this do vertical sound editing so hit it in full blast on his povs my process is purely logistical that sounds like a fun task and now I want to make it perfectly work

to that music so that each time you get that big guitar riff no one who can afford me needs to waste time winning me to some cause I'm like landing on a point so I put all that together and by its nature of being really loud on povs and then tiny music when we're looking at the coverage of the killer I've got to put his voice over on the coverage of him I serve no God or country I fly no flag if I'm effective it's because of one simple fact so I start looking at what

are the longer pieces of dialogue I don't give a I'm going to now stop working the voice over to the very end of where he pulls the shot and work backwards from there and go okay I've got like a chunk where there's no voice what am I going to do about this cuz there's no rhythm it's always like the the voice overs like a lyrics and a song that if you introduce them and then they vanish and then they come back but you're on one key scene you it's can feel messy we started to write

new bits of dialogue to sort of help repair that stick to your plan anticipate don't improvise trust no one [Music] never yield an advantage so that it was this sort of consistent steady thing there were gaps but it still had its you know a rhythm that had intention once we sort of fell in love with this scene in how we were approaching it we took the discipline of saying povs are silent they don't get voice over and when back into things that we'd previous done and applied the same rules so the first time we hear

um The Smith's music when he uh walks up and just looks out at dawn at everybody it's the same thing we've got POV shots and all of his voice over I'm saving for his side 140 million human beings are born every year give or take so I had to sort of start to recalibrate things and then when he brings up his scope early and you get the first sort of hint of something sinister every time he's looking through the scope at like the little girl walking on the street or the security guard all of those

things are all silent and I'm holding them just a little bit longer than you normally would all disadvantage some of that came from when I used to have the voice over placed on those shots they were longer the house voice so everything else the popping sound like fireworks breaking of glass the screams all disadvantage and then when I move the mat up it's like this feels weird and it's cuz it's got that intentional discipline to his process where everything is taken this that tiny bit longer than what's comfortable and what I loved about that in

the end was ran class the sound designer and this be is can be rare for sound designers to be able to get this much space is there's all of the when it wasn't filled with a music track there's all this room for him to design pieces and normally a movie is always it's dialogue and it's Su and it's action and everything and they're looking for these tiny little bits to enhance it he had lots and lots of room here to kind of excite this stuff up cuz we'd naturally built in all of these pauses I

also noticed when watching in the intro that it seemed like you started the voice the voiceover and you said you established this rule where when we're on Michael we're doing voiceover but it seemed like right when you cut to him you also started the voiceover almost at that exact same frame many times and I was like that is something that doesn't usually happen there was a lot of playing around with how the voice came came in and it's it's just working it out so that it's really smooth there's all the fun stuff where he first

falls asleep I'm coming into that scene sort of wide Dave shut it from Every Which Way but Loose slowly introducing him once we've introduced him he falls asleep in an extreme sort of closeup where he's head goes back you move your way in through choreography I squeeze in both sides of the line on it CU once I get behind him I can come over to get the coverage from this side of his face and then use a big wide shot from the back I can get over now to this side of his face and I'm

just using what Dave's given me so that I don't have to keep cutting back to the same setups and then when you get that closeup of him falling asleep that it's like slam vertical sound cut so now once we're wide I've got this choreography slowly standing up and then doing his neet crack and it becomes a game of I am what I am neck crack I am what I am or is it I'm just like popey neck crack which bit of voice over lands best in that moment that shows a hint of violence there was

lots of ones that could work but then they brought too much silent Gap with what follows when he's filling up his water bottle and so it's just this intricate play of let me work out the best one to do that moment on and then work backwards with all of the others but you got to be really curious and really interested in the outcome to deal with all of this minutia with enthusiasm cuz it's a moving time and just when you work it out then we'll change the voice and something new will be written and you

you know you got to you start again and then when you work it all out Dave will shoot me a text and say let's do that a little quicker and then it's it's like okay now when we go to the sink he's not going to walk in on a wide shot anymore I used to have voice over on there now I'm just going to go straight into a closeup of him turning on the tap or however I did so this things start to compress and you got to reassess how you're doing the voiceover again so

much of what's fun about that is the volume I've done a a few of those with Dave where a voiceovers leading you through a massive amount of setups I am so much happier now that I'm dead a huge amount of coverage look at it in terms of economics really to be able to shoot so many different locations and different setups that you need to accumulate something that's that long it takes days and days and days and days of filming and Dave will see it through he will make sure that he's got that amount of budget

left to do that properly and it might all add up to 2 minutes 90 seconds so it begins with volume then the voice over is the speed like the voiceover is the bouncing ball and that can nine times out of 10 to be the hardest part of doing it of making sure that you've got the best delivery of every sentence Nick dun took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money he took and took from me until I no longer longer existed that's murder let the punishment fit the crime we often get

into like the slicing and dicing of words into rebuilding how a word starts or ends and you know what a sentence can be edited three times that's all very pliable all that stuff secretly creates some money troubles the visual part of it it's about getting through it at this Relentless thing so it just gets so impressive that it just keeps going it just keeps changing it comes in slowly you know they don't shoot it all in order and they don't like it's it's all just as you get it when you get in a closed space

in the cool girl thing you get into a little tiny room in a toilet at a gas station there's not much space so Dave will start to do three cameras it can be overwhelming when that comes in cuz that's very much endlessly you got to you got to search down every sort of angle every kind of key bit of action but once you start to work out what the rhythm of the pieces it becomes sort of clear that none of this is about continuity it's all about the best pieces It's All About Jump cutting stuff

it's all about pacing through it once I had it together it was great faster that was defeat in general I remember that cuz there was a piece of music that I had on it and then we ended up in a quiet scene at the end of it and found himself a newer younger bouncier cool girl you think I'd let him destroy me and end up happier than ever the music that's how I would judge how much I tightened it cuz the music would spill into the this quiet thing and and I'd sort of go and

measure that and go oh look at that I got like 22 seconds out of there but nothing's gone so it's just this compress compressed compress you're talking a lot about process and I think and you are talking a lot about how you had the luxury of having all of this footage we play complete total coverage and you kind of can do essentially whatever you want I think that then goes into what you don't do as a creative Choice the discip of making sure you don't go into a Direction that's like probably not quite uh the

best thing for this uh what what would say probably the guard rails that you probably have to keep for yourself when you are I say probably even overwhelmed with this sheer amount of footage a lot of similarities in what the Killer is doing to what I do it's you just got to go the long way around you got to understand all of the shots you got to work out the best pieces of every one of the shots you got to assemble something that's kind of sucks that's a little loose and you got to look at

it and go what's what sucks about this and then you get to start refining and shaving and as long as there's time you can always work your way through [Music] it