From the course: Conversations in Video Editing
Still Screaming documentary: Editing and workflow analysis
From the course: Conversations in Video Editing
Still Screaming documentary: Editing and workflow analysis
- Well why don't you tell us what this project is, the Still Screaming project. - Oh, Still Screaming is a documentary on the original Scream Trilogy. It was in production about the same, and was released at the same week that Scream 4 had come out. So, you know, it was like, perfect timing, and that was intentional, and it was smart, 'cause that's when the interest would be highest. And so, it was a producer I'd worked with before and I love him to death, and I was actually working full-time on the Awards Season that year, eight months pregnant and I would cut the Still Screaming documentary at night. And, Miramax and Lionsgate released it on the Scream Blu-Ray Box Set that they released of the Scream Trilogy. And that was just like so fun to work on because the producer and the director and I like, we were all just huge fans of the films. Like Scream, what Halloween is for some people, like Halloween, like that defines the slasher genre in a lot of ways. It's like that's the movie they refer to when they talk about horror movies of the '80s, is Halloween and Friday the 13th. But like Halloween's the big one. For me, I was about like 18 maybe? I can't remember the year it came out, when Scream first came out. And I was just like, "Oh my God, this is so awesome!" Like that's Scream. What Halloween was for some, Scream was for me. And so we all approached it from like fans making it for people who are fans. Like that's, you know, we love the films and we wanted to make it for people who love the films. And everyone else, if they want to watch it, great. But you know, that was who we made it for. And so they let me do whatever I wanted essentially. So I took like, some bites from their selecs and I had already been cutting the rest of the documentary, before I cut the Cold Open that was like cut later on in the process and so I was already familiar with like a bunch of bites that we were using in the documentary. So, I would pull bites to put in the Open. I was like, oh yeah, this flows nicely, this flows nicely. And I already had sound-ups from the movies in mind. The most memorable things that I'm like, like, the two opening shots of the Cold Open I knew that's how I wanted to start it. Those are the most memorable shots of the whole series. They define them and I knew that's what I wanted to start with. So, I essentially kind of wrote it. - Hm-mm, let's take a look and see if we can recognize some of these iconic moments for those fans that are fans of the series. (phone rings) - Hello? - What's your favorite scary movie? - Scream was just like a phenomenon. - Scream reinvented a genre. - That was a beautiful time in the movie business. - There was this little place for magic to kind of be created. You had Wes Craven, who's a master of telling those stories. - In my wisdom, I turned the project down, went home and thought about it and I said okay. If the job's still open, I'll do it. (screams) (screams) - Whoa! (screams) - Kevin was writing material that gave the audience a lot of credit. - It was clearly a genre that he loved. - So we didn't really expect it to have the success that it would. - It made 30,000,000 the first weekend. - And then the next weekend, it went up. And then the next weekend, it went up again. (glass breaking) - Drew was like, no-one's going to think that I'm going to die. - That was just like, oh my god! - Everybody's a suspect! - A lot of secrecy around the script. - People literally thought I was the killer. - I remember seeing a lot of blacked-out pages in my script. So, back-plot. I might be wearing one of those. - I didn't know that I was going to be the killer until well into shooting. - No-one's safe. (punch) (scream) - She really hit me. She accidentally punched me. (screams) - It was very intense to see Ghost Face. It had become such a part of our pop culture. - This could grow and grow. It could be a phenomenon for generations. - It's a scream, baby! (echo explosion effect) - So, fun. - There you go. - And I, can you talk about your sort-of subtle strategy at having the different Scream movies interact with one another. - Well, it's easier if I show it. There is a, this is a shot from Scream 1, and this was just kinda, once we heard the like, call of, you know, are you, what's your favorite scary movie? It cuts into Ghost Face's hacking. So, this is from Scream 1 followed by him throwing a knife, that's Scream 2. So, it's like the fight scene continues across movies. Scream 1, goes into her attack in Scream 2. That's Scream 3. - Cool. - So, I put that together, and I just knew those shots from memory, 'cause I may have seen the movies several times, and I just put that together. And it's so subtle that, unless you really know the films and are really paying attention, you probably wouldn't catch that I just did, like Scream 1, Scream 2, Scream 3 shots of like their fight. But to me, I always get a kick out of it. I mean, doing stuff like that, I always try to do that in all my work and I just thought that was really, really fun. And then, another thing. It's like, how do we paint this picture that, we are talking about all three movies? The easiest way to depict it without people saying, Yeah, you know, when I worked on Scream 1. And then someone would say, Scream 2, and then Scream 3. I just decided to do this fun, little montage of clips 'cause as a fan, fans loves montage of the stuff, they love montages of the stuff they love watching. And so, it's like, I'm going to take this moment to just let the sound bites breathe, and you know, have this little montage. So I just took the opening credit, or opening title graphics and then followed by like really memorable moments from the films. But I wanted to make sure I included different people 'cause they had so many different people in the cast that, at the time, they weren't as well-known and they're like huge now, so they're well-known. So, I wanted to represent like all these big stars that have been in these films. Like they are a huge cultural influence, so it's like, you have these iconic moments. Then we go to Scream 2. You have Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jerry O' Connell, Jenny McCarthy and Scott Foley. But you know, little things like that, you know, I wanted to represent the films and, so it's like we thought about all those fun, little things. We just wanted it to be really fun. - We have enough time to talk about Going Postal, but if there's anything else that you want to talk about Editing, - Ah, I do. (laughs) - before we, - Before Going Postal. before we switch to talking about the podcast, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to do that. - Yeah, I mean, something I've always been fighting against and, you know, because a lot of, I feel like, I'd like to think of myself as pretty flexible and well-rounded when it comes to creative versus technical, offline versus online editing, you know, it's like, I can cut this story, I can add these complex effects and do compositing to add height to stories. I could, you know, I could color-correct. I could do all these things and a lot of times, not every editor can do that. Like some editors are like, no I'm just offline, I'm just an offline editor, and it's like they take pride in the fact that, oh no, I just tell the story, that's all I do, that's all, I tell the story, like the fact that, maybe if someone else can use effects it's like, well that's you know, that's your thing, effects, but I tell the story. And it's funny, it's like, well I use the effects to tell a story, and I don't always use the effects, I use 'em when appropriate. So, it's like this weird thing and it's something I believe it's like taking advantage of every aspect of the medium. Ya, I cut things that are really like, colorful and flashy but then I also cut things that, you know, they don't have, they have all hard cuts, you know. There's no, the most they might have is color correction.
Contents
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Getting to know Monica's multifaceted approach to editing9m 49s
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Understanding Monica's working style and process in various genres10m 5s
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2015 Movie Mash-Up: Editing and workflow analysis7m 18s
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Still Screaming documentary: Editing and workflow analysis8m 42s
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Monica's life on Twitter and the Going Postal podcast7m 18s
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