Wednesday 12 September 2012

Berberian Sound Studio


Here are a couple of stills from the mash up sequence I cut for Berberian Sound Studio.

It was produced from rushes generated by 2nd Unit DOP Tim Sidell.  Tim took the scene of Gilderoy waking and hearing someone attempting to break in to his flat, printed it to 35mm and shot it running through a Steenbeck whilst varying the playback speed.  He printed up the results and filmed those off the Steenbeck, again playing around with the playback and combining certain shots.  He repeated this process a number of times with each generation of rushes more complex and interesting than the last giving us plenty of beautifully layered images to play with in the edit. 

I tried to keep the rushes as untreated as possible whilst working with the material, just adding a subtle doubling of the image with a slight timing offset in some places and  a post move judder to simulate a projector breaking down, so the finished result is pretty much a pure optical/ non-digital effect.  In order to achieve the burnt out image of Gilderoy Tim used a blowtorch on the film as he found he was unable to make modern filmstock burn using only a projector bulb.. not like the good old days of nitrate film!  

I've been blown away by the consistently good reviews the film has received (like this five star review from Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian) and hope this has drawn high audiences despite the film opening on a relatively small number of screens.  

There's a piece here from director Peter Strickland that talks about the editing process.  It's refreshing to hear Peter say that the chemistry between director and editor is far more important than what the editor has on their CV or the awards they've won.

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