By Daniel Eagan
Translator: Yi Ersan
Proofreader: Qin Tian
Source: Filmmaker (December 22, 2021)
In Adam McKay's self-written and self-directed sci-fi comedy Don't Look Up, even earth-level extinction-level events can't upset the ruling elite. The film, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep, explores how scientists, politicians, journalists and the public react to news of impending disaster.
"Don't Look Up"
After Big Short and Vice President, this is McKay's third collaboration with editor Hank Corwin. As an honorary editor, Covin has worked with directors such as Oliver Stone, Terrence Malik, Robert Redford, and many more.
Hank Corwin
Q: When did you join the program?
Cowan: Since the end of November last year, I've been getting some samples one after another. They were shooting in Boston while I was cutting in my studio in California. It was the time of the pandemic, so I was basically out of contact with any other creatures except my wife and the family dog.
Q: You should have read the script in advance, right?
Cowan: Sure, but as the whole world gets more and more absurd, McKay keeps updating his story. So what I read is arguably a Blueprint script.
This film is about the world and the universe, and he has filmed a lot of people who are not comparable. We also had to shoot the space launch scene, which featured 20 people standing on the icy beach at Cape Cod.
Q: So you're shooting and cutting at the same time?
Cowen: Yes, that's my habit at work. And given that this is the third time mcKay has worked together, he trusts me very much.
Q: Did you start by thinking about inserting some expansion packs or pictures of wild animals into the film?
Cowen: Yes. It's a film about communication, truth, and truth. The problem is that if you are not careful, it can become disconnected from reality or even become too cynical. I want to show the fundamental truth, the state of nature. If you see waves lapping against the rocks, or you see a bee collecting pollen, there's no room for interpretation, what you see is what you get. I needed such imagery to counter the absurdity that happens in the film.
Q: There may not be much room for interpretation of individual shots of wildlife, but once you put them together, it seems to construct some kind of narrative: asteroids, waves, reptiles, hummingbirds, garbage collectors.
Cowen: From hummingbirds to garbage, it looks like the subject of an editorial (laughs). That being said, although you can have many different interpretations of hummingbirds, it is ultimately just a hummingbird that collects nectar.
Q: Did you choose these images yourself?
Cowen: Adam provided the material, but I needed to put it together. I wanted to put some natural elements into the film, but I didn't mean to express my opinion. Take, for example, footage of hippos – mammals and insects have some sort of unconscious behavior that prompts mothers to take care of their children or stimulates bees to pollinate. We also demonstrate the desire to reproduce and gather.
Q: I like the subjective perspective that switches freely in the film. At the beginning of the film, we see Kate Dibiaski (Jennifer Lawrence) sitting at her desk. Then we can also see her spot on a computer monitor, a close-up of a tea bag in a cup, and then she's humming a Wudang gang song.
Cowen: I try to clip in a collage way. Many times, when you keep a shot, it has some kind of weight in itself, as well as a unique emotional value. For this scene, you may feel Jennifer's emotional vulnerability, which is the only scene she has truly enjoyed in the movie.
We have many ways to express happiness, it can be a hand movement, it can be a way of seeing things, it can be a muscle in the back. I was just trying to collage these shots. It's not necessarily the traditional way of film editing, but I think it's very real. It allows me to create what I think is real behavior. I don't have to edit for the audience. I was editing for myself.
Q: It reminds me of Malik's films, where every shot in those works seems to convey the idea of independence. During editing, when you put the various pieces of information together, they may not be arranged in a linear narrative order.
Cowen: The trick to editing this film is that it has a narrative thrust, and a lot of the shots have their rightful places to go. Luckily, Adam shot some slightly impressionistic images for me. I used to put more of these shots, but now he understands the style of material I like. He certainly made the decision, but he also seemed to respect the way we both worked together.
Q: There are a lot of visual layers in the scene about the rocket launch, and you're not worried about overloading the elements.
Cowen: It was actually an intuition that I didn't make this decision consciously. McKay gave me all sorts of shots, and I just tried to put in some of the things that moved me while paying attention to fluidity and rhythm. Sometimes I take out some shots and move them back two or three shots. I am often overwhelmed by the thrust of emotion or narrative. Honestly, I've also been accused of being an overly aggressive editor, but I enjoy the moments.
Q: Actually, I would like to ask you to talk about the double exposure, the superimposed and multi-layered information in this scene.
Cowen: I like the old-fashioned optical lysis mirror. I grew up in the film era, and before editing for electronic video or digital films, I worked with film. You can take a frame out of film and do all sorts of things about it. This pure film editing allows one shot to be juxtaposed on top of other shots. Of course, this is not always the case, and if it's easy to mess up, you have to be clear about when you need to simplify.
I love the presidential campaign scenes in the film, and on both occasions her image is presented in a superimposed fashion. And the scene where Arianna Grande sang. The whole movie is very aggressive and ugly, so I hope that the scene where Ariana sings can be very beautiful. I think the effect of double exposure and triple exposure is gorgeous.
Q: In the first scene in the president's office, there were about five or six people talking.
Cowen: The editing of this scene was very difficult. For me, there's always a scene in a movie that runs through the entire editing process, and that's the scene in the president's office. The scene had some of the best actors in the film world today, four or six cameras shooting at the same time, and scripts from talented screenwriters like Adam. In addition, these actors have a lot of improvisation, constantly stimulating each other. They are like secretly competing with each other, trying to exert their full strength. This scene is the key to the whole movie.
There are a lot of comedic moments in this scene. I never realized how funny Meryl Streep was, she was a talented comedian.
Working with movie stars, I was always worried. When I worked with Terrence Malik and Christian Bell before, I understood what a great actor can bring. I've never worked with DiCaprio, who is arguably the most well-known movie star in the world. I'm just trying to make him more human and authentic. He became that character completely. I mean, when I met him in real life, I found that he didn't look like Dr. Mindy at all.
Q: When you picked close-ups of faces, did you choose them to make the comedic effect stand out?
COWEN: It depends. In order to bring this comedy closer to the existential dilemma, the use of close-ups of faces also had different purposes.
Q: Earlier, after a test screening, Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill seemed to joke that they had an extremely funny scene that had been cut.
Cowen: All I can say is, give me a little for everyone.
In the first cut version, there is a scene that is 16 minutes long, and it is indeed beautiful, but it must also be cropped to make full use of it.
Q: The scene at the end of the film, "The Last Supper," is very moving, and your choice of shots and the characters who appear in this scene makes it more emotionally intense.
Cowen: I actually put in that scene my own wedding video. My wife, Nancy and I were married, it was a disaster, when "Elvis" officiating for us was a very happy smile. But looking back, I felt ashamed not to give her the wedding she deserved. But the video itself is very beautiful and humane, and we don't have to pay royalties.
Q: Wait, Elvis Presley is your wedding facilitator?
Cowen: Of course not, it was pretended by a friend.
Q: Can you talk about the difference between film and digital editing?
Cowen: I used to use the KEM Tablet Editor to move the plates back and forth. I check the selected clips back and forth, from start to finish, many times. After I started working with digital editing, I do the same to this day.
Most editors I know who have never worked on film don't work that way. They'll look at one shot and then another, and it's easy to make mistakes in the process. I found that there were moments when the actors didn't know the camera was filming them, and it was during those times that I discovered the humanity in them, but a little inattentively, and a lot of things like that were ignored.
I even think film editing is in its darkest hour. Looking at my own editing style, I didn't look like the film texture of the '40s to '70s until it did, but at least the core spirit was full of respect and tradition.
However, as I got older, I found myself wanting something more and more minimalistic. Although I grew up in an era when television commercials and music videos were booming, I had a relatively unpretentious vision of editing.