By Iain Blair

In her directorial film debut, Past Lives, South Korean-born playwright Celine Song has made a romantic and deceptively simple film that is intensely personal and autobiographical yet universal, with its themes of love, loss and what might have been. Past Lives is broken into three parts spanning countries and decades. First we see Nora as a young girl in South Korea, developing an early bond with her best friend, Hae Sung, before moving with her family to Toronto. Then we see Nora in her early 20s as she reconnects virtually with Hae Sung. Finally, more than a decade later, Hae Sung visits Nora, now a married playwright living in New York. It stars Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro.

I spoke with Song about the post workflow and making the A24 film, which is Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It also just won Best Director and Best Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards.

How did you prep to direct your first film? Did you talk to other directors?
I talked to some amazing directors, but what they all said is that because only I know the film that I’m making, the way it’s going to be prepped is a process that only I can really know. You need really strong producers and department heads, which I was so lucky to have. I was able to draw on their experience and advice for every step of the way.

You shot in Seoul and New York. Was it the same sort of experience or was it different going back to Seoul?
The filmmaking culture is very different in both places. In New York, there is a very strong union, and in Korea there isn’t one. Also, the way that you secure locations is different. In New York, if you want to shoot somewhere, the mayor’s office knows about it. Korea is still a little bit like guerrilla filmmaking. You show up to a location and try to get it right. You can’t really get permits for things in Korea.

The story takes place over three separate timeframes. Did you shoot chronologically?
No. We shot everything in New York City, and then we had a set built for the Skype section. Then we went to Korea, prepped it for another month and shot there for 10 days.

You and your, DP Shabier Kirchner, shot 35mm. What led you to that decision?
It was my very first movie, so I didn’t know how hard it was going to be. I don’t have experience shooting on digital or film. I don’t know anything. I think part of it was first-timer bravery. I don’t know enough to be afraid. That’s where the fearlessness came from. But it was also informed by the conversations I was having with my DP. We talked about the story and how the philosophy of shooting on film is connected to the philosophy of the movie, which is that the movie is about time made tangible and time made visible. It just made sense for it to be shot on film.

You come from the theater, where there is obviously no post production. Was that a steep learning curve for you?
Yes, but you do have a preview period in theater, when you see it in front of an audience, and you keep editing in that way. But more importantly, I’m a writer. So part of post is that I don’t think of the movie as just what I see on screen and all the sound design and every piece of it. To me, it is a piece of text. So just as I would edit a piece of my own writing, I feel like I was looking at the editing process very much like editing text.

Then of course in film, it’s not just the writing on the page. It’s also sound, color, visuals, timing… So in that way, I really felt that editing was about composing a piece of music. I think of film as a piece of music, with its own rhythm and its own beat that it has to move through. So in that way, I think that that’s also a part of the work that I would do as a playwright in the theater, create a world that works like a piece of music from beginning to end.

With all that in mind, I honestly felt like I was the most equipped to do post. I had an entire world to learn; I had never done it before. But with post, I was in my domain. The other thing I really love about editing and VFX in film is that you can control a lot. Let’s say there’s a pole in the middle of the theater space. You have to accept that pole. But in film, you can just delete the pole with VFX. It’s amazing.

Did editor Keith Fraase, who is based in New York, come on-set at all in Korea, or did you send him dailies?
We sent dailies. He couldn’t come on-set because of COVID.

What were the biggest editing challenges on this?
I think the film’s not so far from the way I had written it, so the bigger editing choices were already scripted. The harder bits were things that are like shoe leather — the scenes that hold the movie together but are not the center of the emotion or the center of the story.

One example is when Nora is traveling to Montauk, where we know that she’s going to eventually meet Arthur (who becomes her husband). We were dealing with how much time is required and how to convey time so that when we meet Arthur, it seems like it is an organic meeting and not such a jarring one. I had scripted all this shoe-leather stuff that we had shot – every beat of her journey to Montauk. We had a subway beat; we had a bus beat. We had so many pieces of her traveling to Montauk because I was nervous about it, feeling it was not long enough. But then, of course, when we actually got into the edit, we realized we only needed a few pieces. You just realize that again, the rhythm of it dictates that you don’t need all of it.

Where did you do all the sound mix?
We did it at all at Goldcrest in New York.

Are you very involved in that?
You have no idea. I think that’s the only place where I needed more time. We went over budget… that’s a nicer way to say it. That’s the only part of the post process where I really was demanding so much. I was so obsessed with it. The sound designer’s nickname for me was Ms. Dog Ears. I know different directors have very different processes around sound, but for me, I was in that room with my sound designer Jacob Ribicoff for 14 hours a day, five days a week, and sometimes overtime, for weeks. I wouldn’t leave.

I would stay there because I just know that sound is one of those things that holds the film together. Also, with this movie, the sound design of the cities and how different they are and how it’s going to play with the compositions — I had such a specific idea of how I wanted those things to move. Because again, I do think of a film as a piece of music. So I was pretty crazy about it. But I don’t want people to notice the sound design. I want people to be able to feel like they’re actually just standing in Madison Square Park. I want them to be fully immersed.

Obviously, it’s not a big effects movie, but you have some. How did that go?
I think it’s a bit of a subjective thing. Actually, looking at it, I’m like, “Well, does that seem good to you?” I’m showing it to my production designer and my DP and I’m like, “This looks OK to me, but I wonder if it can be better. Would you look at it?” So I relied on many eyes.

I give credit to Keith, but also to my assistant editor, Shannon Fitzpatrick, who was a total genius at catching any problems with VFX and having such a detailed eye. I think she’s one of the only people who really noticed things that I didn’t notice in the VFX. I’m like, I think that looks fine, and then she would say point to this one thing in the corner that’s not working. There are people at A24 who’re also amazing at catching sound and visuals because that’s their job. They’ll point out what sounds strange or what looks strange. So you have so many people who are part of the process.

Who was the colorist, and how involved were you with the grading?
It was Tom Poole at Company 3, which is where we edited and did color and everything. I love the process because I showed up after Shabier and Tom had already gone through the whole film and graded it. They did amazing, beautiful work. Then I would come in and give notes about certain scenes and then we’d do them. Of course, while they were grading it, they’d send me stills, and I’d give notes on the stills before going into the suite. Also, Shabier and Tom have worked together a lot, so they already kind of had a rhythm for how they wanted to color the film.

What sort of film did you set out to make?
Since this was the first film I’d directed, I felt like the main goal was to discover the language of my movie. It was beyond just trying to tell the story the best way I could, from the script stage to the post. I think that was the goal throughout. But the truth is that I really wanted the language of the film to be my own language, and I wanted to learn and have a revelation for myself of what my movie is.

I know it is partly autobiographical. How much of you is in Nora?
It really was inspired by a true event of sitting between my childhood sweetheart, who had come to visit me from Korea, and my husband who I live with in New York City. So this is very autobiographical, and the feeling that I had in that very personal moment is the inspiration for the whole film. But then once you turn it into a script, which is an objectification process, and then you turn it into a film with hundreds of people — and especially with the cast members who have to play the characters — by that time it has become very much an object. Then with post, it’s about the chiseling. It’s about putting together an object that is to be shared with the world.

A film is so different from writing a play. Was it a big adjustment for you?
I know theater because I was in it for a decade, probably more, so I knew the very fundamental difference between the way a play is made versus how a film is made. For example, I was taught that in theater, time and space is figurative, while time and space in film is literal. So that means there are different kinds of strengths and weaknesses in both mediums when it comes to telling a story that spans decades and continents. And, in this case, because my joke is always that the villains of the story are 24 years and the Pacific Ocean, it actually needs the time and space to be seen literally… because there needs to be a reason why these two lovers are not together. So the children have to be literally there, and Korea and New York City have to feel tangible and literal.

I assume you can’t wait to direct again?
Oh, I can’t wait. I want to wake up and just go to set tomorrow. That’s how I feel. I’m trying to shoot another movie as soon as I can.

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Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.