By Oliver Peters
Over the years, Edgar Wright has written and directed a string of successful comedies and cult classics. His latest, Last Night in Soho, is a suspense thriller that would make Hitchcock proud. Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is a young English country girl who has moved to the Soho area of London to study fashion design. Her nightly dreams transport her into the past — to the swinging ‘60s and the Soho nightlife, where she observes and becomes strangely intertwined with the life of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), an aspiring singer. Those dreams quickly evolve into nightmares.
Paul Machliss, ACE
Last Night in Soho was edited by Paul Machliss, ACE, a frequent collaborator with Wright. Machliss edited Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The World’s End and Baby Driver. The latter picked up a BAFTA win and an Oscar nomination for best editing. I recently had a chance to interview Machliss during a break from cutting his next feature, The Flash.
Music was a key plot device and impetus for much of the editing in Baby Driver. In Last Night in Soho, music of the 1960s also plays a key role, but in a less blatant manner.
Baby Driver was about capital E editing. Edgar and I took a lot of what we learned and applied it to Soho. Can we do it in a more subtle away? It’s not immediately obvious, but it’s probably as intense. It just doesn’t show itself to the same level.
Many shots that look like sophisticated visual effects were done practically, such as the dance sequence involving both lead actresses and Matt Smith. What were some of the other practical effects?
One clever shot was the bit in the phone box, where right at the end of the dance they go in for a snog. Initially, the reflection is that of Matt Smith [Jack] and Anya [Sandie]. Then as Matt pulls back, you realize that it becomes Thomasin [Eloise] in the mirror. That was initially in a mirror when they start kissing. In the middle of the kiss, there’s an effects team yanking the mirror back to reveal Thomasin and a stand-in behind the mirror. The visual effect is to get rid of the moment when the mirror is yanked.
As with Baby Driver, I presume you were initially editing on set?
I was on set every day. Being on set had a lot to do with things like music playback, motion control cameras and lighting, which probably more than Baby Driver played a huge part in this film. I found myself somewhat responsible for the timing to make sure that Edgar’s idea of how he wanted the lighting to work in sync with the music was 100% successful on the night, because there was no fixing it afterward.
My MO really is not to do the perfect assemble edit in the midst of all the madness of filming. What I’m trying to do for Edgar is a proof of concept. We know as we’re shooting that issues can arise from continuity, camera angles and various other things. So part of what I’m doing on set is keeping an eye on all the disparate elements from a technical perspective to make sure they’re all in harmony to support Edgar’s vision. But as the editor, I still need to make time for an assembly.
Sometimes that meant getting there an hour or two earlier on set. Then I just sit at the Avid with headphones and quickly catch up on the previous day’s work, where I do try and make more of a concerted effort to cut a good scene. Then that gets passed on to the editorial department. By the time Edgar and I get back into the cutting room, we have a fully assembled film to start working on.
Lighting design — especially the neon sign outside of Ellie’s window — drives the scene transitions.
Edgar’s original brief was, “There is a point where the lighting goes from blue, white, red, blue, white, red, and then whenever she transitions into the past, it goes into a constant flashing red.” That’s something that any good lighting operator can queue quite simply. What made it more interesting is that Edgar said, “What I’d love is for the lighting to flash subtly, but in time to every different bit of music that Eloise puts on her little record player.” Then it was like, “Oh, right, how do we do that?”
Bradley Farmer on our music team was able to break the songs down into a kind of beat sheet with all the lyrics and the chorus. Edgar would go, “According to the storyboards, this is the line in the song that I’d like it to start going red, red, red.” Armed with that knowledge, I had one track of audio with the music in mono and another track with longitudinal timecode — a different hour code for every song. I would edit full-screen color images of red, white and blue as a reference on the Avid Media Composer to match what the timing of the color changes should be against the track.
Next, I was able to export an XML file out of the Avid, which could be read by the lighting panel computer. The lighting operator would load these sequences in so the panel would know when to have the lights in their “on” or “off” state. He also had a QuickTime reference from the Avid so he could see the color changes against the burnt-in timecode and know, “Next one’s red, program the SkyPanel to go red.”
Our music playback guy, Pete Blaxill, had copies of the tracks in stereo and was able to use my timecode as his base timecode. He then sent that timecode to the lighting panel. So if Edgar goes, “I now want to pick up the song from the first chorus,” then the lighting panel would chase the playback timecode. Once the sequence was set at the lighting panel, wherever Edgar wanted to go, the lighting desk knew which part of the song we were at and what the next color in the sequence was.
I realized that the motion-control camera could also be triggered by external timecode from Pete’s Avid Pro Tools system. We used that at the climax of “You’re My World,” when Anya descends the staircase in the Cafe de Paris ballroom. This was a two-layer composite shot filmed with a motion-control camera in multiple passes. Thomasin does one pass descending the staircase, and then we did Anya’s pass. We also had singer Beth Singh [Cilla Black] in the foreground of the shot with her backing band behind her.
Pete Blaxill would hit play on his Pro Tools. The music would be coming through the foldback for Beth to mime to, the lighting switched in at the right musical point, and then at exactly the right moment in the chorus, the Pro Tools timecode would trigger the moco camera. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor out of the way in the corner and watching all this happen. It’s incredibly “nerdy,” but it gave me a wonderful feeling of satisfaction to be part of the team that could make moments like this happen seamlessly.
Can you talk about the production and post timeline, considering that this was all impacted by the pandemic?
Prep started at the beginning of 2019. I came on board in April. The shoot itself went from May until early September. We then had the director’s cut period, which — due to the complexity — took slightly longer than your average 10 weeks.
We worked up until the new year and had a preview screening early in January, which got some good numbers back. Edgar was then able to start talking to the studio about some additional photography. We planned that shoot for the last week of March 2020. But at the last minute, it was cancelled as we entered the first lockdown. However, visual effects work continued because all of that could be done remotely. We had a weekly VFX review using Zoom and cineSync with Double Negative for about a four-month period during the first lockdown. That was a bit of a lifesaver for us to know that the film still had a heartbeat during that time.
Things calmed down at the end of July — enough for the studio to consider allowing us to remount the additional photography. And, of course, it was a new world we were living in by that stage. Suddenly we were working in “zones” on set. I was assigned the zone with the video department and couldn’t go on to set and work with Edgar. We had an area — divided by plastic fencing — where we could be. We would have to maintain a distance with him on one side and me on the other. Fortunately, I had my edit trolley modified so that the A-grade monitor was on a swivel-mount, and that’s how he was able to keep an eye on the progress of the work.
Paul Machliss’ on-set setup
We were only the second production in England to resume at that time. I think other productions were watching us and thinking, “Would we all just collapse like flies? Would COVID just go ‘Bam!’ and knock us all out?” Overall, the various PCR testing and new health and safety procedures added about an extra 20% to the budget, but it was the only way we were going to be allowed to shoot.
The reshoots went very well; we had another preview screening in October, and the numbers were even better. But then we were approaching our second lockdown in the UK. However, this time Edgar and I were able to see post production all the way through. All our dates at Twickenham Studios for the sound mix and at Warner Bros. De Lane Lea for the grade could be honored, even though strict safety precautions were in place.
We delivered the film on December 18 of last year, having made all the various HDR and SDR versions for the UHD Blu-ray as well as general release. We did a wonderful Dolby Vision/Dolby Atmos version, which is the ultimate way to see the film. Because of the pandemic and the lack of open theaters at the time, there was a school of thought that this film should be released directly onto a streaming platform. Fortunately, producers Eric Fellner and Nira Park viewed the final grade and mix at Twickenham and said, “No, no, this is a cinematic experience. It was designed to be seen on the big screen, so let’s wait. Let’s bide our time
The bulk of Soho was shot on 35mm. Does the choice of film rather than digital acquisition add some technical challenges?
Fortunately, Kodak is still a company that is churning out 35mm stock full-time. The infrastructure for it, though, is getting less and less. Even in the time between doing The World’s End and Last Night in Soho, there is now only one facility in the UK that can process 35mm. And it has to process the rushes for every production that’s shooting on 35mm in the UK.
Even so, it’s great to think that a medium like 35mm can still support something as complicated as one of Edgar’s films without having to do everything in the digital domain. You’ve got the [Panavision] Millennium XL cameras — even though they’re nearing 20 years old, they’re pretty solid.
Edgar is not shooting on film for the sake of it; it’s his preferred medium of acquisition — in the same way some painters choose water-based paints as opposed to oil-based. He knows what medium he’s on, and he respects that. You might say, “Yes, but the punter won’t necessarily know or appreciate what format this was shot on.” However, it helps to contribute to the feeling of our production. It’s part of the look, part of the patina — that slightly organic feel of the media brings so much to the look of Soho.
Oliver Peters is an award-winning editor/colorist working in commercials, corporate communications, television shows and films. More information at oliverpeters.com.
