By Iain Blair

David Fincher’s The Killer is a violent thriller starring Michael Fassbender as an unnamed hitman whose carefully constructed life begins to fall apart after a botched hit. Despite his mantra to always remain detached and methodical in his work, he lets it become personal after assassins brutally attack his girlfriend, and soon he finds himself hunting those who now threaten him.

L-R: Kirk Baxter and David Fincher

The Netflix film reunites Fincher with Kirk Baxter, the Australian editor who has worked on all of Fincher’s films since The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and who won Oscars for his work on The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I spoke with Baxter about the challenges and workflow.

How did you collaborate with Fincher on this one?
I try not to weigh David down with too many background questions. I keep myself very reactionary to what is being sent, and David, I think by design, isolates me a bit that way. I’ll read the script and have an idea of what’s coming, and then I simply react to what he’s shot and see if it deviates from the script due to the physicality of capturing things.

The general plan was that the film would be a study of process. When The Killer is in control, everything’s going to be deliberate, steady, exacting and quiet. We live in Ren Klyce’s sound design, and when things deviate from The Killer’s plan, the camera starts to shake. I start to jump-cut, the music from composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross comes into the picture, and then all of our senses start to get rocked. It was an almost Zenlike stretching of time in the setup of each story then a race through each kill. That was the overarching approach to editing the film. Then there were a thousand intricate decisions that we made along the way each day.

I assume you never go on-set?
Correct. I just get dailies. Then David and I go back and forth almost daily while he is shooting. [Fincher and DP Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, shot widescreen anamorphic aspect ratio, 2.39×1, with the Red V-Raptor and recorded footage in 8K.] David remains very involved, and he’ll typically text me. Very rarely does he need to call me to talk during an assembly. Our communications are very abbreviated and shorthand. I put assemblies of individual scenes up on Pix, which allows David to be frame-accurate about feedback.

Sometimes I’ll send David selects of scenes, but often on larger scenes, a select sequence can be 30 to 40 minutes long, and it’s difficult for David to consume that much during a day of shooting. So I’ve developed a pattern of sending things that are sort of part edited and part selected. I’ll work out my own path through action, and then I open up and include some multiple choice on performance or nuance — if there are multiple approaches that are worth considering. I like to include David. If I leap to an edit without showing the mathematics of how I got there, often the professor wants to know that you’ve done the research.

The opening Paris stake-out sequence sets up the whole story and tone. I heard that all of Fassbender’s scenes were shot onstage in New Orleans along with the Paris apartment he’s staking out. How tricky was it to put that together?
Yes, it came in pieces. The Paris square and all the exteriors were shot on location in Paris. Then there’s a set inside WeWork, and that came as a separate thing.

What made it more complex was that all the footage of the target across the street came much later than the footage of The Killer’s location. But I still had to create an edit that worked with only The Killer’s side of the story so that Fincher knew he had it. Then he could strike that set and move on. My first version of that scene just had words on the screen [to fill in the blanks] of what was happening across the street. I built it all out with the song “How Soon Is Now?” by The Smiths and The Killer’s inner monologue, which allowed me to work out Fassbender’s best pieces. Then, when I eventually got the other side of the footage, I had to recalibrate all of it so that it wasn’t so pedantic. I had to work out ways to hide the target by the size of the POV or stay on The Killer’s side to allow the scene to stretch to its perfect shooting opportunity, ladling suspense into it.

What were the main challenges of editing the film?
For me, it was a complex film to edit due to how quiet and isolated the lead character is. In the past, I’ve often edited scenes that have a lot of characters and conversation, and the dialogue can help lead you through scenes. There’s a musicality to voices and talking that sometimes makes it obvious how to deliver or exploit the information. Crafting a silent, exacting person moving through space and time called for a different muscle entirely. I often used Fassbender’s most subtle micromovements to push things along. We are always obsessing over detail with Dave’s films, but the observational study of a methodical character seemed to make the microscope more powerful on this one.

It’s very much a world of seeing what he sees, and his temperature controls the pace of the movie. He slows things down; he speeds things up. And that’s the way David covers things — there are always a lot of angles and sizes. There are a lot of choices in terms of how to present information to an audience. It was a very fiddly film to perfect.

As you note, there’s very little dialogue, but there’s a lot of voiceover. Talk about handling that.
Anytime you deal with voiceover, it’s always in flux. It’s quite easy to keep writing a voice-over — keep moving it, keep streamlining it, removing it, bringing it back. That all impacts the picture. We recorded Fassbender performing his monologue four different times, and he became more internal and quieter with the delivery each time. In editing the sniper scene and playing The Smiths in The Killer’s headphones at full volume over all of his POVs, I had to time his voiceover to land on the coverage. That then became a language that we applied to the entire film. POVs never had voice-over, even on scenes when The Killer wasn’t playing music. It created a unique feeling and pacing that we enjoyed.

What was the most difficult scene to cut and why?
The scene with the secretary, Dolores, begging for her life in the bathroom was very challenging because it’s somewhat torturous watching an almost innocent person about to be killed by our lead character. There was a lot of nuance in her performance, so we had to figure out how to manipulate it to make it only slightly unbearable to watch. And that’s always my role. I’m the viewer. I’m the fan. Because I’m not on-set, I’m often the one who’s least informed and trying to make sense of things, learning as I go.

I think the scene with Tilda Swinton (The Expert) was rather difficult as well, probably because she’s so good. The scene was originally a lot longer than it is now, but I had to work the scene out based on what Fassbender was doing, not what Tilda was doing. There are only so many times you can cut to The Killer and his lack of response without diluting that power. So I reduced the scene by about a third in order to give more weight to the lack of vocalization, pushing things forward with the smallest facial performances. That was the scene we played with the most.

There is some humor in the film, albeit dark humor. How tricky was it trying to maneuver that and get it exactly right?
I think there’s always dark humor in David’s movies. He’s a funny guy. I love the humor in it, especially in the fight scene. There’s such brutality in that physical  fight scene, and the humor makes it easier for the audience to watch. It gives you pauses to be able to relax and catch up and brace yourself for what’s coming.

There’s also humor in the voiceover throughout the film. I had to work out the best possible timing for the voice-over and decide what we did and didn’t need. There was a lot of experimentation with that.

Did you use a lot of temp sound?
There was some underwhelming temp stuff that we put in just to get by, but usually sound designer Ren Klyce comes in and does a temp mix before we lock the film. From that point on, we continue to edit with all of his mix splits, which is incredibly helpful.

The same goes for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. They scored about 40 minutes of music very early in the process, and that’s how I temped the music in the film — using their palette so we didn’t have to do needle-drops from other films. Working with their music and finding homes for the score is probably the most enjoyable part of film editing for me.

What about temping visual effects?
We do temp effects when they’re based on storytelling and timing, and there are always so many split screens. David often keeps shots locked off so that we can manipulate within a frame using multiple takes. There are a lot of quiet visual effects that are all about enhancing a frame. And we are constantly stabilizing camera work — and in this case destabilizing, adding camera shake during the fight or flight scenes.

There’s a lot of that sort of work with David, so I don’t need to get bogged down with it when I’m getting ready to lock a cut. That all comes afterward, and it’s [all about] enhancing. We mostly communicate storytelling and timing and know that we’re secure in our choices — that’s what I need to deal with while editing.

Did you do many test screenings?
There’s always a trusted crowd that David will show it to, but we didn’t do test screenings in the conventional sense of bringing in piles of strangers to see how they respond. David’s more likely to share with filmmakers and friends.

How long did the edit take to complete?
It was close to a year and then David reshot two scenes. When David’s in Los Angeles, I like to work out of his office in Hollywood so he can casually pop in and out of the cutting room. Then we picked up and went to the south of France to Brad Pitt’s property Miraval. They have cutting rooms there. We worked there in the summer for a couple of months, which was incredible and very focused.

I heard you’re not much of a tech head.
For me, editorial is more of a mindfuck. It’s a head game, much like writing. I’m focused on what I’m crafting, not on data management. I can be like that because I’ve got a great team around me that is interested and curious about the tech.

I have no curiosity in the technology at all. It just allows me to do my work efficiently. We cut on Adobe Premiere, and we have done for quite a few movies in a row. It is an excellent tool for us — being able to share and pass back and forth multiple projects quickly and effortlessly.

You’ve cut so many of Fincher’s films, but this was a very different type of project. What was the appeal?
I was very excited about this film. There’s a streamlined simplicity in the approach that I think is quite opposite to a lot of movies being done right now in this type of genre. And it felt somewhat punk rock to strip it back and present a revenge film that applied the rules of gravity to its action.

Finally, what’s next? Have you got another project with him on the horizon?
David’s always sitting on a bunch of eggs waiting for one to hatch. They all have their own incubation speed. I try not to badger him too much about what’s coming until we know it’s in the pipeline.

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.