By Iain Blair
Helmed by Greta Gerwig, co-written by Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, Barbie is a celebration of girl power that effortlessly manages to combine romance, sharp satire, stylish musical numbers, wacky car chases and warm-hearted comedy – all tied up with a big pink bow.
Editor Nick Houy
This surprise blockbuster also showcases skillful editing by Nick Houy, ACE, who seamlessly blends all the disparate elements into a coherent whole. I spoke with Houy, who has cut all of Gerwig’s projects, starting with Lady Bird and including Little Women, about the challenges and workflow.
What were the main challenges of editing Barbie?
(Laughs) Talk about shifts in tone. I can’t think of any other film, especially with this level of success, that comes close. First off, it’s this huge comedy, and they aren’t usually the biggest film of the year. Then we’re constantly shifting gears and showing you what the film’s really about, and constantly pulling the rug out from under the big comedy and trying to tell the story of what it is to become human – and suddenly it’s got much bigger philosophical ideas. So finding the right tones and balancing them all was the biggest challenge.
This is not your typical Gerwig project, and because of all the VFX, this had to be very carefully planned out. How did you two collaborate early on?
First, when I read the original script she’d co-written with Noah, I knew it was going to be something special and have a lot of tonal changes. Then, obviously, I knew we’d have to deal with all the VFX, which we hadn’t worked with in the past.
Luckily, the studio, VFX supervisor Glen Pratt, VFX producer Nick King and the teams were so good about letting us be super-creative in the cutting room. It was about finding the tone of the whole movie, even if it meant losing a scene one day and putting it back the next and then trying it a different way.
Most VFX teams would have been pulling their hair out because we were making serious changes in every reel, every day as we tried tons of different things — just as you would if you were writing a draft of a script. But they were game, as was Warners, and they all supported us through that whole process of finding the movie. It took a while, but it was such a fun process.
It must have been a very steep learning curve dealing with tons of VFX?
Yes, but the great thing was that they held our hands the whole way through. I’ve never seen a VFX team that was so cool, and it was fun. We’d discuss stuff like, should the merman’s tail come out of the water this way or that? Should this house be an old A-frame-style Barbie house or a Frank Lloyd Wright-style house? We worked really hard, but it felt like play all the time — so enjoyable.
In the end, I spent about 14 months, including all the prep and the shoot, and we had a lot of previz as well. In fact, not long ago we finished cutting some extras, including finding some old, deleted scenes, which we put together in a 6-minute montage to go at the end of the IMAX release. So if people go to the IMAX release they’ll see the latest stuff we’ve done. I hope to keep working on as much Barbie stuff as possible, because it’s been such a fun ride… but I think that’s the last of it.
Given all the VFX work, were you on-set?
I try not to go on-set at all. I feel that an editor should be like the audience, seeing it fresh and being totally objective, without having anything you’ve seen on-set influencing you. That’s important, but I’m always in constant communication with Greta, talking and texting while she’s shooting. I have to know what she’s thinking at all times and give her information that I’m finding. I was in New York while they were shooting in London and LA, so it was a crazy schedule. I’d be up at 5am texting, and it was a really long shoot.
Did all the previz, postviz and techviz impact your work at all?
It didn’t. It just brought extra depth to it. Whenever we had a beautiful shot of Barbie waving and looking over Barbie Land, we worked on that shot for the whole time we were in post, adding little details and opening up your eyeline to the horizon. If you consider doing that for 100 key shots, and then everything else is being filled in based on the geography that you set in these key shots — and you do all that properly — then you really feel that you’re in this world.
That’s a rare feeling, I think. You recognize it, but it’s so detailed that you just want to get lost in it. It’s nostalgic for a lot of people and so beautiful, and the set design is just gorgeous. It also has this great Wizard of Oz look with all the 2D set paintings. So it all feels really tactile and made by real people, which is really cool.
What was the most difficult scene to cut and why?
Everything was a challenge. When you have a Tati-esque, Marx Brothers-style, crazy chase scene immediately followed by a really long, quiet scene full of emotional dialogue — where the main characters meet their creator — and then you immediately go into another big set piece with a wild car chase, that’s a unique challenge as an editor. We also have these long dance sequences. I don’t know anyone else who’s had to deal with that. You have to use all your learned skills as an editor, as it’s a very tricky line to walk.
I assume you must have used a lot of temp sound?
Oh yeah! I always use a lot of temp music, trying to get the tone of the temp score and all of the temp sound that tells the story. That way, when we’re doing temp screenings, I don’t get taken aback because the sound or music isn’t right. I think that’s a crutch, and you have to make it the very best it can be so that you know you’re testing what the film actually is.
There were around 1,600 VFX shots, which is a lot. Did you use any temp VFX shots?
Absolutely, and our team was really good at temping in, so never once was there a single bluescreen shot in any of the temp screenings we did. It was an amazing accomplishment.
Tell us about the workflow and the editing gear you used.
To me, it doesn’t really matter what software we use since it’s all about telling the story, but we used Avid Version 2021.12. One of the most interesting tech details was that we edited in UHD, so it was very high-quality. When we’d do test screenings, it looked beautiful, even on huge screens straight out of the Avid. That was so cool.
We rented all the equipment and stored all the footage with Company 3, where we did all the editing and the DI. I think we were the first to do all this in UHD and just cut our offline in high resolution. Our primary camera was the ARRI Alexa 65 in ARRIRAW and with a resolution of 6560×3100. The color space was ARRI Log C/Wide Gamut.
In terms of project information, it was 3840×2160, 16×9 aspect ratio using 2×1 mask, 24fps, YCbCr DCI-P3 color space. DNxHR LB MXF media was in P3 D65 color space. As far as Nexis storage space, we had a ton available to us since we were set up on our own Nexis outside of the rest of Company 3. We used around 25TB to 30TB. Lastly, we were all using Mac Pros, the newer “Cheese Grater” generation.
Finally, how would you sum up the whole experience?
We all knew we had something special, and everyone was operating at the top of their game. It was such a fun, satisfying experience, but it’s still a shock to see how big it’s become and how it resonates with people.
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.
Is this the first time you’ve used it on a feature film?
When we went digital, and when film stocks got reduced to a core number, we lost options. But with this process, you can shoot with any of the leading cameras you want, whichever one suits the project, and then the world opens up again. You can choose whatever stock you want to print it onto — negative stocks, print stocks, 35mm, 60mm. So you effectively go back to film. Now some may say it’s creating a faux grain, along with film problems like a bit of gate weave and noise, but it also creates this analog feel that film lovers have always loved about film.
This was your first time working with Denis. How did you get involved in this?
How was that process working with the team from pre-production through post?
Harry at one point said, “I’m giving up. I don’t know what to do there.” And our composer Nicholas Britell told me that the music for this scene is beautiful. The score has a wondering quality to it, so we tried to create the opposite of that. The scary, creepy vibe. So having those two different, almost dissonant pieces on top of each other, it’s beauty and not, at the same time. I love that sequence.
In Episode 2, Cesar leads Cora down the Railroad and assures her he won’t leave her side. He delivers his dialogue directly into camera, and it sounds tremendously present.
Did you get to use new tools or techniques?
What are the reverbs you like to blend for perspective shifts?
I had my initial list and knocked those out, and then, to Shaka’s credit, he let us run with it. Because he has a strong appreciation for sound and music, he really trusted us to do our thing. For the most part, he was totally on board with a lot of the decisions. And because we started early enough, I was feeding the picture department bounces, so they were quickly incorporating those elements into the edit, which is always great because if they get used to our sound without temp effects and temp music, it’s just the way the movie is, and then we can really fine-tune stuff.
Lievsay: It was a joy to have my two wing men, Rich and Shaka, have such a fully fleshed out soundtrack before we started, then to be able to go through the movie with both of them and work on the things that made the movie as good as it can be. Which, after all, should be the primary mission at all times — getting the filmmaker to be in their happy place, so they can relax and enjoy their own film. Usually that involves solving a handful of problems particular to the film, which nobody wants to talk about.
I heard this quote from a press secretary the other day, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” I love that idea. What else is there? Why wouldn’t we want to be doing that?
How did you prep for your studio movie directorial debut? Did you get advice from directors you know?
We shot on the ARRI Alexa LS with the LS lenses, and we all did a lot of scouting and archival research to help with the shot list.
There are a few VFX by Zoic and Powerhouse VFX. What was entailed?
Patty asked us to come up with a lot of new sounds, but one sound that she liked the foundation of was the Lasso of Truth from the first film — only she wanted to elaborate on it. So we stuck with the same general feeling that the Lasso of Truth had in the first Wonder Woman but gave it a bit more articulation because visually it looks a bit different as well. At times its sonic movement had an electrical quality, like high-voltage buzz, to give it some power. Basically, it’s a reflection of what she’s feeling, so it changes a bit from sequence to sequence depending upon what’s happening.
Can you talk about the challenges of making sure all these very varied pieces of content flowed creatively?
At first, we were shooting the show entirely on iPhones and Zoom, so it wasn’t terrible to pass around media with Frame.io as the hub.
The story starts when, after graduating from Harvard, Stevenson (Jordan) — who had his pick of lucrative jobs — instead heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or who were not afforded proper representation, with the support of local advocate Eva Ansley (Larson).
What were the main challenges in pulling it all together?
George Feltenstein, SVP of theatrical catalog marketing for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, spoke about why the film was chosen for restoration. “The Wizard of Oz is among the crown jewels that we hold,” he said. “We wanted to embrace the new 4K HDR technology, but nobody’s ever released a film that old using this technology. HDR, or high dynamic range, has a color range that is wider than anything that’s come before it. There are colors [in The Wizard of Oz] that were never reproducible before, so what better a film to represent that color?”
“We have every 4K monitor manufactured, and we run the film through all of them,” said Bailey. “We painstakingly go through the process from a post perspective to make sure that our consumers get the best quality product that’s available out in the marketplace.”
“So this is an example of some of the stuff that we could do in this version of the restoration,” explained Wilson. “With this version, you can see that the part of the image where she’s supposed to be in the monochrome house is not actually black and white. It was really a color image. So the trick was always to get the interior of the house to look sepia and the exterior to look like all of the colors that it’s supposed to. Our visual effects team here at MPI — Mike Moser and Richie Hiltzik — was able to draw a matte for me so that I could color inside of the house independently of the exterior and make them look right, which was always a really tricky thing to do.”
Wilson reported seeing new things with the 8K scan and 4K display. “The amount of detail that went into this film really shows up.” She said that one of the most remarkable things about the restoration was the amazing detail visible on the characters. For the first time in many generations, maybe ever, you can actually see the detail of the freckles on Dorothy’s face.
In all, it was an amazing experience to go behind the scenes and see how the wizards of MPI created a new version of this masterpiece for today and preserved it for future generations.
But when her mom gets sick and leaves for treatment, June’s creative spark fizzles out. She disassembles the park and packs it away. Then one day as June heads home through the woods, she stumbles onto a real-life Wonderland that mirrors her make-believe one. Only this Wonderland is falling apart and being consumed by the mysterious Darkness. June and the park’s mascots work together to restore Wonderland by stopping the Darkness.
The final mix was done at Technicolor’s Stage 1, with re-recording mixers Anna Behlmer (effects) and Terry Porter (dialogue/music).
So, for the Fireworks Falls, I wanted to use those sounds as the fun details, the top notes that poke through. There are rocket crackles and whistles that support the low-end, powerful portion of the rapids. As June is escaping, she’s saying, “This is so amazing! This is so cool!” She’s a kid exploring something really amazing and realizing that this is all of the stuff that she was imagining and is now experiencing for real. We didn’t want her to feel scared, but rather to be overtaken by the joy and awesomeness of what she’s experiencing.
All the hard work paid off. In the film, Ally joins Jackson Maine on stage to sing a song she wrote called “Shallow.” For Murray and Ruder, this scene portrays everything they wanted to achieve for the performances in A Star is Born. The scene begins outside the concert, as Ally and her friend get out of the car and head toward the stage. The distant crowd and music reverberate through the stairwell as they’re led up to the backstage area. As they get closer, the sound subtly changes to match their proximity to the band. On stage, the music and crowd are deafening. Jackson begins to play guitar and sing solo before Ally finds the courage to join in. They sing “Shallow” together and the crowd goes crazy.
In the Fade is a complex and dark movie. Each of its three acts has a distinctly different feel to it, and it was important for everyone to set these looks before the first day of shooting. This was one of those rare projects when the production company talked to us early to determine how best to do it. Rainer is a true DP — he lights really well. We ran six to eight tests to get the right kit, which allowed us to agree on how to get the looks in each section of the movie. But both Rainer and Fatih are quite “analog” thinkers. They believe that if you can do it on set, you should do so.