Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/990701
37 Q2 2018 / CINEMONTAGE he sells out his fellow workers and himself, he loses his artist girlfriend (Tessa Thompson), his friends and eventually much more. Riley, who began his post-film school career as a rapper with the group the Coup, wrote and directed the film and composed its music. CineMontage interviewed Yabe in New York City in April about the upcoming film, her transition from television to feature films and the importance of mentorship. CineMontage: Moving from television picture editing to film music editing is a pretty significant shift. What do you miss? Mitsuko Alexandra Yabe: I came from a place where I was aware of the conversations around the decision-making process that lead to picture changes — why and how scenes changed. Now that I'm in a different department, I am sometimes in the dark. So that's different. Creatively, I would say what's cool about music editing is the ability to delicately treat music in the way that I want. If we want to hear a certain instrument more than others as I'm editing, or lose a certain instrument sooner than another instrument in a queue, we can. But probably the most fun creative process now is working with a composer and tossing ideas back and forth. Actually, on every film I've worked, the composer was not based in New York, so I feel like it's up to me to communicate in-depth the intentions of the director and the rest of the team. CM: So you have the additional role of translator? MAY: I'm between the director and the composer, and they both have to be happy. But I have to be happy, too. At the end of the day, the film is my boss; actually, the film is everyone's boss. If one of our ideas is making the scene work better objectively, then it doesn't matter where the idea came from. It's just our jobs to efficiently find that solution and move on to the next note. CM: Being a musician yourself must be a great asset. MAY: Composers sometimes come to me and say, "Oh, I left that like this, can you take that and do something with it?" Or, "Oh, I'll try and get back to it when I can, but in the meantime, can you X, Y and Z it?" Or when I'm working with the picture editor or director and they have a vague want. They sometimes might express it in terms of another composer's work, in a way that makes sense, but also isn't specific enough for the composer to address it. So, I would take their general note of "it sounds like John Williams" and try to musically identify where they're coming from. What aspect of the queue led to that interpretation? Is it the chord progression? Is it the instrumentation? It's sort of like babysitting the music and watching it grow into something living and breathing in the film. CM: The composer was also the writer/director in Sorry to Bother You. Can you talk about that? MAY: I think the film's creative vision was very established early on: that signature sound. Just as Boots describes the film to be "an absurdist dark comedy with magical realism and science Sorry to Bother You. Annapurna Pictures