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P H OT O S : L I O N S G AT E HOLD ON: Pedro Pascal, above, in "Freaky Tales" and Ji-young Yoo, below. 33 F A L L Q 3 I S S U E F E A T U R E $hort took the beats that came out of the Bronx and gave them the Bay Area sound that became mainstream in 1987 when $hort was signed to Jive Records. He be- came an executive producer on the film, and rapper Symba sings his "Freaky Tales" song live in the second story segment. The mov- ie's live performances, such as those of Too $hort and the female rapping duo (which features rapper Normani in her film debut), provided many opportunities for Komatsu to experiment with various shots in the edit. For the recorded music, he and assis- tant editor Keven Pelon helped provide numerous song options for the directors to consider. Music editor Rob Bertola further experimented with songs and score options once they were in the mix stage, and Fleck also spent many weekends looking for song ideas. "My assistant editor, Keven, came up with this idea for a super sequence," Komat- su said. "He made a new sequence, laid the song in, then cut every single shot of picture into that sequence. If there wasn't room because many shots often covered the same part of the song, Keven would create a new video channel and put that in until it filled up. It ultimately became a sequence with one audio channel and 46 video channels. When I was working with Ryan and Anna, if we got to a certain part of the song and thought, 'Let's change that shot of Too $hort' or 'What else do we have?' I could go to this super sequence and say, 'Here're all of our options already in sync right there.'" Because Komatsu began his career as a visual effects editor on films such as "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolu- tions," he's had a particularly keen eye for using visual effects to help tell a story in the most dynamic and entertaining way possi- ble. He worked closely with visual effects supervisor Rian Johnson and visual effects editor Matt Steeves, especially on the cha- otic punk fight sequence (one of Komatsu's favorites) in which certain moments were shot in extreme slow motion at 936 frames per second. "It was apparent I was going to do speed ramps with some of the action, but al- though the actual edits didn't change much throughout post, the visual style changed considerably," Komatsu noted. "At a certain point, for example, we wondered, 'What if we did freeze frames on some of the hits?' So we did that on certain key hits and had the blood continue to be in motion." That's when Boden said she'd been thinking about the action lines from comic books. Komatsu picked up a pencil and paper and began drawing lines that visually SEE PAGE 48