Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545125
38 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E then storyboards and some temp graphical material we got from the visual effects team. So Lam and I, in two -and-a-half weeks, put together a version of the movie using only rough temp assets. From that point forward, we used that as a tool to integrate all aspects of how we were framing things, telling the story, and pacing, and to ask Marco, the writer, for script tweaks to poke at the story as much as possible before principal photography began. It was very cool to iterate on that and watch "the movie" before the actual movie was shot. Lam T. Nguyen: We were blessed to have that table read from Chris Pratt because what he performed was almost identical to what we saw in the final movie, which helped enormously when we laid out the edit. Timur and the producers would review the scenes we cut each day. Our goal was to edit the material into five to eight pages a day, which is a lot. But once we had the pre-vis and the producers saw it in its final version, they were so excited that we then brought in the camera and visual effects departments for production. They pretty much used the pre-vis as a blueprint during production. We were on location when they filmed, and they would call Austin or me on the set and say, "Hey, can you come here and take a look at this? What are we missing?" And we were always on top of the edits as we went along. CineMontage: Could you talk a little about the workflow? Mackenzie: Normally, you've got every- thing in one space in an action film or any film. With "Mercy," sometimes the action happens on a tiny phone, or a laptop, or on a screen in the courtroom. Sometimes the action plays out across six different screens, which means six different movies that need complete soundtracks. Soundwise, some of them needed to be small, and others needed to be big and use Dolby Atmos. We needed to figure out a way to do that. For instance, we had time to establish that we were going to zoom in and go full range on the truck in the final scene. But we couldn't leave all of that to the final mix; we had to map some of it early. The process went fairly smoothly and naturally with Timur, but it required a really collaborative environment among the editors. Nguyen: Rob Mackenzie and his team were amazing. I remember the first time we did a sound spotting session, Rob said, "This might be one of the hardest sound mix films to do," because there are so many layers on top of the visuals. They were amazingly patient with us — we were con- stantly making changes, so it was a great team effort all around. Because the film had two picture edi- tors, the first thing Austin and I talked about was workflow. Editors tend to have their own workflow. He discussed his workflow and what practices he's used to. I did the 'The clock sounds become threatening, scary, and tense.' P H OT O : J U S T I N L U B I N / A M A Z O N M G M S T U D I O S JUMP CUT: Kali Reis in an AI-assisted shot from "Mercy."