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I often think about an edit in terms of how we communicate the filmmakers’ role within this power dynamic - ironic distance, conservative acceptance, or radical intervention. In contemporary culture, “comedy” and “horror” films - by functioning subconsciously while sidestepping the more easily dismissed sentimental manipulation of melodrama - retain immense potential subversive and regressive power. If we laugh or get scared alone when engaging with video, we intuit the physically absent social response through our awareness of the video’s relative success - box office, hits, likes, awards. It can also feel alienating or coercive when you don’t share those reactions. It can feel reassuring to be scared in the safety of a group, or to have your worldview reinforced by the laughter of those around you. When we laugh or get scared together in a theater we’ve paid to enter, there is a communication going on within the audience about how we feel about the things we are seeing. Something “official” - with enough resources to appear in an American multiplex - provides a foil for the audience to collectively mock, endorse or ignore through laughter, engrossment, or disinterest. The way editing techniques work has everything to do with the power dynamic between cultural producers and the audience.

NM: I think the terms “horror” and “comedy” connote constellations of atavistic conventions used by filmmakers to deal with social or physical anxieties. Is there a similarity between editing horror and comedy, as in the anticipation? What's the similarity, and the difference? Like, when OJ has just put his head back in the car after leaning out to look at the monster above his truck - we hear Jean Jacket's bass rumble, almost like a laugh, mocking him.īut the main thing was, why would this beast make a noise if it was trying to sneak up on people? Once we had freedom from that, we discovered it was actually way more exciting to say the sound of Jean Jacket is the sound of its victims. Within that, we do actually subtly hear forms of vocalization Jean Jacket trying to cough out the fake horse allows us for the first time to hear a really wild close-encounter-meets-kazoo which sets a tone, into which we added some character.

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Act 2 we start to hear what is contained within - people and animals screaming, or is it just wind? By act 3, there’s no need for Jean Jacket to hide anymore, quite the opposite, it wants to be looked at, and goes full “peacock.” Act 1, it's a predator, and we are really only hearing how it disturbs the environment - the shifting winds or movement of the grass. JB: The sound of the alien changes throughout the film, all as it wishes. The alien, Jean Jacket, is associated with the sound of wind was there ever a moment where you considered giving the creature an animalistic cry? I had to do my part to time the intuitive emotional moments to cut to young Jupe’s face, or to try initial sound and music elements, but because I understood the ethos, it was fairly straightforward. There was more filmed, but it was very clear from the script and how it was performed where the areas of focus would be, so that particular section did not change much from the first edit. He is also just incredibly gifted at creating simple, iconic and disturbing images out of the seemingly mundane - an upright shoe, a teacup, brass scissors. Both decisions in the edit came naturally from Jordan’s approach to writing and filming the scene, focusing on the subjective experience of going through a confusing and traumatic incident - the way we hold on to seemingly out-of-place details, or the way we edit through our memories and process the events of our personal lives through the prism of culture. Was there a more graphic version you considered? Was the upright shoe always so prominent in that scene? The Gordy scene did a great job of conveying the tremendous violence committed by the ape, without showing much. Perhaps Twitter would like to make a new Gordy attack scream in time for the sequel?

JB: I love that this was picked up on, that sound effect is like the Wilhelm Scream of the animal world! There is a lot that is self-referential about this film, but no animals were harmed, it works so very well, and honestly, we did actually try a lot of other sounds, both human and animal - my own impersonation being vaulted indefinitely.

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