“The Boss” came in and sat down. I turned the lights off and the projector on. Dimmers moved up and down as hard drives began to spin and the, so far, somewhat-assembly cut of the film, the third film by “The Boss.” He started writing it in the first months of the pandemic, as a play inexplicably, before rewriting the entire thing and converting to “a cinema format” (why can’t he just say “movie”?) and further broken down and alienated in the editing process. Some of the actors have been informed that they have dubbing to do (ADR, automatic dialogue replacement, or “looping,” actors standing in front of a loop of a given scene and re-recording their dialogue in a recording studio. Often done in noisy exteriors, low budget films, and European and Asian cinema. Everyone does it—less than half of the dialogue in most Hollywood movie is “sync-sound,” or sound that was captured with the image on-screen).
Whether by me or “The Boss,” most people get lost amidst the third or fourth line of that parenthetical, despite the simple fact that all it is is an actor repeating lines into an microphone some months or even years after they shot a given scene. Like I said, everyone does it, but in the United States, sync-sound, or the illusion of sync-sound is prized over every other Western country other than the United Kingdom. IN ANY CASE… editing is my passion in moving images only. I spew beak-wise.
So he sat down and watched what I have, about 55 minutes of roughly completed footage in rough order. Over the weekend, he came in and put in the beginning of the ending, something that was in the script. We went over it again and again, choosing which pictures to use in the montage, but unfortunately, he didn’t have any internet access when he was working, and was unable to capture the photos we needed. They’re all in photo negative, “a total rip-off” of a film he won’t name. But I’ll find out.
I played him some of the beginning sections of the film, the first 25 minutes. Completely relieved, he picked me up like a beach ball and started kissing me. I reminded him that I’m not a dog. I am Monica. “This is amazing… everything is coming together without ever talking about it. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing. I love you.” He kissed me again and left the studio. Truthfully, it was as random for me as it was for him: I was dropping clips in by timecode but also at random, without using headphones while lining up the score. It ended up producing some pretty cool effects, most of which ended up in those “wow” moments that “The Boss” needs or else he gets tense. And red. I’m always red, but after all, I am a hen.
On the screen, a disembodied head floated wide-eyed over a rushing sped-up highway. She’s scared and too slow to stop. I started sleeping when I forgot I only had one monitor.
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits