Danny Jarabek
Heralded as one of the scariest films of the year (including here by our own Joey Magidson), Longlegs from director Osgood Perkins sets forth a bone-chilling atmosphere that is sure to get under your skin. Behind a viral marketing platform from NEON, the images alone are haunting before you even step foot in the theater. However, when constructed with the delicate precision that editors Greg Ng and Graham Fortin bring to the story, Longlegs is taken to a whole new level of eerie.
In conversation with Greg and Graham, they discuss the collaboration with Osgood Perkins and the history of their working relationship as co-editors. The pair detail the techniques they utilize when approaching the horror genre, specifically the methodology for Longlegs that operates not only within horror but also sets forth its own rules and construction as a police procedural and psychological thriller.
Read our full interview with editors of Longlegs Greg Ng and Graham Fortin below.
This is Danny Jarabek, here with Awards Radar, and I am very delighted to have with me today the editors of the recently released horror film Longlegs, directed by Osgood Perkins. I have the editors, Greg Ng and Graham Fortin, with me here today. Graham and Greg, thank you so much for joining me. It’s a pleasure to have you, and I am very excited to unpack some of your editing work in this film.
Greg: Thanks for having us.
Graham: Thank you.
Absolutely. So, first of all, this was one of my most anticipated films of the year. It delivered on so many different levels. It was wonderful to watch the execution of this film after so much of the viral marketing campaign and everything. So, congratulations on it, first of all. I’m curious to hear, because I know you have a relationship with Osgood Perkins, what that collaboration is like, and what the story of you getting into this project was.
Graham: I mean, we came on to the project through our mutual friend, Chris Ferguson, who’s a producer on the film. We’ve worked with him for many years, starting out making short films and then working on another film called Afflicted, which I assisted Greg on. It was twelve/thirteen years ago, and that relationship has continued to grow. And we were lucky enough to be invited onto this.
Greg: Yeah. Longlegs was our inaugural Oz Perkins project, and it seemed like it worked out. For me, I remember coming in… it’s like an arranged marriage. You know? The producers hire the people, and then the director trusts the producers’ picks to work on a thing. I remember coming in because Graham started a bit before me. I came in to meet everybody. It was all very awkward. It’s like, oh, we’re going to get married here for a little bit, and I hope it all works out. Like, what do you like? It was very strange at the beginning, but it turned out to be quite a wonderful relationship. It all worked out, and Oz is a terrific guy to hang with and makes cool movies, so that’s great.
And then for you two as well, I believe your working relationship and collaboration has gone back a long way, as well. So, what has that been like? And then continuing to work together and go into this feature-level project.
Greg: I mean, Graham and I have worked together and hung out for so long that it has a bit of a family feeling with some of our friends, like Chris Ferguson, who was working on the project, and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones. A lot of the producers and a lot of the crew have been moving through different projects together. So, there’s this sort of family energy. But as far as Graham and I are concerned, we have a very special relationship. I feel like I trust Graham a lot, and we are very open with each other and beyond professional. It’s like we’re friends, but we’re also kind of professionals. And if something’s not working, we tell each other. And if something’s working, it’s like, ‘Holy crap, what a great idea!’ We’ve had a lot of time to work on this relationship, and it’s worked out pretty well.
Graham: Yeah. I would agree, and I would also say postproduction can be a quite isolating part of the process. So, it’s wonderful to be able to collaborate with someone and work with someone and be open about all of the good things and the bad things that come up, and being able to call and just being able to talk and bounce ideas off one another is very, very special.
Greg: I’ll also add that when Graham started to edit his things and stopped assisting me, [there] was a period where I was quite sad because I had to find someone to fill in that position. But thankfully, we’ve got Stefan Grub, and we’ve got a few other people that we work with.
Graham: Ian Macdonald. Darien.
Greg: Yeah, Darien. We have a good team of people that always work with.
That’s great. So, in Longlegs specifically, of course, this is operating within the genre of horror, but there are also some other conventions involved here. The psychological thriller, and police procedural, are all different components of what make this film what it is. So, how do you navigate that genre, and how that looks in terms of the editing process for you versus potentially different projects in a different framework?
Greg: Well, I believe when we went to the premiere in LA, Christian Parks described the movie as a family movie, which, to a certain degree, it is. It’s about family. It’s about relationships. It’s a different kind of movie than your average horror movie. It still follows certain conventions and structural sort of things as far as the procedural aspect. My train derailed here.
Graham: I would just say, looking back on the process, sitting down with Oz each day, you would just tackle one scene at a time. And we wouldn’t necessarily discuss the overall genre of the film, it would just be, ‘How do we make this the best scene possible? How do we make this moment the best moment possible?’ And then, with each day and with each month of the editorial process, the picture became what it is. And it became the Oz Perkins experience that Longlegs is.
Greg: Yeah. When working within a genre, certain conventions can direct the project. Like, okay, we’re working on a horror movie. This needs to be horrifying. But in terms of Longlegs, it was like, well, these are the pieces that we have to construct the best movie. I have worked on other things in the past, which were completely different projects, where the angle is defined by the genre. It’s not scary, but we need to jam some scare into it. We need to fabricate something to make it fit the genre. But in Longlegs, it was more like, well, these are the pieces that we have. How can this direct the movie? I mean, as an experience, there’s not a ton of jump scares. It certainly has a lot of doom, tension, and dread. And it’s creepy, but it’s not like, ‘Okay, five minutes, we gotta have a kill, and then we gotta have a scare.’ And, like, ‘Okay, we’ve gone too long without that.’ We followed the script and the story of the movie and we worked within that, I guess.
Also, one of the things that was provocative about watching this movie is just the pace at which it unfolds because it’s not afraid to linger in certain scenes. It’s not afraid to hold its position in a certain shot. But then, also, there are moments where the pace quickens, and there’s a lot of flash-cutting or very quick moments where the buildup releases itself in a really quick fashion. So, how did you navigate that in terms of pace and looking at these moments that are more lingering and dread-inducing versus very quick and flash-cutting?
Greg: One thing that comes to mind, going back to questions talking about genre, is that sometimes when editing something, there’s this need to dress it up or embellish it or heighten a lot of things to make it theatrical and give it a vibe. And I think in certain parts of the movie, maybe, when we were putting it together, it’s like, ‘Okay. Let’s dress this up. There’s going to be a scare here.’ I maybe found that at certain times, I’d be like, ‘Okay, this is too dressed up,’ and Oz would be like, ‘Okay, we need to dial back.’ And I would be like, ‘Oh, but then if you take out scary music, it’s gonna not be scary.’ But then if the story is working and the audience is on board, people will still be engaged even if shots run long or there’s not a lot of decoration in a scene, or when it’s still minimal. So long as the story is engaging and you are invested in what’s happening, it will still maintain your attention. It’s not like we’re cutting … we need another cut because the audience is expecting a cut when the lack of cutting is adding to the tension. It’s just building because you’re not cutting away from what’s happening. So, part of our journey in putting it together is building it up and then starting to strip back to realize that the story can sustain itself without too much embellishment.
Graham: I’d also say there were a lot of test screenings. There were test screenings we did for the film, either with a big audience or a small audience of a couple of people in the room. That helps navigate how you’re feeling as an audience member, and you can make adjustments in the film. Even when cutting, you’re putting together a scene for the first time, you’re kind of like the first audience member in the theater because you’re seeing the shape of how the scene could potentially go. You use your intuition from going to movies and watching movies and how your emotional response to the material is to guide it to where it eventually goes.
Greg: The movie is so beautifully put together and designed. The production design [and] the cinematography is amazing.
Graham: The costumes.
Greg: The costuming. The performances are amazing. So, we didn’t need to cut away from things to cut around performance or continuity or what have you. Sometimes the images were so captivating that you could hold on to something. And even if someone left the frame, it was still so beautifully composed that the tension still maintained itself even after the actors left the scene.
That can speak to my experience. It’s very tense, whatever speed the movie is moving at. It is an intense experience as an audience member. One of the things I’m fascinated by, especially because it was informed by part of the marketing as well, is to never reveal Longlegs himself before paying the price of admission. So, what was the strategy, and how did you navigate or negotiate the reveal or near reveal of Longlegs himself in the film? Especially in the beginning, we see quick moments, but not a fully fleshed-out image of who this person is until much later in the film.
Graham: Less is more, just to say that from the start. But that was a gradual process that happened during the postproduction phase. I feel like there was a lot more of Longlegs earlier on in the editorial.
Interesting.
Graham: Yeah. I don’t want to say too much, but the story of Longlegs that was originally at the beginning of the film was different than what is there now.
Greg: The movie was originally conceived with a more Longlegs-heavy beginning where you see more. But during the edit, it became apparent that parsing out his backstory throughout the movie, doling out the information about who he is, who’s Lee, and what’s the relationship with the mother and Longlegs, became something that you learn as the story progresses instead of being frontloaded with everything at the backstory in the beginning. But certainly, as we started to do that, it became clear that, oh, well, if you just tease a little bit of Longlegs, you just see him for a frame, then it becomes like Christmas where you know that there’s a present and maybe you pull the tape back and you saw the box, but you can’t pull it back because then someone’s gonna know you saw. It’s that tease where you just see enough and then you see him again. He does have kind of a soft intro. By the time you do see him, you’ve seen enough glimpses of around him and from far away and in the shadows that you kind of put it all together. So, it’s not like it’s a huge surprise when you do see them, but it’s certainly gratifying when it all comes together at the hardware store.
What a Christmas present! Nicolas Cage in prosthetics and makeup. What a Christmas present. I just have one more question for you guys in terms of the edit and how you build your relationship with some of the other departments, especially sound design, the music of the film, and what that collaboration is like. How [does] that inform your edit and vice versa inform their work as well?
Graham: I mean, I’ll say we work very closely with Eugenio Battaglia. Well, we worked closely with Zigley, I guess is the name. Especially, Eugenio, I’m very close friends with Eugenio, and we talk all the time. And he’s very kind enough to send us libraries, like at the beginning of production. I mean, he gets into it later, but he’s kind enough to provide us with sounds that he feels will be useful.
Greg: Also, we had a large library of the composer’s music beforehand, and as sketches maybe were coming in, he would send us elements to work with. There was this fluid motion between sound design and music and the edit. So, they all worked together in this beautiful way, which often doesn’t happen. Usually, it’s, ‘Okay, we locked the picture. Now we do the sound,’ and then the composer works. All those things on Longlegs were kind of fluidly moving. So, by the time it came to the mix, Eugenio was also working a lot with this sound design. Is this music? It’s kind of both. I think that helped out the whole edit of everything.
Graham: Even Ed Douglas with VFX.
Greg: Oh, yeah.
Greg: He’ll send us temp VFX work. He did the crazy shot of the doll’s eyes with the veil. That’s him. Having stuff like that in early helps everybody.
Yeah, that’s cool. Greg, you mentioned, I think, at the beginning, that you had heard it was described as a family movie. I just remembered I had a friend who came away from the movie and he kind of jokingly, but he was a little too serious, I think, saying, he’s like, ‘This would be a great Mother’s Day movie.’ The lengths to which your mother will go for you. You know? So, thank you, guys. You just scarred his mother, probably permanently for the rest of their relationship. I joke, but congratulations on this film. It’s wonderfully executed and wonderfully edited, and it’s a great product. I can’t wait to revisit it and watch it more in the future. So, thank you for the time. I appreciate hearing a little bit more behind the scenes, and I hope to talk again soon.
Greg: Cool. Thank you.
Graham: Thank you very much.
Thanks, guys.
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