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December 8, 2020

Arguably J.J. Abrams’ most personal film, Super 8 is a nostalgic ride back to the director’s own childhood and a paean to ‘80s cinema favorites like The Goonies and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Not for nothing is Steven Spielberg a producer on Abrams’ pet project. “It’s my favorite film of J.J.’s,” says Maryann Brandon, ACE. “I love the mix of genre and capturing the excitement of finding one’s love with filmmaking.”

As with other Abrams collaborations, Brandon shares editing duties with Mary Jo Markey, ACE. “We split scenes evenly in a checkerboard sequence throughout the film,” Brandon says. “We watch dailies together and review each other’s work. When we screen the movie with J.J. and other key creatives we’ll make suggestions and then each take our own scene back to recut.”

Super 8 focuses on a gang of youngsters, happily making a zombie movie during their summer vacation when they stumble on what may or may not be an alien monster on the loose. “In this scene our heroes have been caught by the military and they are being taken somewhere but they, nor we, don’t know where,” says Brandon. “Immediately when you see our main characters locked in the back of a school bus you know something terrible is going to happen.”

Repeat viewings don’t make the timing of the event easier to guess. There is a big crashing sound, something has hit the bus causing it to come to a stop. “We wanted it to be really shocking. There are these low angle close-ups of the kids giving you that feeling of dread. We see them through glass, locked off in the back, and we see that the military have pulled out their guns.”

She adds, “J.J. and I did consider a false beat. That is, having the bus stop and the action pause, before introducing the shock. We even discussed having a shot of a pair of eyes shining in the dark only to be revealed as a deer in the headlamps. In the end we just wanted to be true to the moment.”

When the bus is hit, the cutting pace speeds up, giving momentum to the vehicle’s movement and the chaos onboard. “When you
are cutting you are dictated by the action and here, as well as in a previous scene involving a train crash, the film has a very
rhythmical beat to it.”

Crucially, the characters and the audience do not see what has caused the accident. The bus driver is handed a gun by his commander and told to go out and shoot the monster. Everything slows down for tension. “The driver is clearly afraid. He opens the door and the camera goes out of the door. If I were to edit that scene today, I might have held onto that shot a bit longer and let the camera go into the darkness, the nothingness. At the time, I probably didn’t have any more footage and thought it worked rhythmically.”

Brandon says they decided to show very little of the monster, after all it was hard enough to figure out how to fit it into a bus. “The guns are dart/sedation guns. The military are the bad guys here, they want to recapture the creature to continue experimenting on it. J.J. and I want the audience to feel sympathy for the monster. That emotion is transferred through the kids’ reactions to it throughout the film. That’s one reason humor is so important. Keeping a sense of humor helps ground these stories which are otherwise so out there!

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Featured in Content:

Cuts We Love | J.J. Abrams | Maryann Brandon ACE | Spielberg | Super 8

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A short excerpt from the ‘Virtual Glass of Wine’ British Film Editors interview series. David Fairhead BFE talks about the emotions working in the cutting room.