Kwesi Collisson on Split Screens, Special Effects and the New Desktop Arsenal

Kwesi Collisson is one of those guys who seems to do everything — he's a producer who understands money, but also a crack editor and compositor who likes to get hands-on with his projects. Final Cut Pro, Photoshop and After Effects and a raft of plugins constitute his essential toolset for feature-film work. And his latest picture, Conversations With Other Women, offered an unusual challenge: the entire narrative plays out in split-screen. Film & Video asked him to share some of the details.

Explain the use of split-screen for the entirety of Conversations with Other Women. Do we see one character on either side of the screen all the way through the film?

Most of the time you see Helena [Bonham Carter] on one side and Aaron [Eckhart] on the other, in the same space – a hotel room, for example. But they occasionally switch sides with different edits, or if one actor walks to the other side. There are also two shots on one side with flashbacks of themselves in their previous relationship together on the other side. We also play around with each character’s perception of reality at that particular moment in the script. You might see Helena answer Aaron in several different ways, using several different takes from the shoot — happy, sad, glib — or even different blocking.

What aspect ratio did you use?

We had a framing overlay in the HDCAM monitor display and viewfinder of 1.20 for each camera. But the final aspect ratio with the two sides together is 2.35.

Why did you choose Final Cut Pro?

We set out to do some ambitious tasks, especially for the budget. Final Cut Pro was the editing software that I was most familiar with and I knew it was capable of handling the unique problems of the dual-frame format. Cost was also a factor. I already owned the latest version of Final Cut Pro as well as the dual G5 on which we did all of the offline, online and visual effects. Actually, I did borrow a friend’s G5 for a few weeks when the director and I had some overlap in visual effects and editing work. It was amazing that we could do everything on two machines for a feature length film.

Animating Storyboards and Timing Background Plates

How does technology influence the way you work?

We have reached a period in the history of feature filmmaking where you can set out to do almost anything because of the advancement of the technology/tools at a very low cost. It’s also important to understand that there are more producers entering the game, like myself, who have the skills of an editor, compositor and animator. Learning these skills has become a necessity in order to get tasks done more quickly and at a low cost.

A great example of this is the creation an animatic or pre-visualization in the pre-production process. For Conversations, we hired a storyboard artist to illustrate the dual-frame boards. I scanned the boards into the computer with Photoshop and then animated them in Final Cut for timing. If there was a more complex scene that needed more explanation for the director of photography, I would animate the frames in After Effects, to give a better sense of camera position or depth of field. This helped us problem-solve on issues that would not have come up until the day of shooting.

What was the biggest challenge on Conversations specifically?

Spoiler info: In the last shot of the movie Helena Bonham Carter gets into a cab on the right side of the screen, and a few beats later the Aaron Eckhart character gets into the cab on the left side. We see both of them in separate cabs with different background plates of New York City. Finally, both cabs come to a stop. As we see both characters waiting in their own cabs for the light to change, we see the profile of another cab and truck pass behind them from screen left to right. Now the background plate is a single plate — and both characters are in the same cab together.

We shot Helena and Aaron together in the same cab on green screen the entire time but it was the background plate that I split up to give the appearance of being in a different cab. I originally shot some mini-DV footage for the background as a way of giving me something to test for timing as a placeholder. I used After Effects to slow down or speed up the placeholder footage in order to better prepare us for the actual high-definition shoot that would take place months later.

For the final HD shoot of the plates I actually had my PowerBook with me in the front passenger seat of the SUV. We played the QuickTime movie of the test shot as I drove around the upper east side of New York. As the QuickTime played, I knew when to take a turn around a corner or when to come to a stop because I was matching to the timing of the movie. All of this plus the DP, director and AC in the back of the SUV recording the plates to the HDW-F900 camera. When I did the final composite of the HD backgrounds I noticed that the Met Life logo from the midtown building needed to rotoscoped out of the shots. Lastly, the HD background plates seemed a little too bouncy in certain places, so I used After Effects to stabilize the shot and then add back the movement — but at a much more subdued amount.

How do you get on the same page, creatively, with a director? Do you discuss influences? Do you select other films or works of art as reference?

The simplest way to understand the vision of the director is to use examples or references of other work. Our director had very strong ideas about how he wanted certain scenes to look and flow and with his encyclopedic knowledge of films he had very specific examples to use. As an example, the sex scene in Conversations was heavily influenced by John Boorman’s 1967 Point Blank. Pierre Uytterhoeven’s 1966 A Man and A Woman was another film reference that the director used regarding the timing or pace of the film.

And what are your creative influences? Have you seen anything lately that really knocked you out?

My influences start with the classics like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. This movie might be taken for granted but look at the other movies being released in the same time period (or even 15 years later) and then compare them to Kane. Welles was so far ahead of his time with almost every aspect of filmmaking, including camera shots, lighting and certainly editing. Kubrick is another major influence for me as well as Spielberg. Jaws is my number one favorite, if I had to choose. I would obsessively watch this movie as a younger kid and learn something new about story telling or camera shots with every pass. Crash was one of the few movies I’ve seen lately that I really enjoyed, but it’s an emotional ride. It’s impressive that this movie is Paul Haggis’ first directing gig. Crash also shares a producer, Mark R. Harris, with Conversations With Other Women.

Changing Hats and Learning the Ropes

You did visual effects on this film as well as editing. Is that becoming more typical?

When you are doing a film with a budget as small as this one it’s a necessity to wear as many hats as I did. Many producers are rising through the ranks with all of these skills because they have to better understand the entire process and problem-solve at any stage, from the storyboards to luminance value of the green screen to the last pixel pushed. Many editors need to have the skills of compositing to be competent throughout the post process. Most editorial tools do some form of compositing and animating as well.

How did you learn your craft?

I started out in the commercial and broadcast design world in New York City as an After Effects compositor and animator and designer. Early in my career I worked alongside a more experienced editor or animator in an apprentice type of role. I started out editing on Avid and Media 100 until Final Cut Pro was released by Apple. I am primarily self-taught on all the software that I use, but as I produced more jobs I would work alongside my freelancers, some of whom had awesome speed, skills and knew hundreds of little tricks on how better to do things. Most producers didn’t, or still don’t, have the actual hands-on experience of working with the software and the machines. This is what differentiates me from other producers. Producers with these multiple skills are becoming more and more a necessity.

Is the apprenticeship system, where aspiring editors begin as assistants and move up the ranks as part of a long process, still valid today?

I believe that it is still valid but it’s not a long process anymore. Younger people are starting out with more skills coming out of university. So, right out of the gate they can do much more than the same assistant five to eight years ago. The apprenticeship is important because it teaches you real-world skills. It’s difficult to gain the practical skills from a class or book. The best opportunities for me to learn came when I was actually working on a job. I had the pressure of time, the clients, surprise technical problems and then some. Your brain can come up with amazing survival, technical and creative solutions when it’s submersed in the context of a feast-or-famine job situation.

Do you have any advice for young editors?

Never stop learning. It sounds clichéd or oversimplified, but it’s very true. I have a daily regimen of technical Web sites that I forage through just to keep up with the latest in software and hardware. You can’t be an expert at everything, but it’s still important to have options on solving creative or technical issues by having additional skills with different tools. Also, with every generation of kids graduating from University, it gets more and more competitive.