Cutting live performances and incorporating different takes that challenged the continuity of the concerts in James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown” created a unique challenge for film editors Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris while shaping the film into its final runtime.
“It’s very complex to cut [live performances] because every take is different, and the looks and reactions you have in each take are different,” recalls Morris. “You’re moving between that and quickly music editing and removing or adding some guitar pieces or whatnot to get a certain reaction at a certain time.”
“A Complete Unknown” received eight Academy Award nominations and follows the journey of Bob Dylan, played by Academy Award Nominee Timothée Chalamet, after arriving in the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York. Based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric!, the film takes audiences all the way through the night that Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
Buckland, a veteran of James Mangold films working on and off since 2001’s “Kate & Leopold”, previously won an Oscar for his work on “Ford v. Ferrari”. Morris is a newcomer to working on Mangold’s films but has previously worked on “The Creator” and “Armageddon Time”.
The duo discussed balancing the editing duties and reducing the film from its original three-hour-plus run time. Knowing they would not be using all the songs’ full lengths made the process easier, but the editors shared how the climactic concert at the end of the film proved to be the biggest challenge.
“[The scene is] not only Bob playing the music, but also all the drama that’s happening offstage, the crowd reacting to Bob playing, and the effect that Bob is having on the crowd,” explains Buckland. Keeping that all working, intercutting it together—it becomes this one big scene with all these elements servicing the chaos that Bob is creating with his performance.”
Editors Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris spoke with Awards Focus about developing a shorthand with director James Mangold, piecing together the songs into a cohesive narrative and how the final performance created a challenge in continuity and precision.
A Complete Unknown is currently playing in theaters.
Awards Focus: I thought “A Complete Unknown” was phenomenal, and it’s already one of my favorite films of the year. I loved how Timothée Chalamet just disappeared into the role—I truly felt that I was watching Bob Dylan on the screen.
Scott Morris: Oh wow.
Andrew Buckland: Yeah, his performance is quite remarkable.
AF: Did either of you read “Dylan Goes Electric!” before the film went into production or afterwards?
Buckland: Truth be told, I did not read it.
Morris: I started it, but then we got so immersed in the film that there was just no time. We were working long hours and had to focus on the movie.
AF: Andrew, with the exception of “Logan”, you’ve been working on James Mangold’s films going to back to “Knight and Day”. How has the shorthand improved in the relationship?
Buckland: I think now it’s sort of finely tuned shorthand. It’s just great to know someone for so long, and there’s sort of a basic understanding that comes with that. I think one can sort of be free to speak one’s mind and not feel in danger of offending anybody. I think that is definitely a plus in knowing Jim for so long that we could really communicate quite freely. It was super helpful during this process.
AF: Scott, how did you first become attached to working on “A Complete Unknown”?
Morris: Well, Jim, he always works with more than one editor. In this case, he was looking to add somebody new to the team. He was a fan of my work and the directors I’d worked with. He gave me a call, I was available, and we were able to make it happen. It was a dream to join this team and Andrew Buckland and the amazing team he keeps here, Ted Caplan and Don Sylvester, his core collaborators, in the cutting room. It was a treat. These guys have been working together a long time. They have a shorthand, but they brought me right in, and I felt welcomed. The collaboration was moving at a very good speed.
AF: What program did you use to edit the film?
Morris: The great Avid Media Composer.
Buckland: Yes.
Morris: A favorite of many.
AF: How did the two of you balance out the editing duties?
Buckland: It’s pretty organic, really. As Scott said, he really fit. He came to our cutting room. It was sort of an effortless transition to fit right into our little editing family here. It was quite easy to figure out what scenes we were going to cut. It was sort of decided, not really formally, but during the dailies process. As scenes would be coming in, one person would get those days of dailies and start working on them. Depending on the complexity of the scene, you could get caught up in it and spend some time putting it together. But they’re still shooting, and more dailies are coming in. Scott would then just pick up what was coming in. We would try to maintain those scenes throughout the process because we would learn—we would be the ones who would know most about what was shot, all the coverage, the takes, the performances.
It was good to try to keep that consistent, especially when we would transition to work with Jim and cut with Jim. It would just be faster and easier, especially for Jim—was there a take here that does this and this? The person who worked on it from the beginning would know that very well.
AF: At what point after photography wrapped in 2024 did you have a rough assembly cut ready to go?
Morris: After the day we wrapped, it was three or four days.
Andrew Buckland: Four days.
Morris: It was a very long—they shot a lot of materials, so it was a big assembly.
How long was the initial cut?
Buckland: It was about three and a half hours.
AF: What were the challenges in getting that narrowed down to the final close to two-and-a-half-hour runtime?
Buckland: Well, there was a couple of stages, I think, in that. The initial stage was quite easy because we ultimately knew that we wouldn’t have the entire length of these songs in the film. They would be of some variation, some shortened version. We knew that was going to happen so fairly quickly, we identified this song is not going to be the full length because there’s other drama going on, so we’re going to have to shorten these songs. Once we did that, I think within a couple of weeks, we pretty much had 45 minutes out of the movie, fairly quickly. The next stage is more difficult, when you start honing in and sculpting the narrative. There’s a narrative propulsion through the movie, where does this propulsion get hung up and stop? What should we do? That’s the time consuming part of the process.
AF: Were there any things in particular that you all tried to keep in the film but couldn’t find the right spot or it wasn’t working?
Buckland: (Laughs) I can’t think of it.
Morris: I’m trying to think of a scene that we’ve fought really hard to keep in. I mean, I guess they all end up in the movie.
Buckland: It’s pretty much that all the scenes that were going to be cut out of the movie, there was a reason for them to exist in the movie. I know that there were some push and pull to keep them in the—there was a reason to keep them in the movie.
Morris: A lot of cases, it was truncating. I mean, it was truncating scenes that we had that were built out as longer sequences. Four minutes, five minute scenes that end up being two minutes or something in the final film.
Jim talked about starting scenes late, you kind of arrive in them midway through it, and then you leave early. You’re getting kind of the meat of the scene. You’re getting the important pieces in there, which would help us with transitions, too, because it was constantly about how do we transition from this scene to this scene and how the two scenes relate to each other. Jim kept saying, let’s look at them as sequences, the flow of these sequences from one to the next. That helped us to truncate the scenes, get the duration down, and keep the flow just constantly entertaining and you’re engaged.
AF: Which scenes or sequences provided the biggest challenges?
Buckland: Well, the end of the movie is a big challenge. The final scene, the big concert at the end. It was a challenge because there’s so many elements involved in that sequence. Not only Bob playing the music, but also all the drama that’s happening offstage, the crowd reacting to Bob playing, and the effect that Bob is having on the crowd. Keeping that all working, intercutting it together, that it doesn’t feel like you’ve stopped the concert to service this particular beat off the scene offstage or something, but to keep Bob involved, the music involved, and everything that’s happening—it becomes this one big scene with all these elements servicing the chaos that Bob is creating with his performance.
That was a challenge because how they shot that sequence was that they would actually have Timothée play the three rock songs consecutively, so there was no break. They literally shot the concert, those three songs, as one take and with multiple cameras, multiple takes. Sometimes, the song that they were playing, they decided, well, let’s do a shorter version of the song just to have it. Let’s do a longer version of the song just to have it. Within that footage, you have to create the beats, you have to create the moments that, OK, this is the moment we’re now going to go and Lomax is going to react, get angry, go to the soundboard and try to have them turn it down.
So, it’s finding the best moment to leave Bob to do that but always feeling like you haven’t just left Bob and not we’re just not going to deal with Bob anymore. Bob’s always a presence in those moments. Bob will turn to react as though he’s seeing them fight or something on the side. You’re always trying to be aware of how Bob is sort of existing on that stage while this is all happening on the on the sidelines.
AF: When did the picture finally get locked?
Buckland: Very recently.
Morris: A month or so. I don’t know. We’d make small changes after that, but for the most part, the movie was settled in maybe a month.
Buckland: Yeah. When did we finish the final mix? It’s such a blur. Honestly, it’s such a blur.
Morris: It was a blur. The last month of this project. There was a lot happening at once.
Buckland: I don’t even know what date it is right now.
AF: It is November 26th.
Buckland: That’s right.
Morris: We locked it a week or two before the final mix.
Buckland: Yeah. It was about a month ago.
AF: Did this film feel smaller compared to having done the two major big-budget action blockbusters with “Ford vs. Ferrari” and “Indiana Jones” or did it feel just as big?
Buckland: Absolutely. I mean, each film has its challenges. Each film has its scope but the way Jim shoots and makes his films is it’s always character-driven. It doesn’t matter if it’s Indiana Jones on the top of some speeding train—if we’re not connecting with the character at all, then all that stuff is sort of irrelevant in a way. It’s just window dressing. It’s the same with the story of Bob.
It’s we want to connect with Bob. You’re not using different techniques to cut one film versus another. It’s the same. It’s the same approach, same technique, and each film has its challenges. It doesn’t matter what the scope of the movie. The scope of this movie is huge. It’s Bob Dylan in the span of five years where he basically becomes this music juggernaut. There’s really no difference.
Morris: I’ll just add, for this film, the amount of music and live music definitely was a large scope for me on an editorial level, just how many live performances there are. It’s very complex to cut that because every take is different, and the looks and reactions you have in each take are different. You’re moving between that and quickly music editing and removing or adding some guitar pieces or whatnot to get a certain reaction at a certain time. That’s almost every scene in the movie. There’s a lot of music in the movie so that was certainly a fun challenge.
AF: He was singing live on set and not to pre-records, right?
Buckland: That’s right.
Morris: Yeah. They sang live on set.
Buckland: They sang live.
AF: That just makes it all the more unbelievable!
Buckland: Yeah.
Morris: Yeah. I mean, he had to learn, like, 20-something songs.
Buckland: Oh, yeah. The amount of songs he learned.
Morris: Yeah. It was incredible. Some scenes—I think there was a take in one of the scenes where he does “Hard Rain” on stage at Carnegie Hall and they’ve got a live audience. He played a couple of other tracks just because for whatever reason, we had them as alternates or in additions if we were to use them for another montage or something. He learned a lot of Bob Dylan songs.
AF: Andrew, having previously won an Oscar for “Ford vs. Ferrari”, how do you manage to stay grounded?
Buckland: A lot of comedy. Not taking things seriously. Each job is a new job and a new experience, and there’s always something to learn on every film that you do. That’s how I stay grounded.
AF: Okay, one final question. For both of you, were you a big Bob Dylan fan going into the film and has your fandom changed as a result of working on the film?
Morris: I would say yes to both. I started out being a fan of him and his music. I grew up with music and he was kind of a big figure in my household growing up. I certainly was a fan of it and knew about it. But working on the film, I learned so much about this particular time period in his life, when he’s this young guy showing up in the city and very quickly becoming a part of the civil rights era, the musical movement, the activism at the time, and how he evolved. I learned more about him as a person and beyond the music, which has kind of changed my relationship with how I know what was going on in his life at those times when he was writing those songs and how it was all kind of his experience.
Buckland: I was always a fan, but now I know more than I did before. I am definitely amazed at the amount of songs he’s written that other people actually have covered, which is pretty incredible.