One of the most tense scenes of all time is the gridlock scene from Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, which features FBI agent Kate Macer rolling through a cartel-controlled Mexican border town with a convoy of government task force agents working to bring down a Mexican drug lord. But what is it that makes this such a nerve-racking scene? Well, CineFix breaks it down literally moment by moment in the video below, and also provides an infographic that makes it easy to see how Villeneuve structured it.
There's no one way to go about constructing a tense scene, but there certainly are a few factors that need to be set in place—because of, you know, human physiology.
Time
Creating tension is all about putting pressure on your audience and letting them writhe in anticipation, and the only way pressure builds up is over time. This creates a couple of obstacles to maneuver: deciding how long to build the tension in the scene, as well as how to let the tension to rise and fall throughout the scene.
Wax and wane
The gridlock scene in Sicario is over 13 minutes long—admittedly it's a long setup, but the reason why it never gets boring is because it waxes and wanes. In other words, the level of tension increases and decreases in intervals so as to not let the audience be able to anticipate exactly when the big payoff is going to occur. Perhaps they breathe a sigh of relief when they make it to the Mexican prison after being diverted, and maybe again when they cross the border, but all of that relief goes out the window once they see the gridlock up ahead.
The payoff
Or should I say payoffs? The gridlock scene is full of payoffs, but they vary in intensity depending on the level of tension that has been building up before it occurs. Take the final payoff (or climax) for example. Near the end of the scene, the standoff reaches an apex when one of the cartel members reaches for a gun and the task force agents shoot them to smithereens. However, that's not the final payoff—and this is where Villeneuve's mastery really reveals itself.
The shooting at the end of the standoff marks the climax of the main external conflict of the scene: eliminating the enemy threat. However, there is also an internal conflict within Kate Macer that hasn't been resolved—she has to decide whether or not what she and the task force are doing is ethical. As she watches in horror as the gunfight is going on in broad daylight in the middle of gridlocked traffic, she asks, "What the f*** are we doing?" It seems as though her question is actually her answer and her internal conflict has been resolved—that is until a cartel member shoots at her from the rear of the car and she returns fire, killing him. This marks the climax of Macer's internal conflict; she screams an expletive, which mirrors her previous line: a statement that is actually a question.
Here is CineFix's infographic detailing every moment of the gridlock scene so you can see exactly how Villeneuve orchestrated this incredibly intense scene.
I'm not good at beating around the bush, so let's keep bushes out of this—times are tough out there. It's a weird and difficult time for a lot of us, and the aura of 2024 has loomed like a dark cloud for many. Unfortunately, it's a tough time for trans people. This is nothing new, but it's gotten quite a bit scarier considering the current climate.
While this is tough, it's also important to look for the silver linings when we can, and luckily the silver screen is a beacon of such linings. So now that all the doom gloomies are out of the way, let's celebrate some of the wonderful, beautiful movies out there that keep us going. One of which is the exceptional Sundance-premiering documentary,Will & Harper.
The premise of Will & Harper is pretty straightforward: Will Ferrell goes on a road trip with his longtime SNL best buddy Harper Steele shortly after she reveals to him that she's transitioning. See, Harper loves the open road and is known for extensive, cross-country road trips, and Will suggests it could be a great way to reconnect. This of course also comes with the troubling reality that Harper is at far much more risk traveling to certain areas of the states as a trans woman.
What ultimately transpires is a heartwarming, beautiful time capsule of love and friendship. Considering Harper is a very successful, very funny comedy writer—and Will Ferrell is Will Ferrell—it's also a hilarious window into two best friends being very funny together. I laughed, I cried a lot, and I immediately called one of my best friends from high school who is also recently transitioning.
She declined the prospect of recreating the road trip, but there's still time.
Lucky for us, we had the opportunity to speak with the editor of this joint, Monique Zavistovski. Monique was a delight to speak with, offering a fountain of priceless behind-the-scenes bits that didn't make the final cut, as well as some wonderful intel on the art and craft of editing a feature with 250-plus hours of footage to manage.
Enjoy the interview below, watch Will & Harper on Netflix, and go hug your best friend—we never know what our buddies are going through.
Editor's note: the following interview is edited for length and clarity.
Additional editor's note: stay for the end for Kristen Wiig's beautiful credits song, "Will and Harper Go West".
Monique Zavistovski's Editing Origins
"I was cutting on Super 8 16mm using upright Olas and Steenbecks as an emerging editor during the transition from film to digital, which was amazing. I mean, it was terrifying and amazing, but editing is still terrifying and amazing.
Nothing's really changed in that regard. And then I was freelancing. I'm still freelancing—I've floated around for 20 plus years. About four years ago, Delirium Films scooped me up and I worked on several projects with them, one of which was a short film called Behind the Mac: Skywalker Sound directed by Josh Greenbaum. Josh and I had a wonderful working rapport, and Delirium has produced all of his documentaries, all seven of them. So it was a natural pairing that they called me up and asked me if I would be interested in working on Will and Harper.
I was like, "Hell yes."
It was a small group of people who've all worked together, and it was really imperative. Josh and the producers wanted to make sure that it was a safe space with a small team, that everybody knew each other to tell this very sensitive, loving, wonderful story of friendship and transition."
Transitioning From Cutting Film to Premiere Productions
Will and Harper in WIll & Harper
Netflix
"I didn't know anything about RCA cables, and it was very daunting for sure, because I'm a very tactile person. Also having to make decisions that were, really—before you could even work with the material—you had to decide how much space you had on a hard drive, and you had to make edits before you could even experiment, which was new for me. If you had 9GB hard drive that cost you like a $1,000 and weighed 20 pounds, well, you could only get a certain amount of media onto it, and you had to make those decisions beforehand. In that regard, it helped me become a more disciplined storyteller and lean on outlines a lot more than I had before.
Now it's kind of the opposite.
You can shoot everything for 250 hours and have access to all the media and be able to work with it. But, in the beginning, there were some growing pains there, and I think ultimately it helped me be a better storyteller.
We used the Adobe Premiere Pro Productions feature, because I knew the project would get really big. I had organized the project ... it's 30 categories of locations, themes, events, and conversations between Will and Harper. There was a whole running set of sequences about conversations that they had, running jokes, Pringles, fears, hopes, body dysmorphia, you name it. There was a stringout bin for all of those things. Productions was amazing in allowing me and my lead AE, Hunter Hill, and my post supervisor Kevin Otte, share the master project in smaller digestible bites and work through it. It got us all the way through the project without a hitch.
We used external transcripts and our internal transcripts and every version of outline and script you can imagine on this thing, because Will and Harper talked for nine hours straight in the car every day for 16 days. So it certainly wasn't like having an hour and a half sit down interview. I was terrified of missing something. I wanted everything noted, outlined, transcribed, and kept track of.
The script function was a lifesaver."
Balancing Comedy and Emotion in the Edit
"I'm embarrassed to say at first I was a little onward and I was watching the dailies as they were filming, and footage would come in, and I was laughing a lot. I mean, obviously I was crying a lot as well, but the jokes were hilarious and some of the bits would last an hour long. I'm not accustomed to editing comic documentaries with a lot of humorous content, let's put it that way. I learned quickly, and Josh helped me with this, that humor is funnier when it's earned. Along the trip Will and Harper have those deeper moments of growth and emotional moments, and that's what I needed to pay attention to. And I needed to set the humor aside for a while, while we figured out what the deeper emotional beats were that would hold the structure together.
I folded in the humorous bits after that, and we also came to realize that there was a real pattern to how Will and Harper dealt with this subject matter organically . They would crack a joke, they would get into a conversation with some hilarious banter. They would be telling a story or working on a funny bit together or something. And then, inevitably, some deeper conversations would arise having to do with Harper's transition or their friendship, or all kinds of things, their experiences, their lived experiences.
When things felt like they were getting a little bit too deep, somebody would crack a joke. And so that was an organic way for me to get the message that, oh, well, here's where I can earn some humor and let some of those tense difficult moments release through a joke. And that's usually where people cry, and that sort of thing.
I came to understand the rhythm of telling a story like this that requires that kind of balance between emotion and humor."
BTS Scenes That Didn't Make the Final Cut
Will Ferrell as Sherlock Holmes in Will & Harper
The Big Texan Steak Ranch and Brewery | Instagram
"So Will—it's not in any of the footage. It might be in the end credit sequence, but Will brought a harmonica along on the ride, and he played that harmonica once a day. Every day he would make up songs and Harper would make up songs, and Harper oftentimes served as Will's critic. And the rapport, the back and forth between the two of them over Will's harmonica, was absolutely hilarious. There was also a chocolate bunny that Harper's sister Eleanor had gifted her for Easter, and Harper and will put it on the dashboard of the Wagoneer.
I think by the end of the day it melted
They named it Bunny. And then over the next few days after it melted, it became Puddle Bunny and Will tasted Puddle Bunny once a day, every day, for four or five days, this melted pile of chocolate on the dashboard. At the end of the trip, Harper remarked that the real hero of the trip was Puddle Bunny, and that Puddle Bunny was with them through thick and thin, mostly thin.
It was really funny. That's just a couple of examples of stuff that I had to unfortunately cut."
Working With Will, Harper, and the Rest of the Team
Will & Harper
Courtesy of Netflix
"Josh showed Will and Harper an early rough cut, which was a scary moment. How they felt about it was obviously very important to us, and they loved it.
It was too long, very unformed, and a little mushy—there was all sorts of stuff in it—but they loved it. And so [Will and Harper] were on board. And so they saw, I don't know, maybe three cuts after that. Occasionally they would watch something and we're always extremely supportive of Josh's vision for the film, for the story, and how we approached the edit, but they were not looking over anyone's shoulder. They did not have input in the edit room or anything like that. They were able to just sit back and almost look at it with fresh eyes as a nostalgic travel log when they watched it. I think it was great for them to sit back and see it very infrequently.
[They shot on average] nine hours per day. Oh my God. There were multi cams. I would say it was at least 250 hours of footage, and all of it was good. Swear to God.
I made sure to watch all of the dailies, and there were so many hidden gems. Even the quiet moments were compelling to me, and a lot of that is an nod to our DP's, Zoe White's, beautiful camera work. We also had a steady camera operator, Devin, who just—when Will and Harper would stop the car and sit in lawn chairs, or go to various places around the country, you see a lot of beautiful steadicam work done by Devin. It was another layer that led us into Harper's and Will's intimate story."
Carefully Portraying Trans Visibility in 'Will & Harper'
Will Ferrell and Harper Steele
NBC
"Harper so graciously lets us all through her friendship with Will into some of the difficult questions that people aren't accustomed to asking and into the sensitive subject matter.
I really followed Harper's lead. I wanted to consider any sensitivities she might have to anything that I put in the film. And then I also wanted to consider the community sensitivities. We partnered with GLAAD on the project
\and we had a lot of feedback screenings. We made sure to have feedback screenings with all demographics and keep our minds open to how people respond to various moments in the film, to certain scenes, some difficult subject matter, some scary moments, some uncomfortable moments, and joyful moments, too, and what all those beats mean to them.
I took my lead from Harper and from others to try to determine how far can I go with a moment, and are there any areas where I need to hold back? But to be honest with you, I didn't. And what you see is the authentic experience of the road trip."
Monique's Advice to Editors Everywhere
"I mean, if I learned anything all these years, it's a lifestyle.
When you become an editor it's an overwhelming lifestyle. And so I think I would say, first and foremost, be kind to yourself. These projects are marathons, and they can really take a toll on you. If you don't figure out ways to value yourself as a storyteller, you're going to get knocked down every single day. You produce these assemblies or rough cuts that people are like, "That's terrible."
I think that valuing yourself and being kind to yourself and leaving your ego at the door so that you're open to all the brilliant hive mind suggestions out there is really important. And it'll serve. All those things will serve the story better. I mean, at the end of the day, we're storytellers. We want to tell impactful films, enjoyable films, and maybe move a needle a little bit, but maybe not.
Be kind to yourself and leave your ego at the door."
Sicario's Tension MapCredit: Flickr
