‘Saltburn’ - Interview with Editor Victoria Boydell
Emerald Fennell took a bold swing to followup her Oscar winning film, Promising Young Woman, with Saltburn. Fennell crafted a perverted fairytale of manic infatuation and greed starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, and Alison Oliver. The gothic narrative follows two college students at Oxford as a mystery unravels one summer. Offscreen was lucky enough to speak to the Editor, Victoria Boydell, about her work on the film.
Jillian Chilingerian: I love this movie. I've seen it twice. I am such a visual person just like figuring out cues or things that I might have missed with how the story plays out. First I want to talk about that opening, montage because we have a lot of different clips, there might be like 20, maybe more of what we see playing out through the film. So how was that approaching from the start of that process?
Victoria Boydell: So you mean, you counted about 20 that are in the opening narration that then sort of reappear later? Yeah, it was fascinating because it was always part of Emerald's plan to hear Oliver narrate at the beginning, and in the opening, a few lines never changed. We tried other versions, but actually, we reverted back to that, but we did play around quite a lot with the images we saw. So I think my first pass probably leaned quite heavily on the sort of sexually unrequited aspects because we shot short versions, where Oliver is switched out for the girlfriend. Where you see Felix and the girlfriend through the window, there's Oliver and the girlfriend of Oliver and Felix, or there are different moments. So obviously, you know, it's an editor's dream to be given options and material like that. So I sort of first explored all the different possibilities of what you could share at the beginning, and then we pulled back a little bit from that. And it's so interesting when you start talking about Felix in the past and there were certain images if we showed Felix and talked about in the past, that it felt like he died, and also some of the images gave a bit too much away. So we wanted to tease, but we didn't want it to feel such a sort of trailer. We had to try to very careful line between shooting our load too soon as it were, and teasing the audience. They don't give too much away, don't see too much blood. So we just played around with what to show and then added in some more lyrical, textured, very close-up shots that were actually shot on the test cam day, sort of dripping sweat from Felix some very sensual POV stuff. But also interestingly, in the original cut, Oliver answers the question. I loved him, but was I in love with him? So as written and as originally assembled, he answered that question. Yeah, we felt that it actually then had a knock-on effect for the audience watching through the film in terms of him being a reliable narrator like how much do you believe him? How much has he dismissed his adoration for Felix that's why we landed on him taking a breath and then we cut his so he never answers that question.
Jillian Chilingerian: It really sets up for the rest of the film. I've known others that I've seen it with where you're kind of like well these moments could argue that he feels this way and they can get you thinking and analyzing the relationship.
Victoria Boydell: When you watched it a second time, did you spot things you hadn't read the first time?
Jillian Chilingerian: I think I tapped more into it. In certain moments we see at the end, I was hyper-focused on the bikes and the pub. And then what type of stuff is he doing? I noticed him the second time more like a level of human desperation. It's one of those movies that speaks well to the editing because I realized some of my favorite movies where it's like, you know, the overall story, but it feels like a different movie each time. There are a lot of moments that cause discomfort for the viewer. With a lot of films, they will cut away and then you as the viewer, are imagining how would that play out. In the second half of the film, as we learn more about Oliver and realize, we might not like him, but we're kind of stuck with him. We have to, as the audience almost suffer. I'm interested in those decisions of lingering on certain scenes.
Victoria Boydell: I think just discomfort is interesting. I mean, in terms of the bath plug, I would say we never had any discussion about it. I probably say the length of those shots just never changed. We just let him let Oliver finish what he's doing and then circle it almost in a sort of cat that has licked the cream from the bowl and is now having a little sort of lap around it kind of quite satisfied. In terms of the grave, there was discussion not really so much between me and Emerald because we were always in sync with that, but our arguments were it was obviously won't surprise you to hear that some people wanted us to shorten it. Our argument is that if you came out any sooner, it radically change the nature of what you witnessed from him. I think it becomes gratuitous that you've left the scene with him in the middle of having sex in the grave. We both felt passionately that is only by him staying with him long enough that he started sobbing and can't almost can't continue that you understand that it's sad that the only way he was ever going to make love with Felix was after Felix had died. He was never going to be able to when Felix was alive and we both felt there was something romantic, sad, and true magic. I appreciate that not everyone found it as romantic and tragic as Emerald and I did. We were completely in harmony with this, and we did try cutting out two or three different places at various screenings. But I promise you, it changes.
Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, I feel like that's a very pivotal moment for his character, there is love there, I don't know if that's how people would choose to show their love for someone, but it's for his character that moment in his reality.
Victoria Boydell: When we come back to the repeat of the beginning, when he's in the bedroom set up, like hospital and hospice in bed, we return back to the beginning. We return back to exactly the same couple of shots. That's why when he's saying kind of I hated him, we're seeing the absolute opposite because sometimes, desire and love can be a very thin line between loving someone and loving them to the point of destruction and despising.
Jillian Chilingerian: We have these moments that you're like I don't know if I would do that, but the emotions are very grounded and, we all experience how those feels. Maybe at some point, that's where you would ultimately reach when you feel that in a severe way. I love a convergence of timelines and so we're kicked off with the voiceover, it's a recollection of their time together. How did you map out what moments you wanted to go back and forth with these two timelines?
Victoria Boydell: In terms of writing, the film is always structured, with the opening, voiceover montage, and the closing one. We had to deal with the passage of time, because Oliver arrived in Oxford, in September 2006, and didn't go into the house until the following summer. So we wanted to feel that quite a bit of time had passed while he had no friends in Oxford, apart from Michael Davey, and then, had a burgeoning friendship with Felix that took enough time before things started darkening and going sour and Felix rejected him. For sets of montages, which were also partly about memory, we collapsed several sequences, that if we'd run them as scene after scene after scene, they would start feeling like you're slightly treading water. Each run was beautiful and great for character, but not quite building enough, because people wanted to get to Saltburn 10 minutes earlier than we were originally getting set up. We can collapse those timelines and bits so that it gives the feeling as still of being in memory, but also at times of living in the present when they're, they're sort of standing floating on the Oxford. We wanted to tread that line between being with them while their friendship was kicking off and dancing with them and buying random drinks, but also still keep that wonderful sense of memory sort of reflection and ultimately impending loss. Then with the ends, I think we originally had another voiceover montage section, but we just spent a long time trying to traverse the right kind of rhythm and length for him to unpack what he'd done and how he'd done it and return to this central opening of memory and reflection of what Felix meant him only now with the history of what's happened, hopefully, you get something else from it and that's why the images, we no longer need to smash mirrors and, it became more about all about Felix and showing Oliver trying to block them out. Whereas we had intercutting before, it was a lot of fun. I have to say, Emerald has a razor-sharp brain, and she's really creative, so no idea was too dumb, crazy outlandish for us to try because we always knew that we'd come in on Monday morning and go no, maybe that didn't work let's just pull it back again. So it was really good fun.
Jillian Chilingerian: This gave me so much more insight into the whole process I need to watch again. I love the pacing of this movie and those montages of his memories and figuring out their relationship. Yeah, it's romantic also scary but they go so well.
You can read our review of Saltburn, here.