The shock and emptiness of the battle scenes that make up 2/3 of the entire movie “Black Hawk Down”

“Editing” becomes a battlefield reminiscent of the movie

The other reason is due to confusion at the production site.

The story of "Black Hawk Down" was constructed in such a way that the original author Mark Bowden wrote the first draft, which was then rewritten by Ken Nolan, known for " Transformers : The Last Knight " (2017) and "Only the Brave" (2017), and then Steven Zaillian (uncredited), known for " Schindler's List " (1993) and " Hannibal " (2001), put together the final draft. At this point, the script contained a lot of information about the characters, but when the filming of the battle scenes began, the chaos on the battlefield made it difficult to distinguish the characters, and the problem of the aforementioned information being wasted surfaced.

Therefore, the movie was directed by director Scott, who wanted to ``make the battle itself the main character of the movie'' (*1), and Nolan, who was accompanying the filming, revised and adjusted the script, and also incorporated ideas from the actors. The script was completed on set at the same time as filming.

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As a result, the ``editing'' department was mercilessly subjected to this creative criticism.

Many of Ridley Scott's films are edited by veteran editor Pietro Scalia ( JFK (1991), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)).

The work process is generally the same as in Hollywood movies, but it is based on a format in which a rush film that is about 40 to 60 times the size of the main story is roughly edited, and then the director joins in the full-scale editing work. do. In the process, through trial and error, we made rough edits, selected scenes, rearranged shots to avoid confusion, and added reshot scenes, until we completed the final cut, which took around two hours. I'm going.

However, according to Japanese editor Chisako Yokoyama, who worked on Black Hawk Down as an assistant editor, rushes (film prints already shot) were sent to the editing room without any time in between before the script was finished, which caused a lot of chaos in the work. In addition, in the scene where the Black Hawk helicopter crashes, which is the highlight of the film, ten cameras were running at the same time, which made the rushes even bigger. She recalled during a promotional interview for Prometheus (2012) that the editors were constantly complaining about the lack of time and were editing while wearing out their nerves.

This seemingly endless editing Inferno took on a chaotic appearance similar to the Battle of Mogadishu, and through this process, the character portrayals in Black Hawk Down were thoroughly trimmed, making the battle scenes even more prominent.

However, the cost of this editing work was great, especially for Scalia, who was so exhausted that he was forced to take a break from editing Scott Scott's next film, ` `Kingdom of Heaven '' (2005). .

The “emptiness” that cannot be reduced to words is the essence of conflict.