Chapter 228: More Money Than Sense

The grueling shoot was torment enough, but post-production promised no reprieve. Though Chicago required very few visual effects, after spending two solid weeks assembling a rough cut of nearly five hours, the entire post-production team—led by Duke and Mike Dawson—had slowed to an absolute crawl.

Chicago was set in what was called an era of miracles, an era of art, and an era of unchecked extravagance. It was also an era steeped in cynicism.

This era was also known as the "Jazz Age." As an entertainment capital, Jazz Age Chicago overflowed with debauchery and media sensationalism. The entertainment industry was booming, stars rose and fell in the blink of an eye, human nature was cold and vile, and reporters fanned the flames of every scandal they could find.

The final cut needed to use its dazzling musical numbers and kaleidoscope of shifting colors and lights to expose a society that inverted good and evil, blurred black and white, and worshipped nothing but money.

Meticulous editing was essential to make the film shine. As a musical, Chicago featured a massive number of song and dance sequences—tango, jazz, blues, tap. Seamlessly weaving everyday narrative together with these musical performances across various scenes required Duke and Mike Dawson to pour immense time and energy into the pacing.

"The musical sequences are all expressions of the actors' inner emotions."

Standing before the console in the editing room, Duke addressed Mike Dawson and a few assistant editors. "That's why the musical numbers are mostly driven by the female lead's imagination. I want most of the edit points to hit on the beat. They have to launch from the actors' emotional peaks and carry a distinct rhythm, just like live-recorded music!"

As a musical, the massive amount of choreography, body language, and subtle facial expressions had to be reasonably assembled through the camera work to deliver a strong visual impact. The editing of this film had to amplify the expressive power of the motion, clarifying the nature of the entire film, down to every scene and every individual shot.

Selecting clear rhythmic edit points during action would infuse the entire film with the bouncing feel of jazz.

Beyond the cut itself, Duke also had to lead his team in color timing the corresponding shots so the hues and lighting captured on set better matched the needs of the scenes.

"Mike, cut all the preceding footage. I want the film to open right on a close-up of the female lead's eye!"

Even ignoring the fact that Duke had independently financed this film, ever since Independence Day, he possessed final cut privilege on any project he directed. Watching Mike Dawson and the assistants work, Duke continued stating his demands. "After that, cut straight to shot forty-seven! Darken the background color and saturate the title 'Chicago'! I want that bright red neon glowing as fiercely as a warning beacon!"

Despite having won a Best Film Editing Golden Statuette, Mike Dawson voiced no objections. He skillfully swapped and spliced the footage according to Duke's demands.

Watching the busy Mike Dawson and the rest of the crew, Duke realized it was time his team embraced some technological upgrades. Digital editing, for instance, had gradually gained traction in recent years and was far more efficient than traditional cutting.

It took the entire morning just to lock the opening sequence, but the playback met Duke's standards. The film kicked off with a musical number. From a close-up of the announcer's mouth, it smash-cut to a dizzying stage. The cool tones of the stage backdrop contrasted sharply with the warm glow of the cabaret, creating a strong visual impact.

Then, following another shift between cool and warm colors, the daydreamer appeared—Roxie. The physical movements of Roxie and her lover merged seamlessly with the dancing, music, and lyrics on the stage, delivering a massive auditory and visual punch.

In this finalized opening, the shots shifted rapidly, sweeping constantly across the dance floor in time with the live band. From a close-up of lips counting off "5, 6, 7, 8," the camera whipped from the ceiling down into the crowd—every single edit matching the rhythm of the background music.

Duke's intention was perfectly clear. Placing this kind of fast-paced camera work at the very beginning didn't just introduce the environment; more importantly, it locked in a bright, intense tempo for the whole film. It laid a psychological foundation in the audience's minds for the plot and character development to come, hooking their emotions so they could settle in and watch.

If the film had opened with slow, pretentious arthouse pacing, Chicago's market prospects would be completely doomed.

Though his professional background in musicals was limited, when it came to controlling the overall production of a film, Duke lost to no director. He had fully considered the post-production edit during the shoot. The characters' exaggerated, absurd emotional swings—paired with the use of motion transitions—gave the post-production team perfect emotional cutting points.

Only perfect editing could realistically present the characters' emotional arcs as the director envisioned, selecting edit points based on the characters' outward expressions of joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness in different situations, and emphasizing the exaggeration, rendering, and deep characterization of those emotions.

The completed sequence of Roxie's affair with the furniture salesman relied on exactly this editing technique.

After murdering her sister, Velma sang and danced with wild abandon on stage. Meanwhile, driven by jealousy and envy, Roxie seduced the deceitful furniture salesman to achieve her goal of getting on stage.

This segment was created by cross-cutting the two events. When Velma danced on stage and threw her hands up, the camera immediately snapped to the illicit lovers making a similar motion.

This kind of shot sequence could also be called a motion transition. In their upcoming work, per Duke's instructions, there would be many more editing techniques like this.

Duke intended to harness the continuity and intense visual impact of the choreography to match the passionate, kinetic visual characteristics of the entire film.

As post-production deepened, Duke realized that for the film to truly shine, they needed to break through the auditory limitations of the rhythm and better endow the visuals themselves with rhythm.

Rhythmic edit points typically used dialogue-free shots. Based on the rhythmic line of the unfolding events, they flexibly handled shot length and cuts according to the scene's expressed emotion, atmosphere, and visual characteristics. The purpose of a rhythmic edit point was to use varying shot lengths to create a unique rhythm that influenced the audience's psychological response—whether relaxed and smooth, peaceful and steady, or tense and fierce.

Duke successfully deployed this in the sequence after Roxie was locked in her cell.

"Roxie is jailed for murder. Cold, starving, and trapped in the dark without hope, she starts to weep softly, only to be startled awake by the sound of dripping water."

Because Mike Dawson had a sudden emergency and Anna Printz had strongly pushed for it, Duke brought her into the editing room. She was going to be one of his most important assistants going forward, so Duke extremely patiently explained and passed on some editing reasoning and experience to her.

He pointed at the monitor, explaining to the assistant director in detail, "Here the camera cuts to the guard's boots stepping forcefully onto the prison's iron catwalk. The dripping water and the guard's footsteps cross-cut, forming a rhythmic echo in both sound and image. Then another inmate appears, tapping her fingers against the windowsill, lighting a match. Six different prisoners take turns making short noises. The recorded audio on set is already highly rhythmic, and the camera cuts closely following the source of the sound."

Anna Printz evidently understood Duke's style well. Quickly grasping the intention behind the edit, she said, "This way, it doesn't just bring the audience a strong auditory rhythmic impact, but also a distinct visual rhythm, thereby creating a frantic, tense atmosphere for this segment and gripping the audience's hearts?"

"Exactly!" Duke nodded.

The assistant director was a crucial link for a director to control the crew. Sofia Coppola's departure was unavoidable, and it was hard to say when Zack Snyder might leave, so Duke was intentionally grooming Anna Printz.

As he cut and assembled the shots, Duke explained the different editing logic for different scenes to her. "Rationally splicing fast-paced content tones for individual shots creates a massive cumulative effect that can consecutively trigger film climaxes, achieving a gripping result."

In a film, the length of a shot significantly affected the image's expressive power and appeal. The primary element constituting the art of editing was deciding a shot's length; lingering a little longer or cutting a little shorter could play a decisive role in the magnitude of the visual effect.

The so-called "content tone" was a theoretical psychological appeal development curve generated when the audience comprehended the visual content and the camera cut. Graphed out, it was a function image similar to a parabola with a peak; once past this theoretical emotional peak, it turned into a decreasing function.

The "cumulative effect" was built on the editing tone. The development curve of the atmosphere generated by rapid cuts influencing the audience was usually called the "editing tone," and the "cumulative effect" was the corresponding value on the y-axis of that curve.

In actual post-production, of course, Duke couldn't quantify the effect of every shot like this, but when a certain number of shots accumulated and conveyed a certain amount of narrative information, this effect became visibly apparent on screen.

In the upcoming segment Anna Printz helped complete, starting from when Roxie learned her cellmate was hanged and she herself faced her final trial, all the way until Roxie was declared innocent and released—a twenty-minute courtroom trial—the cutting rhythm steadily accelerated, and the content tone accumulated layer by layer, ultimately reaching the peak of the cumulative effect.

Only as Roxie grew disappointed that no reporters were interviewing her did the cuts between shots slowly ease, calming the previous tension.

Furthermore, Duke also utilized some split editing and cross-cutting to create a cyclical narrative technique.

Typically, building a film scene required a cluster of shots, and this dynamic process couldn't be entirely straightforward. It required adding some decorative content to make the scene's portrayal more vivid and rich, better showcase the characters, or highlight their emotions and feelings.

Applying split edits and cross-cutting greatly expanded the film's spatial and temporal relationships. For example, the opening sequence detailing the events between the two leads, Roxie and Velma, was an application of this technique.

In short, a musical this dazzling and steeped in mockery could not exist without exquisite post-production.