Documenting the making of an icon, A Complete Unknown transports audiences back into Bob Dylan’s life as he is on the rise of fame simultaneously as Folk music makes an impact on the world. With a large ensemble of well-known musicians in a changing world, Offscreen Central had the opportunity to talk to editors Andrew Buckland and Scott Morris on conducting research to capture the period accurately, the importance of sound design in guiding the edit, and the immersive experience of filling in Bob Dylan’s world.

Jillian Chilingerian: Hi. So nice to meet both of you!
Scott Morris: Yeah, nice to meet you. Thanks for doing this.

Jillian Chilingerian: As I was watching this, I took away the fact that it feels like a time capsule back into the 1960s. I love learning about musicians through films, and I always find it interesting when they are set in such a specific time of a musician’s career, obviously, with Bob Dylan and the rise of folk music. When you’re approaching this for such a specific period, do you research this era yourself?
Andrew Buckland: I was a fan of Bob Dylan, so it was exciting about this project I got to learn a lot about this period before he became the big Bob Dylan that we all know. So it was fun to learn as we were making the movie and, I watched documentaries and videos, just to get a sense of this period. It wasn’t a deep, deep dive, because I knew that working on this film, its own even though it’s a representation of this time, it becomes its own thing. So you immerse yourself in this new experience and at the same time you’re learning about how popular folk music was in this period before rock and roll took over. I didn’t understand that until I made this film.
Scott Morris: Likewise, I love doing period pieces, and it was fun to do the research. I was a big fan of Bob Dylan and I knew his work, but it was exciting to learn about Pete Seeger and Joan Baez in the grand village scene. Francois did such an amazing job of the production when you walk onto the street at the very beginning of the film, it’s like an instant time capsule.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love the whole folk music aspect of it, because it’s not something a lot of people know with these festivals, and how friendly everyone was with each other, and we get to see this great ensemble from all of these characters within Bob’s world. Those instant connections as you meet people, and how it becomes consequential, obviously in the beginning, when he meets Woody and Pete. What conversations did you first have with what James Mangold wanted to do in how he makes his films?
Andrew Buckland: Jim is so fascinated with Bob Dylan as a character, and I think he wanted to explore this moment before he became iconic. He’s a character even in real life, it’s hard to get to understand or crack inside and see what he’s thinking. The film honors that we’re not delving inside his mental state, but we get a sense of him and how he responded to the current times, and how the music that he writes and plays is the vehicle that we get to understand more about who Bob Dylan is.
Scott Morris: You also talked about how we were getting access to Bob through the other characters as well. We’re able to get through Sylvie, Joan Pete, and everyone else because a lot of times, Bob will be playing a song, and Timothee Chalamet is giving an amazing performance. We’re seeing a lot, but sometimes Bob has this armor up so we have the other characters sometimes to learn about how Bob’s feeling and how he’s affecting them, especially with Sylvie. One of my favorite scenes is seeing Drew cut when they break up at the end, and how, you know emotional that is.
Jillian Chilingerian: When he’s trying to hold her hand through the gate. We get a really good direction of how the music influences him to give us what he is thinking and his psyche. Sometimes it’s so rare to see that within a film that’s about one person of how it all bounces around between their different perspectives, all relating to him.
Andrew Buckland: For Jim, it’s not just playing music. He’s interested in finding the character moments within the songs themselves like it’s just not someone playing and that’s it. There’s more going on here and Jim focused on exploring that so it just doesn’t feel as Jim has described a scene of dialog and then music, a scene of music.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love anytime there is a musical performance in a movie, and how that’s captured. This one immerses you in feeling like you’re part of hearing the sound for the first time. In the end, when you see everyone’s like, we don’t want this to go back to the old school. Why was anyone mad at this song?
Andrew Buckland: Exactly. Different time.
Jillian Chilingerian: I would have liked it if I was there properly. Into those concert sequences and making them feel so immersive, there’s so much happening with they want to cut off the volume and the crowd, and Bob performing.
Andrew Buckland: Well, I think that sequence took the most time, and because they shot 20-minute takes. Timothee performed those three rock songs without a break, one into the other, and it was covered by multi-cameras and there were different multiple takes. The challenge was to find the moments to honor the different stories offstage when to go away, and when to bring in the soundboard and demand it. They turn it down and Pete Seeger does the same thing and has different reactions from the cast so it’s honoring, everyone in that scene as well, and how they’re reacting, but also keeping Bob still involved, and even everyone’s story off-stage stuff. There’s no break and he’s still playing music, and he’s still involved, even a glance that conveys he’s seen them off the side. It’s all those elements that take time to craft. We joked in the cutting room that this was like the Le Mans moment of Bob Dylan.
Scott Morris: the culmination, the climax, and the scope of it is all there in that scene.
Andrew Buckland: So that one did take the longest.
Scott Morris: Yeah, very complex. Yeah, very impressive.
Andrew Buckland: We usually have our doors open in the cutting room, so everyone’s playing the music it’s echoing into the hallways and, of course when you’re editing, you’re repeating. Everyone knows these songs by heart now.

Jillian Chilingerian: Oh my gosh, that’s so funny! How much did the music and the sound inform your editing?
Scott Morris: We had Tom Sylvester in the cutting room from day one while we were cutting daily, so he was applying all these sound design elements, as well as with this film. Another character you forget about is one, there’s New York City in that period, and also for musical sequences, the crowds. Tom did an early ADR group session with the crowd on top of these amazing production tracks because every time he’s performing live, there’s always a crowd there. In the Newport sequences, they had 200 extras there, and Timothee’s playing off their energy, and they’re shouting, and a lot of that was so good, and they were so in the moment, playing off each other. We ended up using a lot of that in the final mix, supplementing with all the group and some sound design for 10,000 people to fill in. I cut the Newport sequence, times are changing, but one of the elements was the crowd interaction and how they were discovering this really important song that meant a lot to them in real time with him, and they are chanting, and they’re singing along, they’re cheering and growing so you’re cutting the sound elements and the picture elements in this way, where it’s a lot of character in the film.

Jillian Chilingerian: This film is about the influence and impact his music had on people, and it’s really about how you show that through those moments with the crowd or the people around him. He can’t even enter a room without people wanting him to play a song or like the art that he once did, and you see those moments where he has those realizations. Musicians give so much to people and it’s interesting to see how that’s framed here. In this period, we’re cycling through a few years of how his career is changing, how he’s changing, how the world around him is changing. Folk music is rising, it’s declining and we’re seeing how that’s influencing how he wants to do his sound, as well as, like, the unrest in the country. Question one is about dealing with those transitions of time and documenting these musical movements at that time and where they’re going and ebbing and flowing.
Scott Morris: Yeah, absolutely. I did the montage early into the film, where he’s performing Hard Rain. It’s Bob’s rise, it starts with him performing in a smaller venue, and it started with a few elements, his record being sold, and they kept building, and we were able to take another montage and fold it into it, and it became his involvement with civil rights and his relationship with Sylvie is filled into that. We get to Carnegie, and he’s performed for a bigger crowd, but Pete is there, and we’re seeing what the rise has meant for Pete. Folk music reaching everyone so he’s revitalized this movement of folk, it’s socially active, but you’re also seeing the fraying of these characters. Sylvie feels alienated by the fame and Pete is dealing with this as his dream, but it’s also bittersweet realizing Bob’s eclipsing him. I find this movie so heartbreaking, at the end with Pete, they do care and love for each other, but they don’t have the words to settle it at the end. There’s the transition after times of changing to the next 65 which we played with different ideas. There we we tried abstract things when we ended up landing on a title card, but also we move into this sequence in which he’s walking on the streets of McDougal, which kind of mirrors how he enters McDougal Street and the chaos of the street. It’s post-Beatles, rock and roll, and there are all these musical things swirling. He’s riding a motorcycle with his new look.
Andrew Buckland: I love how he burst out into the scene. He looks completely different with his hair, the hair, and sunglasses at night, you know, and different.
Scott Morris: Bob Dylan’s persona created,

Jillian Chilingerian: A lot of these characters tell us so much about who Bob was, outside of his music. I found Joan’s whole arc very compelling, giving that time for her to be a central character in his life. How was it to balance the juxtapositions of their careers, because you have well-known musicians in one movie, and you can see at what points they’re big, and what points they’re not in?
Andrew Buckland: Her character is great. I love her character in the film she was famous before Bob, and to see that dynamic for Bob in the beginning, and how that completely transforms later with how she reacts to that and how Bob feels about it. Their relationship didn’t work out, but there was mutual respect that remained between them because he respected her, and she did him as well.
Scott Morris: Monica does such an amazing job. Her vocals are incredible. I mean, when she goes acapella in her first performance, yeah,
Andrew Buckland: Yeah she did!
Scott Morris: Shaking I was like this is unbelievable.
Andrew Buckland: That’s her live vocal right there.

Jillian Chilingerian: Everyone’s vocals in this are so good, going back to those reactions when we see Sylvie have that realization about him and Joan and the sadness as she’s hearing the song.
Andrew Buckland: That song also was music-driven. She’s reacting, not only to them having this connection on stage but also to the way the lyrics are hitting at that moment. It’s just finding that great moment within the song that would impact her, and then have her react, and just stay with her, and she’s absorbing this song, and then she reacts to the crowd, and it just overwhelms her.
Jillian Chilingerian: Those decisions and how they all play off give you such a good picture of what’s happening.
Scott Morris: It’s very immersive.
Jillian Chilingerian: We are in the crowd and behind the scenes getting the full 360.
Scott Morris: Yes, the way you phrased that 360 it’s right. You’re getting all these different vantage points on how this music affects everyone, including our performers.

Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you both so much for this time, it was such a fun time to watch.
Andrew Buckland: Thank you so much.
Scott Morris: Thank you.

A Complete Unknown is in theaters now.
You can read our review of the film here.