In the Warner Bros. feature
The End of Oak Street, a cosmic event rips a neighborhood from its suburban location and transports it to an unknown place where dinosaurs still roam. The Platt family discovers that their very survival now depends on sticking together. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor are joined by Maisy Stella and Christian Convery to make up the fictional family. The project was written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, produced by J.J. Abrams and shot by director of photography Michael Gioulakis. ILM handled visual effects work.
John Axelrad, whose credits include Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z and Crazy Heart, edited The End of Oak Street, and recently sat down with Post to discuss his experience and workflow.
John, looking at your list of credits, you’ve done a lot of film work?
“Yeah. I've been geared towards feature films. As you do one, then you get another and another, and believe me, I'm very happy and blessed to have had a very fulfilling career doing features. They're a lot of fun. It's not something I want to get pigeonholed doing though, because this business, they do want to pigeonhole you.”
With credits like Ad Astra, and the new film The End of Oak Street, it looks like you are comfortable with heavy VFX films?
“Lately I've been doing some visual effects movies, and I think it's important because so much of the industry is going in that direction. But honestly, what I thrive on are genuine, heartfelt stories with emotion and characters you really care about. I’m not just looking for something that's all visual effects and spectacle-based. What really drives me, and why I became a film editor is, I just love telling stories on the human level.”
In the case of The End of Oak Street, how did you get involved?
“Well, my agent is very instrumental in helping me get movies, but at the same time, he's limited if he goes to the studio and the studio hasn't really worked with me before. In this case, I haven't really done a Warner Bros. studio film…I had been following (director) David Robert Mitchell, because I love his movies. Not just It Follows, which I think is brilliant, but his other two movies…the one before this, Under the Silver Lake. And I heard that his normal editor, who was Julio Perez, was not available. I didn't know Julio, but I had an editor colleague of mine, Harry Yoon, who had worked with Julio, and I asked Harry to put us in touch, and he did! And I had a great conversation. We had a lunch, and then he recommended me to David. Literally, the next day, I got the script. I talked with David (and) a week later, I got the job!”
What were the needs for this film?
“Reading the script and having spoken with David, what's most important about The End of Oak Street is the family dynamic - understanding the family and understanding the characters and their relationships, and the whole character arc. You can have as much action as you want, but it won't help the movie.”
What kind of timeframe were you working under?
“I actually started the project in March of 2024 - way back. That's when they started shooting. It was probably a 50-day shoot, which is ambitious for a film of this scope. David and I worked on it together, and we first had edited action scenes, because in a film like this, they do something called ‘post vis,’ which means they take the live-action sequences with the dinosaurs, and then they add pretty high-quality visual effects, but they're not the official visual effects… So we had to do that out of order. We had a preview screening of it, and the studio and David, we all agreed we needed to do some more shooting to fill in the gaps. As I mentioned, [it was] very ambitious. It was a tight schedule for a film like this, but the problem [was], we had to wait for Anne Hathaway, because she was very, very busy, as you can imagine…The visual effects take a while, so we wrapped this project up last November.”
Did that give you a little less pressure as far as a deadline?
“There's always pressure, because the studio doesn't want to keep spending money if they don't have to. So, it's not like they're saying, ‘Oh, take all the time you need.’ But not having a hard release date prevented us from having to work seven days a week, so it was a more humane schedule, and we appreciated that.”
Where were you working in relation to where production was taking place?
“On this particular film, we were in Los Angeles, and they were shooting in Atlanta. On some projects, they do take you on-location for the shoot. But now, with so many remote working platforms, it's so easy to share cuts…They were shooting there, and I was editing here from day-1. When they started principal photography, it allows me to put the film together - out of order - in the order that they're shooting, and also to let them know that, ‘Hey guys, this scene is great, but I think we're missing this.’ Or, ‘Hey, the scene is coming together so well, I think you guys don't need to shoot this other scene.’”
Where were you set up? Did you work out of studio space or from home?
“Well, I love working with a crew, so I really don't want to work at home. I think it's very valuable to have my assistant editors on-site with me. I love to mentor, and I'm very proactive in mentoring my assistants. I've had so many go on to great success. I've had three assistants get nominated for an Academy Award, and two that won an Academy Award for Editing, so I love the mentorship process. I often share editing credits with my assistants, or try to.
“In this case, we had to be at Bad Robot in Santa Monica, which was the deal that J.J. Abrams made. Then we eventually moved to Warner Bros.”
When did you start working more closely with the director?
“We were in a scenario where the director and I were at Warner Bros., and my crew was still at Bad Robot in Santa Monica, so we were in Burbank because David lives in that area. He didn't want to do the commute, and I was very glad not to have to do the commute. At the same time, I was disappointed that my crew was separated from me. But there's software called LucidLink…and we’re basically sharing an Avid project remotely. It was pretty amazing how it worked.”
Is Avid your preferred editing system?
“Yeah, I think Avid is definitely the industry standard in Hollywood. I know that (Adobe) Premiere is very popular, especially in indies, commercials and whatnot, but I learned Avid in 1991, so I was right at the infancy of digital editing in general. And at the time, there was probably 10 competing platforms.”
Editors seem to really like the ScriptSync feature?
“It [lines the script up] with all the takes, and I can basically compare a line reading for all the takes in the movie. So, if you shoot 10 takes, and then the actor does it several times within the take, it's all lined up, and it's a great organizational tool. Especially when you're working with directors that really want to analyze performance, which most do. For that reason alone, I'm a die-hard for Avid. At this stage of my career, I don't want to do another platform.”
There are quite a few scenes where VFX are front and center. And other scenes where subtle visual effects appear in the background. What scene would you point to as a highlight?
“(I’d) say it's a sequence rather than a scene, but the sequence when Ewan is out exploring the neighborhood, looking for the family dog. The kids are still at home, and they see something out the window. There's a whole series of scenes. Anne Hathaway's character, Denise, is going to look after the older lady, Mrs. Huddleston. What was nice about it is, it was very modular, because there are different pieces to this whole sequence as they're discovering that they're not still in their old environment.
“I was able to move things around. We're able to say, ‘Well, let's move, Ewan walking and put it here, and then when Anne Hathaway is going in the house, let's delay that a bit.’ And what's on the page written in the script is great, but then editing is a final rewrite, and you are dealing with so many factors, such as actor performances and the way it's shot and the pacing. So that way you can move things around. That did require a lot of moving pieces, and I felt we really got to a good place with how it was structured.
“And then with the visual effects, literally, we're dealing with visual effects stunt guys wearing these gray suits and carrying a stick that has a dinosaur head on it. I'm so impressed (with) how the actors reacted to something that clearly wasn't there, but using their imagination and acting prowess.
“And then, of course, we deal with the post vis. That informs us, ‘Okay, maybe we want to spend a little more time in this shot because of the creatures.’ Or maybe I held this shot too long, and we gotta get out of it, so there's always a give and take. It's constantly evolving.”