The first day I knew how effective the scares in IT: Welcome to Derry would be was the day my assistant editor had to look away from the screen. The dailies had just landed for a sequence we called “Mother-Thing,” a horrific set piece in Episode 2 in which Pennywise takes the form of Ronnie’s long-dead mother and drags her by an umbilical cord into a tooth-filled maw. My magnificent assistant editor, Janie Gaddy Casey, was prepping the footage when fake blood spurted from Ronnie’s mouth, and she instinctively reached for the trash can, just in case. If it could make Janie flinch, I knew we’d found the right edge to calibrate from.Editing horror isn’t about cutting for shock, it’s about calibrating emotion – fear, tension, empathy – until the body reacts before the brain does. That became the bar to hit for every scare: it had to feel earned, not forced. I wanted viewers to reach for their trash cans, too. Not out of disgust, but because the moment felt so real. My job as one of the editors on Welcome to Derry was to make sure every scare carried that same weight. - YouTube www.youtube.com Humanity and Empathy As the Core of Fear Fear might drive the genre, but it only works when it’s rooted in empathy. Horror lands hardest when you care about the people in danger. That’s why stories about children strike such a deep chord. Their innocence makes you want to reach into the frame...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Thursday, 27 November