Master an Authentic Jump Scare With ‘Oddity’ Editor Brian Phillip Davis

In honor of (almost, pretty much, who cares) officially horror movie season, let’s laud the editing of the impeccably spooky Sundance darling Oddity, shall we?

Oddity isn’t only one of the best horror flicks of the year, it’s also one of the scariest and best made. We all saw that terrifying wooden man in the trailer, but if you haven’t seen him in action already, boy, what a treat. Wooden man aside, Oddity compiles all kinds of atmospheric horror in a tightly wound murder-mystery ghost story for the ages. It’s good stuff for horror fans and cinephiles alike, and certainly deserves some attention now that it’s readily available on Shudder and VOD alike.

But how was it all edited together, you as?

Well, we were curious too, and were lucky enough to chat with the incredibly cool and kind editor of Oddity, Brian Phillip Davis. In our chat with Davis, we dive deep into two of every young editors worst nightmares: crafting a jump scare, and breaking into the industry as a respected feature editor.

Which is scarier? Read on to find out. Or… else…

Editor’s note: the following quotes from Brian Phillip Davis are edited for length and clarity.

Breaking into Horror From Horror-Comedy 

“[Before Oddity] I’ve only worked on horror comedies before. This was probably my first straight horror, if that makes sense. So it was good to do that. I think the horror comedies are kind of difficult to do. It was fun to finally work on a more traditional horror film.

[Horror and comedy movies] are sort of the only types of movies that you can get an audible reaction from an audience. So when you’re testing the stuff, you can hear if they’re laughing, or if they’re scared or jumping. It’s fun in that way,

When you bring them together, horror and comedy, it can be difficult. It can be tricky to keep everything balanced. Usually it can end up being not very funny or not very scary.”

The Art of Editing the Jump Scare 

“I think jump scares … I think they work if they feel like they’re earned. As long as it’s not involving a cat, then you’re in trouble. If it’s a cat jumping out of a cupboard or something, I mean, that’ll scare anybody. Or if you just whacking a loud noise for no reason, that’ll probably work. But I think in Oddity, we tried to make them all feel earned, like Damian [Mc Arthur], the director, he loves to scare people, but he likes to do it in an authentic way.

With a lot of the jump scares you kind of know that there’s probably going to be a jump scare, but it still surprises you. I know there’s the one in the tent when Dani (Carolyn Bracken) knows that somebody’s there and the audience knows that, yeah, someone’s probably going to jump out at any moment. But with that one, I think we successfully managed to surprises people, even though they know it’s coming. It’s hard to cut stuff like that—it’s just trial and error. You just keep working on it and working on it, and I think it’s crucial to try and share those edits with people as well. Not just for me and Damien, but to test on people and get a sense of whether they’re working or not.

That’s difficult for us as filmmakers because we know what’s going on and we know what all the motivations of all the characters are, because we’ve read the entire script.

So for us, the most difficult part of the job is to put yourself into the audience’s head and try and remember what the audience knows. At this point in the movie, we have that scene at the start with Olin and Dani at the door. From the audience’s perspective, hopefully at this point, they’re thinking, “Oh my God, there’s a scary man at the door. She’s in trouble.” But obviously then later in the movie, we find out that he’s a little more sympathetic of a character, and the actor’s playing it in that way.

So I suppose in the edit for that scene, we’re trying to make sure that he’s still scary. Even though we know all this information, we don’t want the audience to know that yet or get a sense of that. At the same time, we don’t want to cheat them too much either. If you watch the movie a second time, everything that’s happening should still make sense. So we just ramped things up, have him banging the door a little bit, a couple extra nervous breaths, or something. Try and ramp it up to make everyone a little more on edge.”

How to Balance the Script in the Edit 

“There was a lot of differences. The order in the script is a lot different to how it turned out in the final film.

The very beginning of the film was originally the scene of Declan in the halfway house, and he finds the body and the glass eye, and that was originally how the movie opened. Then the Olin and Dani at the door scene happened as a flashback about 25 minutes into the movie. So there was a lot of restructuring, and a lot of that came from Damien as well.

Damien would have ideas about how to rearrange things, just to make sure the story was told in the most entertaining way possible. When I’m editing, obviously I’ll always start with what’s in the script, and then after that I start working with the director. We’ll start to deviate from the script and do a little bit of rewriting in the edit.”

Remember the Wooden Man? 

“So I mean, even from reading the script, it was kind of a really creaky thing. I remember reading the script and reading the [wooden man] scenes, and this wooden man was sitting at the table, and even as you’re reading the script, you’re just waiting for this wooden man to come to life. You sense that it was going to happen sooner or later.

In the final cut we were treating it a little bit like Alien. We were trying to not show too much of the wooden man. So obviously there are shots of the wooden man where if the light was catching him in a certain way, or if he just wasn’t quite at the right angle, it just didn’t work as well. So we had to be really, really careful about how much of the wooden man we put in there. Too much and he’s just not scary anymore. So that was probably the biggest challenge [editing].

As for the production practicality of the wooden man…

It was a mixture of… there was a wooden man model that was sitting at the table for most of the time. That model has been on tour around all the film festivals around the world. I think he’s in Dublin right now. He’s probably making his way back to where Damian lives.

But yeah, obviously at a certain point then it’s a guy in a suit. I think there were a pair of legs, there were some hands, there were different bits and pieces that they used depending on the shot. I’m just seeing the footage that’s coming in, so I don’t even know what the complete story is behind that.

Paul McDonald designed the wooden man, so he’s the guy to credit for that.”

Invaluable Insight for Aspiring Feature Editors 

“I would just say to get as much experience as you can—working on whatever you can.

Whether it’s a short film or a music video or commercials, whatever, but just try and get as many credits as an editor, and then put those out into the world somehow. Go to film festivals, go to meetups. I know in Belfast there’s a meetup called Film Devour, and they show a lot of different short films from a lot of different budget levels. Most of them are zero.

So just get involved in the film making community wherever it is you live, and eventually word of mouth will spread around that editing is the thing that you do, and eventually you’ll get asked to edit for other people.

I think I’ve edited something like 40 short films in total. I was just working on shorts, and I would get directors that would come back and I would be their guy, basically. Then eventually one of those directors got their first feature film opportunity. [For me] it was a guy called Chris Ball. We made a feature film together called Bad Day for the Cut. It was like a revenge thriller about a farmer that’s looking for his mother’s pillars, and that went to Sundance.

You’re just trying to find directors to work with. It’s like you’re trying to back the right horses, and eventually one of them will make the break and they’ll bring you with them, and then you just hold onto their coattails.”

Catch Oddity now on Shudder.