In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Oscar contenders who have collaborated on a previous project. Here, we speak with Don’t Look Up composer Nicholas Britell and Power of the Dog editor Peter Sciberras, who previously worked together on the 2019 film The King.

Technically, composer Nicholas Britell and editor Peter Sciberras have never met. Yes, they qualify for our Reunited series, having worked together on 2019’s The King, directed by David Michôd and starring Timothée Chalamet. But the unique nature of their work, while still dependent on collaboration, means they can do it all without being together, or even on the same continent—though they’ll both tell you it’s much easier to do it face-to-face.

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Britell, who is based in New York, most recently created the score for Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up and is also known for his work on HBO’s breakout hit Succession and Barry Jenkins’s films. Sciberras, who lives in Australia, previously worked with Michôd on War Machine and The Rover before editing Jane Campion’s gorgeous drama, The Power of the Dog.

Vanity Fair reunited Britell and Sciberras over Zoom to talk about their craft, their most recent work, and the biggest misconceptions about what they do for a living.

Vanity Fair: For people who may not know, maybe you can use The King as an example to explain how the two of you collaborate even from different places and how each of your work affects the other.

Peter Sciberras: I guess in the edit stage, we start temping with music really early on. So, we kind of figure out where we think we need music and the duration of it and the tone of it. But then, at a certain point, the real music needs to start getting written and those pieces need to be replaced as soon as possible. That’s essentially a very simple description of the process. That’s where the back and forth really begins. We start the conversation and then the conversation really takes off when everyone gets a thought.

Nicholas Britell: Yeah. I think on my side, it’s interesting because I’d never worked with David [Michod] before or Peter, and oftentimes with directors who I have had longer collaborations with, usually I get involved really early, like with Barry Jenkins or Adam McKay, they’ll send me a script, for example. And usually I like to write stuff even before they shoot, sometimes. Like with Don’t Look Up, I actually wrote a piece that Adam played for actors on set.

So, The King was different for me in that sense where I was coming in later to the process, after they had been experimenting with different concepts like Peter was saying. And I think that was interesting for me to look at things and say, “Hey, you don’t have music here. Do you want music here?” As a composer, you’re trying to provide your instincts and your sensibility, but also it really is a conversation. I try to create the music, hopefully that they’re hoping for in a way where you try things and if it feels good, we keep following that. And if it doesn’t, we stop doing that, try something else. It’s very much very exploratory. And for me, the key was David coming to New York and getting to sit with David, because I always think that speaking of the long distance, it’s very difficult when you are doing long distance.

Sciberras: Yeah, absolutely. It’s that instant feedback. And it’s not just language, it’s body language—it’s just excitement. It’s really hard to get that in an email or a quick phone call, especially with time zones. It’s kind of amazing how far we’ve come in terms of remote things, but nothing that can replace that in the room experience for sure.

Britell: I think that’s a good point that speaks to the complexity of these projects, and a film as an art form, which is that there is so much inherent in the work that to try to simplify it or communicate it just over with limited means is actually quite difficult.

Since you are emphasizing how important it is to have in person time with your director, how did you handle the early days of the pandemic when everyone was locked down?

Britell: I remember early on, we were entering postproduction on The Underground Railroad. Barry and I work really closely together and always have. I remember setting up a FaceTime video and angling it towards my screen and being like, “Can you see this?” And we did this thing, and we sort of barely did that a couple times and then realized that I had to go to L.A. to work with him. My wife and I moved to L.A. for about six months. So the answer was, we tried very briefly and then gave up.

Sciberras: Power of the Dog was I think maybe almost two months of a three and a bit months shoot in when we got shut down. So we had like two thirds of the film shot, but there was a lot missing. There was no start to the movie. Jane and I were going to start doing remote stuff on the bits we had, and then before we did that, I strung together an assembly with just slugs for all the scenes missing, just so we could see roughly where the assembly was at and then quickly after playing that we were like, “Okay, there’s really no point starting to cut because there’s just too much missing.” It just felt pointless. So I had a good three months off just like not doing anything until the shoot picked back up. And then when I finally had everything, and I was in Melbourne and Jane was in New Zealand shooting, we finally got together, but I had to do two weeks of quarantine, which was actually remote cutting. So we set up an edit suite in a quarantine hotel in Auckland and that was really the first two weeks I ever really spent with Jane. I was on this tiny little hotel desk. It was a weird way to start a relationship, but there’s one thing about the remote thing, you kind of have less chats and you just get into it, just kind of do the nuts and bolts stuff. So we actually did get a lot done.

One thing Power of The Dog and Don’t Look Up have in common is dealing with tone. When you signed on to these projects, what did you consider to be the biggest challenge when it came to how your work would affect the tone of these projects?

Britell: Don’t Look Up was interesting because I wrote this piece called “The Overture to Logic and Knowledge.” The idea was, what’s the sound of, like, a reverence for rationality and logic and perhaps sort of feeling the higher aspirations of humankind as a starting point.

So then you can imagine what the opposite of that sound is like, what if we don’t have any of that? And the opposite of that was actually the really tough question. Because I think in some ways a sincere feeling of reverence is actually a much more straight-forward concept musically, than what is the sound of an absurdist rollercoaster?

I went to L.A. a few times and was in the edit with Adam and with Hank Corwin, our editor, and it was very experimental. There was this moment where I said to Adam, “What would it sound like if we imagined we’re in World War II and we’re going to lose World War II, because that’s how it felt or that’s how it feels with the question of climate change.” I threw in the kitchen sink of instruments to give it that sense of absurdity. There’s like a toy piano and there’s all these banjos mixed way too loud and doling trumpets and a bass saxophone and all this stuff. There’s two drum kits playing at the same time. It felt like a roller coaster going off a cliff. But I think at the base of it, there’s also a pathos hopefully in there because I think the film itself is this huge tragic comedy. It’s definitely funny, but then ultimately it’s actually quite moving and hopefully profound as we see what unfolds.

Sciberras: Our first discussions were really about tension. That was what we talked about a lot when I first read the script. So a lot of it’s communicated really in the dailies to me from just interpreting what Jane’s doing with the actors and with the camera and with Ari Wegner, our cinematographer. I feel like that conversation is less heard in words often and it just presents itself, just in interpreting Jane’s direction. And, it’s a really tricky film because the source of tension and the tone shifts into a far more romantic space, even though there’s still quite a lot of danger for an audience of where it could go. We totally definitely knew that was going to be a real balancing act and how to maintain that throughout.

Since working with the director is such a pivotal part of both your jobs, what traits do you feel are most important for a director to have for your collaboration to work well?

Britell: I think the one thing above all that I find the most helpful as a composer is when a director is just open to exploring things, and that seems maybe simple, but I think it’s actually a really deep trait, where when a director is willing to hear something that might be totally different than what they had imagined and is always willing to say, “Yeah, let me see that. Sure. Absolutely.” And not just say it out of politeness, but to say it out of actual curiosity. If that’s not present, I think it becomes pretty difficult to create a new, and to really explore almost anything. Then in a way you’re just trying to almost do telepathy of someone else’s vision, whereas in the best version of this, there’s a bit of telepathy, of course, but there’s also a sense of mutual discovery.

Sciberras: I would totally agree with all those, and then I’ll add one quality that I absolutely love that Jane has in spades is like a real clarity of understanding when something is striking the right emotion or feeling right—like on an instinctual level. Because it’s a long process and it’s nice to know that someone’s radar is really finely tuned and they can be brave and confident with choices in that way.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about the work you do?

Britell: That’s a great question. I think that sometimes people think that it isn’t a collaboration in a way, sometimes people think that every idea in the movie is exactly my first thought, and I just say, “Here’s my vision.” As if the music in the movie, the way everything comes together, the way it’s laid out, where it goes, everything is just sort of my thought. It’s this constant collaboration. We don’t do these things in a vacuum, there’s no way that I can do my job without incredible editors and incredible directors. It’s fully a team sport.

Sciberras: One of the big ones is like just the simplification of the role: “Okay you’re just putting shots together.” But I guess just how involved editorial is, how it’s kind of got tentacles into every department and from what the effects and music and sound, and it’s kind of like, you’re there and you are making decisions that inform the rest of the process in some way, or you’re having a conversation with each department and it’s coming back and you’re figuring into the whole with the director. So I think that’s a big misconception of just where the edit stops and starts. It doesn’t rarely stop until the film’s completely finished.

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