Fine-tuning Bohemian Rhapsody

Queen’s showstopping 21-minute gig during 1985’s Live Aid is a contender for the greatest live performance in rock music history and is “the Star Wars Death Star sequence” of a new film according to its Editor.

“It is the moment the whole movie is building towards so there was a lot of pressure to fulfil people’s expectations of what that might be,” explains John Ottman, the editor of Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. “The biggest fear making this film was whether ending at Live Aid, with no epilogue, was going to be memorable and leave people emotionally satisfied or leave them blank.”

The film has had a turbulent history as befitting its rock and roll subject. Over a decade in which a revolving door of stars (Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Whishaw signed to play the lead) and directors (Tom Hooper and Dexter Fletcher) were attached, the final script has the blessing of the band’s guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. The director is Bryan Singer (whose credits include most of the X-Men franchise) although Fletcher returned to direct about a third of principal photography after Singer was fired allegedly due to misconduct on set.

“The film is the classic narrative arc of alienated artist and inflated ego, who is then humbled and who finally brings the band back together for triumphal come back,” says Ottman. “We tell it in a down to earth fashion with nothing hyper real about it except for the concert pieces. These, I made a little more stylistic. I didn’t want to represent them as a straight [forward] concerts otherwise you’d risk losing sight of the story but instead to have each piece move the narrative forward.”

During the band’s first big tour of the U.S, for example, a sequence is inserted about Freddie’s visit to a truck stop bathroom. “It’s the first glimpse into his sexuality,” says Ottman. Also, in the U.S tour sequence, Mercury calls out the names of the states and cities they play as a device to speed the timeline.

While all editors will have a hand in sound design and many have musical or sound editing experience, Ottman is…