{"id":465544,"date":"2026-05-02T21:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T21:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/465544\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T21:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T21:29:21","slug":"michael-movie-editor-on-cutting-the-film-and-removing-jaafars-voiceover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/465544\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Michael’ Movie Editor on Cutting the Film and Removing Jaafar’s Voiceover"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe original cut of the biopic \u201cMichael<\/a>\u201d hit the four-hour mark as it charted Michael Jackson\u2019s journey from a young boy (played by Juliano Valdi) singing with his brothers as \u201cThe Jackson 5\u201d to rising to become a global megastar (his nephew, Jaafar Jackson<\/a>), and ending with the King of Pop selling out London\u2019s Wembley Stadium on the \u201cBad\u201d world tour.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs previously reported<\/a>, the accusations of child abuse were scrapped from the film after attorneys for the Jackson estate, which served as a producer, realized there was a clause in a settlement with one of the singer\u2019s accusers, Jordan Chandler, that barred the depiction or mention of him in any movie. Thus, \u201cMichael\u201d needed to be recut.<\/p>\n

\n\tEnter John Ottman<\/a>, trusted collaborator of producer Graham King<\/a> and editor of \u201cBohemian Rhapsody.\u201d (Editors Tom Cross and Conrad Buff had worked on previous versions; Ottman brought on editor Harry Yoon to aid in the workload.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe editor only intended to be on board the production for a couple of weeks to help navigate the many challenges the film was facing, but to get the project where it needed to be required a complete overhaul. \u201cThat\u2019s when the transition happened,\u201d he says. \u201cI ended up recutting the whole movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOttman, who has an \u201cedited by\u201d credit on the film, explains: \u201cDuring that time, I focused on injecting much-needed intimacy into Michael\u2019s creative process, and much more humor and energy. Graham really responded to the shifts I was making \u2014 like the way I eliminated 25 minutes of voiceover so that the audience could be more involved in Michael\u2019s childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOttman, who watched the full four-hour version of the film, focused on making the early storyline more succinct to establish why Michael was anxious to get out from under his father\u2019s thumb. He also focused on Michael\u2019s creative artistry and aimed to really get inside his head.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI did all these sequences of him tinkering with his music,\u201d Ottman says. \u201cThere\u2019s a little montage with his finger-snapping and things like when he\u2019s at the bulletin board in his studio [trying to write a song].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOttman also wanted to build on the loneliness factor. The childhood sequences show a young Michael growing up without any real friends, so as he becomes famous, he starts adopting animals, including Bubbles the chimp, his llama and pet snake. \u201cI hope people pick up on the fact that those [animals] were his real friends,\u201d Ottman says.<\/p>\n

\n\tOttman and King usually see eye-to-eye, but they differed over the voiceover sequence. Originally, Jaafar, as the older Michael, spoke over clips of his childhood. \u201cYou weren\u2019t in the scenes and experiencing that ride. That was one of my major accomplishments, restoring those scenes to be in real time,\u201d Ottman says, explaining that focusing on young Michael helped ground the emotion. \u201cThat feeling and warmth you have for him really transfers into the future with the older Michael Jackson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tElsewhere, Ottman looked for moments where he could \u201cdig out as much humor as possible.\u201d Those included moments like when little Michael can\u2019t keep his feet still in the recording studio, or when the older Michael walks his pet llama down the street, and he sees some neighbors passing by, or when Michael slips in a Prince joke. According to Ottman, those moments \u201chelped not only endear us to the character, but just keeps the audience having a fun time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOttman also borrowed a few shots from the second half of the original cut to make the scenes blend seamlessly. For example, when Bill Bray (KeiLyn Durrel Jones) is hired as Michael\u2019s head of security, Ottman says, \u201cin the next scene, they\u2019re performing at this county fair, and Bill\u2019s nowhere to be seen. So luckily, he\u2019s sitting near a Ferris wheel in Neverland Ranch in the second half of the film, so I just used those shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe one sequence that kept Ottman up at night was the \u201cBad\u201d concert scene that ends the film. At this point, Michael had successfully broken away from his father\u2019s control and was on his solo tour. Ottman calls it his \u201cmini-Live Aid,\u201d referring to the iconic Queen concert sequence<\/a> in \u201cBohemian Rhapsody<\/a>.\u201d The scene needed to \u201ckick ass\u201d and be character-driven, and also mark a celebration of Jackson being free.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWith movies like this, if the storyline of the narrative of the film just stops for the sequences, the sequences tend to die,\u201d Ottman says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a conscious choice to bookend the film with \u201cBad.\u201d By teasing the performance at the start of the film, Ottman says, \u201cyou\u2019re telling the audience we\u2019re going to come back to this, and it\u2019s more fulfilling when we come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen looking through the footage, it was clear that Jaafar Jackson\u2019s performance really brought the scene to life. \u201cJaafar gave me so many lightning bolt moments,\u201d he says. \u201cMy mission is to get every one of them on the screen.\u201d To spotlight just how good Jaafar was, Ottman favored close-ups to highlight his emotions and the way he sang Michael\u2019s lyrics, and used wider shots to capture the dance moves and atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe highlight of editing the film for Ottman was seeing Jaafar Jackson and Valdi\u2019s performances. \u201cI\u2019m witnessing the beginning of two great careers,\u201d he says. \u201cI was there when it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The original cut of the biopic \u201cMichael\u201d hit the four-hour mark as it charted Michael Jackson\u2019s journey from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[18,117,19,17,97557,204423,19695,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-465544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jaafar-jackson","13":"tag-john-ottman","14":"tag-michael","15":"tag-music"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116507113457714365","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}