‘Missing’ Crew Explains How They Told a Thriller Almost Entirely Using FaceTime, iPhone and Ring Footage - Variety

SPOILER ALERT: This communicative contains large spoilers for the ending of “Missing,” presently playing successful theaters.

“Missing,” the latest merchandise from Sony Pictures Entertainment, is told wholly done machine screens and smartphones.

Storm Reid is June, a girl utilizing modern exertion to way down her mom, played by Nia Long, who has gone missing thousands of miles distant successful Colombia.

Nicholas Johnson and Will Merrick’s follow-up to the 2018 thriller “Searching” posed a situation for editors Austin Keeling and Arielle Zakowsk astir however to archer the communicative and make hostility arsenic June races against the timepiece to find her mother.

Says Keeling, “Arielle and I took screenshots connected our computers and enactment unneurotic the full movie arsenic a temp version. We were capable to play astir done the editing process and take however to screen June’s laptop, however to archer it successful the astir effectual way.”

While FaceTime, Ring and the iPhone were conscionable immoderate tech storytelling devices successful the film, co-directors Johnson and Merrick didn’t really sprout connected iPhones. Says Merrick, “We built much precocious rigs that could simulate what that [footage] would look like. We could spell arsenic heavy successful the extent of tract arsenic we needed to.”

They approached the machine surface cinematically, holding a bushed whenever June got a caller connection successful her inbox oregon panning the camera dilatory crossed her surface for the adjacent reveal.

Zakowsk points retired that a cardinal origin successful telling the communicative from June’s constituent of presumption was not conscionable however she utilized technology, but the velocity astatine which she utilized it. In the property of TikTok, teens determination astatine a faster pace, and truthful that needed to beryllium reflected successful the storytelling. She says, “The velocity of her rodent flying crossed the screen, however accelerated she types, however galore antithetic things she’s multitasking astatine the aforesaid clip — that each stemmed from this thought of what does it look similar erstwhile an 18-year-old is utilizing the machine compared to a 40-year-old.”

And portion the movie is not a nonstop sequel to “Searching,” the creators were definite to enactment successful easter eggs that telephone backmost to the 2018 film, including the true-crime amusement June watches with her friends, “Unfiction.” The occurrence they ticker successful “Missing” is astir the disappearance of Margot Kim, the quality who went missing successful “Searching.”

As acold arsenic the twist Johnson says, “We were capable to enactment each the clues successful beforehand of you. There’s a substance from Sev Ohanian [who is the film’s producer] and it says, ‘It’s evident your ma was lying. Your dad’s not dead.’ He’s spoiling the full movie for you.”

Johnson besides revealed further clues to the father’s character: “At the opening of the movie there’s a opus connected Spotify that says ‘Never Dead,’ and there’s a notation to Darth Vader.”