of “Midsommar.”

This scene directly succeeds a scene

in which our protagonist, Dani,

played by Florence Pugh, is pressured

into taking mushrooms.

She recently suffered a very, very serious loss

and is probably not in the best place

to take psychotropic drugs.”

“Can you feel that, the energy coming up from the earth?”

“A big challenge that we took on in this film

was putting the spectator into the experience

of somebody going through a mushroom trip.

This is the first scene that kind of

introduces psychedelic elements

in the film that will be more prevalent later on.”

“Look, the trees too, they’re breathing.”

“There’s a lot of sound design work here

that’s also helping bring us into her subjectivity.

When she looks up at the tree, we

notice that the tree now seems to be bending and warping,

that the texture seems to be moving.

As I was working with the visual-effects artists

on these shots, we managed to experiment a lot

and find what was too much and what was not enough.”

“You guys are like my family.”

“I would say that some of these shots

we had 80 versions of.

And then when she stands up, Dani

is thrown instantly into a bad trip.”

“I’m going to go for a walk.”

“And from here we kind of enter this negative vortex — “

“No, no, no, no.

Don’t think that.

You’re fine.

It’s almost your birthday.”

“ — where we start playing with facial warping,

warping expressions.

This effect was especially difficult to accomplish,

and so a big part of my job and the job

of my editorial team was actually

to be merciless in the way we watched these effects as they

came in —

“They were laughing at me.”

“ — to see if there were any effects in the background

that jumped too suddenly or where the effect feels

especially digital.”

“You want to come meet my friends?”

“Thank you, I’m — “

“The tripping effect for the background

is more pronounced at the very end of the shot than anywhere

else in the film.

So the disorientation that the viewer

might feel at this moment is more extreme

than they will feel again.”