Episode 055 - Ghostbusters: Afterlife with Dana Glauberman, ACE & Nathan Orloff

The Editor’s Cut – Episode 055 – “Ghostbusters: Afterlife with Dana Glauberman, ACE & Nathan Orloff”

Dana Glauberman:
I was told long ago, “Put a comma after a scene, not a period.” So you want to just keep the movie flowing, and anything that stops the movie… Stops the story from being told, not necessarily take it out, but reevaluate it and see if it’s actually needed.

Sarah Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Editor’s Cut. I’m your host, Sarah Taylor. We would like to point out that the lands on which we have created this podcast, and that many of you may be listening to us from, are part of ancestral territory. It is important for all of us to deeply acknowledge that we are on ancestral territory that has long served as a place where Indigenous peoples have lived, met and interacted. We honor, respect and recognize these nations that have never relinquished their rights or sovereign authority over the lands and waters on which we stand today. We encourage you to reflect on the history of the land, the rich culture, the many contributions and the concerns that impact Indigenous individuals and communities. Land acknowledgements are the start to a deeper action.

Today’s episode is the masterclass that took place at the Calgary International Film Festival on September 26th, 2021 with the editors from “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”, Dana Glauberman, ACE and Nathan Orloff. Dana Glauberman, ACE is an award-winning film editor known for her work on critically acclaimed projects, including “Juno”, “Up in the Air” and “The Mandalorian”. She has garnered recognition for her craft, receiving five ACE Emmy Award nominations, a BAFTA Award nomination, a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and three Editor of the Year accolades. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” will be Glauberman’s seventh feature film partnership with director, Jason Reitman. She’s currently working on Disney+ “The Book of Boba Fett”.

Nathan Orloff is an editor who has worked in various positions in post-production, before cutting with Jason Reitman on “Tully”. He’s been to a galaxy far, far away and where no one has gone before. With his latest feature, he’s busted ghosts one frame at a time with “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”. Nathan recently finished “Plan B,” a critically acclaimed comedy for Hulu, that champion diverse stories and voices, both on and off the screen.

Speaker 3:
And action. This is The Editors cut.

Speaker 4:
A CCE podcast.

Speaker 5:
Exploring

Speaker 6:
Exploring

Speaker 7:
Exploring the art

Speaker 4:
of picture editing

Sarah Taylor:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the CCE master class with the editors from Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Dana Glauberman, ACE and Nate Orloff. Welcome to the Calgary International Film Festival.

Dana Glauberman:
Thank you so much for having us.

Sarah Taylor:
Nate is joining us from Berlin, which I think is amazing, so thank you. I don’t know the time difference, but I’m guessing that either is really late or really early. So my first question to both of you is: Tell us how you became part of working this team for Ghostbusters: Afterlife and what your relationship with the Ghostbusters franchise was prior to working on the film. We’ll start with Dana.

Dana Glauberman:
I got involved with Ghostbusters because of my longstanding relationship with not just Jason, but also Ivan. This is my seventh feature film collaboration with Jason, starting a long time ago with “Thank You For Smoking”, but prior to that, I was an assistant editor for Ivan on several of the movies that he directed and or produced, and I also edited a movie for Ivan, so that kind of brings me into the world of ghost busting just by default, I guess.

Sarah Taylor:
Do you have any memories or feelings about Ghostbusters prior to being part of the film?

Dana Glauberman:
Oh my God, so the original Ghostbusters was so long ago, I’m aging myself, but I was in high school when the original Ghostbusters came out. And I just remember going to the movies with my friends and you know, coming out of it. The Ghostbusters song was so catchy, singing the Ghostbusters song and the Halloween costumes and.. quotes and.. all of that kind of stuff. But it actually, is kind of interesting because you can still turn on the original Ghostbusters from that long ago and it still holds up today. I could turn it on any day of the week and still enjoy it, so it’s fun to see.

Sarah Taylor:
I think I watch it once year usually. And Nate, how about you?

Nathan Orloff:
So my first time working with Jason was on Tully, I actually started on that film first assistant, and so I ended up being an additional editor on that movie, working with Jason on montage. Then he brought me on to the front runner as an additional and so then Ghostbusters was a sort of big opportunity and I felt very, very, very grateful to Jason and grateful for the opportunity to work with Dana on something that is.. You know, so deeply meaningful to not just to a lot of people, but to me. Ghostbusters felt like it was just one of those films that was on the shelf, growing up, that VHS that I would just pop in. It was between Return of the Jedi, Last Crusade, Ghostbusters, I would just pop it in and that was some of my favorite movies to watch.

Sarah Taylor:
Well, speaking of working together, I’m curious, how did you two work as a team of editors on this film? Did you each tackle your own scenes? Did you, you know, do a scene and then pass it onto the next? Kind of tell me what your collaboration was like?

Dana Glauberman:
I think Nate and I worked really, really well together. The original plan was that Nate was going to tackle a lot of the visual effects scenes while I was going to sort of focus on more of the dialogue and character building scene, but part of a strong collaboration is to give the other person or the other people on your team, to look at their work and to give them input. And, you know,  I would call Nate in after I cut a scene and he would have some great ideas that I didn’t even think of and same thing going the other way around. Nate would cut a lot of these visual effects scenes and I would come in and take a look at a first pass of it or even a fifth pass of it and you know,   just constantly collaborating with each other.
But then as more scenes started to come in and as production was going on, and as we started building the project, or the movie from individual scenes to building scenes around it, just second nature, it’s just a natural progression to hand something off to Nate to do a couple of things to something that I worked on or him handing something off to me, and that’s part of the beauty of the collaboration that we had on Ghostbusters.

Sarah Taylor:
Yeah.. Nate, do you have anything to add to that?

Nathan Orloff:
Yeah, no, but Dana said it really well, because I’ve seen it done many ways, and there’s no wrong way. There are certain times where you can have a big wall and you’re like, “These are my scenes. These are your scenes.” And then it turns into “These are your reels and these are my reels.” Dana and I from early on, I would work on a scene all day and it’s 7:30 and I walk in her room like, “Ah, my God, I don’t know what to do,” and then I’d show it to her and then she’d be like, “Well what about like this and this?” And I’ll go yeah, yeah, yeah! And so we quickly bonded on being each like someone to lean on, and I think that’s a really important thing that we did early on in the relationship while Jason was in Calgary and we were in LA.
And… yeah. And totally. And as this goes on, you know, it all meshes together, and so it was really the three of us. It was Jason, Dana and I always in the room looking at, either I have his notes or notes from it. And any person he wanted to show the movie to, talking about it, brainstorming, experimenting. You know, It was a very collaborative and very genuinely open process.

Sarah Taylor:
Oh, that’s so great to hear. That leads to my next question, what was one thing that you learned from one another?

Dana Glauberman:
I’m constantly learning things on every single project, but Nate is so technical. My process is to not include sound effects and music in my first assemblies and Nate does, and you know, so he kind of encouraged me to add more stuff to build on. Even to this day, I’m trying to add more things in. He’s so smart with his storytelling and you know,  I can’t put my finger on one particular thing because he’s so good.

Nathan Orloff:
Similarly, it’s hard to put one thing, but it is funny sometimes that, oh, I don’t know why this cut’s not working. And it just feels like Dana has such great experience, like, through everything that she’s done. She’d be like, “Add three frames to this shot.” I’d go, “Oh, it worked.”

Dana Glauberman:
I love it.

Nathan Orloff:
I was thinking it was a blink or it’s one of those… Oh, you could sometimes start a cut on someone’s half eye opening and you don’t catch that they were blinking and you get an extra frame or something. It’s the tiniest trick that she’s picked up to… Like, because to me, editing, what’s so important is to not just… Like, the hardest part to me about is.. at least is “Look, I built a puzzle.” And then someone walks along and says, “Great, but it’s too big. You need to make this a smaller puzzle.” You’re like, “But it’s a puzzle. I put it together.” And you have to tear it apart again. And so you have to really force the scenes to do the things you want it to do. And she has all these tools to do that.

Dana Glauberman:
I learned the three frame thing, a lot of it came from Ivan because when I was an assistant editor for Ivan  he would be spot on with his framing. And just over the course of time, you sort of learn that pacing and what’s right. Or what feels right. Like you say, there’s no right or wrong, but it’s just an instinct on what feels right.

Sarah Taylor:
Yeah.

Dana Glauberman:
And so it always amazed me that it was like, take two frames off, add five frames here or whatever. Along the lines of the eye blink, sometimes there would be a cut that, you know, the eyes are literally just starting to blink, half-open, but just starting to blink. And that’s what throws you. So if you take off that one frame or complete the blink, it makes the cut a lot smoother.

Sarah Taylor:
Oh, that’s awesome. I love it. Before we became live on this panel, you guys both mentioned, I didn’t know, that you came to Calgary during production of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”. And my question was originally just “What did you feel about the landscape of Alberta? And how did that affect the film?” Cause I think the landscape in Alberta is beautiful, but… And then also what were your thoughts about coming to Calgary and being here with our crews and being able to be on production for this film?

Nathan Orloff:
I loved Calgary. I loved it. And I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I grew up in Seattle, so I love mountains. I love trees. So it was nice to be among nature and the close proximity of like, oh, I’m in downtown. Oh, I’m in the middle of nowhere. To be able do that really quickly was really cool. There’s this bigger concept in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” that the original… Both films, actually all the previous films, were all about high rises and vertical expansion and density. And Jason intentionally wanted to pivot and do something completely differently and take all the things you love about Ghostbusters, but put it in a totally new setting and Calgary was the perfect place. They wanted to go wide. They wanted to go expansive with beautiful landscapes. And there was, I think it was in the commercials that you guys were showing, that’s something that Jason repeats. He’s like, “Calgary has some of the most awards… density for cinematography because of the landscapes.”
And it’s totally warranted. It’s not an anomaly. It’s beautiful. And it’s diverse in its beauty, which I think is important for at least filmmaking aspects. And regarding actually filming there, I was there I think about five weeks, six weeks towards the end I finished the production there because it was all pickups on the stage. And the crew really impressed me, the general attitude, the general vibe, the general… Like that kind of thing. Everyone wanted to make films. It was a passion. It wasn’t just a job.

Sarah Taylor:
There’s a love here for film that’s for sure.

Dana Glauberman:
It’s nice to see. 

Sarah Taylor:
Were there any scenes that you found really challenging and if so, how did you get through those challenges?

Dana Glauberman:
That’s a really good question, without giving anything away.

Sarah Taylor:
I know, right?

Dana Glauberman:
Because nobody’s really seen the movie. You know, film editing in itself is pretty challenging in general, crafting performances… Where like sort of… the bottleneck of where everything comes in. So we have to take the best of everything and put it together to tell a story and creating, you know, a consistency, consistent arc for characters is challenging, particularly when you shoot completely out of order. And so I think that in general, is just a challenging aspect of any kind of project that you.. You take and work on. But some of the visual effects scenes, I would say were… You know, with the ghosts and the build of all of that I think was pretty challenging.

Nathan Orloff:
Crazy on the ghosts stuff, for certain. Very challenging. And it was more challenging, I think, than anyone anticipated. Because I think it’s one of those, like, you know, you see it on so many movies, like `oh, CG characters and this and that`, and you know. it’s not going to be that challenging. Or it’s not like  going to be like climbing Mount Everest that no one’s ever done. But with… for instance, like the scene in the trailer, the one that is in the trailer you showed where they’re going through the town. This is not a spoiler because it is out there. That ghost is called Muncher. And so that’s the Muncher chase. They’re driving through and they’re trying to get Muncher. That scene was like… shot, they had the location, the back of the car and everything, they even had some… she was out there on the chair, it’s real.
And then a few months later we shot all the stuff on a stage of closeups inside. And getting all that stuff to… Sort of… Like, that’s one of the reasons I came up to Calgary, because I was on my laptop, on this laptop that I’m using right now, I was up there in the middle of the sound stages, in a shot in between two things that were shot with the other units, months prior being like, “Oh, does this work and does this fit? And what do we need?” And that was sort of the biggest wrap-your-head-around kind of puzzle, especially when it’s an invisible character. Like It’s just like…

Dana Glauberman:
Hey, you’re going to have to imagine where this ghost is and what he’s doing.

Sarah Taylor:
Yeah.

Nathan Orloff:
We have these storyboards from prior so that we just put it in the scene and cut it out, before a VFX editor could use a 3D model that was at least a rudimentary 3D model. So for a while it would look like a Mario ghost. It was very 2D.

Sarah Taylor:
I love it. So scary.

Nathan Orloff:
I was just like, “No, no, the ghost is going to be here and then it’s and we’re doing this.” And you have to take it dead serious, like “Oh, okay. Okay.” It’s just this very silly… But it’s cool to see that stuff evolve over time.

Sarah Taylor:
Well, my next question was about visual effects. So you had the 2D image that you put in. What other things did you get from visual effects that you got to work with in the edit to maybe help visualize what’s happening?

Dana Glauberman:
Well, we had an amazing visual effects editor on our crew from the very beginning. His name is Tom Cabella and we would literally give him scenes and he would, Nate in particular, would sort of sit with him and tell him where he wants things to go. And he would comp them in early on, so much so that you couldn’t even tell that it was just a temp visual effect. And so the process, for anyone who doesn’t know, the process is, we get dailies, we cut them, pass them on to the visual effects department, we talk about what we want and then they take it to their artists and they start working on it. So that’s the general, like A-B-C version of the process. But I don’t know, Nate, you probably add on a little bit more to that.

Nathan Orloff:
Yeah, no, just the D-E and the F part of the process looks a lot like A-B-C because once the stuff comes back, you’re like, “Oh no, we’re going to re-cut it.

Dana Glauberman:
Yeah.

Nathan Orloff:
And then it changes. And then you’re doing all this over again, over again. It’s very interesting because the nature of the cut drastically changes things and just like Dana said, you learn so much on every project. One of the bigger things I learned generally, was just how much it’s so hard to anticipate timing of invisible things. I’d put it in there and it’s like, “Oh, well my cut’s completely wrong. Look at this.”

Dana Glauberman:
Yeah.

Nathan Orloff:
It’s one of those that’s a little embarrassing, but it’s just not there. It’s hard to time that out. Initially, my cuts were always like … I made it longer instead of shorter. Because I thought that might be better to get more time or something. I don’t know. We have videos of Jason acting out like what Muncher would be doing. He’d be like, “No, no, no. Then he’s going to do this. And then he’s like…” And then we sent it to Vancouver.

Sarah Taylor:
I love it.

Nathan Orloff:
We did not have any pre-vis. Jason ended up not liking to do pre-vis. For his process, he loved doing storyboards. Early on, I was putting together storyboards and that’s some of the reasons we had music and sound effects early on. We didn’t have dailies and then music and sound effects were all I had to support storyboards and it was like an animated movie at one frame per second. And it was very interesting and I have not gone for the kind of big movies now. They all usually use pre-vis to the point where the pre-vis artist has chosen, “oh, this is a 50 millimeter lens.” And then that goes through the pipe. I mean they can change it on set, but certain times where it’s like, “no, no, this shot’s going to be this lens.” Obviously his storyboards are very much more free and open, which is how Jason liked it.

Sarah Taylor:
Well we got a lot of audience questions piling up here. So I think we might just start with these now. What made you want to get into editing and how did you first hear about film editing?

Dana Glauberman:
My… I went to UC Santa Barbara for undergrad. I did not go to grad school for film school. I was a film studies major and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was just kind of exploring things. The one film production class, UC Santa Barbara had a very small production department, but we had to take one film production class and we had to do everything from write, direct, produce, shoot, cast, edit. We had to edit our own little short film. And the only thing that I really clicked with was going into a dark room with my plastic butt splicer with my super eight millimeter film and cutting the film together.
And the reason why it resonated with me was because as a kid, I absolutely loved doing jigsaw puzzles. Still to this day, I do jigsaw puzzles. It kind of got me through the first half of the pandemic. On weekends. I would work during the week, and then on the weekends I would go and work on my puzzles. The only difference between a jigsaw puzzle and film editing and filmmaking is, there’s only two pieces that fit together in a jigsaw puzzle. But there’s thousands of ways to edit a movie, to tell a story. The outcome is the same. You’re still telling a story, whether it’s in a picture through a jigsaw puzzle or on a film or TV show, but that’s what really connected with me. And that’s how I followed that path.

Sarah Taylor:
Oh, that’s great.

Nathan Orloff:
So when I was in middle school, I was a big Star Wars fan. I made a Star Wars fan film, and then I was in iMovie playing around with and I was like, “Oh this is cool…” So I was hooked ever since. I went to film school, I went to Chatham University and I think that, like 90% of people that walk into film school, I was like, “I’m going to be a director.” And by the end of the year, I was like, “I like editing the best.” And so that’s when I ended up focusing on.

Sarah Taylor:
The questions just keep coming in. So… how would someone find experience editing outside of the independent projects? Any tips?

Nathan Orloff:
Be an assistant if you ask me.

Dana Glauberman:
I think starting at the bottom and working your way up, I think, is really, really helpful. Prove to people that you work with that this is what you want to do. Volunteer your time. And then, just on a side note I think, find if there’s editors that you admire their work, find out how to get in touch with them. Write them a fan letter and say that you’re interested in this and you would love to observe. Sometimes you won’t be able to because of confidentiality reasons, but sometimes editor you do hear back from a lot of editors, believe it or not. And that goes for any area that you want to do. It doesn’t necessarily have to be editing. Fan mail is always fun to get.

Nathan Orloff:
For nice people, we respond.

Dana Glauberman:
Yeah. It’s true.

Nathan Orloff:
It`s just..I’ve met for coffee a few people that are just out of film school who want to get edit. Who really wants to get in. But I am very thankful that I spent a lot of time being an assistant and observing and being the fly on the wall and learning the discipline of it. It’s one of those, every year you get older, you know that you don`t know less than you did previously. And that’s very, very, very true in terms of, it’s very important to understand these relationships. Editing, to me, is more about the relationship you have with the director and your crew. It`s not.. You don’t get hired off LinkedIn. Like… Even with an agent, you know, the person that you might be cold-calling or having a meeting with is going to talk to all the other people you have relationships with. And so, if you don’t have any of that… You need to build those relationships and the best way in this industry is to start a career from the bottom and seeing how it’s done. It`s like the same way. But I don’t think it’s even right to just walk in and just do it.

Sarah Taylor:
Totally. That’s great advice. I agree. How early in the process do you come on board of the film and what do you do in those, or, sorry, what are those early conversations with the director like?

Dana Glauberman:
I think every project is unique in that. A lot of directors will bring their editors on really early on during pre-prep and pre-production. For me, I’m always reading a script early and giving notes, but in terms of physically starting on the project, usually it’s day one of production is my first official day on the show. But there are times when the director will want you in on early conversations about how to do things or you know just being involved in the project and story. Being involved in the story and you know, getting ideas of everybody, you know with everybody involved.

Nathan Orloff:
I think Ghostbusters was very much an exception that proves the rule because Dana’s completely right. Most of the time, principally before you start, besides script conversations and all that. For Ghostbusters, I think it was fortunate because that we had storyboards that Jason asked me to work on. And I was grateful for that because it`s like normally you start a project and you get pre-vis, that’s been cut by a pre-vis house. And the director’s like, “Oh, this is not the final edit.” Of course is not the final edit, every time… but we can obviously do whatever. And its intense. And so you’re handed something a little bit. So this was nice to get involved early on these sequences, which I think personally is what I’d rather have happen on these big visual effects movies.

Sarah Taylor:
How far into the edit did it take before you felt like you found the rhythm and tone of the film?

Dana Glauberman:
That’s a good question.

Sarah Taylor:
Yeah.

Nathan Orloff:
A great question.

Dana Glauberman:
Kind of hard to answer. You know, we had a really, really good film when… COVID shut us down, and everything was pushed. But the tone of the film, I think Jason had a really good… Good sense of what he wanted the tone to be. And that came across in the dailies that we were getting. So.. You know, if a director like Jason Reitman knows what he wants and is so good with his actors, the tone comes across in what he’s providing us to cut together. But… You know,  like I said, we had a really good film early on and just toning in on a lot of different aspects of the film you know, just continues to get better and better and better. We started production, what, July of 2019?

Nathan Orloff:
Yeah.

Dana Glauberman:
COVID shut us down in March of 2021.

Nathan Orloff:
I think our director’s cut started end of October?

Dana Glauberman:
Yeah, I think so.

Nathan Orloff:
I think we screened the first week of November.

Dana Glauberman:
Yeah.

Nathan Orloff:
Yeah. So I think by February we had a movie that we were like, “Hey.”

Dana Glauberman:
This is really darn good. I mean, we knew we had something special pretty early on, but seeing the whole movie together, taking out things that don’t project the story at all, taking out scenes don’t really belong in the movie, even though it was scripted. There… You know, it’s just… It just slows the movie down. You want to keep that… I was told long ago, put a comma after a scene, not a period. Right? So you want to just keep the movie flowing. And you know, anything that stops the movie, stops the story from being told… You know, not necessarily take it out, but reevaluate it. And see if it’s actually needed.

Sarah Taylor:
You touched on how COVID stopped you at one point during the film, during working. So how did you find, what did you do? Did you work remotely after that? How did it get back going once you had to stop?

Dana Glauberman:
It was hard to sort of… figure out. It was hard to go from being in an office space with all 10 of our crew members, in addition to all the visual effects and being able to walk down the hall and say, “Hey, Nate, come in here and take a look at this.” Or.. You know.. Just…  Just have all that bond of.. Having lunch together or whatever the situation is.. To going go and working from home. It was really hard for me in particular because we already work in a somewhat isolating part of the business, that working from home is even more isolating, but we, you know, our assistants were fantastic. Mike Fay, Nick Ellsberg, Allie Andrus and all of the rest of the crew. Got us all up and running and figured out a system so we could all work on the same project and be working from home, which was a very hard task.
But we were able to take a little bit of a step back and reevaluate some things and the studio and Jason and Ivan all believed in not releasing the movie on any streaming device or streaming platform I should say. And I’m kind of going all over the place, but really believed in a theatrical release and thankfully was that’s the case because this movie does belong in a theater for everybody to see. So November 18th. Well, I kind of went all over the place with that answer.

Nathan Orloff:
No, that makes sense. I completely agree because it gave us more time, which is like just one of the biggest gifts you can get in post, is more time.

Dana Glauberman:
Yeah. If I could, sorry to interrupt Nate. If I could do every movie like this, not with a shutdown and working from home. But take a month break to… and then come back in and take a fresh eye look at a movie, I think it would be an incredible process for filmmaking.

Nathan Orloff:
Totally agree.

Sarah Taylor:
Did anything spooky happen while you were cutting the movie or on set? Did anything scary happen?

Nathan Orloff:
So the farmhouse in the movie… They built two. They built one on a sound stage. And so when I was in Calgary, I was in the sound station and I ended up working out of what was Trevor’s room. It was my office. And so there was a bunch of times where I’m just watching what they were doing on set and then whatever. And then there’s one time, I totally lost track of time, I’m in my headphones and I suddenly look around and everyone’s gone..

Dana Glauberman:
[giggles]

Nathan Orloff:
And my power gets unplugged and no one notified me. And I was like, “oh shit.” And so it was just very scary that all of that was in this haunted house, for the movie, having to, in the dark, navigate my way out, and it was great.

Sarah Taylor:
Oh, I love it.

Nathan Orloff:
That’s it. That’s it.

Dana Glauberman:
I forgot about that. That’s a good one.

Sarah Taylor:
Do you have a piece of advice that you wish you could go back and give yourself when you first started being an editor?

Dana Glauberman:
I got to think about that for a second…. 

Nathan Orloff:
Oh God…

Dana Glauberman:
I think one of the most important things is to take care of yourself and a work life balance is extremely important. You know, I… Nate and I both really were supportive of our crew, who had to take time off for personal reasons. You know, their job was always going to be there, but there were times when, or there have been times in my past where I’ve had to cancel plans… Because of work. And they were important plans, whether it’s going to a friend’s wedding or having to work until all hours of the night and not being able to go to a play with my family that had been planned for so long for Father’s Day. You know… There`s.. We’re constantly working towards deadlines and I think it’s really important to keep that.. Keep it in perspective. Life is really, really… Your personal life is really, really, really important. And I think that’s probably one of the most important things that, I wish, I had balanced better in my early days of being in the business.

Sarah Taylor:
Yeah…

Nathan Orloff:
I think I’d say… That it’s okay to hate the scene you cut. Tomorrow, next week or next month. It’s to not be precious about your work and that it’s okay to get to a certain place. But to always push it to be better and always push to destroy the thing that you spend that kind of time on. It’s a natural part of the process that does not come naturally.

Sarah Taylor:
Yeah, yeah.

Dana Glauberman:
You follow your instincts.

Sarah Taylor:
Yes. 

Dana Glauberman:
Nate can attest to this. And as far as cutting goes, I tend to second guess myself. I tend to overthink things. And Jason would always say to me… And Nate would come in and look at a scene and be like, “This scene’s great. What is wrong? What are you talking about?” Then I would show Jason and I would just be insecure about it. And Jason would be like, “Stop overthinking things. This scene’s great. Don’t even worry about it.” So follow your instincts.

Sarah Taylor:
That’s a great tip. I think we need to end, but I have one quick question. What is something that you need to have in your edit suite to be the best editor that you can be? It could be like the coffee that you like to drink, the special mouse. What’s one thing that is your…

Dana Glauberman:
All of the above.

Sarah Taylor:
Yeah.

Dana Glauberman:
I mean… Lunch. Don’t forget to eat. A strong crew that you trust and enjoy being with, I think, is really a good thing to have. Our crew was unbelievable. Nate and I spent a lot of time sort of matchmaking our crew in a sense.. You know, because we are in a room for 12 hours a day, five days a week, minimum, and you have to be able to like the people that you’re working with and you have to be able to trust the people that you’re working with. And… I think… You know their input as.. Is as important as the director’s input, and.. You know, it is particularly in the early stages of actually cutting things. So you know,  there were times when, at the end of our work week on a Friday night, we would all be done, and you know sometimes I like to have jigsaw puzzles on my coffee table in my cutting room, and we would all sit around the coffee table because we liked each other so much. We would sit around the coffee table, drinking scotch and doing jigsaw puzzles and just hanging out for an hour. And that’s hard to come by with your crew. Most people want to go home. You know… I think, a strong crew is really important.

Sarah Taylor:
Well, that’s really special.

Nathan Orloff:
Scotch and a very click-y keyboard.

Sarah Taylor:
Excellent.

Nathan Orloff:
Because both of those come after a great group.

Sarah Taylor:
Well, I think that’s the end of our time. It’s been so great to chat with you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having us, Calgary International Film Festival. And we can’t wait to see the film. So everybody go watch Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Thank you.

Dana Glauberman:
Thank you so much for having us. This was delightful.

Nathan Orloff:
Thank you very much.

Sarah Taylor:
Thank you so much for joining us today. And a big thanks goes out to Dana and Nathan for taking the time to chat with us. A special thanks goes out to the team at the Calgary International Film Festival, Andy Willam and Jane MacRae. The main title sound design was created by Jane Tattersall. Additional ADR recording by Andrea Rush. Original music created by Chad Blaine and Soundstream. This episode was mixed and mastered by Tony Bao. The CCE has been supporting Indspire, an organization that provides funding and scholarships for Indigenous post-secondary students. We have a permanent portal on our website at cceditors.ca, or you can donate directly to indspire.ca I-N-D-S-P-I-R-E dot C-A. The CCE is taking steps to build a more equitable ecosystem within our industry. And we encourage our members to participate in any way they can. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends to tune in. Until next time, I’m your host, Sarah Taylor.

Speaker 8:
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