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Étiquette : Editors
Episode 067: In Conversation with Sophie Farkas Bolla
Today's episode is the master series that took place virtually on June 5th 2021.
This episode is in conversation with Sophie Farkas Bolla (editor of BEANS and ROADS IN FEBRUARY). Moderated by Jessie Anthony (writer/director of BROTHER, I CRY), they discuss the ins and outs of editing the breakout film BEANS. Watch the film’s trailer here.
Inspired by true events, BEANS is about a Mohawk girl on the cusp of adolescence who must grow up fast and become her own kind of warrior during the armed stand-off known as the 1990 Oka Crisis. World Premiered at Toronto IFF 2020. Honored as One of Toronto IFF Canada’s Top 10
Sophie Farkas Bolla
Filmmaker and editor, Sophie Farkas Bolla was born in Montréal and started being involved in both visual and performing arts at a very young age. She attended Concordia University in Film Production and graduated in 2006. Soon after, she began working as a film editor while continuing to develop her own films. In 2009, she directed CHRONICLES BY THE OTHER, which enjoyed a good festival run. In 2012, she completed her second short entitled, ISTVAN AND THE FUR TROUT, a cinematic tale about growing up and disillusionment. WHEN MONSTERS WERE REAL (2015) is her third film and explores our fears from childhood. She is also writing her first features, NAGYPAPA, a dramatic comedy evolving in a charming, yet particular family and JULES AU PAYS D’ASHA a fable set in 1940’s Québec where imagination and reality collide. This film is in pre-production and will be shot this summer. When Sophie is not working on her own projects, she is also an editor and in 2018 she was nominated for an Iris awards for best documentary editing for P.S. JERUSALEM by Danae Elon (official selection TIFF and Berlin). Among the many fiction and documentary films that Sophie has edited, there is the award-winning ANTOINE (2009) by Laura Bari (Iris nomination), ANGRY INUK (2016) by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (Audience award at HotDocs), MY DAUGHTER IS NOT FOR SALE (2017) by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, ROADS IN FEBRUARY (2018) by Katherine Jerkovic (Best Canadian First Film Award, TIFF 2018) and most recently BEANS (2020) by Tracey Deer (TIFF, Berlinale) and THE GIG IS UP! (2021) by Shannon Walsh. Finally, Sophie was also a Filmmaker-Trainer for Wapikoni Mobile and accompanied many young people from Tobique First Nation in their creative journey, including Oqim Nicholas with his film AMONG THE FOREST (2018) (Award for best pan-Canadian student film at the FNC).
Jessie Anthony
Writer/Director/Producer Jessie Anthony is a proud Haudenosaunee woman from the Onondaga Nation, Beaver clan, born and raised on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario Canada. Jessie is a graduate of the Indigenous Independent Filmmaking Program and Bachelor of Motion Picture Arts Degree from Capilano University. Jessie is a Telefilm Talent to Watch winner for her first feature film titled “Brother, I Cry” which won the 2020 BC Emerging Filmmakers Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival and picked up the Audience Choice Award in the 2020 imagiNative Film Festival. She is currently in post-production with the series QUERENCIA which won the imagineNATIVE Pitch Competition, gaining a broadcast deal with APTN/The Bell Fund. Jessie has produced shorts funded by Telus Optik and BravoFact as well as many music videos. She was the first Assistant Director on The Edge of the Knife, co-directed by Helen Haig-Brown and Haida Artist, Gwaai Edenshaw. Jessie was a finalist at the MPPIA short film award competition, where she received an honourable mention. She directed the documentary Through My Needle, which follows a Mohawk designer and her family; exploring culture and clan through the beading and design of indigenous regalia. Jessie worked on the Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce (NBC Universal), River of Silence (Telefilm), Going For Broke (Telus/Red Castle Films), Man in the High Castle (Amazon) and La Quinceanera (Lucha Gore -Time Warner) and many more. When Jessie isn’t working within film you can find her on her Facebook live feeds helping indigenous communities with healing and spiritual guidance.
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The Editor’s Cut – Episode 067 – “Beans”
Sarah Taylor:
This episode is generously sponsored by IATSE Local 891 Integral Artists and the Vancouver Post Alliance.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
When you’re an editor, you have the chance to tell them if you feel like something is not quite right and it’s better you tell them than a critic in the newspaper after. So if you tell them and they decide not to change them, that’s fine. Don’t take it personal. It’s their filmmaking, it’s their process. But it’s important to always say what you think, because in the end, you want to make the best possible movie.
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 is 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 soverign 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.
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that the CCE is proud to sponsor an Industry Week Panel at this year’s Calgary International Film Festival. Ethics of documentary filmmaking will be happening on September 24th at 11:00 AM. Join us in a conversation between editors and directors about the ethics of documentary filmmaking and the line we draw between truth and entertainment. Today, I bring to you the master series that took place virtually on June 5th, 2021, in conversation with Sophie Frankas Bolla, editor of Beans and Roads in February. This conversation was moderated by Jessie Anthony, writer, director of Brother, I Cry. They discussed the ins and outs of editing the breakout film, Beans.
Speaker 1:
And Action.
Action.
This is the Editor’s Cut.
A CCE-
Podcast.
Exploring.
Exploring.
Exploring…
The art…
Of picture editing.
Jessie Anthony:
[foreign language 00:02:04]. My name is Jessie Anthony. I’m from the Onondaga Nation Beaver Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario, Canada. I currently live, reside, work, play on the unseated territories of the Coast Salish peoples. And I am a filmmaker, and I am super, super excited to be here today with the editor of Beans, Sophie Farkas Bolla, welcome. I’m excited to dive into this, but before I do that, I’d love for you to just do introduction and let us know of some of the work that you’ve done and what brought you to Beans.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Absolutely. Yeah. So I studied films, I went to film school at Concordia University and I graduated in 2006. And ever since then I’ve been editing films. I’ve done both fiction and documentary. And so, I’ve been doing this for I’d say, well, almost 15 years now. And then, I always wanted to be a filmmaker and an editor. I love the editing process because I really feel it’s like the final step of a film, of the writing process, of the filmmaking process. It’s really the final step before it’s really… you can still change things, make the story a little better, make this, make that. It’s really… so that’s wonderful process to be part of, and to share with different directors. So one of the last films I edited was Beans. It was a great, great process, a great experience and really, really actually fun to work on.
Jessie Anthony:
And for those joining us, Beans, is a first featured debut… feature film by Tracey Deer that is a coming-of-age story surrounded around the historical event of the Oka Crisis. So I guess, my first question would be, because I really do want to dive into that relationship with the director. But first I’d like to jump into your first initial connection with the story. When you read the script, your first thoughts and I guess that interview process or how did you get the job?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
How did I get the job? How did I get the job? Well first, how did I get the job? So I had edited the short film with the producer, [inaudible 00:04:23], a few years ago and it was a great experience. And so, when they were looking for someone for Beans, the producer thought that I should meet Tracey because she was like, “I think you would get along really well with Sophie.” So she sent me the script, I read it. And when I read the script, there was not a doubt in my mind that I wanted to edit this film.
The screenplay was so well written, it was a classic coming of age story, but it had such a powerful purpose and all the back story obviously, around the Oka Crisis, and it gave it just that much more. And so, I went to the interview and all I remember from the interview, it was two or three days before they started shooting. So it was very hectic in the production offices. And I think I just talked a lot about how I loved the project and how I thought we could work together and bring it to where she wanted it to go. And so, that’s how it went. And then a few weeks later she called, and she was like, “Let’s do this”. And I was like, “Wonderful.” So that’s how it happened, sort of, I guess.
Jessie Anthony:
Very cool. And did you have knowledge of Oka Crisis? Did you know a lot about that time in period and everything that had happened around Kahnawake and Kanesatake?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Well, I was young when it happened. I was seven-years old. At the time, when I thought about it, I was like, “What do I remember from that period?” And all I remember really, from that period was that the news, because I remember my parents always watching the news every day, there was the news. And it was this thing about the bridge. The bridge, the bridge was blocked, and it was mostly around the bridge. Obviously, I was seven years old, so I didn’t understand much. All I understand is that some people were upset, and they were blocking a bridge and it lasted the whole summer. For me, as a seven-year-old, that was the understanding I had of it. And the other funny thing was that, that summer, my mom had a cousin visiting from France and so, he thought it was very interesting that Indigenous people were blocking a bridge.
For him, it was very unheard of. And I remember his reaction more than anything else. This European man being a… very surprised by this situation. That’s what I remember as a seven-year-old. Obviously, I saw Alanis Obomsawin’s film probably, I don’t know, when I was in film school, had a very, very, very deep impact on me. And then I remembered me as a child thinking of how… of those few little things I remembered from that time. And yeah, so I would say that my… what I knew about that whole situation, from my memories as a seven-year-old and then seeing that film. And then having a chance to work with Indigenous filmmakers, also, talking about land claims and Indigenous rights and all of that. So by the time I got to Beans, I was very aware and very much wanted to be part of the process.
Jessie Anthony:
Wow. It’s an interesting situation to be on the other side of the bridge and then have this opportunity years later to sit collaboratively to tell this story. I got goosebumps thinking about it and I think that’s the most amazing thing about film work and collaboration and those sorts of things. So do you feel or think that those experiences helped you in that process when sitting with Tracey and with the material?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah. I think so because I think Tracey is very much… I work with another filmmaker and a new filmmaker called, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, in Angry Inuk, and I think her, and Tracey are very much want to help have more bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous. And to tell stories in ways that reach out to people in emotional ways so then that we can connect to the issues. And so, by the time I got to Beans, I had already done that process once and was totally on board with it. And felt it was really important that we can… I continue in that direction. Yeah.
Jessie Anthony:
That’s very cool. For me, I would love to dive into, I guess the editing process. That’s what we’re here to talk about. So I’d love to know that director, editor relationship. Anything you want to tell us or bring up or anything like that about that process would be really great.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
So what we did on Beans is that… so Tracey finished the shoot and then she took a break, which I thought was great. Because while she was gone, I just dove into the material and watched everything. Watched everything, and I was seeing it from a fresh eye. Tracey wasn’t there to tell me what she thought. So I was really just getting my sense of what it was, because often directors are very emotionally attached to the material and then they remember on that day what went right, what went wrong, and they have all this emotional baggage with the material, which is 100% normal. But having nobody there, it just allowed me to have a fresh start and just see the material, see the footage for what it was. So I was able to make my own idea of what was working and better than not and what wasn’t working as well.
So I got to see everything. And then when Tracey came back from her holiday, she was all relaxed and she had taken time off and she had stepped away from the material. So she was really ready to dive in also with a fresh new perspective from the shoot. So what we did at the beginning is that I would assemble some scenes during the week and then, every Friday she would come and we would go through the scenes together. And then this is where we started collaborating. So we would go through the scenes, through the sequences, she would tell me, “Oh, my intention here was to do this. Or let’s do that, and let’s try this.” And so we would do that. So we did that for maybe, I would say, two months. And then, eventually, I’d gotten the whole sequences shot and we put the whole thing together and we watched it for the first time.
And so we had an assembly. And then from the assembly point on, we were spending much more time together. And so I would say Tracey was there almost every day or whenever, two days depending on what we were working on. Sometimes she would say, “Okay, we would work on the scene and then I would work on it by myself.” And then she would come back the next day and we’d watch it again and then we’d move on. So we did that until Christmas and then we had a Christmas break, which was great. So we took three weeks off and then we came back at the end of January and we just had another three weeks, and we just fine tuned the film until the end.
And I remember the day we finished this film, I think it was like midnight. We were in the cutting room, and we were like, “Okay, we are happy. We’ve gone through every single thing”. And the fine-tuning process was really great on that film because we really went deep into the performances. We really went to see how we could… how every single scene, every single sequences, how we could just really go get the perfect rhythm and create the film. So that’s how we worked with Tracey. So it was very collaborative, very collaborative.
Jessie Anthony:
I guess, with that being said, watching some of the scenes come to life and assemble. So initially, this clip is the family has left the reserve and they’ve gone into town to get some food, and ultimately the racism here shown hugely in terms of they’ve been kicked out of the store. So no supplies are coming in and no supplies… it’s hard to get supplies when they leave the reserve to go. How was it for you editing the scene and what was the intention in this scene? For me, I’ll say that moment that they’re walking out and everybody’s clapping and the edit back and forth between the main character and the cashier lady. Yeah, if you want to speak a little bit on that, that’d be really great.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
I think it’s a great scene because there’s lots going on in that scene, actually. There’s the interaction with the mom’s friends with the cashier. And then there’s also what’s going on with Beans and her little sister and how this, benign grocery shopping thing, that we do every day, becomes really, really dramatic. So I think what we did is that we focused primarily on the main action, which was them behind the counter trying to negotiate to get the food. And what was really interesting about that scene is that Tracey didn’t want to just… she wanted to nuance it even though it’s really horrible what’s going on in the sense that… she wanted to nuance it in the sense that there’s the main cashier but then there’s the manager and the manager refuses to sell them the food. Yet, the younger cashier sees that this is not going to go well for Beans and her family, and she sees that they’re not going to get the food they need. And she sees Beans putting the little roll-ups in her bag and just letting her go with the food, anyways, she doesn’t tell on her.
So I felt that we had to sort of make sure that all the different lines were happening at the same time and that we got all of them. So I feel like in the end the overall impression is that it’s a terrible racist moment for Beans in their family. So I think that is the main impression that goes on, but yet the way the scene plays out, Tracey wrote it in a way so that there were still some subtleties and nuances, and it wasn’t just a blank racist moment, there was a lot going on.
Jessie Anthony:
Yeah. It’s a pretty powerful scene. I mean, here’s the thing about this movie, is that every single scene is so powerful and it’s constantly moving you forward, which is like, “Job well done, of course, it’s been very successful.” And is there a difference working with a director that is taking somebody else’s script and putting it together than more of a true event experience that the director has gone through? Can you tell that there’s a different connection with the director in the material when you’re going through the editing process?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
You know, It’s interesting that you ask that, because for Tracey it’s obviously, so inspired from what she lived as a young girl. I’m trying to think of other fiction films. Roads in February, which I did a few years earlier is also a fiction film. But you know when directors write something, usually, it comes from them and usually there’s always something of them in the film. And so, in some ways it’s more direct than others. But for Tracey it was very obvious. But even Roads in February, it’s all about the director and her relationship to having immigrated and being from somewhere but living somewhere else. And so, I think even the character in that film is very much inspired by her even though it’s not a direct conversation that we had in the editing room. So I feel that like it’s always there and that ultimately when you write a script, you’re the one that has all the answers.
Jessie Anthony:
That’s true. Do you find that it’s harder for directors to, I guess, cut certain things, they really want to make it fit. How do we make it fit, but in the edit it’s just not fitting. Because there’s always the story that’s written or there’s the… the story that’s written, the story that’s shot and the story that’s edited, right?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Of course.
Jessie Anthony:
So initially, there’s always three stories to this. So when you’re in that editing process, have you come across, I guess, any directors where it’s been a real challenge and try to make it work but ultimately you have to make that-how do you have that discussion with the director?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
I think it’s a process. I think it’s a long process. I think at the beginning of this… I always tried to remember how I felt the first time I watched the dailies, the rushes, because I feel like people that go to the movies, they see the thing for… they see the film for the first time and so that impression is what counts. And when you’re editing a movie, obviously you’re going over and over and over and over and over the stuff, so it’s hard. It’s really important to keep an emotional connection. But eventually, obviously, it’s hard because you just don’t have it anymore. But you have to trust that the one you had at the beginning is the right one. So I always try and remember exactly how I felt at the beginning, so I can just focus and move forward and make sure that we’re making the right decisions.
So early on in the process I’ll notice if something is working less than it should and I’ll address it right away with the director. I’ll just say, “Well I’m not sure this is working or maybe we will get it to work.” But I’ll usually say it early on in the process because I know that it takes time for directors sometimes to come to terms with this scene or that scene because they’re so attached to it and it’s super normal. So I say it early on and then I just let time go and eventually, I think it makes its way to the director. And eventually, by the end of the process, usually, those scenes have organically been removed from the film or edited or arranged differently. So it usually, happens pretty naturally. It just a process, you have to be patient.
Jessie Anthony:
Right. Patience is key.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
And sometimes you’re wrong as an editor, sometimes you think, “Oh this is not it” but it’s not that scene that’s the problem, it’s another one that’s sort of similar. But then when you remove that one then the one that you felt was problematic ends up working. So it’s important to be really listening to the directors because they know the film more than anybody ever will and it’s important to listen to them, because sometimes you’ll realize, “Oh, my solution to this issue was not necessarily the right solution.” So it’s always important to know where we want to go and depending on the path we take, as long as we know where we’re going. If the path changes a little bit doesn’t matter, as long as we get to where we want to go at the end.
Jessie Anthony:
With that being said, do you prefer, having worked on my first feature film with an editor and not ever being taught how to communicate what’s in your head in a certain way with the edits. Is there certain things you like to see like references or I would say references or pictures or things of how a certain cut, maybe if they can articulate the type of cut they want. Is that something you invite into the editing room?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
I feel like when there’s… I feel like I need to know what the director wants right from the start so we can go in the same direction. And so, usually, we’ll talk a lot about the film, what movies she likes as references and why, and what she was trying to do in this scene and if it worked, or if it didn’t work. Usually, you’ll see in the style of the way it was shot, what they’re trying to do with the scene. So I’ll look at the rushes and I’ll be like, “Oh I think I know what she wants to do there.” And so, I’ll go ahead and try to do that. Usually, if the intention is clear, then I see it right away. And then if it’s not clear then we talk about it. But we talk… there’s a lot of work before, we just talking about other films and what she was trying to do in this, and in this scene.
And usually, we manage to figure out what we want and what she wants. But it’s always finding the best way to communicate, that is the key to good editing, I find. And it always takes a week or two for me to understand that when Tracey uses this word, what she really means is this. And so, I have to just pay attention to what she’s saying and to be able to understand what she really means, because every director communicates in different ways. And so, I feel like it’s the editor’s job to translate what that means in editing terms and in editing language. And that’s why I have to do that, not theirs.
Jessie Anthony:
So do you have any advice for any first time feature editors or somebody who’s taking that leap into editing and working with a director, whether the director is inexperienced or experienced? Do you have any advice for those people?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah. I think if you’re going to cut your first fiction film, the best thing you can do is really just, if you just talk with the director, try and understand what their vision is, what they’re trying to do and if you feel like you understand what their ultimate goal is, then just try and always work in that direction. That doesn’t mean don’t be critical of certain things. If you feel some scene or something is not working or the rhythm is off or there’s something, it’s important to say, but it’s always important to say in a way that’s constructive and that’s respectful. Because it takes time to see things in different ways and not the way you imagined it as a director.
So it’s important to always talk about it and just be open. Because ultimately, I think that when you’re an editor, you have the chance to tell them if you feel like something is not quite right. And it’s better you tell them than a critic in the newspaper after. So if you tell them and they decide not to change, that’s fine, ultimately. Don’t get upset about it. Don’t take it personal, it’s their filmmaking, their process. But it’s important to always say what you think because in the end you want to make the best possible movie.
Jessie Anthony:
Absolutely. Because I’m learning a lot in terms of being a director who has sat with an editor on my first feature, and I’m learning different ways of, “Okay, how do I communicate?” And I’m sure every movie is that learning experience, right? You’re going to get better at it. And I guess, what are some dos or don’ts, do you have… feel free to answer it, if not, we can pass on to my next question. But if there are some dos and don’ts in terms of, I guess, from an editor’s perspective, if I was coming in as a director, what are some dos or don’ts in the room?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Don’t ever take the mouse from the editor.
Jessie Anthony:
Oh my goodness.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Don’t ever take the mouse. I think that’s… unless you ask them, and they say yes or no problem. I feel like that’s a barrier that should not be crossed, because it’s a way… that’s a don’t, definite don’t for me. Don’t take the mouse. That’s my only don’t. I think anything else if you… I think this whole thing about not taking the mouse is also about communication. And if you can’t communicate what you’re trying to express is like, “Don’t take…” and your only way to communicate is to take the mouse from the editor. That’s not a good sign.
Jessie Anthony:
That’s a really good don’t. That is a very good don’t. Because you would never, hopefully, take a camera from a camera operator or the DP, right? So do not take the mouse. I do have a question here. (Audience Question): “Hi, Sophie. I’ve not seen the film yet. Very eager to finally watch it. I’m wondering if there were scenes in the film that had improvisations or if everything was scripted, how did you approach the improvised bits?” Good question.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Great question. Most of it was scripted. There is some scenes that were improvised… there’s one scene I can think about in the film, which was, it was one line in the script. That was basically, just before the SQ attacks the pines where, where the Mohawks were protecting their land. The little girls are in the cemetery in the pines and they’re picking up the golf balls, that they find in the cemetery, because it’s right next to a golf course. And so, it’s basically, one line in the script, it says, “Beans and her little sister are in the cemetery having fun in the woods. And then they find all these golf balls and they decide to pick them up.” So it’s basically, one line.
And so for that scene, Tracey just, she didn’t have a choreograph like, “Okay, you’re going to go here and you’re going to find these ball and then you’re going to go there.” It was just sort of, she just told the girls to do what they want and wanted it. And so, we had all this footage. It was shot on steady cam, so there was lots of footage. It was just a bit of a free, more like a documentary style shooting. And then, so I just looked at the whole… all the footage and I was like, “Okay.” And so I just cut it in an emotional way and then that was it. I was actually… one of the scenes that I cut once, and we never changed.
Jessie Anthony:
Oh wow.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah. So Tracey saw it the first time and she was crying and she was like, “That’s good, let’s not change that.” And then we moved on. So that was a scene that was improvised, but there was no dialogue. Dialogue [inaudible 00:25:50], there was none in this film. It was all very much scripted.
Jessie Anthony:
Wow. Is that rare to have? Again, I can only go by what I’ve done in terms of what actors just go, have free range of it. Is it normal mostly, for things to be very on point scripted or do you tend to come across… I know you’ve done the doc that would be a little bit different. But with feature I guess scripted… yeah, do you find that often?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
In the films that I’ve done, no. Most of them, I’ve always been very much scripted. There hasn’t really been any improv in the films. I think it’s because also of the shooting restrictions, they had a certain amount of days. And they didn’t necessarily have the luxury to just go on these big improv scenes and when you’re working… yeah, no. So the films that I’ve cut, I really haven’t had any improv except for that one scene, just saying. Documentary, there’s lots of that. It’s totally different approach, obviously.
Jessie Anthony:
The next question I have is from Jennifer. (Audience Question): “When you disagree about a scene and you offered solutions and the director is still passionate about their decision, what are some ways you navigate around that if you truly believe your decision as an editor is better than the course for the film?”
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
It happens a lot. I feel like we have to try it with, we have to try it without. We have to give it time and see how the film evolves because sometimes I’ll be like… early on I’ll be like, “I don’t think this scene is going to make it in the film,” but it’s too early for the director to actually agree with me. So I just let it pass. And we tried with and tried without and then eventually it will stay or not in the film. But I must say that it’s never happened to me ever that I was like, “This scene should not be in the film,” and it still is in the scene… in the movie, sorry. It’s never happened to me. So I think we always end up finding, either, I go with on the directors side or the director comes on my side and we always end up agreeing in the end if the process is done properly. Yeah.
Jessie Anthony:
Right. (Audience Question): “Hi, Sophie. Very excited to see the film. I feel like the beginning of the project is always the most daunting. How do you like to start your edit? You have the rushes organized in your bins, then what? Select reel, assemble scenes by scene, a full first cut right away, string outs by beats or by line or some other way?”
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
I watch everything and then I’ll just start by cutting a scene that I feel like cutting. I just want to make it fun. So I’ll just… usually, I’m by myself at that stage too. So I’ll just start with a theme that I feel like cutting and when I’m happy with it, then I move on to another one that I feel like cutting. And then eventually, I go through all of them. Start with something that’s fun that you feel like doing. Don’t start with the first one because it’s the first one and you feel you have to go in the chronological order. Don’t do that. Just start with something that you feel like.
Jessie Anthony:
Right. Do you normally cut to music? Do you temp music? Do you…
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah.
Jessie Anthony:
…Yeah?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah, Yeah. I’ll cut it once without music, obviously. And then I feel like this needs music and then I’ll choose the music that I feel is appropriate with the director or without the director. And then, some directors have very clear ideas on the music they want and then others have no idea. So I suggest things and then we go from there.
Jessie Anthony:
There’s so many amazing scenes in this movie and one of the reasons I really connected to that is growing up on my territory, you know, Six Nations and growing up here and knowing that feeling that Beans is going through when it’s… your group of friends, because a lot of people who live on the same street as you, that’s the kids you grow up with. That’s the people you have around you. So what type of emotions or what type of conversation happened around this particular scene with Tracey?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
I think what particular about that scene, honestly, it was a lot. We wanted to make them look like cool playing…We wanted them to be good playing lacrosse. So I remember that was… at the beginning of scene, they’re playing lacrosse just for fun and they’re sort of not too serious about it. And I felt like that was something that Tracey really, really wanted to have in the film, like just two girls playing lacrosse for fun, not like, because she felt that it was always, if you see girls in films doing sports, they’re always on soccer teams or it’s a sports film. And she was like, “No, girls hang out and do sports just for fun too.” So there was a lot of discussion about the lacrosse, actually.
And then just getting the timing to work, like teenagers talking and trying to get one’s attention versus the other one’s attention. And trying to relate to Beans, who sort of trying to fit in, who wants to fit in and not saying anything and not wanting to disappoint her friend because she’s sort of the one that’s letting her into this new group. So she doesn’t want to disappoint her, but she have to say something cool and she’s sort of intimidated by this guy and…
So we were just trying to convey all these emotions that Beans is going through in that scene once those guys show up. But even before that, when she burns the book because she wants to go to this other school and April is like, “No, you’re not going to stupid school.” So there’s all these conflicting emotions all the time in that scene. And I felt like Tracey really wanted to convey all these emotions. And also, just a general vibe of like kids growing up, like you said. I think that was something that just like all around the scene. It’s like the…
Jessie Anthony:
Very universal. Yeah.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah. I think that’s what she really wanted. I think everybody relates to that. I think we’ve all been in more situations, similar situation when we’re growing up, when we just really want to be the new cool kid. We really want to be part of this new gang, and anybody can relate to that scene.
Jessie Anthony:
That’s very, very true. And I think that’s what makes it so lovely, so universal that I wish I could have seen this in the theater and had that collective experience of coming of age. Oh, so I do have another question here from Sophia. (Audience Question): “Hi, Sophie. How much are you referring to this script once you have already read it many times and are editing? Are you keeping that handy on your first pass and following order, direction or mainly watching, gathering and editing a scene based on instincts, emotions first?”
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah, I usually only read the script. I read the script once and then that’s it. Unless I’m mixed, that’s it. I mean I’ll never read it again honestly. Unless there’s a comprehension thing, like I don’t know, it’s written in another language or something like that. But otherwise, no, I just read it once. I have a general… I get that feeling of reading it once that was very strong in case of Beans. And then I just sort of bring that with me in the editing room and I just work from the new material. Because I don’t want to be influenced by something that was written and that doesn’t exist in the footage, which happens because obviously, all kinds of things happens on shoot. So I just try to work from the footage as the new material. And I don’t really go back to the script.
Jessie Anthony:
So do you work highly… do you work heavily off of script notes as well or the scripty notes?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Not really. I’ll look at the script notes, let’s say I’m by myself… let’s say when I’m screening the rushes for the first time and I feel really strong about one take for some reason, I’ll go to the script notes, especially, if the director’s not there, and I’ll go through the script note and see if in the script note that too was the best take for the director. Or if there’s something… if I feel really strong about a certain take, I like to go and validate that feeling just to see if I’m on the same wavelength as the director. So when I’m screening, I’ll go back to them.
And then the only other reason I’ll go back to is like the classic situation, you’re in the cutting room with the director and they’re like, “I’m sure we shot an insert shot of this.” And I’m like, “I never saw it. It’s not in the bin. Where is that shot?” And then we go back to the script notes and then we’re like, “It is in the script notes or it’s not in the script notes.” So sometimes, you think you did something, and you didn’t, and sometimes you did and it’s not there for some reason and then you have to go back in the footage and maybe the assistant editor didn’t put it there for some reason. Anyway, so then you go look hunting for clips that are not where it should be. And then that’s where I would go back to script notes. Honestly, I don’t really go back to them either for other reasons because then you’re working with the director. And…
Jessie Anthony:
Right. Well, we got a few minutes here left and would really… there was something we had talked about around the feelings, the feelings of the edits and what you were trying to portray, you and Tracey, with the images and the edits. So something really you unique and pretty cool about this film is that there’s actual archive footage, correct? That is throughout the film, and that propels the story forward or it helps you. I guess, I’ll have you dive more into this with the emotion. So if you want to talk about that a little bit and then we can show the final clip and answer any last questions before we call it a day.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Absolutely. So we cut from archival footage. There’s four moments in the film where there’s archival footage. Some of them are for context, some of them are to accentuate an emotion, something that we were trying to convey. So what we did for the archival footage is we looked at all this footage. I don’t remember how many. So we cut the film first with no archival. We didn’t have any of the archival. Once we had a first cut, we knew what we wanted to… how we wanted to use the archival and where we wanted to put it in the film. We had a big idea, but then it got really precise. So we looked at all the footage and then we sort of put them in on timelines where there was this emotion, this idea, this emotion, this idea. And then we went from there.
So interestingly enough, all the archival footage, except maybe for the first one, is really focused around one emotion that we were trying to convey, rather than making it like validate historically. I mean it does that, but we didn’t want to give information in those sequences because they were archival. We weren’t like, “We’re going to give information, we’re going to…” so we weren’t looking to do that. We were really more looking to bring out one emotion in this archival footage. And I think it works because it’s real. So then it just lifts everything up.
Jessie Anthony:
Yeah. It’s a very powerful clip. And then what comes after that as well is quite a interesting moment. And I’ll talk for myself, it’s very triggering. It’s very triggering and heartbreaking for me when I watch that, because it ignites a lot of anger and sadness.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah. We were really trying to go for anger, and I think it was… it’s the most intense emotional archival sequence that we cut. We were going for anger and rage because there was just such a huge frustration in that moment, because the moments that follow after that was when the army decides to step in. And then the last one is a hopeful one, we tried to do something that was hopeful where people were trying to listen to each other, and some sort of hope was on the way. So there was anger, there was tension with the army. And then it was really hope at the end.
Jessie Anthony:
Well, I definitely bravo on the emotional parts of that because, especially, the beautiful transition when it ends to her coming into screen. It makes my heart stop, almost like a breath, right? The breath has been knocked out of me and I couldn’t imagine watching that footage over and over and over again. What kind of experience was that for you to be able to… and I guess maybe I’m not speaking for Tracey, but maybe just your experience with Tracey during some of this really triggering, reliving life experiences. How did you guys take care of each other or yourselves?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Yeah. I think… Well, the hardest scene in the film, and maybe, we can talk about that scene, is the rock throwing scene at Whiskey Point. So for those of you who haven’t seen the film, it’s basically, Beans, her mom and her little sister are leaving the community to go and stay outside in the hotel because it’s become too dangerous with the army. And they have to cross the bridge and on the other side of the bridge… so they open the bridge to let the people go. And on the other side of the bridge, there’s just these mobs of people that are frustrated and angry about the whole situation, and they just start throwing rocks at all the cars of all these families that are leaving. And it’s a really, really hard scene… it’s very difficult, but it was even more difficult to edit because that’s a moment that Tracey actually lived through when she was 12 years old.
So what we did to edit that scene is that I edited it once and then we would watch it and it was really hard for Tracey to watch those scenes because it was just brought her back to that moment. So we would watch it once and then we would talk about it and I would go on my own and recut it, and then maybe a week later we would rewatch it again. But we really… we spaced it out as much as we could.
We just took our time, we didn’t want to rush it because the first time Tracey watched it, obviously, she cried a lot and it was a very difficult moment. And you know I’m just there, obviously, it’s very emotional. So we just tried and listen to each other. And we knew it wasn’t going to be an easy moment, so we were just gentle with ourselves. Let’s just take the time we need, and it’ll take the time it takes. And that’s that’s how we approached it. So that was the hardest scene to cut in terms of emotion and because it was very intense. There’s a lot of intense scenes in that movie, the archival footage, but that one was the hardest.
Jessie Anthony:
And I just want to say what an incredible… to Tracey, an incredible film, to you for taking on this project, being able to be a part of that journey and capture it from your own lived experience, your own communication with the director. And I guess, for me, this is completely out of story context, but when you’re editing, what program do you like to use, and does it matter what program an editor uses?
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
I don’t think it matters. I think it’s just whatever the editor is comfortable with, that’s the most important thing. Everybody has a little, “I like this function in this program versus that program, they don’t have that function.” It’s like little things, but I can work with any really, basically. I work with Avid Premiere and recently I actually cut a film on Resolve, which was the first time, DaVinci Resolve, which was the first time I did that. So I’m really flexible. They all have their little pros and cons, but I think if I had a choice, I would say Avid. But they’re all fine, they’re all good. If somebody asks me, I’ll say Avid. If I don’t have, if it’s more complicated for whatever reason, I’m good with the other two. They all have pros and cons.
Jessie Anthony:
I want to say thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I think that sometimes the editing process… something I wish I knew as a first-time director was that, that it doesn’t stop after production. That you really have to dive and continue to dive in through all of the postproduction. And in film school, they don’t focus enough on postproduction, it’s just how to get your movie going, how to shoot it, and then that’s it. So…
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
We’ll fix it in post.
Jessie Anthony:
Yeah. Oh, that’s something like, “If we can do it on set, let’s do it on set.” But it’s so nice to have conversations like this to dive into, listen to, and understand some of that someone’s process in feature films. I’m sure editing docs and television are a different beast on their own, but in such an epic feature film, it’s beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful. Congratulations. All of the success that it’s getting as well, it’s really great. Thank you, Sophie.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Thank you, Jessie.
Jessie Anthony:
Yes. It was a great conversation. And I hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Me too. Thank you so much.
Jessie Anthony:
Thanks everybody.
Sophie Farkas Bolla:
Bye.
Jessie Anthony:
Bye.
Sarah Taylor:
Thanks so much for joining us today, and a special thanks goes to Jane MacRae and Alison Dowler The main title, Sound Design was created by Jane Tattersall, ADR recording by Andrea Rush. Original music was created by Chad Blain and Soundstripe. This episode was mixed and mastered by Tony Bow. The CCE has been supporting Indspire, an organization that provides funding and scholarships for Indigenous postsecondary students.
We have a permanent portal on our website @cceditors.ca, or you can donate directly to indspire.ca, I-N-D-S-P-I-R-E.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 2:
The CCE is a nonprofit organization with the goal of bettering the art and science of picture editing. If you wish to become a CCE member, please visit our website, www.cceditors.ca. Join our great community of Canadian editors for more related info.
Abonnez-vous là où vous écoutez vos balados
Que voulez-vous entendre sur L'art du montage?
Veuillez nous envoyer un courriel en mentionnant les sujets que vous aimeriez que nous abordions, ou les monteurs.euses dont vous aimeriez entendre parler, à :
Crédits
Un grand Merci à
Jane MacRae
Alison Dowler
Ryan Watson
Abeeshan Arulnesan
Hosted and Produced by
Sarah Taylor
Design sonore du générique d'ouverture
Jane Tattersall
ADR Recording by
Andrea Rusch
Mixé et masterisé par
Tony Bao
Musique originale par
Chad Blain
Soundstripe
Commandité par
IATSE Local 891, Integral Artists, and VPA
Cet événement a eu lieu le 21 juin 2022.
Presented in English / Conférence en anglais
Join us on June 21st for a conversation with the editors Brooke Stern Sebold and Cecilio Escobar behind the genre-blending and awards-winning FRAMING AGNES which garners this year’s Sundance NEXT Audience Award and the NEXT Innovator Award, and recently screened at Hot Docs. This empowering and stylish documentary explores the legacy and impact that one trans woman left from the 1960s and onwards. With moderator Maureen Grant, we will dive into the intricate layers and structure of this innovative hybrid documentary.
Cecilio Guillermo Escobar is a video artist, editor, and technician who works and lives in Toronto. He is an original member of the Toronto Queer Film Festival and works as their Technical Media Director. His recent work as Editor on Chase Joynt’s documentary FRAMING AGNES premiered at Sundance 2022. The film won the NEXT Innovator Award and the Audience Award: NEXT at the festival. His work focuses on QTBIPOC stories that push the boundaries of documentary.
Brooke Stern Sebold (they/she) is a nonbinary filmmaker whose work investigates gender and identity in both doc and narrative spaces. Brooke co-produced and edited the feature documentary FRAMING AGNES, which premiered at Sundance in 2022, winning both the NEXT Audience Award and Innovator Award. Brooke also cut and co-produced FRAMING AGNES the short, which premiered at Tribeca and won the Experimental Award at Outfest. In 2007, Brooke co-directed their first feature doc, RED WITHOUT BLUE, which won the Audience Award at Slamdance and the Jury Award at Frameline and screened at 150+ festivals worldwide. Brooke’s narrative shorts have won awards at Palm Springs ShortsFest and the Florida Film Festival, and Brooke was the recipient of the Cine Golden Eagle Award for Excellence in Directing. When Brooke isn’t writing and pitching shows, they’re editing the Emmy nominated series, BRIEF BUT SPECTACULAR, which airs weekly on PBS NewsHour. Brooke received their BA from Brown University and their MFA from Columbia University. Brooke grew up in the Sonoran desert and loves crystals, doggies, tiramisu and she or they pronouns.
Maureen Grant brings a background in visual art, film production, and an MA in Media Studies to her work as an editor for film and television. She is a five-time nominee of the Canadian Cinema Editors Awards, and is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talents 2019 and the 2013 Canadian Film Centre Editors Lab. She has worked with many notable directors on projects that have received international acclaim. PERCY was the top film in Canada on Apple TV iTunes. PYEWACKET premiered at TIFF 2017 and ranked amongst the year’s top horror films internationally. Recent work includes the Canadian Screen Award (CSA) nominated web series QUERENCIA, the CSA winning sketch comedy series TALLBOYZ, the Peacock / Family musical comedy series TAKE NOTE, and the Lifetime movie STOLEN BY THEIR FATHER. Forthcoming work includes Director V.T. Nayani’s feature film THIS PLACE, starring Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs and Priya Guns.
À propos de l'événement
juin 2022
20h (HAE)
en ligne
Cet événement a eu lieu le 11-12 juin 2022.
Presented in English / Présenté en anglais
Ce cours d’une durée de deux jours abordera non seulement les aspects procéduraux et logistiques de la fonction de l’assistant.e-monteur.euse, mais inclura également un survol global des enjeux politiques et psychologiques du montage et la façon dont ils affectent tout le monde impliqué dans le processus. Avec vingt ans d’expérience en tant qu’assistant-monteur, Paul Whitehead saura vous livrer généreusement ses conseils et ses anecdotes pour illustrer des leçons apprises à la dure. Les personnes débutantes comme les plus expérimentées pourront tirer profit de ce cours. À noter : ce cours n’enseigne pas l’utilisation d’Avid, de Premiere ni d’aucun autre logiciel.
La biographie suivante est uniquement rédigée dans la langue de présentation.
Paul Whitehead has been a fixture in the Toronto Post Production community for over 30 years. He has worked as First Assistant Editor on over 50 film and television productions, and now edits episodic television and feature films. His career began at the dawn of non-linear editing technology, which allowed him to witness and contribute to its development over the years. Paul has taught others the art of assisting throughout his career both one on one and at the college level, and believes strongly that experience must be passed on to maintain the high standards that Canadian crews are known for.
À propos de l'événement
juin 2022
9h à 17h HNE
en ligne
Liste des finalistes et lauréat.e.s
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Roderick Deogrades, CCE & Sam Patterson – CHARLOTTE
Danny Palmer – MATT & BIRD BREAK LOOSE: Ep. 101 – HUMANS TOGETHER
Ed Fuller – PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE
Orion McCaw & Mat Garneau – CARMEN SANDIEGO: Ep. 408 – THE DARK CAPER
Max Szentveri, Greg Canning, Ryan Jobling & Leland Miller – THE SNOOPY SHOW: Ep 01 – HAPPINESS IS A DANCING DOG
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Picture Shop
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Eui Yong Zong – ONE OF OURS
Anouk Deschênes – WINTOPIA
Ben Lawrence – MY TREE
Omar Majeed – THIS STAINED DAWN
Robert Swartz, CCE – DISPATCHES FROM A FIELD HOSPITAL
Sponsored by/Commandité par: JAM Post
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Amélie Labrèche – MON ONCLE PATOF
Anouk Deschênes – LE SPECTRE DES ONDES
Chase Ashbaugh – BROWN ENOUGH
James Blokland – BORN BAD
Rick Bartram – IF SO, DO SO
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Boris FX
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Eamonn O’Connor & Nick Taylor – FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE: Ep. 01 – THE DISAPPEARANCE
Ben Kaplan – HISTORY OF THE SITCOM: Ep. 02 SEX & THE SITCOM
James Hebbard – IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Ep. 201 – POPE FRANCIS
Ian Daly & Bill Towgood – WHILE THE REST OF US DIE: Ep. 201 – THE GAME IS RIGGED
Peter Denes – DARK SIDE OF THE 90’S: Ep. 102 – THE VIPER ROOM: HOLLYWOOD’S SANCTUARY
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Rolling Picture Company
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Rich Williamson – SCARBOROUGH
Arthur Tarnowski, ACE – DRUNKEN BIRDS (LES OISEAUX IVRES)
Christopher A. Smith – DRINKWATER
Shaun Rykiss – WILDHOOD
Sophie Leblond – SIN LA HABANA
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Blackmagic Design
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Mike Scott – BLOWN AWAY: MIRROR MIRROR
Michael Tersigni, CCE – HOME TOWN TAKEOVER: FIRST HAMMER SWING
Peter Hordylan – CELEBRITY IOU: JOYRIDE, OCTAVIA SPENCER – THIS ONE IS FOR YOU, KEANU!
Swapna Mella – THE GREAT CANADIAN BAKING SHOW: CAKE WEEK
Wesley Finucan & Pat Fairbairn – GREAT CHOCOLATE SHOWDOWN: DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT BAKES?
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Annex Pro
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Guillaume Marin & Léonie Tremblay-Clavette – LA SOIRÉE MAMMOUTH 2021
Chris Mutton, CCE – HOLLY HOBBIE: Ep. 303 – THE POSING PERFORMER
Courtney Goldman – GHOSTWRITER: Ep. 13 – THE GHOSTWRITER PART 3
Jamie Alain, CCE – THE BARBARIAN AND THE TROLL: Ep. 111 – I WILL SURVIVE
Patrick Carroll – RISE AND SHINE, BENEDICT STONE
Sponsored by/Commandité par: IATSE Local 891
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Gareth C. Scales, CCE – THE PURSUIT OF LOVE: Ep. 01
Dominique Champagne – BÊTE NOIRE: Ep 01 – ÉTAT DE CHOC
Louis-Philippe Rathé – WAY OVER ME (SORTEZ-MOI DE MOI): EP. 01 – I AM THE SOLUTION
Matthew Hannam, CCE – THE NORTH WATER: Ep. 02 – WE MEN ARE WRETCHED THINGS
Myriam Coulombe – WAY OVER ME (SORTEZ-MOI DE MOI): Ep 05 – LA VÉRITÉ
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Take 5 Productions
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Cam McLauchlin – TOGETHER
Alexander Maxim Seltzer – 10-33
Anna Catley – LITTLE BIRD
Guillaume Marin & Anouk Deschênes – AU PLAISIR LES ORDURES ! (SEE YOU GARBAGE!)
Rick Bartram – WISH
Yvann Thibaudeau – LES MONSTRES
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Formosa
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Craig Webster, CCE & Sam Thomson – SORT OF: Ep. 108 – SORT OF BACK AGAIN
Isabelle Malenfant, CCE – LES BEAUX MALAISES 2.0: Ep. 09 – FLORENCE A 18 ANS
Justin Lachance, CCE – M’ENTENDS-TU?: Ep. 30 – DRAME DISCO
Sam Thomson – SORT OF: Ep.101 – SORT OF GONE
Yvann Thibaudeau – LES MECS 2: Ep. 09
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Company 3
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Wendy Hallam Martin, CCE, ACE – THE HANDMAID’S TALE: Ep. 403 – THE CROSSING
Ana Yavari – THE HANDMAID’S TALE: Ep. 407 – HOME
Christopher Donaldson, CCE – THE HANDMAID’S TALE: Ep. 409 – PROGRESS
Jamie Alain, CCE – SNOWPIERCER: Ep. 206 – MANY MILES FROM SNOWPIERCER
Myriam Coulombe – PORTRAIT ROBOT: Ep.10
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Vanguarde Artist Management
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s: Isabelle Malenfant, CCE – JE NE SUIS PAS UN ROBOT: Ep. 01 – LE MAMELON DE TROP
Mahi Rahgozar & Chris Mutton, CCE – THE COMMUNIST’S DAUGHTER: Ep 01 – OPIUM FOR THE MASSES
Richard Schwadel – THE NOW: Ep 102 – DON’T SHUSH YOUR MOTHER
Shelley Therrien – SOMETHING UNDONE: Ep. 101 – TWO MINUTES AND FORTY NINE SECONDS
Steven Patoine & Juan Mendoza – CHASING WINTER: Ep. 103 – I WANNA GO THERE AND DO WELL
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Canadian Cinema Editors / Les Monteurs et Monteuses de cinéma canadien
Winner(s)/Lauréat.e.s:
Izabelle Langendoen – RUNS THROUGH THEIR BLOOD: A LIFE IMPACTED (Weengushk Film Institute)
Jéremie Mazan – AUX TRAVERS (Université du Québec à Montréal)
Justin Dong-Hyuk Im – WHY DO ANTS GO BACK TO THEIR NEST (York University)
Matthew Williams – ALFIE (Sheridan College)
Teleri McGuire-Astolfo – SOLITUDE (Sheridan College)
Sponsored by/Commandité par: Insight Productions
Récipiendaires des prix hommage
Ron Sanders a commencé sa carrière en tant que monteur de long métrage à Toronto dans les années 1970. Depuis, il a travaillé avec des réalisateur·trice·s comme Rex Bromfield, Mark Lester, Yves Simoneau, Robert Longo, Daniel Petrie Jr., Sturla Gunnarson, Norman Jewison, Stephen Silver, Henry Sellick, Nathan Morlando, Miranda de Pencier et Viggo Mortensen.
Il a collaboré avec le réalisateur David Cronenberg sur dix-neuf films qui lui ont valu neuf nominations pour meilleur montage aux prix Génie, honneur qu’il a remporté quatre fois avec ALTER EGO (1989), CRASH (1996), EXISTENZ (2000) et PROMESSES DE L’OMBRE (2007).
Ron a aussi reçu sept nominations pour meilleur montage de la Guilde des réalisateurs du Canada qui l’a récompensé cinq fois pour UNE HISTOIRE DE VIOLENCE (2006), PROMESSES DE L’OMBRE (2008), UNE MÉTHODE DANGEREUSE (2012), RÊVES NOIRS (2016) et FALLING (2020). En 2010, il a reçu une nomination aux prix American Cinema Editors pour son travail sur CORALINE.
Tout au long de sa carrière, Ron a activement soutenu les talents émergents dans la salle de montage et fait une place aux étudiant·e·s et à toute personne intéressée à en savoir plus sur cet aspect de notre industrie.
Jean-Marc Vallée (1963-2021) was a Canadian filmmaker, film editor, and screenwriter. After studying film at the Université de Montréal, Vallée went on to make a number of critically acclaimed short films, including STÉRÉOTYPES, LES FLEURS MAGIQUES, and LES MOTS MAGIQUES.
His debut feature, BLACK LIST, was nominated for nine Genie Awards, including nods for Vallée’s direction and editing. His fourth feature film, C.R.A.Z.Y., received further critical acclaim. Vallée’s follow-up, THE YOUNG VICTORIA, garnered strong reviews and received three Academy Award nominations.
His sixth film, CAFÉ DE FLORE, was the most nominated film at the 32nd Genie Awards. Vallée’s next films, the American dramas DALLAS BUYERS CLUB and WILD continued this acclaim and the former earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing and Best Picture.
Vallée ventured into television by executive producing and directing two projects BIG LITTLE LIES and SHARP OBJECTS. For the former, he won an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special.
Vallée was a keen collaborator in the edit suite, with editing credits on many of his own projects, often under pseudonyms that played on his initials.
Deux choses étaient primordiales pour lui dans ses projets. D’abord, il établissait qu’il ne voulait pas travailler avant 9 h du matin ni après 18 h. Ensuite, il tenait toujours à avoir un bon budget réservé à la musique, car il croyait que la musique était au centre de toute bonne histoire.
Célébrer les assistant·es-monteur·euses
À l'approche de la remise des Prix CCE, nous voulons célébrer les assistant·e·s-monteur·euse·s qui sont une part inestimable de l'équipe de montage.
Vous trouverez ici les noms des assistant·es-monteur·euses qui ont contribué aux projets en nomination cette année :
Anam Abbas
Darren Adams
Matt Ahrens
Joana Asurmendi
Katie Awad
Charles Boisvert
Jared Bryer
Nathan Burke
Todd Buttenham
Frédérique Chalifoux-Bazinet
Charles Chase
Andrew S. Clark
Sarah Corbeil-Jarry
Andreanne Cousineau
Mercédesz Czanka
Philippine de Sars
Carl Roméo Desjardins
Lisa Diallo
Joanie Drouin-Laplante
Vanessa P. Dubé
Veronica Formos
Teddy Freedman
Dale Gagne
Erika Gagné
Adriane German
Marie-Lou Gingras
David Grave
Shayne Hontiveros
Jay Houpt
Francois Jacob
Edwin Janzen
Jasmin John
Julie Kelly
Marie-Alexandre Kerouac
Azed Kettani
Cédrick Kluyskens
Mary Komech
Pete Kopchek
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14-15 mai 2022
Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver, Halifax, Montréal
Episode 063 - EditCon 2021: Thrills & Chills
This episode is part 5 of a 6 part series covering EditCon 2021 that took place virtually in February 2021.
The past year has brought our lives no shortage of fear-inducing moments, and yet films that offer us frights continue to be one of our greatest escapes. Join editors Michele Conroy (In the Tall Grass, The Silence, Mama), Jeff Barnaby (Blood Quantum, Rhymes For Young Ghouls), Dev Singh (Incident in a Ghostland, Backcountry) and moderator Erin Deck (Rabid) as they share their insights into crafting successful films that both entertain us and play upon our fears and anxieties.
Jeff Barnaby
Jeff Barnaby was born and raised on the rural Mi’gMaq reserve of Listuguj, Quebec. A multi-disciplined artist, he has won several awards for his artwork, poetry, short stories, music and films. His work provides a bare-knuckled view of post-colonial Mi’gMaq life, defying stereotypical treatments of First Nations’ narratives by using horror/sci-fi tropes to explore themes of violence, gender, race and Indigenous futurism.
Michelle Conroy
Michele Conroy is a veteran film and television editor. Her work has earned multiple DGC awards including: Mama, Pompeii and Splice, which was produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by longtime collaborator Vincenzo Natali. Other collaborations with Natali include the ensemble romance Paris, je t’aime, Nothing, Getting Gilliam, and most recently In the Tall Grass. Other theatrical releases include Little Italy, The Grizzlies, and Ginger Snaps: Unleashed. Her TV credits include Vikings, Penny Dreadful, Flashpoint, and This Is Wonderland.
Dev Singh
I edit movies and television. I hold a BSc in Biochemistry from Queen’s, attended Ryerson’s Film Studies program, and was a resident at the Canadian Film Centre. I’ve been fortunate to work with many wonderful artists and it is a joy to count them amongst my friends and collaborators. My credits include the acclaimed Backcountry, People of Earth, and Picture Day. In theatres and festivals soon: Cinema of Sleep and Spiral. I’m currently working on the Resident Evil reboot.
Erin Deck, CCE
Erin Deck is an editor in both film and television. Her work has earned her multiple nominations and awards through the DGC, CSA and CCE. Some of her TV credits include Altered Carbon, Into The Badlands, Ginny & Georgia and Killjoy
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The Editor’s Cut – Episode 063 – EditCon 2021: Thrills & Chills
Michele Conroy:
I love cutting horror, especially ghost stories and thrillers. It is magical in the edit suite when you can cut it. There’s so many ways to cut it.
Jeff Barnaby:
As an indigenous storyteller, it’s a space that it seems to be we relate to the most. That’s why I gravitate towards it because I can integrate my stories in there in a way that codifies them for a non-native audience.
Dev Singh:
There’s so many sub-genres in horror, too.
Michele Conroy:
Yeah.
Dev Singh:
As you were saying, ghost stories. And as Jeff is saying, there’s so many variations that you start to play in and mix together when you’re cutting them. They’re so much fun.
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 part five of a six-part series covering EditCon 2021 that took place virtually in February 2021, editing dark genre and feature film. This past year has brought our lives no shortage of fear-inducing moments, and yet, films that offer us frights continue to be one of the greatest escapes.
In today’s episode, join editors Michele Conroy from In the Tall Grass, The Silence and Mama. Jeff Barnaby from Blood Quantum and Rhymes for Young Ghouls. Dev Singh from Incident in a Ghostland and Backcountry, and moderator Erin Deck, from Rabid, as they share their sights into crafting successful films that both entertain us and play upon our fears and anxieties.
Speaker 5:
And action.
Speaker 6:
This is The Editor’s Cut.
Speaker 7:
A CCE podcast.
Speaker 8:
Exploring, exploring, exploring the art.
Speaker 7:
Of picture editing.
Erin Deck:
Hello, I’m Erin Deck. I’m joining you this morning from Toronto, and acknowledge that we are on traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Hi, everyone. Just briefly, Jeff Barnaby, Michele Conroy, and Dev Singh, our editors, welcome. Thank you for being here. I’m going to be just a little formal for a second, and I’m going to introduce our panelists properly.
Dev is an accomplished film and television editor. He holds a BSc in biochemistry from Queen’s, attended Ryerson Film Studies program and was a resident at the Canadian Film Center. He is one of only three editors ever named in the yearly Playback magazine 10 to Watch. His credits include the acclaimed Backcountry, People of Earth and Picture Day. In theaters and festivals soon is Cinema of Sleep, Spiral, and currently, he’s working on the Resident Evil reboot. Hi, Dev. Welcome.
Dev Singh:
Hi.
Erin Deck:
Hi. Michele is an extraordinary film and television editor. Her work has earned multiple awards, including for Mama, Pompeii and Splice, which was produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by longtime collaborator, Vincenzo Natali. Other collaborations with Natali include an ensemble romance, Paris, je t’aime, Nothing, Getting Gilliam, and most recently In the Tall Grass. Other theatrical releases include Little Italy, The Grizzlies, and Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. Her TV credits include Vikings, Penny Dreadful, Flashpoint, and This is Wonderland.
I would also like to point out that when Mama was released in theaters in North America, it was the number one film, so that’s awesome. Hi, Michele. Welcome.
Jeff was born and raised on the rural Mi’kmaq Reserve of Listuguj, Quebec. A multi-disciplined artist, he has won several awards for his artwork, poetry, short stories, music and films. His work provides a bare knuckle view of the post-colonial Mi’kmaq life, defining stereotypical treatments of First Nations narratives by using horror and sci-fi tropes to explore themes of violence, gender, race, and indigenous futurism.
His 2010 short film, File Under Miscellaneous, was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Live Action. In 2019, Jeff premiered his sophomore feature, Blood Quantum, at the Toronto International Film Festival, as the opener for Midnight Madness.So hi, Jeff.
Jeff Barnaby:
Hi.
Erin Deck:
Yay. I’m super happy that we’re all here. I think just to get us in the mood, I’m going to read just three quick horror quotes. Okay. This one’s by Wes Craven. “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.” This one’s by Stephen King. “I recognize horror as the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify. And if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross out. I’m not proud.”
Then this last one’s by Guillermo del Toro. “When I’m watching a horror movie with other people, and there is a jump scare or tension, you all react at the same time. It’s beautiful, it’s very connecting. It’s very empathic. There is a joy in being scared. I love that there is a community experience in watching a horror movie.” I love those quotes. Okay. So my first question is just going to be an easy one to warm us up. I’m just curious how all three of you got into editing horror movies?
Jeff, I know that you write and direct also your films. But so when you started, did horror films, was that just the jobs that came or did you actively seek them? How did you get into cutting horror films? Dev, I’ll start with you.
Dev Singh:
Yeah. I did a short film while I was at the CFC and it got the attention of Adam MacDonald, who was the director of Backcountry. I went for an interview for Backcountry and he just sat down and said, “Hey, this isn’t an interview. You’re my guy if you want to do this movie.”
I had done all the research and everything, and I was all ready for it. That never really happens, so I was like, “Yeah. All right, this is great. Yeah, love to do it.” And so then we got into it. That started it really.
Erin Deck:
That’s amazing. That was the same way it happened for me with Darren Bousman. I hadn’t cut a feature before and we just went for an interview, and he just wanted somebody who liked to talk about horror and liked horror movies as much as he did. I had some editing experience, but it was just kind of like do our personalities work together?
Dev Singh:
Totally.
Erin Deck:
Yeah. Michele, what about you? Did you seek out horror movies or did they seek you out?
Michele Conroy:
They sought me out. I was doing a lot of TV and then this one producer, who’s working with Copper Heart said, “Vincenzo Natali’s looking for an editor.” And she arranged an interview and took off from there. He and I just hit it off as soon as we met each other. And then Steve Hoban from Copper Heart offered me Ginger Snaps 2. I realized I really enjoy cutting horror.
I love, love cutting horror, more so than drama, more so than comedy. I love horror, it’s fun. It’s fun when you’re in the edit suite and you can just create something you don’t even know in a scene that doesn’t even have a jump, but just suddenly you can create something like that.
Erin Deck:
There’s fun. You have a good time with horror. Even if you’re dealing with sometimes some more serious moments, there’s a bit of a joy in cutting. Hearing someone scream, you almost block that out and just like, “Oh, that’s a good scream. Oh, that scream’s better. Or that stab actually works a lot better than that stab.”
So Jeff, how did you start? Because I know that you write, direct, and edit. Was it something that you always just moved towards?
Jeff Barnaby:
It was always due to financial necessity. I cut my first film in school and it just progressed from there, where I was doing music and all the stuff you mentioned already. I had a pretty good honed artistic sensibility and it was easily transferable to the editing process. I already had a really keen sense of timing because I’d been doing music forever. I had a really keen sense of organizing my thoughts. So it just seemed like a natural progression to do all this artwork and transfer all that skill into cinema. Then it just made sense to take all that other sensibility and apply it to editing.
There’s an interesting byproduct of being Mi’kmaq is that there’s no editors out there that knows Mi’kmaq, so nobody’s going to be able to edit that material anyway. I ended up having to do that regardless. So it became I’d say, “Well, why don’t I just do it?” And then as I was doing it, I began to realize that there’s a language, there is a definitive, native cinematic language to editing that other people don’t really get. It’s a lot about embedded storytelling and disjointed narratives. This goes way back, thousands of years to oral storytelling traditions.
When you think about telling a story orally, you’re telling a story and you never stick to that linear point. You’d be talking and you’d go, “Oh, you remember Larry, Larry from way back when? He used to pump gas over at John’s place.” It’s all over the place. That’s what attracted me to editing was taking that sensibility of indigenous storytelling and applying it to something that hasn’t been around as long as that tradition has. It becomes a new form. So as a native storyteller, of course, that was super exciting to me and being a native filmmaker. Then it just became about the energy to do all of that shit.
Erin Deck:
Yeah. I guess that going into film because of your music, and poetry, and short stories, it’s just another venue to explore. I guess it keeps progressing.
Jeff Barnaby:
The space between music, and imagery, and sound is pretty negligible, so you’re editing all that stuff. Everybody thinks of us as just image editors, yet 90% of our timelines are going to be sound. It’s like you get three bars of editing images and you get 50 sound tracks. I don’t think anybody really, particularly with horror editing because so much of our jumps or our tension is built from sound. You look at something like Ginger Snaps, the first one, where they have that scene where they all get trapped in the dark.
There’s no image there. It’s just sound. You’re editing sound in that closet where you’re hearing that werewolf footage. It’s horrifying, but you don’t actually see anything. Then your talent, you become a musician. Sure, you don’t know how to play any instruments, but you know the rhythm of sound, you know the rhythm of music in order to apply the images.
Erin Deck:
You’re absolutely right. I feel that horror editing really does rely a lot on being a sound designer and a music mixer because it all plays together in one.
Jeff Barnaby:
The only other genre that could probably contend with it is musicals, where you need to be on point with every image you edit.
Erin Deck:
Absolutely. No, absolutely. And going off of the tension, it’s interesting because I was thinking about this. I was thinking a lot of the great movies have different emotions, but horror films really rely on tension and use a high level of tension. There’s this director, he once described tension as an elastic band.
I guess my next question is I’m curious, how do you guys know how far to pull that elastic band? And when to stop and be like, “Okay, I’ve hit it. That’s the perfect amount of tension.” Michele, do you want to start with that one?
Michele Conroy:
It’s hard to say. Usually, you need an audience to know or just test screening personally.
Erin Deck:
Yeah.
Michele Conroy:
Actually in the project I’m working on now, I cut it very loose. Then the process, you keep on pacing it up, pacing it up. The last pass you watch it, and it just was the same rhythm through the entire film. There was no air. I just realized I took all the tension out of this one scene and we have to add four seconds here, three seconds there.
Erin Deck:
I love that you use the emotional response from an audience how to craft that tension, because you have amazing experience in cutting tension. You’re right. A lot of horror, like the Guillermo del Toro quote, you have to see it with somebody.
Even if it’s your assistant or somebody comes in, you’re like, “Can you watch this?” Sometimes they don’t even need to say a word and you can see how they’re reacting.
Michele Conroy:
That’s exactly it. You know the feeling. You’re watching it. Even when the director watches the cut with you for the first time, you’re like, “No, that’s off. I need to open that up. Or you know what? I know it’s off here. I have to add frames here or trim it there.”
Erin Deck:
Tension is a hard thing to fully know if you’ve gotten it right. Dev, do you feel like when you’re cutting footage that when you’re alone in your room, do you just put it together, and I think I got this? Or do you wait until maybe you can screen it with somebody?
Dev Singh:
No. Part of it’s intuitive. You just feel a rhythm. You’re trying to do it a little bit different. Part of it is you’re thinking about what you had done before, and so how that plays into the particular scene or section that you’re doing, I think. And then just overarching things. It’s like tension is the precursor to conflict. So if you think of it dramatically, you’re like, “Oh, how can I stretch that out?” I remember hearing Joe Walker say a similar thing that you were saying, which is a bow and arrow thing, and how you release it, and when you release it.
I think a lot of it is fun with surprise. They give you set ups, something where a person walks into the back of the frame, when you’re in a long shot or a moving master or whatever. Then the next time, you hold that same shot with the audience’s expectation that it comes from there. Then you bait and switch them with the other side. You’re playing on intention, the things that you’ve done before, a little bit of surprise. Then it’s like everyone expects it, so you get used to that expectation and then you change that on them. That’s the fun part if you play into that expectation and turn it.
Michele Conroy:
Yeah. It’s cutting and it’s not cutting when you expect to cut.
Erin Deck:
Yeah.
Dev Singh:
Exactly. It’s fun to do this where like Jeff was talking about, which is that you’re just changing timing and you’re using your own inner timing.
Erin Deck:
Yeah. Jeff, you were going to add to that?
Jeff Barnaby:
I was thinking about a movie like The Conjuring and The Conjuring is a fucking masterclass intention, the whole thing from start to finish. And for me, it was what Dev was talking about is that you need to know the destination in your head. There’s nothing to feel tense about if you don’t know that something is awry.
So they set up this opening of the doll. From that point on, you’re just horrified about what’s going to come around the corner. The great thing about it is the only thing that dies in that whole movie is the dog.
Erin Deck:
Oh, my God, you’re right.
Jeff Barnaby:
So the idea of violence or the idea of any real threat is almost all psychosomatic in that there’s something going on in the house, but he’s just being an asshole. He’s not really doing anything real sinister outside of terrorizing the family. And everything happens there off screen. Everything is just, it’s such a brilliant setup of how to do tension. It really is about the destination. Once you set the tension, what they did with the opening in The Conjuring, then you could just mess with it. And that’s what they do the entire time.
It has nothing to do with that doll, but they already put it inside you and you just maintain it. So you just sit there in that creepy house, making all those weird noises and shadows in the background, and the occasional wipe of a person going back in the background. This is all classic stuff. You can go all the way back to Caligari to see some of this stuff happening. And there’s a lot of classic stuff in horror, the frame just abhors negative space, so the classic thing, right? The classic scene is seen in every horror movie.
Somebody opening a refrigerator door and blocking out that fucking hallway, and what’s going to happen when you close it. So it’s really just an extension of that idea of setting up there’s something amiss going on, and just riding it out through the whole film. Really horror is about great openings. It sets the tone.
Erin Deck:
Yeah, I agree. I feel like those first few minutes of a horror film, they really set up. And when Michele was deciding which clip to use, I was pushing for the opening of Mama but she didn’t go with that one, but that’s okay. The opening to Mama is from the first frame. Then it’s five minutes of just, you don’t blink, and it’s tension all the way through. Then that sets it up because I’m not going to talk too much about Mama, like I know it like Michele does, but it sets it up for the rest of the movie. You’ve got that in you now. Like you were saying, you’ve got that fear, you’ve got that tension. Jeff Barnaby:
One more thought about that. I’m sorry, I keep thinking about 28 Weeks Later and the way they set it up there. It’s a microcosm of what I’m talking about, because how do they introduce that tension in the first place? You’re in a zombie apocalypse, but everything seems cool, they’re cooking and everything’s chill. Then you hear a bang at the door, and that kid shows up.
And from that point on, that scene is what’s coming after next? Then it’s just a rapid fire assault on your senses. It’s the best zombie opening in the history of cinema and I don’t think it’ll ever be topped. It’s exactly that. It introduces the idea and follows up with technique of master filmmakers.
Erin Deck:
This is our hour of Sunday morning horror talk and I love this. I was working on a TV show and it was a drama, but they had a Halloween episode. And this Halloween episode, they gave it to me because they know I love horror. I had cut it in a way that I emotionally responded to. As a horror fan, I liked the way I cut it. But then a person came in and they were like, “Well, no, no, you didn’t follow the rules to horror.” And I was like, “There’s rules? What rules am I supposed to be following?”
And they were like, “Well, you have them seeing that thing before we see them see it. And you’re supposed to have them stay on their face to get the reaction and then show it.” I was like, “Yeah, but I don’t like the reaction of their face.” They were like, “Doesn’t matter, you got to stick to the rules of horror.” I was like, “Aw, I don’t like that.” But it’s interesting how some people believe that you have to cut horror a specific way, but I don’t feel that way. I feel that it is your gut, your emotion, and then also how an audience respond.
When you guys are about to start a horror film, cutting it. Let’s say it’s either going to be a slasher, or a zombie, or paranormal, do you research that genre? Do you take in as much of that genre? Do you watch a lot of the horror movies so that when you go into it, you feel more prepared? Or do you just trust in your knowledge, and editing ability, and experience? Jeff, do you want to start that one?
Jeff Barnaby:
I delve in and watch everything for two reasons. One, they might do something that works that I can steal. Two, they might do something that I’m doing that it looks I’m copying. There’s a fine line between those two things, but I’ve learned to walk it. I try to figure out all the things that people are… I don’t do this as an editor, I do it as a director. I’m like, “Well, if it works for them, we could do it for us but with Indians.” That’s the way I approach my films. But when it comes to doing that, composing stuff, I start as a director and make my way to being an editor.
I try to make my job as an editor as easy as possible. I think I do that by just being well-informed. I think it doesn’t hurt to walk in with all the tools and accoutrements you have to fight your fight. I watch everything and that’s exactly what I did for Blood Quantum. Not that I hadn’t seen every zombie thing that came along already, but I reiterated everything. There were some things that we did, I don’t know if you guys saw the film, but there was a movie called Irreversible. There was a scene in there where this dude gets his head caved in with a thing.
I edited a whole reel together of scenes like that from films that I had been watching to show the crew as inspiration. I put together a hit reel for my crew, along with I put a watch list together for crews that include stuff like that. So not only do I expect it out of myself, I expect it out of the people I work with too.
Erin Deck:
That’s cool. I love that idea that you immerse the whole crew in it, so that when they are shooting or when they’re doing something, they are also part of even just that energy that’s on set. Michele, what about you?
Michele Conroy:
I do the opposite. No, I won’t watch a horror film or a film that’s related to it, but if a director wants me to then I will. I will watch all the directors’ work just to see their style and their rhythm. Also, In the Tall Grass, Vincenzo, the hallucination sequence he wanted., He referenced an episode from the reboot of Twin Peaks. I watched that over and over to get the rhythm. I will reread the script over and over. As you know, it’s more about getting to know my dailies inside out.
Jeff Barnaby:
You work off the script while you’re working?
Michele Conroy:
Yeah.
Jeff Barnaby:
You do? That’s interesting because once we shoot, I never look at the script again, ever. I’ll never look at it again.
Michele Conroy:
But you’re the director too. I get it. No. And then as you know, with any filmmaking and any genres, the script is written three times, everyone knows that. Written when it’s directed, it’s a new story. And when it’s edited, when we cut it, it’s another story.
Yeah. No, I try and be true to the script, but it always changes by the time you’re three months into the cut, the story changes completely most of the time.
Erin Deck:
A lot of times, directors really want to see a cut that reflects the script so that they have a base to work off of. But Jeff, I totally get why you don’t need to because you’ve written it, you’ve shot it. It’s so in your head that you don’t need to see a script.
Jeff Barnaby:
It’s almost, you’re so familiar with it, that you resent it. Then you really want to like, “How can I change all of this stuff? How can I make this more interesting than what I had on a page, which is 30% there?” So it’s how do you extract what I started with versus what I have? When you talk about doing horror films, one of the things you’re leaving out is typically they’re pretty cheap. So you’re having to compensate by hiding stuff and you do that through edits, and you do that to a large extent, through post.
And for us, we really underestimated the amount of money we needed. We were a million dollars short and we were daily cutting stuff, huge plot points that were just getting tossed out the window. I don’t think a non-director editor could have done that because I was literally cutting stuff before I even made it to the editing suite. Trying to figure out in real time on set, how can I make up for what I just did to my script?
Erin Deck:
Right.
Jeff Barnaby:
So by the time we got to the end and there was so much of the script that wasn’t there, all the solutions became editorial and post solutions. That’s how some of the animation got in. There was things that we needed to do that couldn’t include going out and shooting more stuff, and making up for the stuff that we lost because of budget.
That’s where your job as an editor really, really starts to become integral and it’s not just I’m cutting the script together anymore. It’s likeI’m trying to unfuck all the things that they screwed up on set. I’m saying this as a director, that was my experience with dealing with the on set stuff.
Erin Deck:
Yeah. I totally get that. So Dev, before we go to your clip, I’m just going to ask do you watch anything? Do you immerse yourself before you begin a horror film? Did you watch all the Resident Evils before?
Dev Singh:
Yeah. Actually, I’d seen a couple and I even worked on one of them, but Resident Evil is different because it’s reinventing it. It was more about getting into its world. I watch the directors’ stuff just like Michele. Then I kinda just watch my own things. I think I read the script in the town for at least Resident Evil had this First Blood feel.
So I was like, “Oh, you know what? I’ll watch First Blood.” And so I’ll start to do things that are completely different than anyone in that same world expects. Hopefully, that gives it a little bit of a different flavor. That’s kinda where I go a little bit.
Jeff Barnaby:
Here’s a question for all of you as horror editors. Do you ever get tired of looking at that imagery over and over again?
Michele Conroy:
Always.
Jeff Barnaby:
Does it desensitize you? If you see a head getting cut off 50 times, does it matter anymore?
Dev Singh:
Yeah. The gore doesn’t get to me anymore.
Michele Conroy:
I laugh.
Erin Deck:
You watch it over and over again, and you start looking for the technical. You’re like, “Did that blade really slice through that bone perfectly? Oh, the blade kind of wobbled.” You don’t see it. I’m going to shift us into our clips section of this, and so we’re going to start the first clip of Dev’s.
[clip plays]
Erin Deck:
This film, it’s pure horror. Every moment is dark and creepy, and there’s so many really fun jump scares in this film. Especially at the beginning of that clip, you think she’s in a dream because she wakes up, and there’s a wolf and it barks, but she doesn’t react to it.
So you’re kinda all lulled into like, “Okay, we’re going into a dream sequence.” And then right away, there’s a jump scare. I noticed that throughout this film, there’s quite a few jump scares. Was it a lot to take on or just to keep these jump scares feeling fresh, because they do; they land really well. Or was every jump scare planned and executed right, so that it was an easier job for you?
Dev Singh:
No, this was a really hard job, actually. The first one, because the director, Pascal Laugier, who’s French new extremity OG guy. It’s the first person that I’ve ever worked with that has their history in front of them. So he did Martyrs, so everybody in this particular world knows Martyrs.
Jeff Barnaby:
Shit, man. This is exactly what I was going to say is this reminds me so much of Martyrs and I couldn’t figure out why. Now that you say that, wow. Okay.
Dev Singh:
Yeah. That was you’re going in and it was cool because when we interviewed, he had somehow seen Backcountry. He interviewed me in on Skype because he was already back in France, and he was like, “So do you want to do this movie?” I was like, “Okay, sounds good.” He goes, “We’ll put you up in Paris.” And I was like, “Okay, this sounds amazing. I’ll get to work with you.” And then I was like, “Yeah, I don’t know that I’m actually quite ready for this job.” I haven’t done anything this kinda extreme before. It’s a really dark story, but I was up for it.
I was supposed to show after six weeks the rough cut of the film. When I went in, I was like there’d been a previous editor on it that had done the assembly. I watched about 10 minutes of it and I was like, “I know this guy, he knows Martyrs’ feel and stuff, so it didn’t have that tone.” I didn’t want to color the approach that I was going to take because you can’t help yourself. I think I’m like everybody else, probably a little lazy, is that I’ll look at that and I’ll go, “You know what? That is actually pretty good. I’m going to take that and start from there.”
I asked him if I could start it all on my own. And so he said yeah, sure. I would watch the dailies then cut a scene. Then he had waited like a month before we’d even gotten into this, so he was really chomping at it. And to your point about earlier, like working the beginning, we had worked the beginning for six weeks. We only got to 24 minutes after six weeks. I thought I was going to get fired, for sure. I was like, “That was wonderful. I was in Paris for six weeks. I’m going home.” Then the producers came in and they were livid, right?
He was great because he just backed me up. We showed them the first 24 minutes and they went nuts. They were like, “Oh my God, this is terrifying.” Because we fine cut it. We spent six weeks fine cutting for the first 24 minutes, losing stuff, getting it together. And by then that’s kinda an opportunity you get to get into the person’s head space. Then I just watched the dailies for a couple of hours. He shot 40 days in one location too basically, so you can imagine the amount of footage that you have to go through to try and figure that stuff out.
I put the scene together in an hour and then spent six hours doing sound. He would look at it and go, “Hey, that looks pretty good. Let’s do sound.” So then I’d be like, “All right, here we go.” You’re reversing stuff, slowing it down. We would go find YouTube’s of, we create the voice for the character. Obviously, once the real sound guys get into it, it embarrasses all the work that you’ve done. But like Jeff was saying earlier in the show, you just end there.
Erin Deck:
But you have to do that work.
Dev Singh:
Absolutely and that’s how you get the scares. You start to build them. And then each of them, when you do a follow, how do you focus on a certain thing? This point is actually the climax of the second act. It’s actually a 14 minute scene and it really has that like a Martyrs’ feel to it.
It’s weird because I realized once I was watching it again that oh yeah, this is just this tiny little section of a massive thing that you’ve been building for 35 minutes.
Erin Deck:
It’s so true. Yeah. When I had watched the whole film, because we were talking about what scene, and we had talked about a few scenes, but I had watched the whole film. Then when this scene lands, it’s so effective. It’s so effective because it feels like the film just keeps doing this.
It’s interesting when you remove it from that trajectory that it still stands out amazingly, but the impact, it’s not lost but it does lessen a bit. When you watch it on its own, you’re like, “Oh, they don’t get it.” They don’t get how people who are just watching the scene on its own. They’re like, “No, no.” By this point, your mind is like, boom, because there’s also a twist.
Dev Singh:
Yeah. All the shots are echoes of shots that either come up or were before. As you’re building it, you’re like, “Oh yeah, I remember why we went there.” But at first, I would sometimes look and go, “Oh, why did we do that? Oh yeah, right.”
Erin Deck:
When I was watching that scene, I noticed that there’s a lot of angles and I’m like, “Wow, this looks like a lot of footage.” That made me laugh when you had earlier said that he had shot so much and even just this one location.
It looks like a lot of footage to put together and so I’m curious, was there a lot of creating it in the editing room? Did you just have a bucket of just footage to work from, or was it thought through by the director and the script?
Dev Singh:
Yeah, it’s thought through. He knows what he’s doing. He is talented at this world.
Erin Deck:
Yeah.
Dev Singh:
That was a real privilege to be in the hands of somebody. But that having been said, we created everything. It was just we cut out stuff, there was never a plan. There was never like, “Oh, this is how it’s got to be.” It was always looking at everything, trying and finding a new way of saying it. Trying to tweak characters and getting them to feel a particular way about each other and building all that stuff. And then it’s funny, how I approach it all, is just I approach it like drama. I don’t think of it in any other way than that. Then it’s the timing that’s horror. You just bend the content a bit.
Erin Deck:
Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, content. But that’s a really interesting approach. It is, it’s a nonstop film and it was really fun to watch. So our next clip that we’re going to watch is Jeff’s from Blood Quantum.
[clip plays]
Erin Deck:
Jeff, this film is so beautiful and it looks amazing, and there’s such a realistic feel to it. I loved it. The animation is such a wonderful addition to it. I’m curious, I love this style, so I have a couple questions about the animation.
First off, was the style always what you were going to do or did that just develop as you were in the editing room?
Also, I wanted more animation just because it was so good and it was so entertaining. I’m curious, was there a thought process on where to put the animation in the film, and did you remove some, did you add some? I guess let’s just talk about the animation, because it’s such a strong element as well of the film.
Jeff Barnaby:
The animation was always supposed to be there, but it was supposed to be specific to an embedded story within the overall arc of the film, where the old man tells a bedtime story to a young boy in the compound about how he gets his sword. It’s a flashback of him getting his sword, the samurai sword in World War II, because the film is set in the ’80s and he’s a World War II veteran. He’s been selling these antique swords as a way to make his grocery bill. So when we got the budget, saw that there’s no way you can afford the animation. It was, how are we still going to integrate it?
It became act bumpers and spatial placements that added to the scene. Or in this case, the old man, I didn’t want him to die at the end and the way we shot it, when I looked at the footage, it was like, “Well, it looks he’s dead.” So it was, we needed to figure out a way to both stay vague about the idea that whether or not he’s alive, while at the same time presenting it as if he survived. It was such an innocuous area to operate in, that it just made sense to do the animation. We’re working with Daniel Gies from ED Films and that guy’s a genius.
He’s one of these mad genius animators and we hit it off right away because when I walked into his office, it looked my office. He had his drawing pad there, he had his music stuff everywhere. It was like he was a multidisciplined artist, so we spent half the time talking about music. So that’s how that came about. I wanted to show that scene because, that scene on that particular day was a shit show. The whole thing was brutal. We were supposed to shoot on the dock, but it was too windy so that got tossed out.
That means every storyboard that we did, gone. Then the stunt that was supposed to happen up on top of that monolith, it was the same thing. It was like we can’t do it because it would just blow the stuntman off. And then it became a matter of a 10-year flood. You can’t really see it in the clip, but the whole area flooded. So that set that we were using, where the zombies were able to run up to the monolith, if you actually cut forward a little bit more, you’ll see that entire area is surrounded by water.
So it was a matter of cutting around the snow that was there in the morning. It was a matter of cutting around the flood. It was a matter of cutting around the fact that the zombies we shot, we shot two days before. It was all this stuff that we had to cut around that wasn’t there prior, just a couple hours before, so that’s what that was.
Erin Deck:
You wouldn’t know, you wouldn’t know. It fits together so wonderfully. You did a great job.
Jeff Barnaby:
That’s it. That’s the magic of editing. That’s really only… So I was looking at it, I was having traumatic flashbacks, because I had the exact opposite of Dev in that we probably had about three shots to use, plus the B-roll. So we had three shots to cut with, plus the B-roll, to make that scene, and that was the entire film. I’ve been in the same position as Dev too, where I cut this 24-hour doc and they show up with 70 hours of footage. It was a 24-minute doc with 70 hours of footage, so I know what he feels like.
In a way, it’s worse, because when you have just a handful of shots, there’s only so many ways it can go together. When you have a ton of footage, the sky’s the limit. I think that’s what I was looking at there, was just trying to get all those shots to jive in a way that made something. It wasn’t easy. Plus the music, I did the music there too. It was like it’s a fun scene because it works. It works as an editor because you’re using everything. You’re using music, you’re using all the footage you can get your hands on.
And we really did, we used everything. When I was talking about it yesterday, or I forget when we were doing our pre-interview. When I talked about Michel, the DOP just randomly shooting shit on the shore. That’s exactly what I ended up using for that entire final scene. It was just like… you talk about it being a survival movie, it really was, in the sense that we barely survived it. We had to stop filming because we ran out of money. I had to cut the movie that we had, fly to Cannes, sell that, nd come back, reshoot that whole scene six months later, and recut it with the rest of the material that was already there, that we had shot the year before.
Erin Deck:
That’s crazy.
Jeff Barnaby:
It is crazy. They don’t really tell you that as an editor, but when you are director-editor, there’s nobody there with any kind of common sense to speak any, you know, “Maybe there’s an easier way to do this!”
Erin Deck:
It was interesting because a lot what you said, was a lot of my thought process about it because being the writer-director-editor, you take on a lot on your own and you don’t have that. A lot of times the editor, director, are such great sounding boards off of each other. It’s like, “How can we make this work and how does that…?”
And you’re not in it alone, but you kind of were. And so it’s really interesting to see how you developed that over, now I know, over a span of time because it looks really great. Also, I was really happy that you didn’t kill the grandpa, because when I saw the zombies going on him, I was like, “No.” I was like, “I accept it because it’s a horror movie,” but I was sad. I was sad.
Jeff Barnaby:
You have to be there for the sequel.
Erin Deck:
Amazing. Can you just tell me about how you did the transitions from live action to the animation? Because they’re pretty seamless in the film. And was that again, while you were shooting, was that thought out, so that once you got into the editing room, you knew that they could just fit together, or was it something that developed in the editing room? You’re like, “Okay, this is where I want the animation to start.”
Jeff Barnaby:
It’s such a long, really…that alone could be two hours of just talking. Because really what I’m doing in the space of being an indigenous filmmaker in a predominantly non-native space, is I’m trying to figure out via vis-a-vis being an editor-director, what the indigenous narrative looks like on screen.
Erin Deck:
Yeah.
Jeff Barnaby:
A lot of what I’m doing is trying to figure out how I can shoot transitions to help me integrate either stories from the past, or animation, or anything else. Because if you’ve seen my prior films, this isn’t the first time I’ve integrated animation. And we did it there, we did it, we drew it right into the book. I shot the book. We used that as a transition. The same thing with the opening of Blood Quantum, we shot the ground, knowing that I was going to have that pregnancy was all going to just dissolve from animation to real time.
So really, it’s overwhelming sometimes being an editor-director, but I can count at least 10 times where I’ve been on set where I’ve pre-cut a movie in my brain. One of the famous scenes from Rhymes was another issue of we didn’t have enough money, and I wanted to do a “Let’s introduce everybody in the party” like Goodfellas. Let’s do that and we’ll have an introduction. We couldn’t do that because we didn’t have the money. It’s like we fucking literally don’t even have enough lights to light that, so figure it out.
I’m sitting there, it’s like, “Well, how do we do this?” So what I did was I told the DOP, and we did it in probably two seconds. I said, “Let’s hook up the mask to the camera and let’s take two shots. Let’s get everybody coming towards the camera, talk to Devery’s character sitting at the desk.” And when you’re looking at it, DOP is like, “What the fuck are we doing? We’re just panning, this makes no sense.” But when I got to the edit, I took both versions of the shot, I combined them. It made it look like the mask didn’t move, while everybody else came flooding towards the camera.
I figured that out six to seven, eight months before we actually sat it down and cut it. So it was like things like that really help. Then for that particular scene, it was they were supposed to come out with a bunch of survivors. We had them there, but it was like we ran out of time, we can’t shoot it. So we again had to figure out how to shoot all that stuff. We lost our deck, we lost our survivors. It was like we were making it up as we go along. And I was cutting it as I went along, knowing I needed this, I needed that. We can cover it with a lot of handheld integrating shots.
Erin Deck:
It is amazing.
Jeff Barnaby:
It’s a handbook on how to be a director, writer, composer with no money. That’s was that was.
Erin Deck:
It’s a beautiful film. I really love it. I’m going to now jump onto Michele’s. We’re going to do a clip from Mama.
[clip plays]
Erin Deck:
The first time I watched it, you know as editors and filmmakers, you watch a film and you’re like, “Oh, I want to cut there,” or “Oh, they did that.” I didn’t do that with this film. The editing was so seamless and the tension just stays at such a level. It’s a wonderfully put together, cut film. I was just like, it was really good. Michele, you did such a beautiful job on it.
I was curious, it’s funny in that, I’ve seen Mama a couple times. But when I got the clip, and we were talking about it and I watched the clip, my headphones were dying on me so I watched it without sound.
The pacing, it’s so strong that I was like, “It works, the scene without even dialogue, sound effects music.” It works so well because the cuts are just right at the right spot. I’m curious, because I know that you enjoy working with sound effects and music. I was Michele’s assistant editor for three years so I know her work process. And I also know that you really enjoy playing some things really quiet. When it came to this scene, did you first start it off very quiet, or was music and sound effects a part of the scene right from the beginning?
Michele Conroy:
It’s funny that you mention that. Actually, watching this clip after all these years not watching, seeing the film, I felt we shouldn’t have had music at the end. I felt it should have been dry, just with sound design. That’s what I tend to do too. Even the project I’m working on now, I put in too much music, wall-to-wall music.
And when you strip it down because there’s a lot of sound design. You have creaks, you have the light bulbs flashing. It’s just even the atmos, and the kids playing. I think that would’ve been much stronger without music.
Erin Deck:
Yeah.
Michele Conroy:
I use this clip because there’s another scene where Jessica, walking down the hallway, she hears something. So this was cut differently. When I assembled the cut, I realized they were almost identical scenes, the way they were cut. So this one, I couldn’t cut to her walking down the hallway, but I just thought we’d stay on her back and follow with her. And also, because I overcut the scene and then as the process goes, I pull more and more shots out. When we go around the horn, when the kids are looking at the closet when she’s about to open the door, I overcut that sequence, that bit.
So when I watched it I thought, “What if we just stay on Jessica down to the door and then back up to her?” Because people are probably expecting me to cut to her, the kids again, expecting that cut and it’s when not to cut. To me, that’s what’s difficult, because especially if you’ve seen these scenes over and over, you just want to cut, and cut, and cut, and take the air out. That’s just why I selected this clip because nothing really happens. It’s just what is about to happen, we’re not sure. And you do see mom in the closet after in another scene.
Yeah, but actually it’s the sound design, which I thought was as in any horror film, it’s really it’s half of the film. Yeah. I don’t think we should have music at the end watching it. I just think we should’ve stripped it.
Erin Deck:
Isn’t it interesting when you watch something, when you’re so far removed from it, how you’re just like, “Oh, that could have been better.” But I think that’s so great also, just as editors, you’re constantly evolving and learning. And so I know that with Vincenzo Natali, he loves to do storyboards, and he’s very strong at storyboards.
I know that for Splice, every scene was storyboarded out. I’m curious, do you actually enjoy that? Do you enjoy that a director comes so prepared with storyboards, especially into the editing room? And like, “Okay, I have to follow the storyboards.” Or is it irksome being like, “Let me just feel the footage with the storyboards?”
Michele Conroy:
It depends on the director. Some directors have storyboards and you’re like, “No. No, we can’t cut it this way.” Vincenzo, he has a vision. He knows his script. I trust his storyboards because they do cut together. Even Andy with Mama, he’s an artist just like Vincenzo. Vincenzo was a storyboard artist before he started directing. They have a good vision. They come well-prepared.
I have other directors that’ll have storyboards, and they don’t shoot the storyboards, which is fine for me. I think with an action sequence though, you do need it storyboarded. And you cut according to the storyboard and then it changes, it evolves once you’re in the edit suite, and you string it together, and you’re sitting with the director. But Vincenzo though, his storyboards we do go by it a lot. Yeah, we follow his storyboards. That’s the rule.
Erin Deck:
They could be artwork. He did storyboards for In the Tall Grass also, I assume, right?
Michele Conroy:
Yeah. He had very detailed. But the first opening In the Tall Grass, we changed completely because it just took too long for them to get into the grass. We lost this whole brother and sister argument that just went on and on. We just like, “Get them into the grass right away.”
Erin Deck:
That’s amazing. You wouldn’t know with that movie that you guys cut anything out, because In the Tall Grass, the brother-sister relationship, it’s there. I like that you guys did get them into the grass sooner, but it’s so funny. That’s the joy of editing is when there’s all of this footage or scenes that you remove, then you just have to make it seamless.
Michele Conroy:
Well, as you were saying, the opening of a film. It was like, “This can’t be the opening of our film. It’s just not strong enough.” It’s happening on the film I’m working on now. You got to work it, as Dev said. I’m working on this opening scene. I’ve spent so many hours on it, and it’s only two minutes long.
Erin Deck:
Right.
Michele Conroy:
I hope it stays.
Jeff Barnaby:
There’s six scenes in a movie that you work on the whole time.
Michele Conroy:
And you know I’m going to be working on this scene until the very end, until the day before lock.
Erin Deck:
Yeah. And then sometimes like you said, when you’re removed from it and then you watch it back, you’re just like, “Oh, I could’ve done that just a wee bit better.” When I watch the opening of Rabid, I’m just like, “Oh, I wish I would’ve cut it just slightly different.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s fine.”
Jeff Barnaby:
Well, you never really finish anything as an artist. You just put it down.
Erin Deck:
No, it’s so true.
Dev Singh:
That’s right, that’s right.
Erin Deck:
I can’t think of something that I’ve cut that I’ve watched later and went, “Yeah, that’s solid.”
Jeff Barnaby:
I’ve had scenes like that in my movies, but not a whole movie. No.
Erin Deck:
Yeah.
Michele Conroy:
I usually can’t watch my stuff. I can’t watch it again.
Dev Singh:
No, me neither.
Erin Deck:
Oh really?
Michele Conroy:
Yeah. I cringe.
Erin Deck:
Yeah. You know what? I think about it and that’s true. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any of my films after the fact, which is so interesting.
We’re starting to wrap up I see, but I’m curious, do you love cutting horror? Is it what you would prefer to cut, and direct and write for Jeff? So Dev, do you love cutting horror? Is it your main thing?
Dev Singh:
I mean I love editing, so it doesn’t really matter what it is. But, the great thing about horror is, particularly kinda given this time, it’s one of the last bastions of real cinema, so you get really great shots.
Jeff Barnaby:
Amen.
Dev Singh:
And images that you can really play with. Sometimes when you’re in a drama or something you’re like, “Oh yeah, I get this.”
Jeff Barnaby:
Two people talking!
Dev Singh:
But in horror, you’re like we get it, totally. And it’s like, this is cinema you know? And that feels great to cut. That’s why I like genre so much. Genre is just a blast to edit.
Erin Deck:
I completely agree. I love it. Jeff, you agree, I assume?
Jeff Barnaby:
As an indigenous storyteller, it’s a space that it seems to be we relate to the most, so that’s why I gravitate towards it, because I can integrate my stories in there in a way that codifies them for a non-native audience.
Erin Deck:
Yeah. Michele, what about you?
Michele Conroy:
I love cutting horror. I do. I do, especially ghost stories and thrillers. Really, it is magical in the edit suite when you can cut it. There’s so many ways to cut it.
Dev Singh:
There’s so many sub-genres in horror, too. There’s just, as you were saying, like ghost stories. And as Jeff is saying, there’s so many variations that you start to play in and mix together when you’re cutting them. It’s so much fun.
Jeff Barnaby:
It’s the bastion of the existential crisis that we’re going on to right now. There’s no better genre besides science fiction and horror to articulate the insubstantial-ness of the things we fear right now. Horror and what else?
Erin Deck:
No, you’re absolutely, you’re absolutely. And on that note, that is all we have. Honestly, I have 10 more questions that I had for everyone that I wanted to ask, but we’re at the end. That was super awesome.
Thank you to Dev, Michele and Jeff for joining us. Thank you EditCon for having us. And honestly, if you guys ever want to do this again, we could just Zoom and talk horror, any Sunday morning. All right. Thank you, everyone.
Michele Conroy:
Thank you.
Erin Deck:
Have a great Sunday, everyone.
Jeff Barnaby:
Thanks. Thanks for having us.
Erin Deck:
Bye.
Michele Conroy:
Thanks. Bye.
Dev Singh:
Bye.
Sarah Taylor:
Thanks so much for listening today, and a special thanks goes out to Jane MacRae and Alison Dowler. This episode was edited by Alex Schead and Karen Alec. The main title sound design was created by Jane Tattersall. Additional ADR recording by Andrea Rusch. Virtual music created by Chad Blain and Soundstripe. This episode was mixed and mastered by Tony Bao.
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Hosted and Produced by
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Cet événement a eu lieu le 30 avril 2022.
Presented in English / Présenté en anglais
Whether you’re just starting out or have been working for years there are always questions when planning your career path. Join the CCE for a special mentorship-driven online event focused on early and mid-career development and planning. Mentee participants will cycle between four virtual breakout rooms hosted by some of the CCE’s best. Editor mentors will lead discussions and answer questions on a variety of career development topics. After the sessions are complete, join us for some virtual socializing.
Salles de discussion :
Getting on top of your career aspirations is all about assessing potential opportunities. For many, taking assistant editing jobs is an integral stage in development; for others, diving straight into editing is the way to go. You might want to work with an agent, or go it on your own. Either way, you’ll need to network and interview successfully to advance your career. It’s a lot to navigate and we’re here to help. Learn about strategies for short and long-term planning and tips for selling yourself and your skillset to others.
Negotiating for yourself can be tough, especially when you’re eager to jump into a new project. Standard contracts rarely provide all the details and protections you need, and even with the help of an agent, it can be hard to know what to ask for. Union projects can provide certain benefits, but many types of work are not covered by this umbrella. We’ll talk rates, kit fees, schedules, edit suite setups, use of home offices, credits and more in this all- encompassing discussion.
We all know how difficult working remotely can be. Managing communication is often difficult, notes can be delayed, streaming cuts can be a pain, constant messages can be distracting and “real time” editing is hardly a replacement for having multiple minds in a room. And where do you turn when you’re stuck or need advice?
Rest assured everything is overcomable. We’ll discuss some of the tools and strategies to keep the collaborative spirit going while working remotely and hear about how to engage peers and mentors to help you along your journey.
There’s a lot more to being “in the chair” than just operating the software. The cutting room can be rife with emotion, internal politics, high stakes, and lots of stress. Despite tight deadlines and high expectations, the editor is often expected to sit calmly at the center of it all. Learn some tips and techniques for navigating collaboration and conflict in the edit suite.
À propos de l'événement
avril 2022
13-15h HAE
en ligne
Catégories
Congratulations to our 2022 CSA winners!
Félicitations à nos lauréat.e.s des prix Écrans canadiens 2022
Félicitations à nos membres CCE lauréat.e.s des prix Écrans canadiens!
Episode 060 - EditCon 2021: In Conversation with Michelle Tesoro, ACE
Today’s episode is part 2 of a 6 part series covering EditCon 2021 that took place virtually in February 2021.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE, is a master of drama, intrigue and suspense. From FRINGE to THE NEWSROOM, Michelle’s work shows a range of storytelling techniques.
Paul Day, CCE, and Michelle Tesoro, ACE, discuss Michelle’s work, including her most recent feat of editing an entire mini-series, THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE
Cutting-edge picture editor Michelle Tesoro, ACE, is an industry rising star. Tesoro cut Netflix’s top-rated series The Queen’s Gambit, Emmy-nominated series When They See Us, Godless, House of Cards, and HBO’s series Newsroom. She also cut features like Focus Features’ Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg biography On the Basis of Sex, Participant Media’s Shot Caller, and SXSW’s Grand Jury Prize-winning film Natural Selection, which earned Tesoro the 2011 SXSW Award for Best Editing.
Paul Day, CCE
Paul has been a picture editor for 25 years and has worked with such companies as Netflix, MGM, AMC, Showtime and many more. Some of his recent editing credits include Another Life, Ransom, Into the Badlands, Dark Matter and Lost Girl. He is one of the Canadian Cinema Editors’ co-founders and currently sits on the National Board for the Directors Guild of Canada.
This episode generously sponsored by Jam Post!
À écouter ici !
The Editor’s Cut – Episode 060 – “EditCon 2021: In Conversation with Michelle Tesoro, ACE”
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Relationships are more important, sometimes than what the job is, because you just never know what weird TV show is going to lead you to another prestigious TV show. Because those players, whoever you’re working with, do a variety of things and things are always changing. Try to keep in mind what relationships you’re creating and what that may mean later on.
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 part two of a six part series covering EditCon 2021 that took place virtually in February, 2021. In conversation with Michelle Tesoro, ACE. Michelle is a master of drama, intrigue, and suspense. From fringe to the newsroom, Michelle’s work shows a range of storytelling techniques. Paul Day, CCE and Michelle Tesoro, ACE discuss Michelle’s work, including her most recent feat of editing an entire mini-series, The Queen’s Gambit.
Speaker 3:
And action!
Speaker 4:
This is The Editor’s Cut.
Speaker 5:
A CCE podcast.
Speaker 4:
Exploring, exploring, exploring the art.
Speaker 5:
Of picture editing.
Paul Day, CCE:
First of all, I want to welcome Michelle Tesoro for joining me live from Los Angeles. You got up early to join us. She has cut such wonderful shows as Godless, Luck, of course, The Queen’s Gambit, House of Cards, When They See Us, Newsroom. Again, thank you for joining us so early from Los Angeles.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Thanks Paul. Thanks for having me.
Paul Day, CCE:
I want to jump right in by saying, or at least asking you to just give us the journey of Michelle to where you are today. I know you started in Chicago. You now reside in Los Angeles. And of course along the way, I’m sure you’ve had your trials and tribulations of getting to where you are today in such an outstanding career. So can you just give us a quick little sort of Reader’s Digest version of how Michelle went from Chicago to Los Angeles?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Well, I’m from Chicago, and I spent my first two years of college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And I always wanted to get into film, I just didn’t get into any of the film schools for my freshman year. I wasn’t that great of a student. I was an average student. But for my junior year of college, I got into NYU and I decided to pursue a career in film that way. So I went to Tisch and finished my degree there. And it was there that I got bit by the editing bug. I just decided to move forward there.
At the time when I graduated, there wasn’t a whole lot of work, but I was able to get a job at a music publishing company, which is Echo Music and Records. I was their in-house video editor, librarian person. And I did that for about three years, cutting special things and little promos for all their music CDs and things that were going out.
Probably after about three years, I decided to move to Los Angeles. So I came out here through ACE. I had applied for the internship program. I didn’t get it, but I did attend their three-day workshop that they had. And I met a lot of people there at the workshop. This was probably 2005. And I just started through some connections. I had started post-coordinating and assistant editing in network television, and it sort of starts there. I joined the union and everything. And I think it was maybe three years of just assistant editing until I was able to be lucky enough to get a bump up on Swingtown and In Treatment.
Paul Day, CCE:
When you first started out, you started meeting people like this. That whole networking process, being parachuted into Los Angeles, is that when you start meeting the people who inspire you, the people who support you along the way. Are there a few people that you can name that helped guide you, mentors, people that you even maybe even call upon today for advice?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Oh, there’s so many people. But I would say… like… the people who gave me the crucial advice that I needed in the beginning, to.. before I moved out here, would probably be Marty Nicholson, ACE, as well as Paul Barnes, who’s also an ACE member. I met Paul in an editing class at NYU back when I was in school, and he connected me to Marty Nicholson. They told me just the practicalities of having to move out to Los Angeles, which was joining the Guild, getting your hours, and being an assistant editor, how important that is. And so initially that information was really important.
And also another editor I met in New York is Peter Frank. He’s also an ACE member. I did my first couple of assistant editing jobs with him, and he was so supportive and really understanding. For…Now when I think about it, I was really green. I remember I didn’t even know how to organize a lined script, like with the facing pages and all that. So he’s super patient. And I think-
Paul Day, CCE:
You got to learn somewhere, right?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
I guess so. And just be with people who are nice enough to not be annoyed by you. But I think the first few people I worked with, and that would be Michael Ruscio and Lisa Bromwell and Ron Rosen, I got in with the right group that were doing, at the time in television, really great work. And they were willing to.. kinda bring me up and really help me become an editor and also let people know that I edit and without any preconceived notions or protectiveness over their own. So they’re very willing to share. And I still talk to these same people to this day. We’re all close.
And I would say, even along the way, one mentor, he doesn’t like me calling him a mentor, but he’s sort of an accidental mentor, I’ll call it, is Sidney Wolinsky. He’s been just instrumental. He’s such a good friend. We met on Swingtown, which is the first show I got bumped up on when Ron Rosen left to do a pilot. I took over his rotation. But Sidney was one of the other editors and we became fast friends and talked a lot about… And ever since then we call each other about, “What would you do in this situation? Do you think you should take this job? What would you say about this?” And that’s just been so good for me, just how to understand how to conduct myself as a professional. And he has so much experience too, other than a great editor and I could talk about that kind of stuff with him.
Paul Day, CCE:
Sure. I couldn’t agree more with having that resource of having people to call. I definitely have several people who I can call upon and bounce ideas off and career advice and stuff. This is a two-part question and this sort of goes hand in hand with you getting the opportunity to start cutting. But also now that you’re an extremely established editor, how do you also encourage your assistants in getting bumped up or getting cutting opportunities? So tell us a little bit about your transition from assisting to cutting, whether it was easy or difficult, or who you had supporting along the way. And then also tell us a little bit about how you conduct yourself as an editor with your team.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
So.. I think I was always doing a lot of stuff on the side, like whether it was cutting what we used to call little webseries for YouTube with my friends, or somebody, first time filmmaker like Robbie Pickering, we did Natural Selection together. That was completely for nothing. I literally did it for nothing. And I did it while I was cutting In Treatment season three. Amy Duddleston will remember this because she was working with me at the time. But yeah, I practically killed myself doing other stuff while I was trying to just do the practical thing of working.
So I did a lot of that and I think the people I worked with saw that I did that and saw I was putting the hard work. And I was also, if they asked me for help, I would help them. I also think at the time, the assistants were doing a lot of the previously-ons in network television. So you got to showcase your editing work, not just to your editors, but also to the producers. So that enabled me to showcase and have the producers work with me one-on-one other than other things I did for them for the main show. Like for Swingtown. I did a lot of the dissolves. I created the look of those dissolves and transitions. We had special soft iris dissolves that close and different things. So that was something that, it made people see how you would work with a producer. Because that’s the biggest thing, is how do you act in the chair.
Paul Day, CCE:
Sure, sure.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
And to segue way to how… Well actually… And then when once you get a bump up, it’s never secured that you’re going to work again as an editor. So…There was a period of time, I think every editor who can remember their transition between assistant editor to editor will know that you’re kind of riding that fence. And I did that. I was an editor. Then I was an assistant editor. It was a period of time where you go back and forth. And you’re just waiting for those first three credits to say, “Okay, look, I have enough editing credits, can I just do this?”
And I think now with my assistants, I try to give them, if they don’t have enough time of it, enough time in the chair. Because I think that is the biggest thing, if people question whether they can handle something or not. Because oftentimes it’s fine when you’re… A, yes, they should be cutting on their own and honing their own craft and getting fast. And I, of course, encourage that and I try to get assistants who want to cut, cutting, get them involved. But the biggest thing is also to be able to know that they can take a note, know that they can take a note in the room with you within a certain speed of time.
And that’s sort of how I try to help them, other than if I get any calls like, “Oh, I’m doing this short,” or, “I’m doing this,” or whatever, I try to recommend, if I feel like somebody is ready. I’m always recommending.
Paul Day, CCE:
It’s interesting, [Gillian 00:11:00] and [Steven 00:11:01] were talking earlier about doing all this remote stuff and not really catching the vibe that’s going on in the room. It’s one of those things where I was always trying to pass along to assistants to sorts of read body language and mood. And you just don’t know what other things have happened to a producer or director before they get into the room. And I always looked at it, it’s sort of like you want a calm, warm, comforting environment for who’s ever coming in so you can at least get the true creative self coming out of them once you get into it.
All right. So once you’ve transitioned into becoming a very established editor, you meet Scott Frank. Can you tell us the story of your relationship with Scott Frank? That you worked on Godless and of course The Queen’s Gambit. But I think you did one other project with him as well. I think this is your third project with Scott? But just tell us about that building of a relationship, because you cut all episodes of Godless and you’ve cut all episodes of Queen’s Gambit. I want to talk about that maybe a little bit later, but just tell us about meeting Scott Frank, and that evolution of a creative relationship.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Well, it’s interesting because yeah, I met him, I wanna to say kind of in the middle of my… Well, it was now 10 years ago, 2014. Oh, actually not that long ago, I guess… I met him in 2013, 2014. I was doing a movie, Revenge of the Green Dragons, but it was after I did The Newsroom. Yeah, so I had a pretty good run of it. And we met on a pilot called Hoke for FX, which did not get picked up. And the producer on that was David Manson, who I had assisted one of my very first jobs when I worked with Peter Frank. And I think I had done one other recut for him on a Movie of the Week just prior to interviewing with Scott.
So I think he was the one who actually recommended to Scott that he meet with me. And I see at the time Scott was looking for a new editor, and now that I know him, he’s super open. And we met, and I don’t remember this, of course, but Scott does. He said, because somebody else asked him about this in an interview… That what he.. What he liked about me is that we talk a lot about story. We focus a lot about story and how things are playing out. And that’s just sort of… You know, how it happens with us. And I did the pilot. It didn’t get picked up. He really liked me. And then I think two years later he… Or that year he moved to New York and was developing Godless, I think. And then he asked me to do that. So that was 2016.
Paul Day, CCE:
Okay. Because we don’t have a huge amount of time, I want to jump in to our first clip of The Queen’s Gambit. So I think we’re going to show the audience two different chess matches. We’re going to start with the one that takes place in Ohio. Why don’t we roll that, and then we’ll talk a bit about the style of that particular clip. And then we’ll show the other clip.
[start of the clip1]
Benny:
Why, hello Beth.
Beth:
Why, hello Benny.
Benny:
I read about your game with Borgov. That must have felt terrible.
Beth:
I felt like a fool.
Benny:
I know that feeling. Helpless. It all goes and you just… push wood.
Who have you got up first?
Beth:
Manfredi.
Benny:
That shouldn’t take too long. Highest rated players in the whole fucking country, and yet here we are in some second-rate university playing on cheap plastic boards, with cheap plastic pieces. If this were a golf or a tennis tournament, we’d be surrounded by reporters as opposed to… whoever these people are. You should see the places they play in the Soviet Union.
Beth:
Oh, I’m planning on it.
Benny:
You have to get past me first.
Beth:
I’m planning on that, too.
[end of the clip1]
Paul Day, CCE:
So that was clip one. And there was a lot of split screens, a lot of exciting DV movements and stuff like that. How much of that was written? How much of that is designed? How much of that was you? And how long did it take to put that particular sequence together?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Well, that’s a crazy one because I think the idea of the split screens was definitely was written in the script. That wasn’t anything that he could write in like, “Oh, it’s going to be placed this way.” But I do seem to remember that in the script he described, they don’t look at each other until the end. They never face each other until the end. And when they went to shoot the sequence, actually, they were running out of time. Something was happening with the schedule where they didn’t have as much time in the location as they originally planned. So he completely had to throw all of his plans out in terms of how much of that was done in camera. He was going to do this whole choreographed scenario where they were going to face each other and do all this stuff ..and that never happened.
So they just did the best they can, which… They did the best they could, with covering it in a way that sort of made sense. And he called me saying, “So… the day didn’t go that great, but.. there you go! figure it out!”
Paul Day, CCE:
Did they do any pickups or anything for that?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
We did. I think the surest thing though, I do have to say because it was important to him, is that he knew that he wanted classic or gas and he had that music cleared prior to shooting it. And he told everybody to listen to it so that they knew what kind of rhythm they were going to… Or the vibe of the whole thing. So I knew that I at least had some sort of rhythmic spine to work with.
So basically, what they shot was her playing with the other players and all that. And I kind of mapped it out with… okay, here’s day one, two, and three. And it’s also not being… What you don’t see here is the scene where she comes out and Benny is talking to the reporter. That was supposed to be in the middle somewhere. So there was a lot of other scenes that were getting in the cut with day one, day two, day three. So it was never supposed to be in one section, but it was very clear to me that we had to even just restructure the reel in its entirety. So-
Paul Day, CCE:
You say the reel, do you mean the episode or do you mean that particular segment?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
I mean the 20 minutes. No, I mean literally the reel that that segment was in, which is like the 20 minutes around that scene.
Paul Day, CCE:
Okay. Right.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
And there’s all these other complications of, well, what shirt is she wearing? And I was like, well, hopefully if it’s working dramatically, no one’s worried about what shirt she’s wearing, but if you really keep track of it, it doesn’t make any sense. But I was like, well… And I don’t think anybody has a problem with it, obviously. But yeah, so I kind of mapped it out. I think the overhead part where you see the chess board and the faces come out of it, I had used a shot from one of the Shaibel matches in episode one. I used that and I used their little faces. And then I think, when they’re circling the names, I had used footage from episode two, I think, in there. And I made a shot list of what second unit needed to shoot for that particular sequence so that we could have more to play with. Plus I just asked, “So just get some shots, close up shots of the board,” because that wasn’t shot at the time either.
So..Basically with my two other assistants, Charlie Greene and Phillip Kimsey, we created… Like I think I did day one and then I created the kind of structure of it. And I had them try their hand. I think Philip did day three and Charlie did day two. And, you know, we created, we tried to make it look different. Because I was like, “This Brady bunch thing, is it going to last for the other segments?”
Paul Day, CCE:
Does Scott Frank shoot a lot of material? Does he shoot a lot of footage?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Comparatively, no. No. When I compare to some other directors who might shoot three cameras and you end up with four hours of footage every day, it’s half that. They really try… That’s when he and Steven Meizler is DP, they really try to shoot what the elements that they want and not just shoot a bunch of coverage. You know… So I think, yeah, it wasn’t really a lot. But luckily, when you do these split screens, you have higher resolution when you make the image smaller. So for example, at the beginning of day one, you see the closeup on the chalkboard, Benny Watts and Harmon, you know, that was from some other wide shot that I really zoomed in on and had to make sure that [inaudible 00:19:51]. That wouldn’t be a problematic. So…
Paul Day, CCE:
Oh, okay. He made footage. That’s good. During some of these chess matches, there must have been a lot of footage of chess. Did you know chess going into this show? Or did you learn chess? Or did you have anybody to guide you along in the rules of a chess board?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
I knew the basic rules of chess, of how pieces move and how pieces get captured. But to know chess, no, I did not know chess. I thought… I think I tried and I realized, oh, this is like learn how to be a first-rate tennis player in a month, that’s just not going to happen.
Paul Day, CCE:
I was the chess president at high school. I was the president of the chess club for two years. So… I played a lot of chess. So watching the show, I definitely had a reminiscent of going back to sort of the early stages of learning all the moves and learning all the names of the people. And I think you had a couple of consultants who are world champions. So it pays to have those people.
Hey, look, I want to roll the other clip by comparison. This is a chess match that takes place now in Paris.
[start of the clip2]
[end of the clip2]
That’s just amazing. The emotional context within that. And it’s one line, which is, “I resign,” to go five minutes of screen time with just music and faces sweating, drinking water. You know… You suck the audience directly into exactly how she’s thinking. Tell us about the process of getting to that point. I mean, was there more dialogue? I felt like, did we want to hear more conversations? And there’s one thing I just love, which is when she makes the move with the rook, there’s a gasp in the room, but it’s so subtle and it’s designed that you just know she’s made a mistake, and there’s something that’s about to go wrong for her. Tell us about creating that sequence. And it’s such a contrast to the other chess match. How did you come up with both those scenarios?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
I mean… I think this sequence, you know.. they were very deliberate about the kind of footage that was available to me. I specifically remember in the script, there was no dialogue. So there wasn’t other dialogue that was cut out. It was all supposed to be just performance-based in terms of Anya, in terms of her memories, of thinking back on studying with Benny, the faces in the room, trying to maximize as much pressure from exterior sources onto her. And the way they shot her, you know, very tight, very intense, the pieces that they got for me to play with already put me in a mode of just trying to tell the story with faces.
I think though, and I was noticing this time around watching it, how informative the sound design and the music really help tell you where those moments are when you’ve gotten to a different mode, like when she moves the rook. You know, or actually, when she decides that she’s not sure if she wants to move the rook (laughs) There’s a little tick, tick, tick, tick, that adds on top of the ticking.
The other thing that I employed after the fact is the use of the clocks. At that point, you’re familiar with how the chess clocks are utilized in these tournaments, but in here I wanted to use it as like a more subjective running out of time. I’m running out of time, and literally the ticking clock that is actually the rhythm for the entire sequence, like all the moves I wanted to keep to make sure I was keeping in time with the rhythm of the clock. And I think also music and sound… kinda of took that and ran with it. ‘Cos literally when I cut that initially, I just had the ticking clock and I had things moving to it. And when I first showed Scott, he just saw it and he was like, “Oh great. We just need a tick there.” I was like, “Uh, wait a minute.” Let’s just see what music and sound can add to this. Because I still want to be informed about when it’s over for her, because there is nothing, unless you really know chess, you don’t know when it’s over. You don’t know when it’s reached the point where she knows she’s going to lose. And I think that the music and the sound effects do take you there.
Paul Day, CCE:
And also those oners, those straight-on shots of people looking down the camera, the uncomfortableness, the tension, like being stared at and being scrutinized over. Another aspect of that is also just, you could play that silently and completely understand what’s going on. So to add the elements of the sound design and the music is brilliant.
Now I’m going to touch upon really quickly. You cutting all seven episodes. I mean, to what benefit did you have because of that choice of style from episode one to episode seven?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
I think there’s probably a consistent feel when you go from episode to episode. It’s consistent, yet different. We were trying to bring a different element to every episode, certainly to every chess match. You know I was recalling a lot of things from the opening, the Paris opening in episode one there, that I wanted to just remind people of what they initially saw. So I just think having that knowledge of where all the episodes are, where she is personally in the storyline was useful. Other than that, it’s a lot of work. (laughs)
Paul Day, CCE:
Of course, it’s a lot of work! In keeping with our schedule, I just want to have a conversation that about When They See Us, which is another series that you were involved in. This one is a very emotionally charged mini-series based on true events that happened in New York City, where five… I think, five teens got wrongfully charged for rape and murder. A tour de force of a mini-series, I have to admit. And I’m just surprised it didn’t get as much attention as it did. But I know it was nominated for I think, 15 or 16 Emmys. I just think that the contrast again, of your career with the many different facets that you’ve worked on from Godless to Luck, Queen’s Gambit, this series is a tour de force. And I can’t express how amazing it was to watch it. It was so wonderfully put together. Tell us the story leading into working with Ava and working on this project. And how were you able to get through some of these such emotionally charged scenes?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
I mean, I think we all had, and when I mean all, all the other editors, Terilyn Shropshire, and Spencer Averick. And with Ava, you know, we felt obligated to.. tell the story on behalf of the men. You know, do it justice. Having people understand what their experience was. And… what was interesting about this, about the show, is that every episode gives you a different perspective on the story, on what happened to them. If you’ve watched the first episode, which is just this horrifying experience for the boys, and then you see this episode, which is how they each come out of prisons and how fragmented their lives are, as a result, the context of it really, really puts you in their shoes, which I think was the point. And ultimately is the point of why we tell these kinds of stories, is so that people can relate on a human level to what they’re going to.
I mean, I was really interested in becoming a part of this project. For a long time is just going to be Teri and Spencer, each cutting two episodes. Ava had directed all of the episodes very much like how Scott directed all of the episodes. And I think at some point, because Teri was cutting episode one and that’s such a beast of an episode, like from top to bottom it’s… I mean, not only are you trying to establish the look and the feel of the show, but.. you know, you’re also trying to tell that part of the story. It was just always a very difficult episode to work on. And I think by the time you get to episode three or… when it came time to her to start putting that together, she kind of knew, she thought down the line that she wasn’t going to be able to handle another episode. Because all these episodes were running like, I don’t know, 80 minutes. They’re like little movies. So.. they brought me on at that point. So.. I was, I came on in the middle of them shooting. And it was such a different process. You know… Very, very collaborative. And it was fun to kinda bounce ideas off of the other editors and see what they were doing and.. try to not necessarily match styles, but… have some continuity, what we were doing editorially, so that it felt consistent. But you know, each story is different. My story, my challenge was to try to tie the young versions of the characters to the older versions of the characters. And.. you know, the sample that we watch is just an example of how different they could be. And what occurred to me is that Antron’s… They kind of coincide with their relationships with their fathers. Like Antron’s relationship with his father is very fragmented. The style of the editing there, even though… those two scenes were never put together, none of those were ever put together in the script, but it was something that Ava and I felt like we needed to do, we needed to go from young boy to older boy, so we tried to make direct transitions. But in a lot of ways it represents their fragmented relationship. Whereas Raymond and Ray Sr., you know, they were always together and in contact. And.. sort of the fluid way that you see you know, his growth in prison and how the father was always talking to him. And then obviously at the end, it’s so different than Antron and his father’s reunion.
Paul Day, CCE:
How much did Ava give you that leeway to play with that back and forth between the storylines? Was it per the script, or did you massage that into that evolution with the other editors?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
So, for my episode is completely different than the other episodes.I mean, this one Ava and I had to do a lot of restructuring of the episode itself. Yeah, she gave me carte blanche, you know? I think the first cut I gave her was basically the script and she was like, “No, no, no. Go back and make it what it’s supposed to be. And here’s my problems with basically how the script was, so can you fix these in editorial?” So… it was really great to just do what I needed to do to get the episode together. Yeah, this is a good example of… Like, so the Raymond transition part, that was all storyboarded, they had previs, they really prepared for that.
Paul Day, CCE:
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
And Antron’s… Whereas the Antron transition, that was all created in the editing room, really.
Paul Day, CCE:
That’s great. And so let’s touch upon just briefly about your experience working as a solo editor, cutting a full mini-series, and working with other editors. I think there’s some audience members who definitely always constantly have those questions about what’s it like on a series maintaining continuity, but also just working relationships with people, that kind of aspect. You know, how do you guys organize yourself as far as making comments on shows and stuff like that?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
I think When They See Us, you know, as opposed to how Godless and The Queen’s Gambit were done where I was the only one, on When They See Us, it was really important, for even during dailies, how we all commented on dailies. Ava wanted a breakdown from all of us of what we thought of the footage, if we needed any, if we needed her to get anything, based on what we thought. And so we all knew, what we had that collaboration from the get-go, and because she was shooting it all at once, it’s not like somebody was finished before the others. I suppose like episode one was finished sooner than say episode four, for example, but just the way it worked in terms actor schedules. But I think… What was great is we just made it a point to sit down and look at everything and comment on everything. And when episodes were coming together, Ava was very much like, “Okay, come in and you see it, you give your feedback, and you give your feedback.” And we did that. And towards the end, when the episodes were two studio cuts in, we actually sat and we did a whole binge of the four, which is just really emotionally draining. And we were able to give like the feedback by sitting all together, watching it and having an opportunity to go over it one more time. You know, so that was interesting on that show. Now, if you’re on a show that’s more episodic, where you have different directors, it’s a completely different thing. I think what makes a difference is how many directors you have on a show.
Paul Day, CCE:
Having that one guiding force, moving you through it.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Exactly.
Paul Day, CCE:
Let’s talk briefly about your method, your isolated… How you approach dailies and how you sort of break down looking at footage. Just give us a day-to-day habit that you go through.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
The day in the life in the cutting room of Michelle Tesoro. It depends on the show, but I’ll just say what it was on The Queen’s Gambit just because it’s the most recent thought of me being in dailies. The footage comes in and I have the assistants organize it and in sequences that I call pulls, which are basically the segments of the scenes in script order. All the setups, all the cameras, everything in one sequence. And, so, they do that for the day, and on Queen’s, those were usually ready by right before lunch or just after lunch. So we’d have a leisurely lunch, and then after lunch we’d sit and we’d watch all these things together, all the sequences, meaning everything that was shot for the day. And I would make my notes, we would make our comments on it. We’d talk about what we saw, basically me and the assistants on The Queen’s Gambit. I had two. And… by the end of it, I would say, okay, if there were scenes that I think I could give to them, I would give to them. So every time they would have something to cut, I would say, “Okay, you do 3:24 to 3:30,” or whatever. And then I usually would give myself the hardest chunk, which actually sometimes it sucked because sometimes you look for those oners or those easy scenes to give you a mental break. And so on The Queen’s Gambit and I was always doing the hard stuff. I was like, “Goddamn it.”
Paul Day, CCE:
Got to hand over one of the hard [inaudible 00:34:45].
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Yeah. Which I did, but I didn’t want to overload them because I knew they already had a lot of work that they were doing. So… But it was fun because whatever they did do, how it rolled is once they started cutting, they would show me, like they would show us, we would screen their versions of cuts and we would make comments. We would all make comments on each other’s cuts. And I could give feedback if they had time to do that. But, you know, you have a certain amount of time, so we worked well with what we had. And I think that was basically the daily routine for many weeks. And at some point at the end of every week, we would get everything together so, to pick sequences and send it to Scott for his feedback.
Paul Day, CCE:
Now you were talking about pulls, I think you referred to them as. Is that like a selects reel? Would you just have everything in the selects reel or would you just have circle takes or would it be based on director’s choices or your choices?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
So we typically get everything even B neg footage. And within the… when we’re naming the clips, if there was a director select, that would have an asterisk next to it. So I could see in the timeline, what were circles, other than looking at the facing page, but I could see in the timeline what they were. So if we were really pressed for time, we wouldn’t watch all the B neg stuff, we would just watch the director selects. But in the pull sequence itself, which is, as you described, like basically I would say, “Okay, line one to line eight would be this section.” And then you’d see all the setups for that and all the takes for that, or all the cameras for that. You would have everything there.
So it’s mostly set up. So while you’re cutting, if you need to reference other takes, you had kinda an easy way. It’s just, I can’t just [crosstalk 00:36:35] sync.
Paul Day, CCE:
Yeah.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
[inaudible 00:36:35] sync is hard for me because it’s just words. I need pictures.
Paul Day, CCE:
Right. You’re a picture editor. That’s why. You need the visuals.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Yes.
Paul Day, CCE:
Nothing wrong with that at all. Don’t have to say you’re sorry. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was the series Godless. I think I told you when we met for pre-interview, it’s like one of those shows that I think I’ve binged twice now because it’s so deliciously done.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
[inaudible 00:37:02]. Oh my God, thank you!
Paul Day, CCE:
It’s so well done. It’s amazing. I can’t gush enough over this series. Watching it is just so much fun. And Canadian Kim Coates just chews up the scenery in just about every scene that he’s in, because he’s just so good. But I have two questions actually. And one of them is just, I just noticed that Godless and Queen’s Gambit are seven episodes. Why seven? Why not eight? Why not six? Why not 10?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Seven episodes means we’ve gone over and had to create a seventh, for both.
Paul Day, CCE:
Oh. So it always started off at six?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
It always started off at six. Yeah, it’s funny. I think the run times for both of them both ended up about seven and a half hours.
Paul Day, CCE:
When you sit down to cut a whole mini-series like that, do you know where the changeovers are as far as the episodes are concerned? Or do you cut it like one big seven, nine-hour movie?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
You cut it like one, what starts as almost nine and a half, 10-hour movie. And then you wind it down. Obviously when he writes the scripts, they are episodes. They’re written in episodes. He has already decided, “Okay, this ends here, this starts here.” But I think Godless is a little clearer where things started, we shifted things around. I can’t remember if we… Oh, no, we did break up. We broke up episode five into two for Godless. For Queen’s Gambit, we broke up episode two into episodes two A and two B, which is episodes two and three. It’s funny because you look at it, it’s like, well, we do want to keep all this story, but we’re always struggling with length somehow. He hasn’t quite hit that… Been able to write a good 45 minute episode. (laughs)
Paul Day, CCE:
But I think that’s a testament to the fact that all the characterizations and the dialogue and just everything that’s put together. That sequence, the second question I have for that particular was sequence is, was it written that way or were there a lot of embellishments that you added to connect it all together and make it so cool?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Yeah. What’s fun about that… Well, it was a little bit of both, you know, I think it was definitely written in a certain way. If you’re counting, we definitely are stick tight to how many clips, how many bullets, because it’s very important that, ‘oh, there was a seventh one!’ but where is it in terms of scoop, putting everything together. And they did storyboard that. They had to, there was so many stunts involved, especially with the horses. But I think that… And I remember I put it together exactly as storyboarded in the assembly and he was looking at it, going, “There’s something wrong with it. Just do another pass where you’re making it cool.” And I’m like, okay. And that’s when we see the intercutting of Roy and McNue on top of each other when he’s, “Shoot, shoot, shoot,” is when I started getting a little bit more into it there.
Paul Day, CCE:
Right. So well done. So well done. What advice would you give for up-and-coming editors, assistant editors, people wanting to get into post. What is your top secret go-to advice?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Oh my gosh, I guess it would be, you know, keep cutting, keep challenging yourself, and let people know if you’re trying to move on up. I think in my earlier story, I sort of I made that clear as everybody knew that I was doing it and it was just a matter of time. That’s what I would say.
Paul Day, CCE:
Another question is, if you’re put into a situation that you may not necessarily think it’s an advantage to you, do you look at it as at least a stepping stone? Like if you’re involved with a show that might not be something you want to do or being put into a situation that, you know, what it’s going to take to advance you to the next level.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Yeah. I mean, I think… Troy Takaki gave me this advice recently. It is, in so many ways, about your relationships. Relationships are more important sometimes than what the job is, because you just never know what weird TV show is going to lead you to another prestigious TV show. Because those players, whoever you’re working with, do a variety of things and things are always changing. So… I mean this sort of attaches on to the first question, like what would be the good advice, is try to keep in mind what relationships you’re creating and what that may mean later on.
Paul Day, CCE:
Well, tell us about the things that really get you jived up, like the shows when you’re on shows. What is it that you wake up in the morning and can’t wait to get into the cutting room?
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Usually when there is a puzzle to solve that we haven’t quite cracked and I’ve been mulling it over in my mind, whatever it might be. And I think I have that, “Ah! Ah! I know what I want to do.” I need to get in the cutting room and makes, see if it works or not, or if it’s just a fantasy that lives in my head.
Paul Day, CCE:
Well, I think we’ve come to the end of our road. The one thing I just wanted to say is thank you for taking the time to join us and be part of this. Again, your career, your.. all the shows that you’ve worked on have just been amazing and you should be quite proud of yourself. And I want to thank you on behalf of the Canadian Cinema Editors and EditCon that you had joined us. Thank you so much.
Michelle Tesoro, ACE:
Thanks so much. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Take care.
[Sarah Taylor:
Thank you so much for joining us, and a big thank you goes to Jane MacRae and Alison Dowler. This episode was edited by Alex Schead. The main title sound design was created by Jane Tattersall. Additional ADR recording by Andrea Rusch. Original music created by Chad Blain and Soundstripe. This episode was mixed and mastered by Tony Bao.
The CCE has been supporting Indspire, an organization that provides funding and scholarships for indigenous postsecondary 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.
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Till next time, I’m your host, Sarah Taylor.
Speaker 5:
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