There are as many truisms about editing a film as there are filmmakers. Some directors prefer a hands-off approach, letting the editors cut as they see fit; others get in on the ground floor to focus on every shot; still others shoot every possible angle, planning to create the film in the edit suite. Yet because of the fluid nature of moviemaking, the editing process isn’t just where the film gets made, but often remade, rethought and rejiggered.
Part of an editor’s job, says “Napoleon” co-editor Claire Simpson, “is being the psychiatrist in the room. You see a director’s vulnerabilities at the same time as their strengths.”
Whatever their process, the edit room is also full of surprises — adjustments have to be made to tone, angle and sometimes even character choices. Here are five stories from this year’s award season films where editors (and their directors) found ways to pull magic out of reshoots, VFX — and sometimes seemingly thin air.
Director: Greta Gerwig
Editor: Nick Houy
The pairing: Houy and Gerwig are longtime collaborators, having shared credits on “Little Women” (2019) and “Lady Bird” (2017), and he notes, “She’s extremely collaborative. She has this innate sense of what she wants the story to be.” But, he adds, “she gives a lot of freedom to try things.”
Surprise! Toward the end of the film, when Barbie (Margot Robbie) meets her creator Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), the script originally said Barbie should see “images of life in a Malick-y way,” referring to “Tree of Life” director Terrence Malick’s frequent use of small shot details to represent a bigger picture, Houy explains in an email. He tried stock footage, but it didn’t click. Instead, he pivoted and obtained “personal home movies from myself, my family and our crew’s families, including old home movies and modern iPhone videos” to illustrate the real world and its human complexities. To Houy and Gerwig, this felt “the most natural and told the story best.” There’s even a flash of his own daughter included.
Director: Ridley Scott
Editors: Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo
The pairing: Restivo’s new to working with Scott, but Simpson (who won an Oscar in 1987 for editing “Platoon”) paired with the director for films including 2021’s “The Last Duel” and “House of Gucci.” “[Scott] doesn’t have a lot of patience,” Simpson says with a chuckle. “He doesn’t like to be involved in the nitty-gritty of the initial process.” Adds Restivo, “He likes us to show him things he wouldn’t have expected to see.”
At a time when there’s greater sensitivity around elevating stories about women, the director has long focused on intelligent, nuanced female characters.
Surprise! A scene focusing on the Battle of Austerlitz found its voice when Scott suggested using music featuring Corsican voices paired with a critical moment when soldiers fall through the ice. Explains Simpson, “We used the [water] tank shoot of enemy soldiers falling through the ice, and that gave the scene a different dimension instead of it just being Napoleon’s point of view. The Corsican musicians, they’re singing as part of a Mass. Not many people will know the translation, but it’s the ‘Kyrie Eleison,’ and it brings home the futility of war.”
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Editor: Eddie Hamilton
The pairing: Combining McQuarrie, Hamilton (Oscar nominated in 2023 for his editing on “Top Gun: Maverick”) and producer-star Tom Cruise (who has final cut approval) meant there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, Hamilton says. “[McQuarrie] gives himself a lot of ingredients. We build the movie completely in the editing room. When we get to the final result where Tom is happy with it, we want to get to the audience as quickly as possible. They do not fight concerns from the audience.”
Surprise! A decision about how to present the character of Grace (Hayley Atwell) needed tweaking after an early audience screening. Grace had outwitted Ethan (Cruise) too often, and viewers lost sympathy for her. The filmmakers realized from pickup shoots they had a new option: to make her go it alone without Ethan or his mask machine. “That’s how we made sure the audience was on her side in the third act, which totally affected how they felt about the last 40 minutes,” says Hamilton. “It was a perfect solve.”
Director: Blitz Bazawule
Editor: Jon Poll
The pairing: Bazawule wasn’t a rookie when it came to directing features, but he didn’t have the same depth of experience as veteran Poll. But that didn’t matter, says Poll: “I would constantly forget that he hadn’t made a whole bunch of films,” says the editor. “He’s so sure of what he wants and deliberate about what he’s looking for, so specific in tone.”
Directors Blitz Bazawule (‘The Color Purple’), Bradley Cooper (‘Maestro’), Michael Mann (‘Ferrari’), Alexander Payne (‘The Holdovers’), Celine Song (‘Past Lives’) and Justine Triet (‘Anatomy of a Fall’) on how they do what they do.
Surprise! The turning-point Easter dinner sequence is one of the only times where all eight main characters are in scene together, and it follows two major dramatic scenes. “The audience needs to know how each of them is feeling at each moment,” says Poll. “We took many passes [of edits] to get it there. The last phase was everything was working, but finding more subtle reactions that would help the story — but also where humor could help us. The version we ended up with had the most varied emotions and told the story best. Everyone was changed after being in that scene.”
Director: Andrew Haigh
Editor: Jonathan Alberts
The pairing: Haigh and Alberts (who’ve also paired on such films as 2017’s “Lean on Pete” and 2015’s “45 Years”) spent a year editing “Strangers,” Alberts writes in an email. “Andrew is an incredibly thorough and detail-oriented director (with an editorial background), so he always wants to explore all the creative possibilities in the cutting room.”
Surprise! In the film, Adam (Andrew Scott) handles an old restaurant menu from a box of artifacts. “We wanted to find a way to visually connect the menu in this heirloom box to that final destination,” writes Alberts. But the script or location wasn’t set up to help — so they realized a little VFX change could deepen the narrative, and they changed a generic parking sign to echo the graphics displayed on the menu. “Suddenly, there’s a visual connection in the first 20 minutes of the film and the last 20,” he writes. “Editing is often about creating connections and using repetition to generate meaning.”
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