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Until the Last Beat: Nick Emerson on Editing Conclave
Brían F. O’Byrne and Ralph Fiennes in Conclave In Conclave, corruption, betrayal and clashing ideologies turn the selection of a new pope into fertile ground for a taut political thriller as English cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is caught in the middle of the struggle between a conservative caucus wishing to return the Catholic church to its dogmatic past and a liberal wing pushing for a more open-minded future. As dean of the proceedings, Fiennes is tasked with shaking off his own crisis of faith in order to guide 120 fractious cardinals sequestered in the Vatican to a consensus on a new leader. The parallels between the film’s papal power tussle and post-pandemic political battles in the United States and around the globe are clear, but while director Edward Berger takes thematic inspiration from the contemporary political climate in his followup to All Quiet on the Western Front, his stylistic inspiration harkens back to the 1970s political thrillers of Alan J. Pakula, particularly the “Paranoia Trilogy” of All the President’s Men, The Parallax View and Klute.
The connection between Conclave and Pakula’s work was clear the moment editor Nick Emerson got his hands on the script. “When I first read it, even before I’d met Edward, I thought of those films. We definitely connected over our love of those Pakula movies,” said Emerson, whose other credits include Starred Up, Lady Macbeth and Emma. “Every film I do, I reference those movies because they’re so amazing, but you don’t always get the opportunity to work on something where you are actually aspiring to them. Our goal was to be similarly precise and rigorous in terms of the architecture of our scenes.” Emerson points to a scene in The Parallax View where Warren Beatty’s investigative reporter goes to visit his ex-girlfriend (Paula Prentiss), who has witnessed the assassination of a senator and fears for her safety. “The first half of the scene is about a minute long and on Warren Beatty’s back. You don’t see his face, which is extraordinary given that he’s the star of the film,” said Emerson. “Finally, at a very key moment, it cuts around to Beatty’s face. That was the sort of restraint we wanted to aim for in Conclave.”
That judiciousness can be found in the opening images of the movie, which begins with a series of tracking shots behind Fiennes as he marches hastily toward the deathbed of the ailing pontiff. “We tried versions where we opened with some very interesting shots of Rome—not traditional establishing shots but very atmospheric ones—but eventually decided it was much more interesting to just land in the middle of the story and on the back of our protagonist’s head,” explained Emerson. “When you begin that way, the audience starts asking, ‘Who is this? Why is he walking so fast? Where’s he going?’ It creates this immediate tension.”
To achieve a purity and precision akin to the “Paranoia Trilogy,” Emerson sought to refrain from using repetitive coverage as much as possible. “Quite often in editing, if there’s a dialogue scene, you’re cutting shot/reverse shot between two setups, but Edward shot the film in such a way that there was almost a different setup for every line or for every different section of a scene,” said Emerson. “We couldn’t do that across the entire film, but it is what we aspired to, and we managed to do it quite a lot.” Another aspiration was to hold shots as long as possible, “until its absolute capacity. Edward would say all the time, ‘Let’s test the limits.’ We’d push it two, three or four frames and all of sudden realize, ‘That’s definitely the wrong place’ or ‘That’s the perfect place,’” said Emerson. “A frame is a 24th of a second, so it’s a very short space of time, but when the performances are this finely calibrated, a few frames can make such a difference. Holding could be the difference [or not] between seeing the actor moving on to a new thought.”
A memorable long take occurs the night before the conclave’s first vote, when Stanley Tucci’s Cardinal Bellini and his supporters huddle in an auditorium to talk strategy. The scene opens with a slow zoom out into a wide shot, a flourish frequently employed by Pakula and his “Paranoia Trilogy” cinematographer Gordon Willis. “When I saw the dailies with that zoom, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to cut away from this.’ So, that became my starting point for that scene: How long can I hold this?” said Emerson. “There were more cutty versions, then there were versions with even [fewer] cuts [than what ended up in the film]. I think we got the right balance for the point of that scene, which is to understand that Stanley Tucci’s character isn’t going to temper his views for politics’ sake or just to get the job.” For other scenes, Emerson preferred to build the edit around specific moments. “Scenes have anchor points all over them, but there are always certain key ones that you know where you want to land,” Emerson said. “I like to let the actors be the guide. Quite often, when I’m putting a scene together for the first time, I won’t start at the beginning. I’ll look for a key moment within the scene and think, ‘I know there’s a good chance that I’m going to want to be on this character in this shot for this moment.’ Then, I’ll build the scene out from there.”
One of the film’s biggest challenges was individualizing the conclave’s half-dozen secret ballot votes, shot on a Sistine Chapel set at Rome’s legendary Cinecittà Studios. “While not quite in real time, we let the first vote play out very slowly. That gives you permission to speed up the other votes or make them different dramatically,” Emerson said. “Those voting sequences were storyboarded and very deliberately planned. Edward had different shots for each voting sequence, so you never got the sense that you’re recycling any footage because that is easy to do when the characters wear the same clothes at every vote. You could potentially move things around an awful lot, but I think we only had two shots across all those voting sequences that ended up in a place other than where they were designed to be.”
Attention is paid throughout to the details of the traditions and ceremonies of this insular world, whether it’s the way the ballots are placed onto a ceremonial plate and then tipped into an urn or how the deceased pope’s ring is taken from his finger and the seal removed with a chisel. “I’m very pleased with all that detail because you can find yourself under pressure sometimes just to cut straight to the story, but those details are so important,” Emerson said, citing A Man Escaped as an example of procedural filmmaking. One of those exquisite details ends the pre-title sequence as the pope’s journey in an ambulance is distilled to a single close-up of the body bag being jostled as the vehicle drives away. “That opening sequence was always intended to end on that shot,” said Emerson. “This very famous and very religious man [is] also just a human being in a body bag in the back of an ambulance. I think it says something about the wider themes of the film.”
Despite the sprawling ensemble cast, attention paid to the pageantry of the papal election process and plot twists and turns, Conclave still clocks in at an economical two hours on the nose. The first assembly after shooting wrapped stood at two hours and 40 minutes; after a few passes, it hovered around two hours and 10 minute. “We wanted to have it reduced down completely to its core parts,” said Emerson. “[Later cuts we made] were usually ends and beginnings of scenes, little bits of connective tissue you realize you don’t need. Maybe you don’t actually need to see this person walk from point A to point B, and you can just land in the middle of the scene. There’s a great David Fincher quote: Arrive into a scene as late as possible and leave as soon as you can. I took that to heart when I read it, and I find it really inspirational.” To make the process of distilling a film down to its core parts less painful, Emerson says he “tries not to fall in love with things too much.” He cites another piece of guidance from editor Sam O’Steen (The Graduate, Chinatown): “Movie first, scene second, movement third.” “That means you would sacrifice a moment to save a scene, and you would sacrifice a scene to save the film,” said Emerson. “I always think of that. You’ve got to serve the film above all else.”
