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“The Film and My Understanding of It Really Changed”: Editor Nicolas Chaudeurge on Sukkwan Island

Close-up of a white man with gray hair against the Arctic sky.Still from Sukkwan Island. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Thirteen-year-old Roy agrees to spend a year in northern Norway with his father to reconnect in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition film Sukkwan Island. The film stars Swann Arlaud (Anatomy of a Fall) and newcomer Woody Norman.

Nicolas Chaudeurge edited the film after working with director Vladimir de Fontenay on his previous film, Mobile Homes. Below, he explains his efficient style and what it means when solutions start to happen by mistake.

See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here.

Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?

Chaudeurge: I begged Vladimir de Fontenay to take me back after originally having to refuse the film because of conflicting commitments. He kindly took me on after a short period of ghosting. I was hired because of my begging abilities and also possibly because I was one of the editors of his previous film, Mobile Homes.

Filmmaker: In terms of advancing your film from its earliest assembly to your final cut, what were your goals as an editor? What elements of the film did you want to enhance, or preserve, or tease out or totally reshape?

Chaudeurge: In the cutting room, Vladimir wrote an entire board full of editing goals and quotes, some funny, some deep, some both. The best was “If it’s boring cut it out.” It’s both liberating and quick to go with this one. Ultimately, you don’t want to lose your audience, and that’s what it stands for. The film is very ambitious in terms of production, and some scenes didn’t fully work as planned. We worked really hard to change them, but a couple of times we didn’t succeed so we chopped these bits out. Vladimir is very brave and daring as a director, both on set and in the cutting room.

Filmmaker: How did you achieve these goals? What types of editing techniques, or processes, or feedback screenings allowed this work to occur?

Chaudeurge: The producers of the film, Haut et Court, own cinemas in Paris. For each version, we screened the film in a real theater with some selected audience (my mom, for example). After each screening, we would listen to the comments from the spectators and then regroup in a small committee to debrief. That’s ideal because you watch the film in proper conditions and get a sense of progress. The emotional impact of a film can only be measured with an audience, and for me it’s the key factor to improve the edit. It was a family sized process, which fitted the movie; the discussions always felt very inclusive.

Filmmaker: As an editor, how did you come up in the business, and what influences have affected your work?

Chaudeurge: I came to the business because I wanted to and also I knew one film producer, Freddy Denaes. I did an internship in his company in 1993, and he had a backlog of corporate documentaries to edit with little to no money. They were about TV and sports. I spent the next year editing these films as well as assisting on shorts and studying script writing. That was my first film school. Strangely enough, Carole Scotta, one of the producers, also worked for Freddy at the start of her career (but not at the same time as me).

In terms of influences, apart from Hitchcock, I have always been a great admirer of French editor Yann Dedet, who is a master. Also, all of the editors of Sam Peckinpah, particularly Lou Lombardo and Tony Lawson. Discovering The Wild Bunch caused a major explosion in my head.

Filmmaker: What editing system did you use, and why?

Chaudeurge: Avid Media Composer because I never have to ask myself why. I am used to it and I don’t want to have to think about the tool, so it’s a solid match. Drama editing mostly uses four or five functions, so any decent editing software can be used to great results. Like Walter Murch told me once, “edit for the eyes” (the eyes of the characters and those of the audience). 99 out of 100 times, the best transition is a cut. It’s about what you cut and where, not the tool you use.

Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to cut and why? And how did you do it?

Chaudeurge: The monologue of the dad at the end. There were a lot of variations and nuances. It’s both intense emotionally and quite hard for the son to react to. You want the audience to never stop listening to his story, so we wanted it to be perfectly tuned. We only did two or three versions of it, but each time it took a lot of finessing. I find dialog editing to be the most time consuming. A change of one frame actually makes a difference in a sentence. You need to be ultra precise.

Filmmaker: What role did VFX work, or compositing, or other post-production techniques play in terms of the final edit?

Chaudeurge: The usual for a non VFX-driven film: quite a lot. Nothing major, but a lot of little corrections that hopefully people won’t notice.

Filmmaker: Finally, now that the process is over, what new meanings has the film taken on for you? What did you discover in the footage that you might not have seen initially, and how does your final understanding of the film differ from the understanding that you began with?

Chaudeurge: The answer to all this is “so much”… The film and my understanding of it really changed and came out through the process. It wasn’t that long an edit, but it was intense, and the film was permanently improving, so we always wanted to push it further. A sign for me in the later stages of the process is when happy solutions to problems happen by accident or even by mistake. Then you know it’s going the right way.

Carole, Elliott and Caroline, the producers, were always very enthusiastic and supportive, so there was a lot of motivation. Ultimately, the film was really cool with us. It brought us to Sundance.

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