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“Amanda’s Approach is About Eclecticism”: Editor Benjamin Shearn on By Design

A woman in a green and blue coat watches as two other women caress a chair.Still from By Design. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

By Design is the latest feature film by Amanda Kramer, best known for Please Baby Please and Ladyworld. The film will premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as part of the NEXT section.

Benjamin Shearn, who has edited all of Kramer’s feature films, joined her once again in the cutting room for By Design. Below, he explains how his close friendship with Kramer helps him retain the magic in the edit.

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?

Shearn: I’ve edited all of Amanda’s features and most of her other visual work. We’re also close friends, and if that sounds like a conflict of interest it absolutely is. I’m deeply invested and thus almost never stay in my lane. It’s a unique dynamic that I, of course, never expect on other films.

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?

Shearn: Because of our relationship, I’m able to kind of haunt the process. I’m on set, assembling as we shoot, consulting on set-ups etc. I love doing it this way. I can feel the creativity of set more tangibly and knead it into the edit. The energy as Amanda shoots is wild. It’s about capturing that.

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

Shearn: If you break down the editing style of By Design, there’s nearly every technique imaginable: continuity, experimental, cross cutting, montage, fades, match cuts, jump cuts. Amanda’s approach is about eclecticism and evoking the right feeling moment to moment rather than adhering to any editing dogma.

Filmmaker: As an editor, what influences have affected your work?

Shearn: I’m not sure if this is a respectable answer, but the truth is, anything and everything. Certainly the filmmakers and editors I think of as masters; the way some demented YouTube essay uses voiceover; a bizarre sound effect on Dragula. Anything with an intense sense of flow.

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

Shearn: Premiere! It’s just so customizable and easy. Once everything is dialed in you can just swim in your footage and really play. I’m an acolyte.

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

Shearn: The scene where Camille’s (Juliette Lewis) mother (Betty Buckley) visits. It’s virtually in real-time and all about dead space and interior thought. I tried to do as little as possible. I think most editors would agree sometimes that’s the biggest challenge.

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?

Shearn: One moment in post really crystallized some of the film’s meaning for me; our sound producer and mixer Alexandra Fehrman swiveled around from working on the film’s climax and said, “It’s so sad. Camille would have been fine had she just never been loved like that.” For those who have seen the film, I’m sure that resonates.

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