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“Each Set of Rushes Presents a Unique Puzzle”: Editor George Cragg on The Thing with Feathers

A white man is making sketches.Still from The Thing with Feathers. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

In The Thing with Feathers, a widower and father of two suspects he is being stalked by a crow-like figure. The adaptation of Max Porter’s book of the same name stars Benedict Cumberbatch and is the fiction feature debut of director Dylan Southern (Shut Up and Play the Hits, Meet Me in the Bathroom).

The versatile George Cragg (CollectiveI Am Not a WitchEarth Mama) served as the film’s editor in his first collaboration with Southern. He talks about how he made his way up in the industry and how he and Southern restructured the film below.

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?

Cragg: The script came to me through my agent. I loved the script and really wanted to do it, which is always the best place to start. As to why I was hired, you’d have to ask Dylan!

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?

Cragg: My goals as an editor were the same as they always are: try to really understand the material and everything it offers, understand what the director really wants and then bring those two things together.

What I really wanted to preserve was the intensity of the emotion I felt when I first read the script, and I think we achieved this. At the beginning of the edit, Dylan said he felt there was potential to restructure things, which we did do, and even though the final film differs quite significantly from the script, I don’t think it deviates at all from the intention of the script.

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

Cragg: Each set of rushes presents a unique puzzle, the solution to which is never the same. The techniques that make one edit work won’t work at all for another. It’s a kind of weird alchemy. You just have to get inside it, so I never really approach a film with any particular process in mind. Martina Zamolo, who assembled the film with me, provided a vital second pair of eyes throughout the edit and contributed enormously with endless smart observations and suggestions.

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

Cragg: While living in Berlin I met the producer Philippe Bober. Despite not having cut a feature he, asked me if I’d have a go at a film they had been having a bit of trouble with in the edit. That was Shirin Neshat’s Women Without Men, which went on to win the Silver Lion in Venice. After that, I cut a number of films Philippe was producing, which was a great introduction to feature film editing. Since then, I feel lucky to have worked on a really broad range of very different films, including docs, as this really reflects my own diverse tastes and influences.

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

Cragg: Avid Media Composer. Because it’s the one I know how to use!

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

Cragg: The scene, or it’s more of a sequence really, that we spent by far the most time on was the beginning of the demon chapter. This sequence posed numerous problems, and the solutions were equally numerous. We slowly, one by one, found them. I do remember eating chicken wings after one slightly dispiriting screening where the sequence still bumped for people and having a mini eureka moment where I realized I could pinch a shot from a different scene that would unlock a different way to approach the sequence. Good old chicken wings.

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?

Cragg: I don’t think my understanding of the film has really changed from when I read the script, but what I really admire in the film is the space it occupies between the real and the imaginary. It straddles and smudges that line in a really beautiful and emotional way that perhaps only film can do. Because of this, it is a genuinely valuable companion to Max Porter’s extraordinary book. I think this is the film’s greatest achievement.

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