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“Connect Images in the Edit Based on an Analysis of Characters”: Editor Cooper Raiff on Hal & Harper

Two white men and a white woman are looking at one another and laughing.Still from Hal & Harper. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Director Cooper Raiff returns to Sundance after his prize-winning Cha Cha Real Smooth with the episodic series Hal & Harper, about a pair of codependent siblings and their father. The first four episodes of Hal & Harper will screen as part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Episodics section.

Besides directing, Raiff also served as editor on the series. Below, he talks about his approach to editing as a writer-director and why editing the series transformed his understanding of its characters.

See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here.

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

Raiff: I just really see the edit while writing the script and while directing on set. It’s always felt crazy to picture myself not editing my own work. That said, I think having as many eyes on the edit as possible is important. McKinley edited the show with me, and he was amazing and became a great friend and collaborator. I was also constantly showing cuts to all the producers and getting many eyes on everything. But yeah, I think editing is my second favorite part of filmmaking, second to actually catching the idea and writing it.

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

Raiff: My goal is always to bring an audience in. I love the characters in this show, and I love what the show is trying to say. I want other people to see it and hear it and be brought into it.

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

Raiff: A lot of unofficial feedback screenings. A lot of just constantly reminding myself that no one’s going to care about this story unless it’s told the right way, and no one’s going care about this family until they’ve sat with them for long enough. And the only way to get people to stay long enough is if they’re entertained. As a filmmaker, I’m having to constantly remind myself of that. As an audience member, I personally never care about being “entertained,” because what’s the meaning in that? But the goal here is to get a streamer or network to buy this show so people can see it. And a streamer or network won’t buy it if it isn’t entertaining and getting people to stay and watch it.

See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here.

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

Raiff: I edited my first movie and my second. I’m influenced by every artist that just has something to say and works really hard to say it right.

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

Raiff: Avid. I like Premiere better because it’s more intuitive to me but was told on my last movie that we had to edit on Avid for delivery reasons. So that was the last thing I used, and I felt like I knew it better.

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

Raiff: Just all the scenes where it felt like we didn’t get as many takes as we should’ve. We had no money and sometimes knew we had to move on when we weren’t necessarily ready to. The hope was we’d figure it out in the edit, but those are always the hardest.

Filmmaker: Finally, now that the process is over, what new meanings has the series 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 series differ from the understanding that you began with?

Raiff: The show was always in a state of becoming. I always try to embrace that sort of thing. But to answer the question, the theme that got biggest for me was the theme of Dad “dying” metaphorically when Hal and Harper were four and two. I didn’t realize while writing the show how much the kids were affected by the abandonment of both of their parents, not just the obvious one. The show was always about a family dealing with pain, but after watching the footage and getting into the edit, what became clear was just how big certain wounds were. And it became very clear how they were connected to their present relationships, with each other and with their friends and romantic partners. Also the patterns just became so clear. I could see how Harper’s partner was probably feeling a lot of the same things as Hal’s girlfriend and Dad’s girlfriend.

I wrote the script knowing these characters so intuitively but then watching it all laid out (so many fucking times) I was able to, at some point, see exactly why Hal and Harper and Dad were acting out in the ways they were, whereas I was just feeling my way through the writing process. I was able to really connect images in the edit based on an analysis of characters and patterns, with a sort of distance that I didn’t have (and didn’t want to have) while writing. That’s really what I love about editing. It can suck so hard to watch the same thing over and over, but it’s fun (and important) when you’re learning things about the show the whole time.

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