Go backBack to selection

“Enter into Disagreements with More Compassion”: Editors Hannah Gabriel, Rubin Daniels Jr., Leslie Simmer and Elise Ahrens on Bucks County, USA

Two-shot of teenage girls on the sidewalk with a movie theater marquee in the background.Still from Bucks County, USA. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Buck County, USA observes both adults and teenagers in the eponymous location, one of Pennsylvania’s pivotal counties for national and state elections. The series, directed and produced by Robert May and Barry Levinson, focuses on the political battles as seen through teens, looking at conflicts from the eyes of students across the political spectrum.

Hannah Gabriel, Rubin Daniels Jr., Leslie Simmer and Elise Ahrens all served as editors on the series. Below, they discuss how the project showed them the common ground in viewpoints they would have otherwise dismissed and the challenges of telling a story that weaves together ten separate character arcs.

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?

Gabriel: I’ve always been a very empathy-forward person and have a deep interest in psychology and personality and their effects on human behavior. That curiosity positioned me perfectly to join the team for a project like Bucks County, USA, which seeks to spotlight the visceral humanity and true complexity at the core of the escalating political conflict that many Americans have found taking up residence in their very homes. I’ve had my own experience facing that kind of conflict, as my parents (with whom I’ve always been very close) and much of my extended family hold political beliefs that are staunchly opposed to my own. Over the past few years, as the differences in our opinions have been unavoidably underscored, I’ve had to work toward untangling the knee-jerk judgments and generalizations that have dominated our political climate. I’ve also seen firsthand the pain that mischaracterization, misrepresentation and miscommunication can cause, and I’ve cradled that knowledge carefully through my work on this series.

I came onto the series as an assistant editor through my continued work with Robert May’s production company, SenArt Films, and have since been graciously entrusted with the roles of editor and associate producer.

Daniels Jr.: I’ve collaborated on several projects with director Steve James, who has also worked with Robert May, the director of this project. Steve recommended me for this opportunity.

Simmer: I was one of four editors who worked together on Bucks County, USA. I was brought onto the project in the year leading up to Sundance. Robert contacted me to discuss the project because we had worked together on War Tapes with Steve James, and he also knew me through Kartemquin in general (I worked there for 27 years) and the documentary Stevie. Robert was aware that my expertise is in verité documentary editing and that I have a sensitivity to character and emotional nuance and an ability to connect viewers with the emotionality of a scene/situation. Also, I had worked collaboratively with editorial teams in the past and welcome that opportunity. Additionally, I had had the fortune of being on an edit team with Rubin Daniels Jr. several years ago (America to Me, directed by Steve James) and welcomed the opportunity to work with him again.

Ahrens: When I was introduced to the concept for Bucks County, USA, it sounded like a social experiment, a bastion of old journalism and the ultimate foray into empathizing with your neighbor. I had recently relocated from deeply blue Brooklyn to a small, purple town in the Hudson Valley. I felt like I was personally taking on the challenge of fostering relationships across the political line just as Robert May and Jason Sosnoff were looking for someone willing to wade through footage of subjects with opposing political views with an open mind. I also really appreciated their perspective on capturing and delivering a balanced story where no one is assumed “right” or morally superior. Like the mission of the project, I was curious to learn how people come to hold their political beliefs. Although I started as an assistant editor on the project, the team quickly transitioned me into the role of editor, which I greatly appreciate as a show of faith in my editing and storytelling ability. 

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?

Gabriel: In Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising (and in Bryan Fuller’s TV adaptation of the novels), it is said that Hannibal “follows several trains of thought at once, without distraction from any, and [that] one of the trains is always for his own amusement.” In my opinion, that’s a pretty good encapsulation of the goals that our team had for the series, albeit in a looser and markedly less sinister context! We’ve striven to craft a story that is as deeply engaging and character driven as any good work of fiction, that accurately and fairly represents both sides of bitter real-life conflicts and that plays beyond politics to hit the audience in their soft spot of compassion and curiosity. I vividly remember being present for our initial sizzle shoot in April 2022, during which producer Jason Sosnoff (Baltimore Pictures), who conceived the project along with producer and director Robert May (SenArt Films), asked our very first interviewee to stare directly into the camera lens and recite the names she had been called over the past few years. With her chin held high and a heaviness in her chest, she told us she has been called a dyke, a pedophile, a groomer. There was genuine power and emotion in that declaration—with which we start each episode of our series—that we’ve sought to encapsulate throughout our telling of this story.

One of our big challenges has been to piece together our presentation of complex, relatable and engaging characters with the motor of our concrete plot, much of which centers around school board politics, policies, and elections—topics that require clear but concise explanation and that will only land impactfully if they are informed by the deep-rooted fears, wounds, and hopes of each of our characters. We’ve been committed to weaving empathy and connection through every scene of this story and to emphasize the toll these conflicts, policies, and decisions can have on human beings. While our story does intricately explore “politics,” another of our challenges has been to crack open the assumptions and conventions that govern a “political piece” and to play in the spaces between; politics may serve as the framework for our story, but our story is not about politics. Our goal has been to wring out the emotion, anticipation and thought processes that lie at the base of these disagreements in a way that allows our viewers to identify with all our characters in some way—even those whose opinions they most vehemently disagree with.

Daniels Jr.: Due to the series featuring numerous characters, we began by developing character arcs for each one. After establishing arcs for the major characters, we focused on how these arcs could interact with one another throughout each episode.

Simmer:  The production team had done a wonderful job of choosing participants for the series with the goal of providing a balanced perspective from both sides of the political arena. But more than that, they had established relationships of trust—which should be the standard for all documentaries, by the way—and so there was footage of deeply emotional moments and also raw honesty with many of the participants, both adults and young people. So it was our job to try to honor those relationships and weave together the story of the political divide in this community with compassion and integrity. Part of the challenge was having a plethora of material and choosing how to tease out the story and from whose perspective at which time. Then add to that the necessity of explaining some of the political issues being voted on by the school districts, which is central to understanding the story, and there is some very complex braiding going on.

Ahrens: I was involved for a year towards the beginning of the editing process. It’s been an incredible learning experience to see how the edit has morphed and evolved in an expansive, years long collaborative process with three other editors. The team was faced with a delicate challenge, to spin a web of characters across an entire community. The complexity and nuance of each subject sits at the crux of the story. Teasing out each policy, each character’s personal story and their impact on each other was both the goal and the hurdle. I think oversimplification would have been the enemy to this endeavor. The team was dedicated to taking on the difficult task of weaving a ten-strand braid rather than simplify and lose the heart of the project. The result has enhanced and preserved moments of genuine community connection. I think one of our characters summed it up perfectly when she said something like, “We focus on division when where we come together is where all of the beauty and nobility lies.” This through line was beautifully maintained from the beginning of the process to the episodes premiering at Sundance. 

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

Gabriel: Team-wide collaboration, integrity and detachment from bias, first of all! I worked directly with Robert May in his edit suite at SenArt and with our story producer, Ginger Smith, both of whom provided invaluable and almost instant feedback, direction, and guidance. Without their vision, storytelling expertise, and creativity, this series would be a very different piece. The whole team’s input was critical—every editor and producer brought a unique perspective and strength to the work, and our frequent story meetings and team-wide notes sessions were invaluable.

Regarding processes, as several other editors mention below, we began by crafting an arc for each of our characters, operating under Ginger’s expert direction. I found this process to be remarkably helpful in getting to know both the characters and the material and in nailing down the unique flavor and emotion each character contributes to the story. Having that initial understanding of character, in which each participant’s emotional arc and personal story served as the lens through which we viewed the objectively static “plot,” was immensely helpful in grounding us in these characters and their perspectives.

Daniels Jr.: We worked as a team, watching each other’s cuts and having feedback screenings to discuss the series. 

Simmer: In order to understand the journeys of our participants, it was decided early on that we would cut character arcs to capture in very rough (i.e. long) form key moments with them from both interviews and in scenes. Although we knew we would be trimming these moments significantly, this gave us kind of a library of material that we could pick from. Ginger Smith, who has had extensive writing experience from her previous work, watched all the shoots and all the character arcs and made notes that she drew on when working with Robert to develop a story strategy. So Ginger would create an outline and each of the editors would take on parts of the outline to create an initial draft of an episode. One of the editors would assemble the parts and Ginger, Robert, Jason and Barry would watch the rough cut, make changes and get back to the editors with further directions. At some point the editors would be able to watch the full cut and give feedback. I believe that the cuts were also provided to people outside the team. There were a lot of moving parts. Having multiple editors they could deploy on different parts of the story made making changes more efficient.

Ahrens: I can only speak to the early part of the process that I was a part of. We built at least a dozen expansive and thorough arcs for each character, some running five plus hours, to get a perspective on what we had before attempting to weave it together. These arcs also gave us the opportunity to condense the backstory of each character. In my notes, I tracked something I called “the shift,” or when subjects were activated to get engaged in their community. We quicky saw that COVID was an inciting incident for most of the parents and school employees in the community. Frequent feedback sessions among the team (Robert May, Jason Sosnoff, Ginger Smith, Rubin Daniels Jr, Leslie Simmer, Hannah Gabriel, and myself) provided varied perspectives which functioned like guard rails to maintain balance while crafting the narrative.

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

Gabriel: I’ve had a somewhat unconventional journey as an editor, and my background is firmly rooted in literature. As a child, I dreamt of being an author, and I’ve been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. My sense and knowledge of story was formed through my continued exploration of that medium and further influenced by my college study of classical Greek playwriting, American drama, and worldwide theatre history. I’m incredibly grateful to Robert May and Ginger Smith for their trust, guidance and tutelage over the seven years I’ve been at SenArt Films. 

Daniels Jr.: I attended film school at DePaul University. I also interned at Kartemquin Films. After earning my Master’s degree in cinema production, I was hired as an assistant editor at Kartemquin working on a documentary series directed by Steve James titled America to Me, which premiered at Sundance.

Simmer: I’ve always been interested in writing and the process of storytelling. When I went to grad school to study film, I quickly became interested in editing because so much of the actual storytelling happens in the edit room. I was initially interested in making “experimental” or non-narrative filmmaking, and my process was to have an inciting question or idea and to gather footage around that, then put it together in the edit room. Once when I was telling a friend about my process, they said “Oh, you’d like documentary filmmaking then; same principle.” So, when I got the opportunity to work in post-production at Kartemquin Films in Chicago, I jumped at it. I got a first-class education in the art of documentary filmmaking and was exposed to so many deeply talented filmmakers. I found my voice and my people there. But every great documentary I watch gives me more inspiration and fuels my imagination. I’ve been very excited to see the form pushed more and more–which echoes my initial interest in experimental filmmaking–and hope to work in those doc environments on future projects.

Ahrens: I came up through the rungs of post-production in an apprentice-like way and learned from peers and mentors at each stage along the way. Starting in digitizing and broadcast news, I eventually transitioned into documentary as an assistant and then associate editor. Three years on the feature Loudmouth served as my bootcamp in story structure from Josh Alexander and pace and style from Armando Croda. Last year, being a part of the Karen Schmeer fellowship gave me the opportunity to learn from mentors like Miki Watanabe Milmore and Chris White. And I’ve found solidarity with other editors in the Alliance of Documentary Editors and Hudson Valley Post. Exchanging work and feedback with peers in these groups has influenced and grown my editing style. I’m especially interested in projects that juxtapose verité and archival footage to reposition or combat established narratives. 

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

Daniels Jr.: SenArt Films uses Premiere Pro.

Simmer: We worked in Premiere Pro Productions, on Windows, remotely operating edit systems in Robert’s studio. Premiere Productions, because when you’re working with long-format documentary, and with multiple editors in various places working simultaneously. Productions is a great platform to accommodate a large amount of footage and many many sequences.

Ahrens: Premiere, because it seems to be the standard due to its user-friendly interface and ease importing incongruous footage. But I miss Avid Media Composer!

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

Gabriel: While each scene presents its own unique difficulties, the most consistent challenge I faced was balancing our goal of fair and equal representation across political parties with intense, narrative-style audience engagement. I feel I’ve done well in my efforts to ensure our story is fair to both “sides” and have been conscientious in spotting areas where we’re over- or under-representing a certain point of view. Putting aside my own personal biases and judgments has been relatively easy, especially in light of the fantastically deep and relatable stories Robert has been able to elicit from our participants in his interviews. But it’s easy to get lost in the complexities and nuance of the story, and when you’re working such an abundant supply of intelligent, thought-provoking and relatable commentary, it can be difficult to “kill your darlings” for the sake of maintaining storytelling pace while still ensuring the necessary context, representation and background is present. Sometimes, I wanted nothing more than to sit in an hours-long back-and-forth between participants while they raised points I had never considered before and shed light on the formation of opinions I had once thought unexplainable.

Daniels Jr.: The series maintains a bipartisan approach to every topic, presenting both sides of each issue fairly and equally. As a result, ensuring that my edits remained neutral and did not favor one side over the other was a challenge.

Simmer: Challenges in doc editing can range from not having the ideal footage you’d like to have, to technical issues, to figuring out ways to clarify information that’s being delivered… but for me, sometimes the hardest scenes to cut are ones that have the most emotional resonance. When I’m watching two people who care for each other arguing about the core values that inform their political decisions, and feeling those arguments hit home inside me, it can be exhausting and gut-wrenching—especially when you see the repercussions of those arguments all across the U.S. We live in exceptional times, and we all have so much on the line as far as how we define “freedom.” As to how you punch through it as an editor, you have to compartmentalize your own feelings and then show the scene to others to make sure you’ve gotten it right. I have to compartmentalize a lot.

Ahrens: Although it’s not a scene, I found the most difficult part of the process maintaining the patience required to fully empathize without judging some of our characters for such a prolonged edit. It’s one thing to enter a project like this with full energy and fervor but sustaining an attempt at impartiality was a marathon, not a sprint. For any documentary or nonfiction project, it can be a real challenge to stay vigilant to active empathy. We watched our subjects struggle with the same thing when they met with neighbors with opposing views, despite painful developments in elections or personal life. But this conscious and open-minded engagement with our documentary subjects actually impacted my ability to have conversations with acquaintances and family in a new, more productive way outside of the project. Leslie, another editor on this project, shared a similar story where she had a conversation with a man on a plane about his opposing views. I think experiences like these influenced our approach, to look beyond what something is, whether a personally held view, a school policy, or a popular narrative, and question how it became that way.  

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?  

Gabriel: While we’ve a long way to go until our project is completed, I’ve already taken a great deal away from my experience working on this series. I’ve been consistently inspired by our participants, the students especially, and I’ve been surprised to find places where my own opinions draw a little closer to alignment than I might have expected with someone whose views I would have written off in any other context.

For me, the most profound meaning the film has taken on is in its impact. Nearly every single member of our team, from cinematographer to editor, has some story to share about the lessons they’ve learned through their work on this project. We may not have changed our political opinions or been irrefutably swayed by the onscreen arguments our participants have made, but we have been motivated to enter into disagreements with more compassion and empathy. We’ve found our judgments, opinions, and generalizations challenged, and we’ve been unflinchingly reminded of our common humanity.

Daniels Jr.: We’re still in the process of editing the series, so I feel like I’m constantly learning, especially considering the current political climate.

Simmer: The project continues but I’ve had to leave because I am committed to another terrific production. One thing I discovered in the footage that surprised me was that two of the women in the film provide a model for talking to people who have very different political opinions. They’re not talking in a way that’s meant to change people’s minds, but talking in order to clarify why you believe what you believe and to open up the conversation to the fact that we’re both humans, not crazy monsters. I didn’t think I would ever be able to do that myself, but I found myself in a situation where I was kind of stuck and I was able to call on this model of conversation and patience. The person I was talking to ended up thanking me, because no one from my side of the aisle would usually talk to them. I don’t think I changed their mind, but I’m glad we were able to reach across the aisle for a minute. And I wouldn’t have been able to do that without watching those scenes in the series between those two women.

© 2025 Filmmaker Magazine. All Rights Reserved. A Publication of The Gotham