Editors
Interviews - Editors
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“My Past as a Dancer Has a Big Influence on How I Work”: Editor Charlotte Munch Bengtsen on The Last Race
Charlotte Munch Bengtsen began her career as an editor in the mid-2000s on a number of documentaries and shorts. Her break came in 2012 when Joshua Oppenheimer hired her as an editor on his seismic work The Act of Killing. Munch Bengtsen’s newest project is The Last Race, the feature doc debut from visual artist Michael Dweck. Below, she shares her thoughts on the importance of test screenings, rushes and how her experience as a dancer influences her work as an editor. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes […]
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“I Think a Lot about the Crossover Between Painting and Editing”: Editor Hannah Buck on Chef Flynn
Flynn McGarry began hosting his own supper club when he was 11 years old. Now 19, the teen chef has fascinated readers of the New York Times Magazine, Time and food blogs the world over. McGarry is the subject of Chef Flynn, the second feature doc from director Cameron Yates (The Canal Street Madam). Yates hired Hannah Buck to edit Chef Flynn alongside consulting editors Amy Foote and Shannon Kennedy. Below, Buck discusses how she sought to move the film away from talking heads and voiceover narration and toward “a more vérité approach.” Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up […]
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“The Courage to Just Give a Damn”: Editor Patrick Ryan Gass on HIV/AIDS Documentary Quiet Heroes
In 1981, Dr. Kristen Ries and her partner Maggie Snyder were the only medical professionals in Utah to treat people with HIV/AIDS. Jenny Mackenzie’s new documentary, Quiet Heroes, tells their story. Mackenzie previously directed similar healthcare-focused docs on childhood diabetes (Sugar Babies) and the opioid epidemic (Dying in Vein). Below, Gass spoke with Filmmaker ahead of the film’s Sundance premiere about being a self-taught editor and why this story needed to be told. 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? Gass: I […]
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David Gutnik on Editing the Psychological Thriller NANCY Starring Andrea Riseborough
Writer/director Christina Cho and editor David Gutnik met during their time at Columbia University’s MFA Film Program. Gutnik edited Cho’s thesis film, I Am John Wayne, which won the Grand Jury Prize for best short film at Slamdance in 2012. Their new film together, NANCY, is one of three films at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival to star Andrea Riseborough. Below, Gutnik discusses the genre elements of this psychological thriller and how he sought to ensure that “every edit is connected to the central nervous system of the character, and by extension the soul of the film.” Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
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Editor Tom Maroney on the International Science and Engineering Fair Documentary Science Fair
Tom Maroney has worked as an editor on more than a dozen documentary TV series for the Discovery Channel, PBS, National Geographic, MTV and other channels. In 2017 he edited Nobody Speak: Trials of The Free Press, which premiered at Sundance and was released by Netflix. He returns to Sundance this year for Science Fair, a documentary in the Kids program of the festival. Maroney speaks with Filmmaker below about the film’s character-driven approach and how he and directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster sought to structure a film around a competitive science fair when “it was clear from the beginning that […]
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Mark Burnett and Nick Emerson on Editing Aubrey Plaza Comedy An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
Writer/director Jim Hosking premiered his short Renegades at Sundance in 2010 and returned to the festival in 2016 with his debut feature The Greasy Strangler. His second feature, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, premieres in the NEXT program at Sundance 2018. Luff Lin unites Hosking with a cast of comedy luminaries: Aubrey Plaza, Jemaine Clement and Craig Robinson, among others. The film was edited by Mark Burnett, who also edited Greasy Strangler, and Nick Emerson (Lady Macbeth, Starred Up). Filmmaker spoke with the film’s editing team about the film’s tricky tone, which teeters between absurdist and romantic comedy, ahead of Luff Linn‘s premiere […]
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“I Was Watching Russian TV More than My Entire Family in Russia”: Maxim Pozdorovkin and Matvey Kulakov on Editing Our New President
Maxim Pozdorovkin entered the documentary film world in 2013 with Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, a film that earned him top prizes at Sundance, Cinema Eye Honors and the British Independent Film Awards. He returned to Sundance in 2014 with The Notorious Mr. Bout. Now, he returns to the World Cinema Documentary Competition once again with Our New President, a doc on Russia’s propagandistic state-run news networks. Below, Pozdorovkin and co-editor Matvey Kulakov discuss how they crafted a feature film from such surreal archival footage. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes […]
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On the Cut
On a film screen, a single edit flies by in the blink of an eye — usually, in 1/24th of a second. In the edit room, though, a cut is teased, strategized, finessed and obsessed over. We asked six editors from six of the fall’s best films to give us the frames on both sides of one particularly noteworthy cut — and to explain why these edits are so important. Call Me By Your Name Director: Luca Guadagnino Editor: Walter Fasano Fasano: Sensual. That’s the way I’d like to define our approach to the editing of Call Me By Your […]
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“A Coming of Age Story–with Jump Scares”: Jason Ballantine on Editing It
In horror movies, kids are often exempt from the carnage. It’s a trope of the genre—the cute moppet that any experienced horror viewer knows is in absolutely no peril within the confines of the film. Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of It opens with a grade-schooler in a yellow rain slicker having his arm torn off by a sewer dwelling clown—a creature who then drags the child into the underground bowels of Derry, Maine. The film’s brutal ground rules are immediately established – anyone is fair game and no appendage is safe. “I am very conscious watching any film where the main cast […]
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Transforming Information into Experience: White Sun Screenwriter and Editor David Barker
David Barker is a hard one to put a finger on. He is an American writer and editor who over the past 10 years has gained an international reputation for his analytical ability and open, unconventional approach. Recent collaborations include Deepak Rauniyar’s sensitive exploration of the impact of Nepalese civil war White Sun (opening today at New York’s MOMA and running through September 12) and Josephine Decker’s upcoming feature with Molly Parker, Mirandy July and Helena Howard, Madeline Madeline. Things happen with David differently than you’d expect them to. You walk an entirely other route than you wanted and end […]
