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Interview

WHAT OUR MEMBERS DO: Ian Chase, Sound Editor/Re-Recording Mixer

by uncredited March 8, 2024

written by uncredited 12 minutes read

Where are you currently employed?

I work as a freelance sound editor and re-recording mixer in Burbank, Calif., but for the past few years, the majority of my work has been with Skywalker Sound and done remotely from my home studio. I will go up to the ranch in Northern California to work in person during the final mix, as it allows me to spend time with my teammates and collaborate more effectively.

Current projects?

I recently worked as one of the Foley editors on two Marvel Disney+ series called “Echo” and “Secret Invasion.” In “Echo,” there was a unique aspect with a deaf character, and a significant part of the show involved using American Sign Language (ASL) for dialogue. Typically, Foley is a background element that helps blend the soundtrack together, but in this case, it took a prominent role; the hand movements and the sound of clothing movement that was recorded to match the ASL became the dialogue of the scene.

On “Secret Invasion,” the show had a gritty spy drama vibe with plenty of intense action scenes. One memorable moment was a gunfight in a glass greenhouse. We had the opportunity to capture all the sounds of glass breaking, SWAT team gear, weapon movements, and impacts. Even after the chaos subsides and the main characters cautiously move around, the subtle sound of crunching glass underfoot can be heard. I think it adds to the tension and realism of the scene.

Describe your job.

One of the most interesting jobs I’ve had is working as an assistant sound supervisor. The job is very diverse in terms of tasks. Because of this, I have begun to learn some basic coding skills and have even started developing my own software. One particular program I created acts as a virtual assistant. It can sort files based on their names and types, move them to the right place on the show server, create new folders with the correct-version numbers and dates, and even set up Pro Tools sessions with video and audio tracks. I built this software while working on “She-Hulk,” where it proved incredibly helpful as we dealt with 286 conforms due to picture and/or visual effects updates. Occasionally, we were conforming three times a day due to the changes. Despite having two assistants on the show, myself and Melissa Lytle, the workload was immense, so my virtual assistant software was a lifesaver.

How did you first become interested in this line of work?

As a kid, I played electric guitar and collected effect pedals and amps. Instead of focusing on learning songs, I was more interested in creating strange and unique sounds with the pedals. This sonic passion carried into high school where the guidance counselor suggested that I pursue a career in sound, so I looked into the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). I applied, got in, and started learning about different positions (classifications, in union-speak) within post sound for film and TV. I’m thankful that the professors had real world experience and were able to teach a lot of the skills I still use today.

Who gave you your first break?

After graduating from SCAD, I moved to Los Angeles and lived in my car for about seven months while working for free in different post sound roles. Then Brent Kiser, a sound supervisor who owns Unbridled Sound and is a fellow SCAD alum, gave me my first paying job as a re-recording mixer. Back then, we were working on indie projects headed to festivals, so if I made a mistake, it wasn’t career ending. I took great advantage of this time and mixed on as many projects as I could. I used my time at Unbridled Sound to learn and grow as an audio professional, and now I feel confident in my work because I can spot issues early and know how to fix them.

What was your first union job?

A friend told me he had passed my name along to a supervisor at Skywalker for a Marvel TV show headed for Disney+. I remember feeling really excited and knew that if the call came through, I would be ready. A few weeks later, I was playing video games with my siblings on a Saturday morning. An unnamed call came through with a San Francisco area code, and I had to decide whether to answer the potential Skywalker call or stay online with my brothers. Tough choice, but I took the call and it was Mac Smith asking me to work on an ambitious series called “Moon Knight.” I happily took the job and a few months later even won a Primetime Emmy for the work. But I almost missed my first Skywalker opportunity because I was playing video games with my brothers.

What credits or projects are you proudest of, and why?

For two years, I worked with Wylie Stateman and Eric Hoehn at Post 2.0 mixing the foreign dubbed version of movies. Since dubbing usually happens after the project is done, there wasn’t any pressure from directors or producers during the mixing sessions, so I was free to take my time and explore. This allowed me to experiment with different mixing techniques and plugins. We would also get copies of the original Pro Tools session, and I would go through them very thoroughly, dissecting and analyzing all the automation and trying to pick up little tips and tricks.

What was your biggest challenge in your job (or on a particular project) and how did you overcome/solve it?

I worked as one of the re-recording mixers on “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Brent Kiser and the editors had already done a lot of work on the mix so they asked me to start around the middle of the movie. The reel he asked me to focus on had a scene in an alley where characters talk about finding happiness even in simple things, like owning a laundromat together. It made me reflect on my own life, and I got emotional because it felt related to events in my own life.

When I met with the directors, I shared how moved I was by that scene. We had a long conversation about its importance to the film and how crucial it would be to ensure the audience experiences a similar emotional journey. With this clear goal, we went scene by scene and discussed the emotional beats and then worked the audio until that goal was achieved. It was a new approach for me and them to build a mixing guide based on personal emotional check points, but it worked well, and I believe it’s a key reason so many audience members related to the movie in the end.

At the end of the year, our sound team was one of the ten selected for the Academy Sound Branch shortlist. It was a great opportunity to meet with other mixers and sound editors to discuss our work. A memorable highlight of the night was the chance to speak with Paul Massey, one of my favorite mixers who has inspired me with his previous mixing work. We talked about the importance of finding yourself in a project and translating that connection into artistic decisions.

What was the most fun you’ve had at work?

I used to work with two talented and funny sound editors, Danielle Price and Jacob Flack. They worked together in a small room without air conditioning. To beat the heat, they got a fan that could be filled with water to make the air cooler. Instead of using fancy water, they used tap water stored in plastic bottles in the fridge. To tell them apart from actual drinking water bottles, they drew skulls on the tap water bottles. These skull bottles still crack me up whenever I think about them, and now that Death Water is the name of a legit company, I wish they had run with the idea more.

Jobwise, what do you hope to be doing five years from now?

I have two distinct goals for the future, both very different. First, I’d love to supervise or mix on an action or war movie. My brothers are in the army, and I want to work on something they can proudly share with their army buddies. I’m on the lookout for my own version of movies like “The Hurt Locker” or “Fury.” Secondly, I heard Taylor Swift is working on her first feature film, and if the chance comes up, I’d love to be involved in any way possible.

What are your outside activities, hobbies, passions?
I learned to scuba-dive in 2021 and have been going on trips to the California coastal islands via chartered boats.

Favorite movie(s)? Why?

I keep a highlight reel of sound design moments from movies I wish I had done. I go back to the list when I’m lost and looking for inspiration. A glimpse at a few of the titles on my wish-I-had-done-that list are: “Blade Runner 2049,” “Dune,” “The Creator,” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Iron Man,” “Tron: Legacy,” “Road to Perdition,” “Transformers,” and any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Each of those films has a unique sonic thumbprint and tackled a difficult genre in a fresh way.

Favorite TV program(s)? Why?

My wife and I love watching the TV show “Below Deck.” It features the interior and exterior crew working on a super yacht. Naturally, there’s a lot of workplace drama, and we always pause to talk about who we think is right and wrong.

Do you have an industry mentor?

Currently, I have been learning a lot from Justin Doyle, an amazing sound effects editor and designer. He has such great taste in sounds and is pretty much unique in his ability to select the perfect sound for a scene. He has taught me not to be tricked by visually complex, overly stacked sound editing and instead find confidence in simple, clear, well-chosen design. Since working with him, I have been trying to select one well-chosen sound rather than ten average sounds mangled together.

What advice would you offer to someone interested in pursuing your line of work?

Conan O’Brien once compared working in show biz to playing slots at the casino. He said you have to keep trying every day because you never know when you’ll hit the jackpot. I agree and have found it helpful to maintain consistent effort. I would also add that having a good life partner is key. My partner, April Lamb, is a true genius. and I really am grateful for her support, love, and business savvy.

Was there ever a circumstance when you had to rely on the Guild for help or assistance?

Recently, my first child was born, and the union health insurance was amazing. Anytime I had a question or issue, I would call. They always answered the phone quickly and had the right answers.

Is there anything you’d like to say to your fellow Guild members, some words of encouragement?

When I first started freelancing, I wanted to join the union and work at a studio. I reached out to various studios in LA, asking to work as a mix tech or assistant re-recording mixer. I shared my goal with my friend Eric Hoehn, who offered to help. He wrote a great email to Formosa Group, asking them to consider hiring me as a re-recording mixer. They responded quickly, wanting to schedule a Zoom interview. I was nervous, but Eric boosted my confidence by reminding me of my skills. His support helped me ask for what I wanted, and in the end, I was hired by Formosa Group to mix. If I could offer encouragement to anyone in this industry, it would be to recognize your skills as valuable and seek out supporters who believe in you and your success.

March 8, 2024 0 comments

Features Interview

In ‘American Fiction’, Picture Editor Hilda Rasula Made the Most of a Commanding Lead Performance

by Rob Feld March 8, 2024

written by Rob Feld 8 minutes read

By Rob Feld

In cutting the feature “American F iction,” Hilda Rasula, ACE, had a powerful weapon: The performance from lead actor Jeffrey Wright.

“American Fiction,” Cord Jefferson’s screen adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel “Erasure,” is among the most-acclaimed films of 2023. The most subtle expression in Wright’s face could anchor a complex scene that sought to bridge drama and satire, but the calibration of tone and timing needed to be just right. For a relatively low-budget film offering limited coverage to work with, there was a good deal of massaging to be done to leverage the treasures Wright gave her.

Erika Alexander and Jeffrey Wright in “American Fiction.” PHOTO: MGM

“American Fiction” tells the story of Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Wright), a frequently acerbic, respected novelist and professor of English literature, who has been struggling with the stereotyped tales the publishing industry demands from him as a Black author. His nuanced stories, devoid of pandering thuggish ghetto tropes, haven’t sold a book in years—they aren’t “Black enough.” What’s more, his reaction to his students’ cultural sensitivities lands him in trouble with his department and leads to a forced sabbatical. In a fit of frustration, to prove his point, Monk pens an outlandish “Black” book under a pseudonym, which surprisingly takes off, putting even more pressure on his sense of integrity versus his need to financially support his ailing mother.

Rasula’s edits lean into the performance-driven storytelling and satirical humor, while threading a needle between satirical humor and drama. Of key importance to landing the film’s explosive and unexpected ending was balancing the storyline of Monk’s angst-ridden professional life with crises transpiring at his family home. Even with a strong script, clear directorial vision, and a brilliant cast, the key to making this story fly was found in the edit.

CineMontage: Finding the voice of this film must have been an exploration. What were your early conversations like with the director, Cord Jefferson?

Hilda Rasula: Cord had a strong sense of the movie he wanted to make and why he was making it, which is so helpful when you’re cutting. We talked about trying to make a movie that, despite its satirical element, was operating on a close-to-the-ground, human level. It isn’t a Mike Leigh, kitchen-sink vibe, but we wanted to find an everyday authenticity in the performances. We wanted those relationships to feel lived-in, and we talked about finding that in some of the more dramatic scenes to balance out some of the absurdities of plot and satire. I don’t think we ever deviated from the hope of making a humanist film. We knew what we were going for tonally, but finding it was another thing, and sometimes [it was] laborious to nail it. How comedic is too much? Where is the comedy leaning towards farce? How broad can this go before the scene starts to collapse under the weight of a tone that’s getting too broad or too farcical? How far can it swing in this direction to get the maximum laughs possible, but then make sure that we’re not going so far in that direction that we can’t come back to some of the darker drama? It was a delicate, fine balance.

‘It was a tight schedule, so there wasn’t a lot of coverage.’

Issa Rae (left) and Nicole Kempskie in writer/director Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction.” PHOTO: ORION PICTURES

CineMontage: Can you think of an example where you were testing those boundaries?

Hilda Rasula: I think where we were playing with it in the storyline around Monk’s book, like those scenes in Arthur’s office where he is talking to publishers on the phone and comes up with the alternate title. We had options around how big to swing it with these amazing runs of improvisation, where they were doing wholly other things. They’re such gifted performers but we needed to play with the balance of how big we wanted the comedy to get. It became clear to me fairly early on that we needed to have the balances tip more towards Monk and play a lot of things off of Jeffrey’s expressions. By tipping the scales towards Jeffrey’s face, we could do a lot of comic timing manipulation with the dialogue. When do you have a straight man as good as Jeffrey Wright? He can do tightly wound, stillness, stillness with a glimmer of sardonic humor. He can do a tiny twitch of his eye or his mouth that suggests his frustration with the situation, but in a really subtle way that ends up playing as the joke. There is a merry-go-round of absurdity happening around him, and those scenes took some balancing to realize that it was in Jeffrey’s face that the humor was landing. He’s a genius, in full command of his craft.

CineMontage: Can you connect that way of using performance to the type of coverage you were receiving?

Hilda Rasula: They were shooting on a tight schedule without the luxury of time and money, so there wasn’t a lot of coverage. That just meant that I had to drill even harder into the truth of the performances. It is a performance-driven film so there’s nothing to hide behind. There are no grand set pieces that would let you play a little sleight of hand with the audience. You’re moving from one talky, performance-driven scene to another, and each one has to work to keep things moving forward and for you to believe in these characters. At times, it was a highwire act to find the truth of the scene with the coverage that I had. I used every classic editor trick that lets you manipulate time and space, like figuring out the timing of when to put people off-screen so that you can massage the timing of the dialogue and mix takes, which would let me add a single word from ADR, so that the intonation was consistent with the intentions of the script.

CineMontage: Any other examples come to mind?

Rasula: It was single-camera shooting, so sometimes it was a question of finding the shared truth of their performances. You can have an actor exploring things on one side of their coverage, then turning around to shoot another actor doing their coverage. So, you need to find what feels like an authentic rhythm of dialogue, despite the single-camera shooting. So, pacing up scenes, finding the right rhythm to achieve some kind of verisimilitude.

CineMontage: You’re interweaving the family storyline and his career storyline. How were you relating these two things so that they paid off at the end?

Rasula: That was the lion’s share of the work, finding a way to weave together what are essentially two distinct aspects of Monk’s life, in a way that could flow like life itself. To help the flow between different storylines, we did a lot of pacing work. On some occasions, that meant cutting a bunch of dialogue, getting out of a scene much earlier than intended, or coming in later and doing some restructuring, so that the flow between these light and dark modes or storylines could work.

CineMontage: What did that work look like?

Rasula: I had a board on a wall in my office with index cards for every scene. As an exercise one day, we color-coded all the cards for his professional storyline and his family storyline, to see how they laid out. From the color coding, we could see where the balance was getting a little out-of-whack—we’ve been blue for six scenes in a row, maybe we need to hear a little more from that other storyline? We did a big restructure to act one that introduced Monk in a way that helped the audience get a better handle on him and invest in him. Before, we were meeting his family a lot earlier, but we hadn’t yet understood the central conceit of his beef with his professional world; the ways that he is being hemmed in by the publishing industry, being constrained as a writer, as an artist, and being asked to sand down the edges of his work for white publishers and white audiences. So one of the big triumphs of the edit came late in the game: realizing there were different ways we could restructure act one, so that we could crystallize his professional situation before meeting his family.

It was like magic — once we figured that out, suddenly there was a much better flow. We had to kill a few darlings in order to do it, which was sad and always happens, but you have to be mercenary. And once we figured that out, we were off to the races!

March 8, 2024 0 comments

Behind the Scenes Features Interview

How the Post Team of ‘Ferrari’ Worked Together to Bring an Auto Epic to Life

by Peter Tonguette March 8, 2024

written by Peter Tonguette 10 minutes read

By Peter Tonguette

In the world of international motorsports, the glamorous drivers, glitzy sponsors, and incredible racecars draw most of the attention, but any real auto racing fan knows that it’s the pit crew that does the heavy lifting.

The pit crew ushers the racecar into place to refuel, to detach and discard worn tires, to affix new tires, and to send the momentarily sidelined racer back to the course in good shape. If the pit crew has done its job, no one will have noticed their expeditious handiwork.

Something of the same spirit of committed professionalism and grace under pressure characterizes the post-production team on Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” released to theaters late last year. The Neon release stars Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, the stylish, sophisticated automotive pioneer who, as the film opens, finds his attention split between his racecar empire and his muddled personal life: He is bereft over the loss of his son with his wife, Laura (Penelope Cruz), while also maintaining a relationship with his mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley), with whom he also has a child. This is a personal psychodrama set amid the world of high-octane racing.

For Mann, the film is the fulfilment of a long-stated wish to make a cinematic portrait of Ferrari in full: his life, his loves, and his cars. The filmmaker demanded the sort of authenticity for which he had become famous on such earlier triumphs as “Heat” (1995), “The Insider” (1999), and “Ali” (2001). On this film, engine sounds had to be authentic to the cars being depicted on-camera, and the Italian-inflected English dialogue had to sound realistic but intelligible. All of this, and more, had to be achieved on a schedule far more compressed, and a budget considerably more limited, than the filmmaker’s large-scale studio pictures.

Consequently, Mann assembled a team of post-production pros. Many had worked with Mann in the past — some for decades, others for a shorter period — along with those who were new initiates. Together, they took charge of “Ferrari” in post-production in much the same way that the pit crew is responsible for a car mid-race: they refueled the film, changed its tires, and assured that, when it prepared to make its rounds on the course of the year’s best pictures, it was in tip-top shape.

CineMontage recently spoke with some key members of this “pit crew”: picture editor Pietro Scalia, ACE; supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer Tony Lamberti; supervising sound editor Bernard Weiser; re-recording mixer Andy Nelson; music editor Paul Apelgren; and production sound mixer Lee Orloff.

CineMontage: Pietro, “Ferrari” is your first film with Michael Mann. What interested you about the project?

Pietro Scalia: I’ve known Michael for many years, and over the many years he’s been trying to put this movie together, he would contact me. I was very flattered by that. I knew of the project and the long gestation of it. Having the opportunity to work with a master, and somebody that I admired for so long, I’m happy that finally it was ready to go. I loved the script, and I had seen the evolution. I was amazed how he was able to crystallize this story so beautifully.

Pietro Scalia.

CineMontage: How did you work together in putting the picture together?

Scalia: One of the things we had to adapt very early on is the communication in the form of notes from Michael. Before he would shoot, he would share all his research and notes. During the shoot, he would note things that he liked, but when we were in Modena [Italy], it was a very tight schedule. He would come in on weekends, but he didn’t have much time to review the material. He said, “Just go ahead and follow the notes. We’ll review it on the weekends.” That gave me the kind of initial freedom to tackle the scenes, having all the information that I needed. Then we would review them on the weekends and, to my surprise, he liked these scenes, which gave me confidence.

The real editing part of it with Michael was after the shoot in Italy, when he returned to L.A. He literally went back to all the dailies, he commented on them, he recorded his reactions — very, very specific. His assistants would transcribe them, and we would get these notes. We created this giant library of notes. That’s his process. He has everything catalogued and noted.

Tony Lamberti.

CineMontage: Are Mann’s notes about his favorite takes or moments he likes?

Scalia: Exactly that, but also very, very specific. For example, in going through the takes, he noted his preferred takes, but then also the specific sections where he would stop the dailies and give you specific timecodes.

He would revisit older cuts, view them again, and sometimes make combinations. It was a continuous fine-tune to remove everything that’s in excess. How does this compare to that one? Sometimes we’d have three or four different cuts of the same scene at the same time. There are sequences that I cut 50 times.

CineMontage: Tony, you first worked with Michael on “Blackhat” (2015), and you learned about “Ferrari” while working on a director’s cut of the earlier film.

Tony Lamberti: He had this alternate edit of “Blackhat” that he showed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and on those weekends when I went in to work on it, he had all the materials out for “Ferrari.” His offices were filled with these giant poster boards of locations. He had build-sheets for the cars.

All the cars that are moving on-screen are actually replicas of the real cars. He had to build them from scratch in order to be able to mount cameras to them and put them through the rigors of production. The real cars are worth tens of millions of dollars. I’ve never worked with a director who just goes so deep into every single detail.

CineMontage: That meant you had to record the sounds of the real cars — not the replicas seen on-camera, but the actual cars they represent, right?

Lamberti: Specifically, the engines. The cars that were the replicas had little four-cylinder turbo engines in them, so we could run them all day long and beat them up, but the sound was not the real sound. The way that Michael’s attention to detail plays out is: “We’ve got to have the authentic sounds,” so that when a real racing driver watches this movie, they’ll be transported back. We started chasing down cars, and we had many, many avenues we were chasing down. The big challenge for me was: “How do you convince collectors and museums to allow you to record their highly valued cars”?

CineMontage: Once you managed to line up the real cars, how did you mic them?

Lamberti: So now we had all the cars wrangled. I had a shot list of everything that needed to get shot, and then the cutting room sent clips of the racing scenes so they could actually see on-screen what action needed to be shot. We had all the pieces in place. And then it’s just taking out the driver and performing those things. We were very, very specific: “We need starts, idles, aways.” All of these things needed to be done at at least 5,000 RPMs and above. We had all these stipulations; we need to have these cars revving their highest revs and doing these different actions. Then it was up to the guys to go out in the field and record it.

Michael has done enough amateur racing to really know what’s going on, and he’s been a Ferrari guy forever. Not only did we have to get the sound of the engines right, but we had to get the performances right, and what we liked to call racecraft. So all of those downshifts, all of the upshifts, all of the accelerations and decelerations — they all had to be absolutely spot-on to not only what we were seeing on-camera but when we’re not seeing things on-camera.

Bernard Weiser.

CineMontage: Lee, the recording of the dialogue scenes came under your purview.

Lee Orloff: It’s always about authenticity with Michael. As far back as anything I’ve ever done with him, he doesn’t build sets. If there’s a real location that we can go to, where the event takes place, we’ll be in Chicago for “Ali”; we’ll be down in Pascagoula, Mississippi, for “The Insider” in the courtroom. Once you realize that that’s his approach, you read the script and you know: “OK, so we’re going to be there.”

When it comes to racecraft, there’s no way that he’s going to allow anything on the soundtrack to be anything short of absolutely authentic. And this is stuff that’s sometimes barely in the picture, but it’s happening in the background. We’re having a conversation between Enzo and a driver on a racetrack, and the Maserati and the Ferraris are doing the time trials. He created that so that each one of those shifts, and everything in the track, supports that whole sense that you’re in the place. This is the way it would be if you were there.

Andy Nelson.

CineMontage: Bernard, you had previously worked with Mann and with Tony on “Blackhat.” What was the setup like on “Ferrari”?

Bernard Weiser: Tony and I knew that, for Michael, having the two of us be supervisors was the way to go. We knew the demands that we were walking into. I’d say this show proved us correct with that view of it. Michael likes to have direct contact. As a result, I was the one that, when I started, was immediately embedded with the picture department, starting at the very end of January or beginning of February. My cutting room was right next to Pietro and right in the middle of it all. That way, Michael could walk from room to room and discuss what he was thinking.

Andy Nelson: My experience with Michael is that everything’s evolving. In other words, he doesn’t finish a cut, come to the stage, and start mixing the sound. He’s finishing the movie in all these areas at the same time. We’ll put up a sequence on the screen and we’ll work on it with him, but it’s informing him, as we’re doing something, of what he thinks he should do pictorially. It literally comes alive on the big screen at that moment in time. He’ll move the picture editing department over to the dub stage, right next to where I am, and he’ll be back and forward because the cut will change. You have to be ready to work in a very fluid style with him.

Weiser: The first thing Michael said to me the first day I was there was that his biggest concern was the understandability of the dialogue. This was a twofold problem: You had the Italian actors speaking English, many with a very heavy accent, and then you had the English-speaking actors trying to speak English but with an Italian accent. CineMontage: How did you
address the issue?

March 8, 2024 0 comments

DAYTIME IN PARIS: Lou de Laâge and Valérie Lemercier in “Coup de Chance.”

Features Interview

Hollywood Ending: Alisa Lepselter Cut What May – or May Not – Be Woody Allen’s Last Film, ‘Coup de Chance’

by Rob Feld February 6, 2024

written by Rob Feld 9 minutes read

By Rob Feld

Alisa Lepselter’s first feature editing credit was for Nicole Holofcener’s breakout “Walking and Talking,” but she was soon snatched up by Woody Allen to cut “Sweet and Lowdown,” and has been working for him nearly exclusively ever since.

Just this year, her availability realigned with Holofcener’s production schedule to collaborate with her on “You Hurt My Feelings,” before returning to cut Allen’s 50th feature film, “Coup de Chance,” his French-language suspense-drama. The film may or may not be Allen’s last—he has questioned his willingness to do the fundraising hustle at age 88—but Lepselter approached it no differently than usual.

The film tells the story of Fanny (Lou de Laâge), who had attended high school in New York but now lives in Paris. She runs into a novelist, Alain (Niels Schneider), who had been in love with her in high school and is writing his next book in Paris. Though Fanny is married to Jean (Melvil Poupaud), a wealthy and controlling finance titan, Alain pursues her and eventually draws her into an affair. Jean’s suspicions lead to a murder, leaving Fanny and her mother in danger.

Alisa Lepselter.

“In making a film, it is key to have a first-rate cinematographer and a first-rate editor,” Allen said. “I’ve always worked with only first-rate cinematographers and for many years with Alisa because she is a first-rate editor.” Lepselter’s skills and ability to collaborate with the exacting Allen are on display in the film, which moves quickly as a drama while balancing aspects but not fully following the form of a suspense thriller as closely as did their work on “Match Point.” Finding the voice of “Coup de Chance” took give and take and experimentation, and the trust born of years of collaboration.

CineMontage: Looking at the directors you have worked with—Woody Allen, Nicole Holofcener, and Nora Ephron while you were an assistant editor—there is a bit of a family tree there; not unrelated voices, but different personalities with whom to interact. Allen was one of the more pleasant interviews of my life, Eph-on perhaps the most challenging. Can you tell me about your collaborations?

Alisa Lepselter: I felt lucky enough to share a sensibility with a lot of the people I worked with. We clicked. We laughed at the same things. That’s a big part of it. I adored Nora and was so grateful to her for so many things. People would say to me, “I hope you get to be her editor someday.” But I would say, “Actually, I am much happier being her friend.” She was tough to work for because she was so demanding, so particular. I was glad that I got to see that, but not be the one who had to answer to it as her editor. But she did really encourage me a lot in my career.

CineMontage: Your first job as an editor was also Nicole Holofcener’s breakout feature, “Walking and Talking.” You were finally able to work with her again on “You Hurt My Feelings.” Did you find your collaborative process change over the years?

Lepselter: Nicole is one of my closest friends. I cut her first feature but unfortunately, we got out of sync after that. I wasn’t available when she made her second feature because I was working for Woody. So, it took us this long to be able to work together again. We speak the same language and I feel like I understand her scripts on a deep level. We’re contemporaries and we have a lot in common. I love the way she writes. When I first interviewed with her for “Walking and Talking,” I hadn’t cut a feature yet and the producers were too nervous to hire me. They said, “Nicole really loved you but she’s a first-time director and we feel that she needs someone with more experience.” But then they allowed her to hire me. She said, “I could tell that you get me,” because of the way that I spoke to her about her characters. I get her on a level very differentfrom the way I get Woody, but I understand where he’s coming from, too. I’d only cut “Walking and Talking” when I met him, but I think he trusted that I knew what I was doing, and he wanted someone who he felt comfortable sitting next to all day because he spends so much time in the editing room.

‘When we’re working it’s pretty intense.’

CineMontage: Tell me about your process with him. He’s not the personality you would imagine from seeing in his movies.

Lepselter: No, he’s very reserved. I think part of that comes from being so famous for so long that people think they know you. Our relationship is very professional. It’s all about the work. It’s not as though he doesn’t make me laugh because he does. He can’t help it. He’s one of the funniest people who ever lived, but when we’re working, it’s pretty intense. He likes to be there while we’re cutting the first pass. We always start with scene one and go through the film sequentially, assembling it together, looking at all the dailies and selecting takes. I’ll make notes as we screen the dailies and then I’ll put it together. He’s not far away while I’m doing that. With “Coup de Chance,” I had to have two scripts: a French and an English. I speak French as well as you could expect for someone who studied it a long time ago, so I felt comfortable enough with the language, reading it and listening to it, but I hired a French assistant, Hadrien Nicoloso, who could tell me if I made a mistake. If I thought that a cheat worked, I had Hadrien there to tell me whether or not it was something I could get away with; or if I unintentionally dropped a word or if a syllable got by me, or occasionally a flub in a line reading that I thought was acceptable. In a Woody film, the stammering that seems so natural isn’t something that I necessarily would cut around. But what seems like a natural stammer might actually be that the actor was just forgetting their line. That was new to the process but otherwise, we put together a first assembly, screen it on the big screen, make changes, and screen it over and over again until we feel it’s where it needs to be.

AUTEUR: Woody Allen at the 80th Venice International Film Festival 2023. PHOTO: ALAMY

CineMontage: What sort of coverage do you get from him and where does he put his focus when choosing a take?

Lepselter: He shoots limited coverage, and he doesn’t shoot a lot of takes because he knows what he wants. I think he directs efficiently. When deciding between takes, it’s almost always about performance, but it’s also about camera and the rhythm. There aren’t a ton of choices, but the actors will give you different performances. So, it’s about tone and how we feel the scene is best represented.

CineMontage: Have you seen his process or emphasis change over time?

Lepselter: He’s become more relaxed about certain things and more concerned about others. He’s certainly more trusting of me after working together for so many years. If we disagree on something, I’ll push him twice, not three times, because I feel like it’s my job to point out something when I don’t agree with him. But he’s the director. So, I have to find a way to get my point across. Now it’s nice to not feel like I have to work as hard for him to understand me. We have a much easier rapport so that if I am trying to convince him to look at something another way, he’s much more receptive to it. CineMontage: “Coup de Chance” has a suspense element but it doesn’t fully lean into the genre. Can you talk about how you found the tone? Lepselter: We find it as we go. This particular film was a little tricky because you want it to be suspenseful and to move quickly. But it is also a relationship drama that shouldn’t feel like a horror movie. That was something that we worked with a lot. The main character, Jean, had to be scary enough, but you don’t want him to be a monster. You want him to be a believable character. That was one of the more challenging aspects of this film: how to get the tone right for someone who is clearly a problematic character, while keeping him believable and not a cartoon.

CineMontage: Do you think that was more finding the performance or leaving moments out?

Lepselter: It was a combination of both. There were things that we left out that were too leading or too over the top. It was piring it down from some of the things that were on the page where, once we saw the whole, made it feel less believable.

CineMontage: He has said this will be his last film. Do you believe it or did that impact your approach to it?

Lepselter: I think he backtracked on that, and I don’t think that’s what he meant. I mean, it could conceivably be, but if something came along that he wanted to do, he wouldn’t say that he wouldn’t do it.

CineMontage: Having such an inside view, what do you think his contribution to film has been? What differentiates him?

Lepselter: He’s a distinctive filmmaker with such a specific style. Obviously, the fact that he’s made almost a film a year for so many years is a big part of it. I think the fact that he’s so prodigiously talented and prolific is an enormous contribution. Just the sheer number of different films that he’s made. Comedies obviously, but also dramas. The characters that he’s created have become some of the most important characters to film lovers everywhere. I grew up watching Woody Allen films. Never in a million years did I think I’d be lucky enough to work on one of them.

February 6, 2024 0 comments

OSAGE WISDOM: Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Behind the Scenes Features Interview

Thelma Schoonmaker Talks Editing Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers of The Flower Moon’

by uncredited February 1, 2024

written by uncredited 11 minutes read

By Patrick Z. McGavin

Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE, knows that her famous collaborator embraces the challenge of the new.

“Marty never wants to repeat himself,” said Schoonmaker, the three-time Oscar-winning editor best known for her work with director Martin Scorsese on film classics such as “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas.” “He gets a great new idea he wants to challenge himself with, and I’m being challenged with him,” she added. “There’s never any boredom.” Their latest challenge is the Apple-financed $200 million production, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” adapted by the writer Eric Roth and Scorsese from the 2016 non-fiction book by David Grann.

PARTNERS: Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker. PHOTO: AP

Set in 1921 in northern Oklahoma, the film is a story of greed, corruption, and racism after the discovery of oil under Osage Nation land transformed the region into one of the wealthiest areas in the country. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a returning World War I soldier ensnared in a scheme concocted by his uncle, William Hale, a nefarious cattle baron played by Robert DeNiro. The emotional centerpiece is the relationship between the Osage woman Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and Ernest, who starts as her chauffeur and eventually marries her. Like Scorsese’s Netflix epic “The Irishman” (2019), this new Apple Original film is a historical epic with a three-and-a-half-hour running time.

In an interview with CineMontage, Schoonmaker talks about the challenges of finding a balance between the film’s violent historical context and its more subtle family dynamics.

CineMontage: How did you prepare for this daunting material? Thelma Schoonmaker: Of course, I read the book, and that is filled with information. I learned many things through the process as I was going. I was given books, for example, on the very interesting ways Osage dress for weddings. The women wear this military outfit, which is something that happened when they first encountered white people.

They probably admired the look of the epaulets. Things like that I learned as each scene came up. It was the same with pipe at the beginning, and the drums at the end. The drums are so important to the Osage. They actually consider the drum a person, and the keeper of the drum is a very special person who is carefully chosen. Then it’s handed from person to person as people get older. I was learning all of that with each scene.

CineMontage: How did you decide to weave in the other narrative blocks, like the illustrated Osage book, the use of photographs and film, or the intertitles?

Schoonmaker: Marty knew right away that he wanted to use the black-and-white scenes, which were shot with actual silent cameras by [cinematographer] Ellen Kuras. The idea of using silent film footage in the beginning, once the oil was discovered, was to reproduce exactly as a newsreel of those days would have looked. It was shot by Ellen Kuras with a silent film camera using black-and-white film stock. Marty even owns one of the cameras. He always knew that, instead of a different way of explaining what happened, which may be lengthy and maybe not as interesting, that he wanted to use the silent film as a way to let people know what happened and not spend a lot of time on it.

Marty said, “I’m not making a documentary about the Osage. I’m making a film about two people who are in love with each other.”

CineMontage: One of the most striking cuts happens early, with an overhead shot and Mollie’s voiceover as we see these tableaux of sorrow, violence, and loss. Thelma

Schoonmaker: That was kind of a daring thing we did with Mollie’s voice there. We haven’t seen her yet. We don’t know who she is. Hearing a woman’s voice over these men who have died, and women who have died, and there’s been no investigation of it as a criminal act — hearing that female voice is such a shock.

CineMontage: The movie is a marriage story. The key question is how authentic Ernest’s love for Mollie is. How does the cutting color that ambiguity? Schoonmaker: DiCaprio was originally going to play the FBI man. What happened was once he decided to play Ernest, both he and Lily helped Marty revise the script and make the love story the central theme of the movie. You might wonder, but most people tell me they completely believe the love story, which is the way wonderful actors do it. An FBI agent asked Mollie, “Why are you staying with him?” She said, “I love him.” The actors make it that way. Leo is wonderful at improvisation. There’s the scene where Mollie calls him over to the bed. He’s been watching Blackie steal his car, the stupid plot that the two of them came up with.

She said, “I don’t know if you love me anymore,” and he convinces her he does. They say to each other, in Osage, “I love you,” and they touch noses, which is the Osage way of expressing love. During the intimate moment, he improvises, and they laugh, and he says, “You’re going to wake up the kids.”

CineMontage: With your long history of cutting both Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro at different parts of their careers, how beneficial was that in capturing their specific styles and emotional ranges?

Schoonmaker: They are both so different in this movie from what I expected, particularly Leo. He is willing to play someone who is not very smart, who’s lazy, but who loves this woman. That’s a big departure from the roles that he normally plays. I was astonished to see how skillfully he was able to switch into this kind of a part, and how he was absolutely adamant about staying in it. He never wanted to make himself look glamorous or romantic. He wanted to develop that part as it should have been. DeNiro is also very different in this. I couldn’t believe his voice. He came up with this wonderful voice that shows a bit of age, but it’s got a very interesting character. He said at the press conference at Cannes that he really didn’t understand his character.

He played it beautifully, in spite of the fact that he couldn’t really personally identify with such a thing. There are many people in films like that, characters who are double-sided. It’s hard to handle, like “Peeping Tom” (1960), my husband Michael Powell’s film, where you feel compassion for this man who is killing people. My husband felt this man had been tortured and abused as a child, and he can’t help himself. The compassion the critics were feeling when they first saw the movie made them so uncomfortable. They felt they were guilty of supporting his crimes.

CineMontage: Scorsese has been criticized sometimes for the female representation in his films. Lily Gladstone is the soul of the film. What was your process like with her?

Schoonmaker: She is such a wonderful actress, a genius. She’s a Blackfoot who learned the Osage language. The woman who trained her in Osage said, “She sounded like my mother.” I noticed sometimes that even after Marty said, “Cut,” she would stay in character for the two or three feet it takes for the film to run out. This is a part to die for. She is the soul of the movie, her dignity, and her willingness to compromise for the man she chooses to be with. She’s attracted to him, and he’s attracted to her. I didn’t have to do anything to make her performance any better than it already is.

CineMontage: The FBI investigation is more pronounced in the book. How much did you play around with how you wanted to introduce that element?

Schoonmaker: Marty had already had to make big changes once Leo decided he didn’t want to play the FBI agent. That work was going on even a little bit during the shooting, particularly building the love story. That it was going on during shooting was a little unusual, but it’s happened before. We experimented with placing scenes around the love story, to make sure the love story was strengthened. With editing, you do move things around.

CineMontage: Did you watch the early ’20s films of D.W. Griffith, John Ford, or Erich von Stroheim to get a feel for how things moved back then?

Schoonmaker: Marty is already so familiar with that period of movies that it’s sort of in his brain already. I didn’t have to look at those movies. I knew a lot of the ones that mean the most to him.

CineMontage: The movie was shot on 35mm film. What impact, if any, did that have on your work? Schoonmaker: We do make the transition to digital right away for editing purposes. We had very highresolution footage all the way through when we were editing. So it wasn’t a matter of us having to go back when we did, for example, with an optical visual effect. We didn’t have to go back and get the negative because we already had high-quality resolution negative, which meant things were faster and we could manipulate things even more in the editing room.

We created some visual effects in the editing room, and that was because we were shooting at a very high resolution. That was really different from previous films. We have this high-resolution element for the final.

CineMontage: How do you and Scorsese resolve any differences you might have?

Schoonmaker: There is never an ego battle or anything like Marty used to have in his early days in Hollywood when he was changing the ways movies are made. If we disagree, I show him four or five options of another way to go, and he will look at it, and we will decide together which is better. It’s not ever a problem.

Sometimes we may want to screen one way, then try screening another way to gauge audience reactions when we debrief them afterwards. We settle these things in the early editing. He trained me. He taught me everything I know about editing. Our sensibilities are the same.

CineMontage: With Netflix on “The Irishmen,” and now Apple with this film, you are working outside the traditional commercial restraints. Has that been liberating artistically?

Schoonmaker: It’s the nature of the subject matter, like the long slow builds of how De Niro’s character in “The Irishman” evolved to the absolutely devastating last scene, where he’s aging and all alone. That’s what he’s earned from how he ran his life. So that build was very, very important. Similarly with this film, it’s a big story, and it needed the length. Most people tell me they have no problem at all with it. So they feel gripped by the movie right away and stay that way.

CineMontage: Criterion has recently issued 4K editions of “Mean Streets” (1985), “After Hours” (1985), and your husband’s key film, “The Red Shoes” (1948). Does this lead you to reflect on your life and work?

Schoonmaker: I do the restorations myself. I work with Scorsese, and we work very closely with the colorist and the sound restoration. “After Hours” was something we spent a great deal of time on. It’s wonderful to see the film brought to life again, particularly these days with digital. You can do these amazing things to remove dirt and scratches and get the sound and color exactly right.

I’ve worked on the restoration with Scorsese of almost all the recent movies, and also my husband’s movies. The wonder-ul thing about it is you see the same scene over and over again as you are working on the color, so you get to learn the film in a different way. You see little things that you never noticed, particularly on my husband’s films. That is a joy. I love every minute of it, and I never get tired of seeing them.

Patrick Z. McGavin is a Chicago-based writer and cultural journalist.

February 1, 2024 0 comments

Behind the Scenes Interview Web Exclusives

Affonso Gonçalves Talks Editing Todd Haynes’ Drama ‘May December’

by Peter Tonguette January 23, 2024

written by Peter Tonguette 10 minutes read

By Peter Tonguette

From the life and death of Karen Carpenter to our inability to function in the modern world to stories of love affairs thwarted by society, filmmaker Todd Haynes has always had a penchant for high drama.

His earlier films — including the aforementioned “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” (1987), “Safe” (1995), and “Far from Heaven” (2002) — established that pattern, but his latest film confirms it. “May December” — which Netflix released to widespread attention and acclaim in late November — enlarges the sort of story that would normally be tabloid fodder to operatic proportions.

Julianne Moore (the earlier star of “Safe” and “Far from Heaven”) stars as Gracie, a woman whose life was derailed following the revelation of an illicit (and illegal) relationship with a teenager, Joe (Charles Melton) — a young man whom she subsequently married. Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, an actress who has been tapped to play a character based on Gracie in a new movie.

The contours of Gracie’s crimes as depicted in Samy Burch’s screenplay are said to be inspired by the real-life case of Mary Kay Letourneau, who was the subject of a thousand newsmagazine segments in the 1990s and 2000s. In the hands of Haynes and his frequent collaborator in the cutting room, picture editor Affonso Goncalves, ACE, the material becomes as strange, disturbing, and darkly comic as anything in memory.

Over a series of collaborations reaching back to “Mildred Pierce” (2011) and including the acclaimed “Carol” (2015) and “Wonderstruck” (2017), Goncalves is uniquely attuned to Haynes’ style. The editor recently spoke with CineMontage about their latest cinematic undertaking.

CineMontage: You and Todd Haynes have worked together a long time. What about the two of you click?

Affonso Gonçalves: We watch films the same way and we like similar kinds of films. Todd has this encyclopedic knowledge of film, which is really amazing. We both have a deep love of film. We have that communication. He can make references and talk about movies that he loves and ideas that he has, and I know exactly what he’s talking about. I think that helps because then I know what he’s looking for.

For every single film we’ve worked together on, he’s done extensive research for the film. He has film references, music references, and literary references. He gives those to all of us — his main creative partners. It’s great, because you know what he’s going for, but it’s really fun because it enriches my knowledge of film and filmmaking.

Affonso Gonçalves, editor of “The Lost Daughter.” PHOTO: Matt Infante.

CineMontage: What were some of the reference points for “May December”?

Gonçalves: He made a lot of references to [Ingmar] Bergman films, where he saw similarities — not only the mirror scenes, but films with women who mirror each other’s relationships. And [Jean-Luc] Godard and Joseph Losey. Then we started cutting, we kept thinking about those films.

Of course, this film has a very interesting tone. Ultimately, it’s a serious film with a serious subject matter — it’s a very morally dark and complex story — but it’s also funny. We had to shift. [Humor] not something we’re used to, or Todd is used to shooting, so it was really interesting in the cutting room for us to explore and, whenever we could, lean into the humor. And with a film like this, it really helps.

CineMontage: How did you bring that quality to the forefront?

Gonçalves: I think through the sharpness of the edit. In [Haynes’s] other films, there’s always sort of a lingering quality — the moments you get to experience and savor. Here, it’s a little bit different. We have so many scenes that are in one shot and things happen within the frame, and it is what it is; we just have to be careful when we’re coming in and we’re going out. Everything else has a little more pace, a little more sharpness. We get out a little faster than you expect. We talked about punchlines, which usually was not something that we’d talk about.

CineMontage: How do you and Todd work together? Do you cut as they’re shooting? What happens when Todd comes in?

Gonçalves: He’s shooting the film and I’m cutting. I was in LA, he was shooting in Savannah [Georgia]. When he finished shooting, I had a cut of the film. Todd doesn’t really watch dailies. He took a couple of weeks off. We sent to him DVDs of everything that was shot, so after he took a little break, he watched all the footage by himself and took notes, and he sent that all to me. By that time, I was in Portland, where he lives, so then I built a cut based on his notes. Then he came in and we worked off of that. We also had my cut, and we kind of used both of them.

Then that becomes the third cut, which is the final cut. It’s very hands-on. He comes in at 9 and he leaves at 7. We go through very, very detailed notes about every performance, every cut, the scenes, and the structure of the film. That part is similar in every film that we’ve done together.

CineMontage: Was “May December” a movie that changed a lot, or were the bones obvious from the beginning?

Gonçalves: The bones were there. It’s not a film that we did a massive restructure on. We lifted some scenes. We may have changed them a little bit around, or used different lines, but it was pretty close to the script. The work that we really did was work closely with performance, which is always something that we spend a lot of time on.

CineMontage: The movie is anchored by Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. What was it like working with their performances?

Gonçalves: Once you pick one performance, everything else has to fall in line with that [within a scene]. It can’t be that one [performance] is too big and one is too small. Once we committed to Julianne’s performance, if the scene is anchored on her, everything else has to follow. Which is really interesting, because Natalie is kind of performing a performance by Julianne. Me and Todd have to really gauge: “Is this too much? Did she get it too close? Is the lisp too strong?” It’s really carefully building the right arc of the character and arc of the change.

CineMontage: Throughout the film, we hear the theme from Joseph Losey’s 1970 masterpiece “The Go-Between.” Was it a temp piece first? When did you decide to commit to that music?

Gonçalves: That emerged because Todd, while he was researching the film, decided to watch “The Go-Between.” It was a film that he really liked, and he hadn’t watched it in a long time. He immediately fell in love with the soundtrack to the point that he actually added it to the script. He also played it on the set for the actors.

I knew that we wanted to use [“The Go-Between”] as a temp, and I temped the film with it. It was really interesting because, when you watch [“May December”], it’s not something that comes to mind. One, it’s specific to the [Losey] film, and two, it has a specific sonic language that is not something you think of when you’re watching “May December.” The challenge was how do we fit this to the scene? So you sometimes cut in a way that’s going to fit, or you start the music a little later, or you don’t use the entire piece or just one hit.

CineMontage: There are a lot of colors to this film: it’s about moral issues, it’s also about show business and the media. What do you hope people take from the movie?

Gonçalves: I love the film. I feel like a lot of people are understanding the moral conundrums of the film. You come in with one idea, and it’s super-slippery because you can’t really trust the film — you have to make up your own mind of what’s right, what’s wrong, what is it that happened, and who was right. It’s so much about boundaries being trampled on.

As I’m working on it, I have to make my own decisions. I have to make my own judgment call. And, at the same time, I have to be true to the story and to the film, and I can’t pick sides. That’s the great thing about being an editor.

January 23, 2024 0 comments