Before the first frame of a movie has been lensed, editor Myron Kerstein forms an impression from the words on the pages. “I’m really trying to understand the emotion when I’m reading a script,” says Kerstein, who earned his second Oscar nomination in film editing for his longtime collaborator Jon. M. Chu’s “Wicked” adaptation. “If something starts to give me goosebumps, or I start to feel something in my heart while I’m reading a script, that’s always key for me. I’m really trying to listen to my heart.”
Remembering the first time he read the “Wicked” script, Kerstein says, “I cried at the end, which was a very similar emotion that I wanted to capture when we were making the movie.”
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Central to the stage musical adaptation was the friendship that develops between Elphaba (Oscar-nominated Cynthia Erivo), who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda (Oscar-nominated Ariana Grande), the Good Witch. The defining moment that begins this friendship takes place in the Ozdust Ballroom. Although described in the script, Kerstein says, “When you’re actually getting the footage of something like the Ozdust Ballroom and connecting to it emotionally, you’re like, ‘This is a whole other kettle of fish.’”
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“Jon and I spoke at length about that scene at script stage and when they were doing rehearsals,” he relates. “We both knew that that scene was going to be the centerpiece of the movie. If that scene didn’t work, the rest of the film was going to fall apart.
“There’s not a lot of time for you to connect this friendship and feel that there’s this bonding. … We had to cover a lot of territory pretty quickly,” he adds, noting that at the same time, he had an abundance of material. “I had these really long takes to look at, and every single one of those takes made me cry at the end of the take.”
Elphaba is treated initially as an outcast before Glinda approaches her. The aim was to make viewers feel uncomfortable, “to make you feel not only from Elphaba’s point of view, but from Glinda’s point of view, but also even from the people who are bullying Elphaba. So there’s a lot of play with point of view. There’s a lot of play with pacing. There’s a lot of play with silence.”
For nominee Sean Baker, the “Anora” script and edit were uniquely intertwined, as he was the film’s writer, director and editor (nominated in all three categories). “I always have my editing cap on — at least slightly on — during the other two stages,” he says. “There was deliberate writing of transitions and cutting in the screenplay. Sometimes that stuff was there, and sometimes I would leave things underwritten, knowing that I would be able to find that scene in post-production.”
That was the case for the long stretch of the film when sex worker Ani (played by Oscar-nominated Mikey Madison) is riding around Brooklyn as a captive to her new husband’s family entourage, who are searching for him in order to force an annulment demanded by his Russian oligarch parents. “That was intentionally set up to be found,” Baker explains. “We were going to shoot that whole section ‘docu’ … sometimes in a very ‘Candid Camera’-type style.
“There are other scenes — such as the home invasion scene — that is extremely tight in the writing, knowing that there was exposition that we had to get out there [and was a] very plot-driven set piece,” he continues. “Even some of the edits were predetermined in the screenplay, such as the smash cut to her with the scarf in her mouth, gagged.”
“Conclave” editor Nick Emerson admits that when he works on a film adapted from a book, he purposely doesn’t read the novel first. “When I read [the script for Edward Berger’s “Conclave”], I was just blown away. It was a thriller, and it was a page turner, and I was just totally gripped,” he says of the story, which follows Cardinal Lawrence (Oscar-nominee Ralph Fiennes), who organizes a conclave to select a new pope as many secrets surface. The script reminded him of ’70s thrillers such as “The Parallax View” or “All the President’s Men.”
“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could sort of aspire to something like that?’” he says. “Edward and I [wanted] to be very rigorous in our approach in terms of how we edit together a scene, not to be very ‘cutty’ and really wait until the last minute to cut, and also to not use the same shot more than once. … In those ’70s paranoid thrillers, we spoke about how so much of it is about just withholding, with- holding until the last moment.”
Noting that there are a lot of twists and turns in this film, Emerson suggests that audience members might think the final surprise is who is elected to be the next pope. “But then you have one more. … It’s down to the wonderful writing and the performances,” he says. “We wanted to be very, very minimal with the cutting, and just sort of gentle and not try to set it up too much. … Sometimes it’s about the absence of information and just suddenly something being blurted out.”
“Emilia Pérez” is the second Oscar nomination for editor Juliette Welfling, who recalled the first time she read the genre-defying script for Jacques Audiard’s crime musical. “When I first read the script, I’m not sure I had any idea of what this edit would be, because it goes in every genre,” she admits. “I read it during the night, and I couldn’t stop reading it. I didn’t sleep. I was so excited. [But] it’s only when I first saw the dailies that I realized that it’s going to be kind of a crazy movie — in a good way.”
While editing, she found the best approach was not to over-think. “I tried not to really think about it like, ‘This is this genre. Now, it’s this new genre.’ I tried to just follow my emotions and do it as if it’s all just one piece.”
For the musical numbers, she was led by “looking for the emotion in the performance” but then would sort of “sneak into the musical part.” For instance, the singing might begin before the instruments come in. “It was all pretty well prepared in the dailies. It was going kind of naturally and fluently, and we tried to respect this.”
The final Oscar nominee, “The Brutalist” editor Dávid Jancsó, said via email that he “was completely struck by its ambition and depth” when he first read the script. Brady Corbet’s epic follows (fictional) Hungarian architect László Tóth (Oscar nominee Adrien Brody), who, after escaping post-war Europe, works to rebuild his life in America. Jancsó wrote, “As the project evolved, the vision for the edit shifted in response to the performances, cinematography and moments of truth that emerged during production. The cut became more and more about allowing the story to breathe, embracing moments of vulnerability and imperfection. While the initial impression emphasized precision, the edit ultimately prioritized an organic flow.”
Baker sums up that he would like to see more respect for the role of editors and editing in filmmaking. “I think that the editing credit should be right next to the writing and directing credit. It’s just as important,” he says. “Editing can make or break a movie. It can go from, literally, like an unwatchable movie to a masterpiece.”
