In the tenth and final episode of Short Hand, we’re getting into the edit and calling upon the expertise of film editors Rebecca Lloyd (Cow, The Power, For Love), Mdhamiri Á Nkemi (The Last Tree, Ear for Eye, Femme), Ami Aripin (Strawberry Cheesecake, Exhale) and director and animator Renee Zhan (O Black Hole, Soft Animals) to shed light on their processes.n
Topics covered include: how editors decide which short film projects to work on, tailoring an editing style to the vision of the director, trusting an emotional response to an edit, eliminating dialogue, the particular challenges of cutting an animated short, intention, efficiency and the value of the editor.
I think every film has its own logic or its own set of rules and its own grammar. So I’m not really into like, ‘oh, yeah, my rule is this and you should always do this. Or you should always do that’. I just feel like with every story, you develop something together when you’re making it. I feel like every film is its own world. And I’m sure there’s some tenets, but most of the time, I like to be inspired by what the story is.
Ami Aripin, Film Editor
SHOW NOTES & RESOURCES
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Short Hand: Hello, you’re listening to Short Hand: A guide to making a short film – a BFI NETWORK and Film Hub South East podcast. Whether you’re actively making a short film or passively thinking about it, this is a podcast designed to help you on the journey from coming up with a compelling short film idea to editing it into a finished product. In this final episode, we’re getting into the edit and chatting to short film editors, and a filmmaker, about how they cut their darlings.
Rebecca Lloyd: When I was an assistant editor, short films were passed to me through the editors I was working with. So at that time, I was so lucky to meet so many lovely up-and-coming directors and producers. So it was through the editors that I got the short films and then I also continued to edit short films alongside the features I’m editing because I love the challenge of editing compact and interesting story within 10 to 20 minutes.
Short Hand: That’s BIFA-nominated film editor Rebecca Lloyd, whose credits include Andrea Arnold’s recent documentary Cow, and independent features like Herself and The Power. She’s also worked consistently on short films and next you’ll hear her discuss how she decides which short film projects to work on.
Rebecca Lloyd: At the very beginning, I never said no to a short film and always said yes. It’s all about meeting new people, growing with them in the hope that when they’ve got their feature that you’ll build that friendship and that relationship and understanding. So then I suppose most recently, short films have come to me through word of mouth, or people who have worked with in the past, or have googled me and liked my worked and reached out to me that way. And a couple of short films have come to me through my agent.
How I went about and at what stage I got my agent was, it was a night of the ceremony when I was selected as one of the BAFTA Breakthrough Brits in 2016 for my editing on American Honey, I started to think about agents around that time, and editors I had worked with were with Casarrotto. So they were like my first choice. But I approached them, and they weren’t looking for any new editors. But at that ceremony, it was just incredible. They approached and asked to represent me. And that was just so exciting, and a big pivotal moment in my career.
When a short film project comes to me I do base my decision on my initial reaction to the script. I’ve read many feature film and short film scripts in the last 13 years, so I like to think that I can sense its rhythm and how the story is going to flow, and how it makes me feel at the end. But I also base working on a short film with my first meeting with the director, because you always know like at that meeting, if you click and if you’re on the same page, and if it’d be a nice short film journey together.
I actually had a Zoom meeting with a short film director yesterday after her script came my way. And I just loved the story. And her storytelling technique was to tell it all through point of views and reflections and in a nonlinear way, very surreal, visceral with lots of sound design. And that to me from my from being an artist, I’ve always been drawn to very arthouse film, and then meeting her on Zoom, I was just like, ‘Yeah, you know’. It was a micro-budget, and I let her know that I’d be doing it at weekends. I’m excited to work on it, because it just seems like a very important and interesting story to tell visually. So that was another reason why I chose that one. And also, if I’m too busy at the time, but love the scripts, if I’ve got an assistant editor who I know is brilliant, I always recommend them to edit it and then I supervise. And that’s like another nice way of just passing it down.
Short Hand: In the following segment, Rebecca discusses how the director’s vision guides her editing process, and why it always comes back to instinct and emotional response.
Rebecca Lloyd: I’ve worked on many different genres of short films and feature films from Romance, Comedy, Action, Horror, really, in the end, I always tailor my way of working to the vision of the director, and also what footage is shot and what’s in front of me. Sometimes it’s like the script is jumping off the page and other times we have to throw the scripts out the window and just rewrite. I do have in-depth conversations about what the director’s vision is the atmosphere and the tension they’re aiming for in the scene and what moments and the performances they like best and then I go away and edit it alone. I don’t know whether I have a personal style but I I know I trust my instincts and my emotional response to the footage and that my internal rhythm influences the final film. I used to be a dancer and I feel editing is like creating a well-choreographed dance.
I also tend not to cut for the sake of cutting. A great demonstration of this is my working with Dominic Savage on his TV series I am Kirsty and with Andrea Arnold on Cow. It was just staying with the moment and keeping it authentic. But also I listen, and I’m with the director and their vision and directors do come with their own style. And I respect that. And I will always tailor my editing to suit their vision. It is about reacting to the footage and the feeling. And if it’s not working, you just know, and you just rework and rework until the director says ‘that’s what I want from it’. Like every genre has its own pace and rhythm and every genre faces different problems. But at the end of the day, it is all about your gut and your feelings and stepping back. And if it’s making you laugh, making you cry. Like for me when I’m editing, I’ve been told I’m a very emotional editor. And in the sense of having emotional intelligence, if I’m if I’m not crying, if I’m not laughing, if I’m not scared, you know, then it isn’t working. And then I just feel like, I’m the first audience and keep working on it until I get that reaction.
Short Hand: Next Rebecca reveals how her editing process works on a more logistical level and also what it is she’s doing, i.e. not just cutting to make the film shorter, but get to the heart of what the film is trying to say, and offers her advice for if and when you get stuck.
Rebecca Lloyd: So usually the short films that I’ve edited, I get all the rushes at once, and I like to get the first assembly to the director as quickly as I can. And I follow the scripts in the order, including all the dialogue to preserve everything that they have shot and the overall structure. I love this reveal, unlike the director who finds it terrifying, as with the first assembly, you can see obvious things immediately. And the fun can begin, sculpting and chipping away at the scenes, at beginnings and the endings and having conversations about how we can tell the story in the most compact and economical way.
Once the director has got the assembly, we work on eliminating dialogue as sometimes visually it has already been said or adding time to be with the character to establish their emotional journey, and for the audience to care and believe. It’s nice getting all the rushes at once because I can start at the beginning and work my way through. And sometimes I edit half and send it to the director for feedback while I’m working on the second half. Sometimes a scene has to be manipulated and massaged to get to the heart of what’s the scene is about. One example is a short film I edited early on in my career. The director was worried about the coverage and the performance was not as strong as they’d hoped for. So we had so many different versions with different openings, different endings, dialogue on reactions, creating completely new scenes out of all the rushes we had. And we worked and worked and reworked, finding solutions that told the story the best way with the footage we had.
I love that moment I have with the rushes and that first assembly. For me, it’s when you can see the film as a whole and just that dialogue back and forth. Because quite a lot of the time, we’re working remotely on short films or on the weekend. And then I send a cut and they get feedback in the week. And then I work on the weekends. So it kind of works that way. And then it’s lovely. They come in, we sit together. And we do get the chance to look through the performances, picking out moments that the director of loves and then kind of like basing the scene around that and trying to find the best route to that moment and out of it. Like I always love that assembly time as well because it is my first moment with the rushes. You’ve had the discussions with the director before about what their vision is and what they want from it. Tonally, I always ask them what films they would recommend me to watch to help me gauge pace or style or tone.
If you’re stuck on anything, it’s usually because you’ve been making 1000 decisions and choices in your mind and your brain’s just run out of that capacity. So it’s always great just to walk away or move on to the next scene or even just you know sleep on it because sometimes solutions can come to you in your dreams. And [remembering] like every cut having a purpose to drive the story forward. It’s all about what is serving the story best for the character’s emotional journey. It’s fine-tuning and shaping the performances and just making sure it flows until you work out where that block is and always trust your instincts, your gut feelings.
Renee Zhan: Ami and I met at film school at the National Film and Television school. It’s two years so the first year we’re sort of working on small projects getting like the Paris up With different directors, editors, just to kind of see, you know, how people, you know how people get along and stuff. So we kind of got a chance to see each other’s work then I think, and yeah, I was just always really impressed with always work and her sort of work ethic, and everyone who worked with her said great things. So I really wanted, I thought it’d be a good thing if we could work together for our grad film.
Short Hand: That’s Renee Zhan, an award-winning animator and director, known for her short films O Black Hole, Soft Animals and Reneepoptosis, which won the Short Film Jury Prize at Sundance in 2019. Renee is joined by her regular collaborator and editor Ami Aripin. Here they talk about meeting at NFTS and how they decided to work together and then how they establish creative compatibility when it comes to making a short film.
Ami Aripin: Usually, we were paired up, so you don’t really get a choice in who you want to work with, except for the grads. So it was quite a big deal. And I knew that it would take up most of my year. So for me it had to fulfil two conditions. 1) I had to like the person. 2) I had to really be into the story that we’re trying to make. And with Renee, because our previous works, actually, it was Soft Animals, a film that Renee had directed, that’s actually making festival circuit rounds right now, I saw that in our first year. And I immediately went, ‘Okay, I have to work with this person, like no matter what, I have to work with this person’. So yeah, like a combination of the story and the person I think draws me to the projects that I do.
Renee Zhan: At the beginning of the process, it’s a bit like dating or a bit like prom, because there’s eight of every group. So there’s eight directors, eight producers, eight editors. It’s kind of this mad scramble to sort of have conversations and figure out what feels right. We just had a nice chat, where we talked about films and films we liked and didn’t like. And I remember the moment I thought, ‘yeah, this is this is great’, because we were talking about birds, and just how much we liked birds.
Ami Aripin: I think it’s something that kind of guides me with editing as well, because you have a list of logical things. But it’s also quite instinctive and there’s only so much logic, and then you start to just understand, ‘okay, I understand this person. I know what she is all about’. But I guess if you don’t know someone, that very first meeting is really important. Because you kind of have to know, why do you want to tell this story? What draws them to it? And I think editors have to learn to get into the minds of the directors, because sometimes things are quite hard to articulate, you know, not everything is easily expressed. And specifically for this animation O Black Hole, because we didn’t really have a proper set in stone kind of script. So it meant that there was a lot of collaboration. It was a lot of like, but ‘Why do you want to do this? Is that a good idea? Is that a bad idea? So I guess, if you’re working with someone that you can always have good, long conversations with, I think that will lead to like the ideas and the decisions that you make in the edit.
Short Hand: Next up Ami and Renee talk about how they actually communicate during the editing phase, and the particular challenges inherent to editing an animated short film and how figuring out what the short film is going to be is really about the story (which is a good time to point you in the direction of Episode One, where we explore how to refine the story you’re telling).
Ami Aripin: So I would love to have Renee with me the whole day in the edit suite. But because with O Black Hole she was really busy animating as well, so she didn’t really have that much time. I mean, if I really needed her to be there, we would spend a couple of hours together. But we did, I think it was like a 16 minute animation film, in the space of a year. It was really ambitious. So a lot of time it was just sort of like madly animating in her tiny room. But you know, again, I would just say ‘Can I get you to look at something?’ She was like, ‘okay, cool. I’ll be there for like, half an hour or something’. But I don’t know what you feel about that Renee? Would you prefer to be in the editing suite or out of it?
Renee Zhan: That’s good question. I’m not sure I haven’t had the experience yet of sort of being in the editing suite all day, I definitely would have preferred to have been done animating. But yeah, I think what Ami was saying in a very kind way earlier was that it was a mess. The film was a mess. The process was a bit of a mess. And editing is kind of this like final chance to make it all make sense. Which is why I love it so much. So yeah, it was a really enjoyable process and I feel like I really learned a lot it. I would say editing down in animation is very tricky because I was like animating the shots and then I would come downstairs and it’d be like ‘maybe let’s just take the last half of the shot’. And I was was like, ‘No, that took me, that was eight hours. You know, that I just spent? Where will it go? No one will see it’. But I think it’s important to let go of that and to kind of separate yourself from being the animator, and then going into the edit suite, and then looking at the film as a whole, and making decisions for the good of the film.
Ami Aripin: Yeah, because I feel like with animation, especially because Renee is animating, as well as directing, she’s so close to the material, that I sort of feel really like a lot of empathy for her. Because it is like, you get really precious about things, you know, and that’s not bad or good. It is what it is. So I always try to remind myself, like, it’s actually really painful to make those decisions. So when I do it, I really approach it gently. And sometimes, if she’s not up for it, I won’t push it. I’ll be like, ‘Hey, this is what I feel. But if you disagree, it’s all right’. Maybe then I will try to revisit it again, at a later time, just because I feel like, you know, it’s like she’s spent eight hours animating, it’s tiring. And then she comes into my room. And sometimes there’s only so much bad news, or so much, I don’t know, intensity that someone can take in a day. So like, pick your battles, I guess.
Renee Zhan: Yeah, it’s really, really hard to do that, especially in the middle of production, or near the end of production, because you’ve just been sort of so deep in it. But yeah, like getting other opinions is really is kind of the best way to do it. I think at the film school, that that was kind of a great positive of the film school, as well as kind of a negative, that there were so many opinions coming in every day, from tutors, from other classmates, like, we would just have these big reviews, you know, every couple of weeks, having those opinions is really good. But having too many, I think is also starts to just feel like I don’t know, like noise like it’s hard to then to stay true to what it is that we were trying to make in the first place. So yeah, it’s just it’s a really tricky balance, I think.
Ami Aripin: I think like, it’s from the very beginning. I’m always I’m always curious about the story. Like, what why are we telling this story? What is it about? And with the film that I’m making with Renee right now there’s a script. I just feel like when I’m reading the script, I like to really analyse ‘What’s this doing here? What’s the characterisation of this person?’ So I feel like whenever I don’t understand something, it’s okay. I just have to keep asking Renee, ‘what are you intending?’ And not everything makes it into the film anything, but I feel like we need to know what we’re trying to say. So again, that’s the sort of the the logical part of it where you ask all these like, basic questions, but I feel like at some point, if you’re too logical as well, it’s really boring. And sometimes it’s okay, if you don’t understand something, you know, like, it’s okay. For example, we were having quite a few feedback sessions in the school where literally people were like, ‘I have no idea what this film is, I have no idea what you guys are trying to do.’ And, and it’s hard to hear that when you’ve been working on it for months, you know, but then we have to decide like, ‘No, we know what the story is’. And maybe this isn’t for everyone. And it’s okay, if someone doesn’t understand everything. But as long as it’s like emotionally honest, I think that’s a good way to think about it. I think if you’re affected by things that make you feel something, so if you’re like cutting for emotional clarity, maybe that helps.
Renee Zhan: Yeah, there was a lot of that of people saying I have no idea what’s happening. And it’s quite a sort of old school traditional place. So I think that was why we were getting a lot of that. But I think the first time that we showed it to someone, it was Astrid and Emily, friends who are in the directing fiction course there. And they seemed so sort of emotional, you know, after seeing it, and that kind of was it was like, ‘okay, that’s great’. That’s amazing that somebody can watch it and feel something even if they don’t really get every sort of twist or turn.
Short Hand: Finally, Renee and Ami share what they’ve learnt from editing their short films so far, as well as what advice they would give to filmmakers currently going through that process.
Renee Zhan: I think each film is such a huge learning experience. O Black Hole probably the most so. And yeah, I’m developing this film now with BBC Film. It’s a live action film. We have a script this time, which is really good. And I think it’s more important to me with this one that it sort of logically makes sense. And people sort of are with it the whole time. It’s been really good. Just yesterday, I mean, I had a like session where we sort of looked through it because it’s really helpful just to see it from from her point of view and to look at it with someone else.
Ami Aripin: I don’t know if this is like a common thing, but I’m quite harsh on myself. So it’s quite hard for me to look back and like literally watch the things that I’ve done, because I’m scared that I will watch it and I go ‘oh no, I shouldn’t have done that and kind of ruined it forever’. And also like with O Black Hole, it was like an intense time. And then we graduated into a pandemic. So I feel like a lot has happened. And maybe I haven’t quite unpacked everything. It’s more of like, I think I know Renee better now, so we are building on a relationship that we already have. And what I like to do actually, with every film I do, even if the writer is not Renee, I think every film has its own logic, or its own set of rules and its own grammar. So I’m not really into like, ‘oh, yeah, my rule is, you should always do this. Or you should always do that’. I just feel like with every story, you kind of develop something together, when you’re making it. I feel like every film is its own world. And I’m sure there’s some tenets, but most of the time, I like to be inspired by what the story is. And also trust your team, you know, I think it’s quite hard to make a film alone. So if you have a good team with you trust that everybody’s kind of in it. I think everybody wants the best for the film.
Renee Zhan: I guess the biggest piece of advice, which I don’t really follow myself is that the film can always be shorter. You probably don’t need that shot that you’re hanging on to. And yeah, trust your editor, and trust that having different people seeing something that you can’t, because you’re sort of so deep in the middle of it. Yeah, I’d say trust your editor, and also trust your own voice. And just don’t forget, like why it is that you set out to make the film in the first place.
Mdhamiri Nkemi: I like to be involved before the shoot, if possible. And you know, after reading the script I’ll meet the director. The director and I will have conversations about what the story is and what we’re trying to say. And I guess thematically what it’s trying to accomplish, and what they hope the audience will take away by the end of the film and you know, get inside the director’s head as much as possible really. Because all of that stuff is really useful fodder for when I’m editing. When I start the edit, I’m mostly going off the conversations but the script is really useful, as it’s kind of the main backbone of a film. But I think mostly it’s those conversations.
Short Hand: That’s Mdhamiri Nkemi, an editor and ScreenDaily Star of Tomorrow, know for his work on features such as ear for eye and Blue Story, as well as this year’s winner of the BIFA award for Best Short Film Femme, alongside a plethora of short films such as Dawn in the Dark, Something in the Closet, The Devil’s Harmony and Night Bus. Here he discusses how and when he gets involved in projects, his technical process, how he works with directors and why the most important thing in the edit is simplifying.
Mdhamiri Nkemi: On a technical level, I’m going off the continuity report and those kinds of things and camera sheets and everything. But usually, that’s kind of more trying to get me out of trouble if I realise I’m missing something or something’s not coming together. It’s mostly going off, at first, my instincts and the script from the conversations I’ve had with the director. Firstly, there’s the technical side of organising the rushes and setting up my project and I like to be quite detailed and meticulous in that because it becomes really useful down the line, when you’re sitting with the director and starting to go, ‘Hey, is there another version of that? What else did we film on that day’ and I can have that all locally labelled so I can go back and pull that up. So spending time doing that, and then I’ll organise all the rushes in terms by scene and by shot. And I’ll start watching through all of that stuff and sort of make my own notes on what I think is really useful or the best take, etc. And then I’ll start cutting it together, usually in chronological order so you have a first pass of the full film, that’s essentially going to be as close as possible to the script and trying to use my instincts, my knowledge of what the director wants to try and put together that version of the film.
Yeah, I think it totally depends on the director that I’m working with and on the stage in the in the editing process, how closely they are, how much time they’re spending with me. At the beginning, I guess it kind of depends on the project as well, but on a feature production I’m starting to assemble during the shoot, so obviously they’re not with me at all, and maybe we’ll check in every day or every other day and let them know how it’s going and how it’s cutting together. And then usually I’ll have like two weeks during the feature and two weeks after the shoot when finishing together the first assembly, and after that point, the director will come in and we’ll spend, you know, days maybe weeks together, crafting the second cut of the film, which is normally referred to as a director’s cut where we’re trying to help create what the director imagines to be the best version of the film. And so hopefully my assembly is like at 70% there and then it’s like trying to get that extra 30%. We’ll go through everything, every shot every take and sort of try and see if we can find a better performance or find a new way of imagining it. And that also means taking stuff away. That’s really important to say as part of the editing process, a lot of it is kind of simplifying or reducing and trying to find the most efficient way of telling the story
Short Hand: Next, Mdhamiri emphasises why concision is key and how he communicates with the filmmakers he’s working with to encourage that concision.
Mdhamiri Nkemi: I think it’s important to remember the value I guess of the editor and that they have fresh eyes and can see it differently than the way the director is seeing it. And you know, the director has been sitting on the project for months, or maybe even years, whereas the editor is coming on with fresher eyes and can go ‘the story is really interesting. But, maybe it might be even more interesting, if you took away this element of it, or maybe you could tell the story in a simpler way’. And I think it’s really important to value that I guess, that fresh perspective.
I guess it’s also, you know, showing it to other people and getting other people’s opinion on it, and kind of being able to gauge from that what is working and what isn’t working. And you know, I think there’s that common expression of, you know, short films are either too long, much too long or far, far too long. My experience is always that there’s a more concise way of telling the story. It can even be it can be the best story in the world, but it’s going to be better if it was slightly shorter. And also, you have a better chance at festivals and awards.
Those kinds of conversations happen all the time, how do you reduce things and make them punchier and more concise. I remember on a film I worked on called Blue Story, the first cut was probably at least two and a half hours and I think the final film is maybe just shy of 90 minutes. And so there’s a lot of stuff that can be took out the film.
A learning experience for me because I didn’t have previous experience on a feature film and the director, it was also his first time making feature film. And so I was doing a lot of like, sort of helping, showing him how to navigate that world with execs and handling feedback and all that kind of thing. And actually, he was really happy with that first assembly, which was like two and a half hours, and so it was about how do I talk Rapman (the director) into seeing that there is a more concise version. I think he trusted me, which I think is the most important thing. The greatest thing a director can do with their editors is value their opinion and value their input. You know, I cut lots of different versions together to see if there was a way of getting this particular sequence more concise.
Our opening was kind of following these two boys and their relationship. In the original version in the script, you sort of see them growing up together, when they’re like in primary school and secondary school. So the first 20 minutes is just them growing up together and it’s really nice, but it didn’t move the story forward in anyway. So he went away and left me for a bit and I tried to work out, is there a more montage-y version that’s a lot more concise but still keeps the main story points that you need to know and yeah, so we did that and he basically gave me the thumbs up. So we tweaked and finessed it and that ended up being the opening of the film.
Short Hand: Finally, Mdhamiri talks about honing his editorial instincts, keeping emotions at the forefront of the film and why performances are key to a good edit.
Mdhamiri Nkemi: I guess for me, it’s always story and character first. I think it’s about evaluating the material that you have in front of you and going ‘well, what is the best version of this specific film?’ And trying to help the film, it sounds pretentious, but trying to allow the film to tell you what it wants to be and what it needs to be. The best version of the characters and the best version of the story. And then it’s like looking at it and going ‘okay, well, this needs to feel like an action film. Do we need to cut faster? Do we need to spend more time in this moment? Do we need to spend more time on the action sequences?’ I think for me it’s primarily about the story and the character.
Clarity, rhythm and subtext are definitely all key pillars me when I’m cutting. I think it’s also about emotion and the emotion of the characters. And does it feel true? And does it feel true to the moment they’re going through? Is there a through-line with that in the film, does it feel like that you can follow that as an audience? And also, I guess, the emotion of the audience, and what are they thinking and feeling about the film and trying to keep that in mind? Trying to keep that at the forefront actually. It’s like trying to remember that the film is going to be seen by people and it’s about their experience of the film throughout, not necessarily the director’s experience, which is also valid, but it’s like how do you translate that into something that the audience are going to have an emotional connection to and hopefully take away something from by the end of the film.
I think I spend a lot of time trying to craft an actor’s performance. I spent a lot of time when I when I started out, doing a lot of really amateur short films, which is actually really great experience because it forced me to have to learn how to get the best out of something, how to craft something that was kind of mediocre into being maybe slightly better. And so yeah, it’s a lot of sort of trying to improve performances. I think I’ve learned a lot about performance and what is good performance and what isn’t good performance. And I’ve got a good instinct, I think now about that. And so much of it is about not just when the actors are acting, but also reacting and responding to the other person, I think you can tell a bad performance when the actor in between their lines, they just kind of switch off and they’re just waiting to say their next line. I think what’s really interesting is when you get those actors who are bouncing off of the other person and is giving them and you know, all those all those reactions, the looks and moments that aren’t the actual line itself, I think is so interesting and makes for a good film.
Short Hand: Thank you for listening to Short Hand. This marks the end of the series, so if you’ve tuned in every week, thank you for coming with us on this journey. If it’s your first time, please do check out our previous episodes wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to get in touch with us on social media @networkfhse on Twitter and @bfinetworkfhse on Instagram to let us know what you thought or ask any questions about the BFI NETWORK Short Film Fund.