#440 – Cut/daily Meets... Dune Prophecy's Editing Team
This is the first ever Cut/daily Meets... interview to feature four editors.
But you're in for a treat with some sage advice from the quartet of editors who brought HBO's Dune Prophecy to the screen.
These are all seriously experienced editors.
Dune: Prophecy is an intricate series with a large ensemble cast to manage, character and narrative arcs to interweave and a huge universe to establish and explore.
The kind of challenging problems editors relish to tackle!
Unabridged or curated - the choice is yours!
As I asked some bonus questions, and there are four times as many answers, I've curated or trimmed the team's responses into this regular-sized edition of the interview.
However, you can read the grande, unabridged edition here.
Which you should absolutely do if you want double the fun.
Spoiler Alert: There are minor plot details ahead.
What was your process for co-editing episodes and how did that differ from your solo episodes?
AA: Collaborating with Anna on episode six was incredible. The episode was such a massive undertaking that we ended up an hour and 20 minutes long. So, you can imagine that we had several cuts that were much longer in previous iterations before that.
Anna and I bounced scenes off of each other. We asked for each other‘s opinions more often than I would on a solo episode. It was really nice getting each other‘s creative take on a scene.
AH: Amelia is such a smart and intuitive editor. It was invaluable to me to have somebody I could go to and get their take on that day’s footage. Our back-and-forth dialogue on the episode continued throughout our time working on it. We’d pass scenes back and forth if one of us needed a fresh take on something or if one of us had an idea we wanted to show.
Solo editing can sometimes feel like you’re a bit adrift at sea. Having a collaborator as talented and as enthusiastic as Amelia made the process so much better. I really feel like we were able to bring out more in the episode than either of us could have alone.
SR: Originally, I was slated to edit episode 5, but due to the size and logistics of our show, Mark and I decided to co-edit it. I completed an early assembly, and then Mark took a pass and worked on the director’s cut.
It was such a joy to step away, let Mark and the director, Anna Foerster, shape the episode, and then come back with fresh eyes during the Producers’ Cut. I absolutely loved what Mark and Anna had done with it, and diving back in at that stage was incredibly rewarding.
Mark is the best collaborator, so getting to be on Evercasts with him and work together in this way was such a delight. This episode really took a village—our amazing assistant editors, Brian Santistevan and Tim Kuper, both earned additional editing credits on it as well.
It was such a collaborative effort, and I couldn’t be prouder of how it turned out.
Given how much VFX there is in the show, how did this impact your workflow and general cutting experience?
MH: Establishing a great rapport with your VFX team and being highly communicative is essential on a big VFX show.
On Dune: Prophecy, I hadn’t worked with VFX Supervisor Michael Enriquez before, but he was incredibly collaborative and made a point to include editorial in discussions, which was invaluable.
I also had the advantage of working with VFX Producer Terron Pratt, with whom I’d collaborated on all three seasons of Netflix’s Lost in Space reboot. We already had a shorthand and a strong working relationship, which made navigating the complexities of the VFX pipeline much smoother.