#481 – Cut/daily Meets... Companion's Editing Duo

What's it like editing as part of an editing team?

It's not the first time we've explored that question in Cut/daily Meets... in fact, you can learn from these editorial teams if you dip into the archives:

• #395 - Cut/daily Meets... Shōgun Editors Maria Gonzales and Aika Miyake
• #440 – Cut/daily Meets... Dune Prophecy's Editing Team
• #452 – Emmy Contending Editors Talk (Extended Edition)

But in this extended interview with Companion's editors Brett W Bachman and Josh Ethier, you'll get an inside look at what it's like to work on the same film in series and in parallel.

Incidentally, Brett has also been featured in Cut/daily Meets... before.

Josh and Brett's individual credits (close to 50 each) include an extensive range of horror and psychological thrillers, including the Netflix hit Don't Move, Orphan: First Kill, and critically acclaimed indie movies such as Pig, The Toxic Avenger and Mandy.

All to say, they know their craft!

What’s your daily work routine?

BWB: If we’re in production, I wake up and glance at the emailed script reports. I want to get a sense of what is coming into editorial that day.

Once I’m at the office, I’ll load up a sequence of new dailies that my assistant, Noah Cody, has built out and organized. I watch dailies and begin making a selects reel as I progress take-by-take. Good stuff goes up to layer V2, incredible footage goes up to V3. I cull the sequence until I have a tight selects reel, and then I begin to assemble off of that.

My goal is to always stay up to camera. Over the last few years, I have never been off by more than a day or two. This way, I can effectively communicate to production if we’re missing any shots.

I make sure that the first edit has ample sound effects; ambience, simple foley, hard effects. I tend to avoid any music in the first few edits. I try to get a PIX link off to my director on an almost daily basis for these first edits.

JE: On Companion I came on during the Director’s Cut, so I’d always check in with our Assistant Editor, Noah, to see if there were any new music cues or visual effects that needed review.

Then we’d get to work on whatever was on our plate that day. We always had things coming in from other departments, so we made sure to stay on top of that to keep everything running smoothly.

Then, lots and lots of coffee.

What do you now know about your work that you wish you’d known when you first started?

JE: When I first started editing films in my early twenties I thought I had to saturate myself with the edit.

I wouldn’t watch other movies; I’d try to stay in the editor headspace for as long as I could. I had wanted so badly to edit films when I was a teenager, I thought this way I wouldn’t risk missing my shot.

On my first film, I learned that’s absolutely not the way to do it.

People have been making great films for over a century and it’s important to learn from them.

I had a sequence on that first film that was really frustrating me and I didn’t yet have the chops to cut my way out of it. Exasperated, we exported it to watch it down again.

While the progress bar ticked down, the director and I threw on a comfort movie, Fast Five. Fred Raskin’s work on Fast Five is incredible, and in a fight scene halfway through the movie, I spotted the solution to the problem I was facing in the cutting room.

Ever since then, I make sure to keep devouring movies while I’m working. You can draw inspiration from anywhere, and it’s important to be open to that.

BWB: Trust the process.

The film must go through a lengthy process of assembly, screening, and revision to find the right balance of all elements in the film: tone, story, performance, structure, I could go on and on.

By no means should you slouch through the early edits, but know that the film will find its own identity and voice with time.