#515 – Cut/daily Meets... Editor David Trachtenberg, ACE

Have you ever wondered if you would ever be able to work on a project with a member of your own family?

As someone who regularly works with my brother (an animator), it can create both a fun and complex dynamic.

In this Issue of Cut/daily we'll get to hear from an Editor working with his younger brother who is also the Director (Dan Trachtenberg) of the last two Predator films; Prey and Predator: Badlands.

Editor David Trachtenberg's latest feature credit is Predator: Badlands, the latest in the multi-decade Predator franchise that all began nearly 40 years ago in 1987.

David's previous feature film credits also include The Current War and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

While his extensive TV series credits include:

• The Offer
• The Lost Symbol
• Shadow and Bone
• The Boys
• Margot Vs. Lilly

You can find David via his personal site here.

My favourite thing David had to share?

Cut everything you can for anyone you can as you never know where they will ultimately take you.

Predator: Badlands – Bonus Questions

How did you come to be on the project with Dan and what is it like collaborating with your brother?

My brother and have a unique relationship. I left for college when he was about 6, so we really didn’t grow up together. His passion for film started at a very young age and a bunch of VHS movies that I left behind - including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Karate Kid and Empire Strikes Back - became part of his film vocabulary and obsession.

When he was in high school, we started communicating a lot about film, movies and commercials. I was a commercial editor at the time, and he had hopes of breaking into the business through commercial directing, so he started making short films and spec commercials. I would cut all of his films and we developed a creative bond in pushing his career forward.

Eventually, as he found success professionally, I began cutting on some of his projects. We did some commercials and a couple of pilots including The Boys. But it wasn’t until Predator: Badlands that we finally got to work together on a feature film.

It’s been amazing to see him become the director he is today, and working together has been a great experience. Even though we are brothers, I also see him as a colleague (for the most part)!

How do you find the right tonal balance between tension, graphic violence and moments of humour? (Do test screenings help with this?)

Some of it is instinct and going with what feels right in the editor’s and director’s cuts. You have to trust yourself initially to find that tonal balance until you get other eyes on it.

After that phase, even before the official test screenings, I find the friends and family screenings extremely helpful. We try to invite a good balance of filmmakers as well as friends and family that just enjoy going to movies.

In addition to their verbal and written feedback, you can really sense what is working and what isn’t just by being in the room. Those early screenings are instrumental in shaping a film.

What was the most challenging aspect of editing Badlands and how did you overcome it?

This goes back to finding the right tonal balance.

Dan’s vision for the film was to counter the preconceptions of Predator movies. Rather than a villain, the Predator is the protagonist. And rather than straight ahead action and violence, Dan wanted a buddy movie with an emotional journey and some humour.

So, I think our biggest challenge was to allow audiences to go for that ride despite what they might already know of Predator films. Humor was a big part of that balance. We got a lot of laughs in early screenings but realised that although they were intentional, some of laughs were taking the audience out of the movie rather than drawing them in, so we dialled them back a bit.

Another big challenge for me was the volume of visual effects.

I have worked with visual effects throughout my career, but in this film there were only a handful of shots that did not have a visual effect. That said, we were able to cut the film by fully embracing what our lead, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, was doing on camera.

Dimitrius performed without a prosthetic mask, so in a lot of ways it was like cutting traditional dialogue scenes. Then, VFX created the animated “mask” you see in the film, which completely realised the emotions and performance Dimitrius gave on camera.