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November 2018

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EDITING www.postmagazine.com 10 POST NOVEMBER 2018 t's the late '60s, and the El Royale is an aging hotel situated on the border between California and Nevada. The Tahoe hotspot is a decade past its heyday, when some of the country's most famous celebrities and politicians mingled in and around the resort's casi- no, bar, bungalows and pool. Now, its few guests are mostly passing through, and prefer anonymity. A chance rainy night brings seven individuals together, where their complicated lives intersect. While some see opportunity and redemption in their future, others are looking to escape their past. As events unfold, each is drawn into a complicated backstory that involves murder, spying, the government and robbery. Jeff Bridges plays Father Daniel Flynn, a priest who returns to the hotel in search of a missing fortune. Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) is a talented lounge singer on her way to a gig in Reno. Jon Hamm plays traveling sales- man Laramie Seymour Sullivan, while Dakota Johnson and Cailee Spaeny play sisters looking to break free from a reli- gious cult, led by Chris Hemsworth's Billy Lee character. El Royale manager Miles Miller (played by Lewis Pullman) has his own demons, many of which come to light over the film's duration. The project reunited editor Lisa Lassek — a frequent collaborator of writer/ director Joss Whedon (Avengers, The Avengers: Age of Ultron) — with director Drew Goddard. Lassek cut Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods, The Circle and most recently, 12 Strong. Here, she speaks exclusively with Post about the challenges of editing 20th Century Fox's Bad Times at the El Royale — "It was such a labor of love…"— work- ing with Goddard, and for the first time in more than a decade, cutting a feature shot on film. You have worked with Drew Goddard a number of times. Is that how this came together? "I actually met Drew Goddard with Joss Whedon. We both go way back. I first met him working on Buffy [The Vampire Slayer]. Both Drew and I came up in the 'Joss Whedon school'. That was my early career — his early career. We both learned everything from Joss basically." How was Bad Times at the El Royale different than the Marvel films you have worked on? "They say every film has it's own chal- lenges. There's nothing harder than those Marvel films…but for this one we had a really short schedule from the get-go. We started shooting in February in Vancouver and we came out the be- ginning of October. So it was particularly short. And even though it doesn't look like a VFX-heavy movie, it did have quite a few VFX. Just like we do on a Marvel film, we had to start doing turnovers while we were still shooting." The story is presented in chapters. Can you talk about your workflow? "Drew's concept was to shoot in order. It takes place in the lobby of that hotel, and the lobby gets progressively changed as it goes. It's not like we could start at the end anyway. It really helped me editori- ally because it was something I've never had the luxury of before. Obviously, in a Marvel movie, we are getting bits and pieces of the entire movie the entire time. You almost feel like you don't have a complete chapter or anything com- plete. But in this movie, I actually did have scenes complete. "I can tell you that I had the beginning of the movie — the whole first act almost — done, pretty early on in shooting because he shot that first. It was kind of nice. It wasn't perfectly in order. He had to shoot some of the flashbacks and things like that based on locations, but it was far more in order than I'd ever had the luxury of. "I feel like it was great and it was almost like you were building the movie from beginning to end and discovering the movie and the characters, and letting them develop from beginning to end. I can understand why it's something that actors would prefer…I never knew it would be so nice for an editor as well." Do you have a preferred editing system? "I am definitely, very strictly, an Avid editor. I haven't had any show where I've used Premiere or anything else. I've been using Avid from the very beginning and never changed." Bad Times was shot on 35mm film? That is not too common today? "I haven't done a feature shot on film since 2005. It was really refreshing, but there are things I forgot when you shoot on film, like the delay. Because we were shooting in Vancouver, we had to ship the film every day. It had to fly, everyday, from Vancouver to LA to get processed… then telecined and then sent to me. It was days before I got my dailies." Where were you working? "I was in Vancouver. We were literally above the set. I could walk down to set any time of day...I can't imagine doing a movie any other way, especially on a Drew movie. We did Cabin the same way. We had a lot of the same crew as Cabin in the Woods on this one, so it was so natural for me to walk downstairs and talk to the script supervisor, who was the same on both shows — Susan Lambie... There are things that evolve as you are shooting. For example, on Cabin, we had a ton of footage that was shot to then be on TVs or monitors later. And this was the same thing. Drew shot the 'Malibu Massacre' footage at the beginning and then that played a couple of weeks later on-camera." Did you receive hard drives with the dailies? "We would download it. Our Internet was pretty good and we were able to get it digitally." What resolution were you working at? "We weren't cutting film, so we still had to screen out of the Avid. It was your usual DNxHD115, the one that holds up when you do previews, and it looked great. BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE I BY MARC LOFTUS EDITOR LISA LASSEK REUNITES WITH FREQUENT COLLABORATOR DREW GODDARD Editor Lassek

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