Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1124770
42 CINEMONTAGE / Q2 2019 project. "Initially, she was very hands-off," the editor recalls. "Then I showed her an assembly, per the script. It was two hours long at that point. Ava said, 'Okay, now I want to see your cut,' and she challenged me to take out 20 minutes on my own and to experiment with restructuring and truncating groups of scenes together to make one 'stew.' She said, 'We always have this other cut to go back to.' She's not afraid to see something else she hadn't thought of — which is very freeing for an editor." DuVernay and Tesoro restructured the third part so that, in the beginning, we see each boy transition into manhood, instead of seeing all the characters when they were boys at once, then seeing them all as men in the second half. For example, one of the boys and his mother are talking about studying and his worry about what going home will be like. And in the next scene, we see him at home as an adult. "There's a common denominator across the two scenes," explains Tesoro. Because Part 3 had been shot for a previous structure, they had to find the right footage to create those boyhood-to-manhood transitions. "We benefited from a lot of coverage," she adds. "Ava was always pushing the cameras to get what Teri calls 'texture,' and I was able to use it in interesting ways. One shot I use as a transition that I otherwise never would have used was a shot that rack-focuses between leaves on trees and barbed wire outside the prison. It transitions us from incarceration to freedom." On the editor's first two passes, DuVernay gave her "general restructure ideas and some specific notes," notes Tesoro. "But I was pretty much able to have control and work on my own with the cut, trying to shape it." As the two structured the part in a way that connected the audience to the boys, the editor was also able to learn from the director more about how the other parts were developing. "Ava knew what she might need from the part as a whole, and how that fit in with the other parts," she explains. Assistant editor Shafer met Tesoro when she was brought on as an apprentice and bumped up to second assistant for On the Basis of Sex. "In this project, I threw her in the ocean, but she had a really good attitude about jumping in and has the energy of someone just starting out," says the editor. "Michelle is intense in a great way," notes Shafer. "She's very demanding of herself; she's very fast and likes things really organized. "I love to organize, so we complement each other," the assistant continues. "She likes her bins organized, and I could do that all day long. She demanded a lot of me, knowing that I'm new, but let me rise to the occasion and learn a lot along the way." Shafer also worked "tirelessly" on temp sound effects. "I'm a big believer that sound and picture are equally important," she maintains, adding that one of the difficulties of working on Part 3 was that the characters' storylines are split. "They're all in different locations, doing different things. We had to find a way to keep them connected and have them flow; bridging those scenes was a challenge." Monnar created the temp track for most of Part 3. "Although I didn't personally cut the temp everywhere, the editors had pieces of music related to what I was doing in Parts 1 and 3, so we could have consistency with the themes that were chosen." PART 4 Averick says that, from the beginning, DuVernay wanted him to work on the final portion, which, he says, is a standalone story that doesn't connect chronologically with the others. The fourth part focuses on the fate of Korey Wise (Jharrell Jerome), who immediately went to an adult prison after being arrested because he was 16. "He had a completely different experience than the other boys," notes the editor. "The fact that the part is solely about Korey, and nobody else, was the main hurdle for us. To step inside of his completely unique and terrifying experience, as much as possible, was very important." Assistant editor Katherine Shafer, left, and editor Michelle Tesoro.