Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/914212
57 Q4 2017 / CINEMONTAGE undergoing a new medical/social experiment which will shrink their bodies to the size of action figures, the film — like many of Payne's previous movies — is an utterly unpredictable blend of comedy, character study and social commentary. Tent, who won an ACE Eddie Award for The Descendants, and was previously nominated for that award for Nebraska (2013), Sideways (2004), About Schmidt (2002) and Election (1999) — all directed by Payne — discussed his work on Downsizing and more during an interview with CineMontage in October. CineMontage: You have no credits as an assistant editor. How did you make the jump straight to the editor's chair? Kevin Tent: I went to film school at LA City College. My first job was editing educational films. It was really good because I was my own assistant; I had to sync my own dailies and get the films through the lab. My big break was when I got a chance to re-cut a film for Roger Corman; it was kind of a mess. After that, I got my first solo editing credit on another Corman movie called Not of this Earth (1988). It's pretty hilarious. CM: How fast did you have to deliver those early Corman movies? KT: So fast! Not of This Earth was probably a 10-day shoot and then maybe a month and a half or so to finish it. You needed to have an assembly for Roger two or three days after you finished shooting — or faster. If you wanted to be an editor, it was a great place to learn. You could be an assistant one week and cutting a feature the next. Roger had zero patience if something wasn't working in a film, so I always felt I had to race against his impatience. Keep the film tight and zipping along and not boring. CM: Those early films must have been cut on film. When did you switch to Avid? KT: At Corman in those days, it was all Moviolas. Then when I did more expensive B-movies, I would work with an upright cutter and a KEM, when we could afford it. The first film I did nonlinear was One Good Turn [1996]. We had done Citizen Ruth on film and, after doing One Good Turn, I kept saying to Alexander, "You are going to love this Avid thing! It's amazing." So when he got Election, we used an Avid on that. Citizen Ruth was my last movie on film. We couldn't afford an Avid on that; they were expensive back then. CM: From your KEM and Moviola days, were there any good habits you carried forward into your nonlinear editing? KT: The skill of learning where to make a good, or pretty close, edit on the first try. One thing Alexander and I did carry over from cutting on film — and something we still do — is lining up takes. If we had six takes of a line reading, we would cut Downsizing. Paramount Pictures