Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/914212
75 Q4 2017 / CINEMONTAGE It is not unusual for a film to be in assembly form before major changes are made, but other times, problem scenes are dealt with in the course of Lepselter's initial pass at the material. "Sometimes, we'll be in the middle of the assembly, and we'll realize something isn't working so we'll eliminate it even before it's made the first cut," she explains. "We cut it together and, if there's something that's going to take me any amount of time to figure out — like because it's technically challenging — he might go in the other room or go home for lunch." The film is continually honed and refined during the assembly process, so Lepselter's initial cuts are frequently not significantly longer than her final cuts. In the case of Wonder Wheel, she estimates that the first cut was only about 10 minutes longer than its ultimate length of 101 minutes. "There have been films where we've cut out a lot more material than that," the editor reveals. "This was a pretty tight script. There have been times when we've wanted to lose a scene and we felt that we couldn't because we really didn't have any extra to lose as far as telling the story. He's famous for not shooting a lot of material that he doesn't need, and after some 50 films, he knows what he needs." Allen is equally famous for his proclivity to allow whole scenes to unfold in extended master shots. "Woody doesn't like cutty films," Lepselter confirms. "He finds that it distracts him if there's over-the- shoulder, close-up, back-and-forth. It's not his style." However, when the editor viewed dailies for her inaugural film with Allen, Sweet and Lowdown, she encountered more coverage than she expected — or would find in many subsequent films. "I knew from having been a Woody Allen fan my whole life that he shot a lot of scenes in one take," she says. "I started watching the dailies and there was an enormous amount of coverage. I was surprised and stunned. He said, 'You know, this is an old-fashioned film. I wanted it to have an old-fashioned feeling, and I wanted to shoot it more traditionally.'" Allen's long-take tendency, however, is in full force in Wonder Wheel. During a scene in which Carolina arrives on the boardwalk, the camera glides with her as she walks past the spinning rides, pausing on a sign that reads: "CONEY ISLAND: BARREL OF LAFFS." When Carolina enters Ruby's Clam House, where Ginny whiles away her days as a waitress, the camera lingers on the characters during their first, tense introduction. "Even for Woody, Wonder Wheel has some very long masters," Lepselter observes. "There are some scenes that are very long takes, and the camera is sweeping around for an entire scene. And occasionally I'll think, 'I wish I had a cutaway.' But you choose a take and that's it." That said, the editor attests that the long-take aesthetic worked perfectly for the theatricality of the film. "It was a choice that the director and the cinematographer felt worked for the setting," she adds. "It really gave it an interesting feeling." Consequently, editorial decisions often revolved around the elimination or shuffling of whole scenes rather than cutting within them. "There was a lot of discussion about a certain part of the film — whether or not we were jumping in tone in Kate's performance in an unfortunate way," Lepselter explains. "It has to do with her character's development, her relationship to the other characters, and whether it felt like she got from Point A to Point B too quickly." The solution was dropping a scene that was standing in the way. "It was causing us to experience a discordant feeling in that Wonder Wheel. Amazon Studios