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EDITING I was in LA, so he'll take a look at those and give me comments, but he doesn't get really too detailed with notes at that stage because when he comes back into town and we start working together, we basically start from scratch. We watch dailies all over again and start cutting the movie. "Then, what we will do is watch what I had done originally, and we'll compare it — if he likes a take better or thinks we should do this. By then he has some per- spective on it too. He'll remember what he liked on-set, and I think he double checks himself to say, 'I like that take or like that idea.'" Does Alexander Payne sit in on editing sessions? "He loves it in the cutting room. He is there pretty much all the time. Sometimes I will say, 'Give me an hour on this,' but for the most part he is there." Are you working from a home studio or at a facility? "I do have home studio but I wasn't able to do that for this movie. It was just way too big. We had a cutting room in an apartment/loft kind of thing on Melrose and Larchmont right near Paramount studios, which worked great." What editing system are you using? Do you have a preference? "I do have a preference for Avid. It's what I know best and it's never let me down. It served us so well on this big movie Downsizing. We had everyone hooked up to ISIS. It worked great. I am a big fan of the Avid and so is Alexander." Is all of your media stored on-site? "It was all on-site, locked up in a closet, safe and sound. And we were all linked up to it. Our visual effects editor was linked up to it — Joe Carson. Our assis- tant Mindy Elliott, everyone was connect- ed to it. Mindy Elliott was our main first assistant editor. She is amazing. She is so organized and so professional. She does all of our hiring. Then we have a second assistant editor and a PA. We had a big staff. And…the visual effects team had their people over there — (VFX super- visor) James Price and (VFX producer) Susan MacLeod. We had an army." What format was it shot on? "I think they shot with an Arri, and it was all digital." So they were shooting high res and then giving you 2K or HD media? "That's exactly right…They shot 4K, espe- cially for all the visual effects stuff, and we cut in 2K or maybe less." Are you able to keep up with the dailies, or is it too much material? "I definitely kept up with dailies, and they started shooting in April of 2016. There was a little bit of an overlap. I was finishing my own movie at that time, so there was another editor who helped out doing some of the cutting for a month or so…Then I kept up. I was cutting dailies up until they finished shooting. Alexander came into the cut- ting room in September of 2016 and we finished in August of [2017]. Basically, almost a year to get the whole thing done. We did a lot of previews and a lot of screening, and the visual effects, it takes a lot of time to get those right. So it was a year." What kind of feedback is Alexander providing during the edit? "It's always different. Sometime he'll ask if Jay Cassidy is available, (laughs), who is an awesome editor, or will say, 'Yeah, I hadn't thought about that.' We really start from scratch and watch all our dailies and go through them. He's always got a good sense of humor and is fairly positive. He may joke around that he wants to call Jay Cassidy, but I don't think he has yet. (laugh)" Are there any scenes that you really like in this film? "There are so many things that I love in the movie, but one of my favorite se- quences that is really long is the whole downsizing sequence, where they go and get downsized. It's a combination of everything. It's a combination of performances — Kristen Wiig saying goodbye, and Matt Damon hugging is so good and visually it looks so amazing. And it was choreographed so well that the editing looks so good in it. Rolfe Kent did the greatest music on it for that whole big eight-minute sequence, which is pretty long. When that comes on I am so entertained, even after seeing it 10 billion times. I still think it's a great sequence. It actually went together very easily and very well. The only challenge was getting it con- densed. There's still a lot of stuff that's not there. In the first cut it was proba- bly four extra minutes longer." What are your thoughts of the finished film and its message? "I don't know if it can change the world, but hopefully it can get people to think. That would be great." Director Alexander Payne joined Tent for much of the edit.