Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277150
PEOPLE www.postmagazine.com 13 POST JULY/AUG 2020 "I edit whatever David directs," Baxter explains. "So the episodes that I cut are the ones that he's shot," referring to the two seasons of Mindhunter. As additional direc- tors were involved in the series, Baxter also served as a co-producer, overseeing other editors working on the series. Baxter's editing career began cutting film and then moved to nonlinear editing, using Avid's NLEs. After moving to Final Cut Pro for a stretch, he again switched, this time to Adobe Premiere Pro. "Once we switched to Premiere, we sort of had no reason to change again," he reflects. He credits a "sea of help" in setting him up with the dailies and for- mats he needs to be productive, but then works alone on the assembly. "I'm cutting and selecting, and cut assembling it whilst Fincher is shooting," he says of the process. "So we're separat- ed. And our conversation is for the work that I'm doing. I don't call him up and say, 'Hey, can you watch these dailies with me?' Or, 'What's your idea or intent be- hind this?' He speaks to me through the material and I speak back to him through the edit." Baxter says he will refresh himself with a new scene by reviewing the script before he begins cutting, but then allows the footage to speak for itself. "I sort of let the material lead me more so than the written word because once David has shot the scene, it doesn't matter how it was written. What matters is what he's captured." Being a streaming series, there is no hard length on what the final edit's run- time needs to come in at, but Baxter says he still has a general idea in mind. "We are allotted flexibility — abso- lutely. You try to sort of aim at a general length, if you want to keep it in the ball- park so that it's not too short, but I don't think it's a concern if it goes a bit longer, and that's the freedom that Netflix sort of provides." Having worked with the filmmaker so many times in the past, Baxter is not quick to label him with a particular style. In fact, the editor says Fincher's style varies from project to project and even from scene to scene. "But in general, we like to keep things tight, and we like to keep things moving with angles, which we tend to move in a pretty aggressive fashion," he notes. "I've read in some reviews that [Mindhunter] is a slower-paced show. So my interpreta- tion of that is, information might drip out, but the pace of the filmmaking — the angles, how you move through a scene — is not slow." Having worked on both seasons of Mindhunter, Baxter says consistency is one goal that he shoots for editorially, while also allowing for the characters to evolve. "I think (Bill) Tench got a lot more time in the second season," he points out. "I think Wendy (Carr) elevated up into the main character, and she got a lot more time. But in terms of how we're trying to tell things, it was reasonably similar." Baxter says he particularly likes the series' interview sequences with the con- victed felons — including Charles Manson — and how they are given enough time to really play out. "They're just so long," he notes. "The format allows you to really fit in the scene. And that's a consistent thing across the series. And that's something I thoroughly enjoy." Mindhunter is shot in 8K using Red's Helium. Editor Baxter cuts the show using Adobe Premiere.