Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1359892
53 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E J U M P S 'Papa' CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25 'Remote' CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 the course of a week, we had to get every editor, assistant, and apprentice set up at home, with an Avid, with the drive, with all the material," said Novick, who is based in New York. "We went from having two offices for this project to, I don't know, 10." Sound mixing had to be reimagined. "The mixer went in, but we all listened on our soundbars at home and then went on Zoom," said Novick, adding that some voice - overs — such as Meryl Streep reading the words of Hemingway's third wife, journalist Martha Gellhorn — had to be recorded using imaginative means. The team brainstormed sending a sound engineer to Streep's home to possibly re- cord the actress, but in the end, a solution was worked out. "Her son had a recording setup in his home, for recording music," N o v i c k s a i d . " Ke n s p o k e to h e r a n d talked her through the character, . . . but then she just went into her son's studio and recorded." Hemingway's voice was recorded by Jeff Daniels — like Hemingway, a Mid- westerner (he grew up in Michigan). "We were looking for someone potentially from the middle of the country — sort of the American spirit," Novick said. "We've always wanted to work with Jeff Dan- iels." (When the postproduction team received the Daniels tracks and began cutting them in, Ewers said, it was like Christmas morning.) Despite the pivot from in-person to virtual editing, White said that the final result is indistinguishable from a Burns project made pre-pandemic. "In the end, we had as beautiful a project as we normally would have," White said. And, by the end of the process, Burns had scrutinized every frame. "The final month of editing, . . . is me going, 'Open up six frames,'" Burns said. "By the last day of editing, I'm usually the only one still talking." Yet, on this film, Hemingway talks too — not just in the voice of Jeff Daniels, or in the visible excerpts from his stories and novels, but through the images we see of the man. Ewers' mind went back to the documentary's closest antecedent in his own f ilmography: Burns' 2001 d o c u m e n ta r y " M a r k Twa i n ," w h i c h Ewers co-edited with Craig Mellish, ACE. It was while editing that film that Ewers recognized the simple power of lingering on his subject's eyes. "On 'Twain,' when you look at the old photographs of him, there's this wit and this joy and this spark," Ewers said. "As each one of his daughters passes away — even when he's onstage and he's Mark Twain, not Samuel Clemens — you see the spark die, until his wife dies and his last daughter, and he's all that's left of his own immediate family. There's nothing left in his eyes." Decades later, Ewers realized that he was seeing the same progression in photographs of the man many called "Papa." "Here's a man who, just like Mark Twain, was just full of life and ambition and drive," Ewers said. "And, as one head trauma after another comes to him, you start to see the light go out, and by the time he's in his fifties, it's just not there." The stark simplicity of a photograph, the sharp clarity of a cut — it's what filmmaking is all about for Ken Burns and company. "Films are only made in the editing room — period," Burns said. ■ the employees signing electronic union cards in a virtual vote for Editors Guild representation. We sent the company correspondence informing them of the crew's choice in late December. A few weeks later, we had reached an amicable agreement for management to recognize the crew's choice to unionize, based upon a neutral third party's verification that a majority of the employees in question had signed cards. At the time of this writ- ing, Titmouse's editorial employees are preparing to negotiate their first union contract at the company. Collective action is a prerequisite for meaningful change, and there are chal- lenges to achieving such collective action when workers are working in individual isolation. As an organizer, I'd much pre- fer to meet with workers in person and look them in their eyes. More important, I'd prefer that the leaders on our orga- nizing committees would have direct, unmediated access to their colleagues as they're reaching out to bring coworkers on board with the organizing effort. But it's also perhaps true that the lives of involuntary sequestration we've lived over the past year have helped us to recognize how crucial it is to remain connected to those with whom we share common interests. These months have often been lonely ones, but that loneli- ness has, maybe, made us more eager and more innovative in our efforts to forge bonds that make us less isolated, more powerful. Even from the bunkers of our living rooms -- pressed into service as working rooms -- organizing finds a way. ■