Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1382552
Nancy Richardson. 28 C I N E M O N T A G E W H A T O U R M E M B E R S D O Nancy Richardson, ACE PICTURE EDITOR Q Where are you currently employed? Starting a project that will edit here in Los Angeles, then travel to London. I am also a tenured professor in the film program at UCLA. Q Current projects? "Love and Monsters" in release now on Netflix.... And we were nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects!! Next I will be editing "Luckiest Girl Alive" for Picturestart and Made Up Stories. Q Describe your job. While they are shooting, I receive the footage each day and edit the scenes according to the script. I send cuts to the director throughout the shoot. Incorpo- rating notes from the director as I work, I put the film together, to the script, always trying to make it play as smoothly as pos- sible so that we can see if the story works. Then, working with the director, we revise and rewrite, lose redundancies, tighten and rework for pace and rhythm, find the tone, massage performances, crystallize character nuances, and clarify any confusion in the story. Sometimes this involves restructuring, writing and adding ADR, working with temp music, sound, and VFX, with the expectation that the sound designers, music editors and composers will vastly improve on the temp versions. Then we put the film in front of the studio and/or financiers, and then test it with an audience. The creative discussions then widen to include producers and studio execu- tives, and marketing. Perhaps reshoots are done to fix any remaining story issues or to add a missing element. At some point we "lock" (although we don't seem to ever lock any more), and turn reels over endless times to sound, music, VFX and color. We mix the film – which is really my favorite part. That is where it all comes together finally. We do the final color – sometimes at the same time as the mix. After endless little issues and correc- tions, one day it is finished. Hopefully there will be premieres in theaters again someday. Q How did you first become interested in this line of work? I have a degree in Film Theory and Criticism from UC. Berkeley. I studied in a program in Paris at the New Sorbonne. It felt divorced from the real process of how films are made. I realized that I wanted to be a film- maker more than a critic or an academic. So I decided to apply to the graduate pro- gram in Filmmaking at UCLA. I wrote and directed a few shorts, then wrote and sold some feature film scripts. The place I felt most at home was in an editing room. I discovered that for me, the purest, most influential – and final - form of filmmaking takes place in the editing process. Q Who gave you your first break? Friends I went to film school with