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P H OT O : N E T F L I X MONSTROUS: Jacob Elordi in "Frankenstein." 37 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E F E A T U R E my name. I also DMed Guillermo on Twitter (X): ""I loved working with you; I'd love to do it again. I'm in your stack of resumés but wanted to reach out directly." He replied al- most instantly: "Yeah, send me your contact information and I'll get back to you." Within a week I had a script and an inter- view. I prepped as much as I could, showed up to his Santa Monica office, waited about an hour while he finished Zooms. He comes out — literally one foot out the door — and his assistant says, "Hey, you've got an editor to interview." He looks down the hall: "Oh, hey Evan. Yeah, you're hired. This will be fun. Are you fast?" I said, "Yeah, I'm fast." "Great — this will be fun." And he left. The whole thing was 60 seconds. I had to call UTA to make sure that was real. CineMontage: When you finally did speak to him, were there conversations about a vision or was it, "Here's footage — start figuring it out?" Schiff: It was the latter. They delayed my start date to the last possible second. Pivot- al was installing the Avids for me on day one of the shoot. I came in on day two, had to set up my system, cut footage, and deal with a pre-shoot from two weeks prior. From that point on, we hit the ground running. It was on me to cut scenes Guillermo would be happy with: To understand what he was going for, remember what I'd learned on "Pan's" and "Hellboy" and how his style has changed — and do it fast. On "Hellboy II" in 2007, we had all day to ingest dailies, prep bins, cut, add sound and temp music. Here, I had to have a cut ready two hours before call every day. So, very early mornings. CineMontage: Was that a budget thing or a creative thing? Schiff: Creative. If he shoots a scene Monday, he wants to walk onto set Tuesday with a fully cut version of that scene and a QuickTime of everything so far. He can watch between setups. If he's worried he didn't get a shot, he can grab it. On week- ends he'll go home and rewrite parts of the script based on the edit. He wants to be up to date at all times, as fast as possible. I had two hours with him before call every day. The game I played with myself was: when he walks in and watches, I want him to say, "OK, great — let's do this other thing I was thinking about last night," not, "Start over." I was offset from the shoot crew by a day, and we worked all day Satur- day throughout the shoot. By wrap, the cut was far more advanced than most director's cuts. That's the benefit of a director who cares about editing and is willing to spend so much of his time on it during the shoot. CineMontage: Let's talk about what became apparent as you got footage — how his style had evolved. What emerged, and how did you discover this film's grammar? S c h i f f : G u i l l e r m o i s a s i n g l e - u n i t , single-camera director. Every shot is inten- tional; he rarely shoots something he won't use. That helps when you're slamming a cut together at 4 a.m. You know he doesn't like it too cutty. There's a lot of Steadicam, cranes — shots that he and Dan Laustsen plan and choreograph. You want to feature those, show off the world he's creating: the sets Tamara built, the costumes Kate designed. Every detail has meaning. Ask him about anything on the set and he'll give you 20 minutes on where it came from and what it means. So, the point isn't to rush through scenes but to live in them — to understand characters' motivations, wants, needs, conflicts. When I get footage, I want to highlight performance and story and let you immerse. There aren't many flashy cuts. Sometimes we'd cut a scene, then go through and start simplifying to get back to that steady feeling — like there's a hand at your back, pushing you gently through the scene, not forcefully. CineMontage: Can you give me examples that were challenging or that exemplified your approach with his? Schiff: The lecture scene. We had a ton of footage and needed to establish adult Victor as a rock star — full of hubris, very cavalier. We've got the audience, the pro- fessors, Victor tossing the ball and playing to the room more than to the professors; he cares about the reaction he's getting. There's a lot more dialogue in that scene than we're using. Guillermo and I worked to isolate what's essential — the feeling of Victor showing off and basically tanking his career, but he's so overconfident it doesn't matter. He has one goal. We also introduce Harlander, watching and evaluating wheth- er to approach Victor afterward. Keeping all those threads running while trimming was the challenge. The original cut was over five minutes; now it's around four. The trick was to isolate what's important while keeping that immersive, not-too-cutty flow. CineMontage: How have you seen his style evolve over the years? Schiff: He plays with frame rates much more now. He'll shoot within a scene at different speeds. Say Elizabeth and the creature; all of Elizabeth's shots might be at 36 fps, the creature at 24, or she's at 36 for part of a shot and we slowly, invisibly ramp her back to real time. The intention is a floating, ethereal feeling you might not consciously recognize — more graceful, more elegant — without announcing "slow- SEE PAGE 53