Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546034
32 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E (with Johanna Turner, sound designer) and dialogue (alongside her longtime dialogue editor, Michael Jesmer). Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and L i n d a C a rd e l l i n i l e a d t h e c a s t fo r t h e seven-episode series, with support from Richard Jenkins, Joy Sunday, Arlan Ruf, Peter Sarsgaard, and Chris Perfetti. The story unfolds slowly in a series of flashbacks and memories of moments that range from earnest and heartfelt to surreal and funny. CineMontage spoke with the post-pro- duction team about how they helped shape the story on a show that oscillates between uncomfortable subject matter and some surprising humor. CineMontage: How did you approach the nonlinear narrative from a sound and picture editing perspective? Max Koepke: The scripts were nonlin- ear to start, so I think we were primed for it. Kevin, who had worked with Steve before, said, "Be prepared to share scenes or move things around," or "Be prepared for Steve to 'continue' the writing process in the edit and find things as he goes." As editors, you try to make sure that even if something's narratively nonlinear, it's emotionally linear, so I focused on that and then trusted the process with Steve and Kevin. Throughout the series, as the audience gets to know the characters, they're being asked to start liking and trusting them — or maybe not trusting them. It really has no relevance when that happens in the linear timeline. We're just giving the audience information so they can be more invested in the story than in learning when and where things happened in this particular show. Kevin D. Ross: There are numerous misdirects of character development in our story, so our emotional throughline, or linear line that Max was talking about, might be, for example, that in one episode you lean into the idea that Carol is the killer, and you're going to build her up emotionally that way. But in the next one, you discover new information to change the narrative. The emotion was there, but now you've added a new layer in the next episode that questions what the viewer believes. W hitf ield Scheidegger: From the assistant editors' side, when we read the scripts, it was very clear from the beginning that the story was so nonlinear that the material was also going to be. Steve and the production team shot it as a feature for 70 days straight, so when we started working on it, I chatted with Juliana about how we wanted to organize the server, the files, and everything else. We essentially just made one huge media bucket for everything to go in and created only two separate projects for the editors to work on. We would peel off scenes as they came in, but because it was shot cross-boarded [shooting multiple episodes simultane- ously], I think all of us had an idea that it was one big story. From the beginning, Janet and I went through all the scenes and ScriptSynced everything. The whole series was sorted according to the episode number it was shot for — Kevin was edit- ing the odd-numbered episodes, and Max was editing the even-numbered ones — but it was clear that material might move between episodes, or Steve would poach a shot and use it to build something else in the room. We just made the material readily available. Juliana Rodzinski: One of the beauties of having a showrunner-writer-director is that he knows everything. It's so ingrained in him, and it's not like you're having to deal politically with different directors or dif- ferent plugs in the system. He would move between the two edit rooms, and it was a small operation, so we could experiment. CineMontage: Could you say more about working with Steve in the edit? Scheidegger: The story didn't change fundamentally, but Steve was always open to experimentation with the cuts. In this show more than others I've seen, there was a lot of creativity and work done across episodes in the edit bay because Steve had the power and the ability to work across the whole story. Ross: He would say, "Cool, that's work- ing. OK, I'm going to work with Max." Then he'd leave for Max's room because some- thing he just did in my episode inspired a new twist in Max's episode. Koepke: Sometimes he would say, "Hey, Kevin's got this weird shot. What if you just put it in the middle of this scene? Is that provocative or not? OK, it's not. Never mind," or "Yes, that works." Or, "That reminds me of another thing. Maybe we should do this. I'll write a little line for it." Kevin D. Ross. Ruth Adelman.