Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/711111
25 Q3 2016 / CINEMONTAGE Elmiger was not the only one to burrow into the lives of the film's characters. The actors were encouraged to read books about the period, and Leigh went even further. "She had heard a tape of Parker toward the end of her life, and I think she used that as a bit of a model for her performance," Elmiger says. "They were very, very dogged about doing their homework and being historically accurate. In the script, Alan was very thorough." For Elmiger, however, the film was an education in more ways than one. The project was her first as a solo editor following about 15 years of working as an assistant or sound editor on both coasts. She began as an assistant editor at CBS in New York, assigned to the documentary series CBS Reports, before moving to Los Angeles to work as an assistant editor under Sally Menke, ACE. She returned to New York to serve as the second editor with Geraldine Peroni, ACE, on Robert Altman's sweeping Los Angeles epic, Short Cuts (1993). Since Altman and his associate of many years, Scott Bushnell, were to produce Mrs. Parker, Elmiger had an inside track to edit the film — despite the fact that it was to be cut on the Avid and she had never edited digitally. "Alan had met someone who had an Avid, so he was completely enthralled with it," Elmiger recalls. "Very few New York people, or any people, knew how to work on Avid. I didn't really know, but I figured it out pretty fast." Production took place over eight weeks in the summer of 1993 in Montreal, Canada. Elmiger was on location with the crew, present for discussions of the film with Rudolph and the nightly screening of dailies — an important ritual on the set of a movie by Rudolph or Altman. "They both screen dailies every night, religiously, and actors have to come; everybody goes," she says. Rudolph relied on many collaborators with whom he had previously worked, including cinematographer Jan Kiesser, ASC, CSC, and production designer Francois Seguin. Despite being the new kid in the cutting room, Elmiger fell in with the team. "Nobody was trying to get home on the weekends or any of that kind of thing," she remembers. "It was a very full-on, 24/7 kind of experience." From time to time, Altman himself journeyed to Montreal, which occasioned festive dinners with cast and crew. Says Elmiger: "That's the way Bob and Alan make films: Everyone comes to dailies and everyone goes to parties." When the "party" in Montreal concluded, work continued in New York in the fall. Elmiger and Rudolph started from the top. "Alan never liked cutting until he was done shooting, and then he would work from the beginning," Elmiger explains. "He wanted to start at the beginning so that the editing work would have a continuity to it." The editorial crew included assistant editors Dylan Tichenor, Céline Béland and Zeborah Tidwell. Rudolph, who was present "all day, every day" throughout post-production, approached individual scenes in the same manner. "He would say, 'All right, where are we going to start the scene?'" Elmiger recalls. "We would look at the wide shots and the close-ups, and we would find where we were going to start the scene — and it could've been anywhere." Sometimes master shots would be the best place to begin, but just as often, a variety of options were "auditioned." In covering a scene, Rudolph preferred not to repeat shots. "He wouldn't do so many takes in one angle," Elmiger observes. "He would keep changing the camera. A scene's coverage would be somewhat disparate; it wouldn't be over, over, medium, close." Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Fine Line Features/Photofest