Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/942009
53 Q1 2018 / CINEMONTAGE that when I'm talking about characters who do bad things, sometimes I'm talking to the person who did those bad things. For any film, I try to have love and empathy for every character, whether good or bad. If you maintain that empathy for those characters, then you never have to worry about treading lightly because you really do care about them. I care about everyone in Chappaquiddick. Even if I think that their decisions were wrong, I don't think that they're terrible people for making wrong decisions. I just think that they were mistaken. CM: Speaking of Malick, tell me how you got into his world. KF: When The Tree of Life was finally ready to go, I was called to interview with Terry. To be honest, I hadn't seen any of his films and wasn't aware of his importance to cinema, so I wasn't awestruck and we were able to have a nice conversation. When he interviews you, he likes to talk about where you're from. I'm from Houston, which he knows really well. It wasn't a chat about film; he was interested in me as a person. CM: How did you make the leap from apprentice to full editor? KF: Terry had always planned to do a movie in tandem with Tree of Life, which eventually became Voyage of Time [2016]; the creation section of Tree of Life would expand to be a 40-minute IMAX movie, released simultaneously. Because the producers had no one else available, I was asked to be assistant editor on it. I of course jumped at that, but really didn't have the experience for it. But I was brought into a room to sit at a table of 10 people, including Terry, the producers and a visual effects supervisor who had worked on The Matrix and Batman Begins — heavy-hitters. They started asking me about workflow and process. I had no answers for anybody. I basically told them I would check on it and get back to them. It's the most embarrassing moment of my career. But for whatever reason, they didn't fire me. CM: Yet you wound up as editor? KF: An editor was supposed to be hired, but Terry was involved in cutting Tree, and they never got around to it. So, I just started cutting footage. I guess I was ballsy enough back then to grab Terry and pull him into a room to see what I had been doing. He was impressed enough that he started working with me. We ended up having a really good rapport. Part of what I did on Voyage then became the creation sequence in Tree. I worked on Voyage for about two and a half years [ultimately sharing editing credit with Rehman Nizar Ali], then became the lead editor on his next film, To the Wonder. CM: So what was your process for working with Malick, once it became formalized? KF: Terry has a very strict dogma, which I learned on Tree. There are exceptions to every rule, but he believes films should be fluid, so he's always looking for the camera to keep moving, and always wants the actor to move. He wants deep focus as much as possible; he thinks selective focus doesn't feel real — that it's the filmmaker placing his own intention on the viewer, when you should be allowed to look around the frame as you please. The screen should be like looking into a window. Before To the Wonder was shot, we had a lot of conversations. It's a really different process. The Tree of Life. Fox Searchlight Pictures