‘Stranger Things’, ‘Beef’ & ‘Nobody Wants This’ Editors Discuss What Makes The Perfect Cut – Netflix Fix It In Post
Despite what the song says, sometimes it’s not only the first but also the second, third or even fourth cut that is the deepest. Film and television editors hold an incredible amount of power in not what only the audience ultimately sees but also in shaping maximum story impact.
As part of Netflix’s FYSEE LA festival, Deadline moderated a “Fix It in Post” panel at the streamer’s L.A. Crafts Hub, the Teatro Roma, with panelists Stranger Things’ supervising sound editor Craig Henighan and editor Dean Zimmerman, Beef Season 2 editor Lauren Connelly and Nobody Wants This Season 2 editor David Dean.
It’s a no-brainer that collaborating with your show’s creator is of the utmost importance, however, what happens when an editor suggests something that the showrunner hadn’t even thought of? The answer in most cases is a respectful improvement of vision and tone for the audience and the storyline.
Zimmerman and Henighan, who have been working on Stranger Things with the Duffer brothers for the entirety of the series’ nine-year, five-season run, had an incredibly trusting relationship with one another in the edit bay.
“In my experience, and for the Duffer brothers, they write very tight scripts and are very specific on how they want their tones. The interesting thing is in Season 1, when we first started, it was all about the drama. Everything was super intense, and kept you on the edge of your seat,” Zimmerman explained. “And there was a scene in particular that I decided to cut as a comedy instead of a drama, and when I showed it to them, they freaked out and didn’t know what to do. And the one thing they did say was, ‘Now we have to go back and rewrite all the scripts to put more comedy into it.’”
Zimmerman continued: “You know what I said to them? Obviously through all the years that I’ve been working in this business, I was like, you need to have those moments of levity, and you need to have those moments where you can let the audience sit back before you punch them in the face with something super scary or super dramatic and it’s something they learned very quickly. That was a big tonal shift in Season 1 that then carried out throughout the rest of the seasons. So, when you talk about tone with them, it all stems from the writing. But that flexibility that we all have in the cutting room is to create something completely different than what’s on the page.”
When it came to controlling the Vecna-Demogorgon showdown at the MAC-Z through sound and music, Henighan said: “We think about things like, where to pull sound down. What if we did this scene without music? And I think we can all agree about the music as a big conversational point. [But it can’t be something like] I’ve just been hearing music for 20 minutes. I really need the music [to serve a purpose] and kick in for an emotional thing or it’s not as impactful.”
He continued. “Working with the Duffers and Dean has been very strategic to lay off the music [when we don’t need it.] And that scene at the MAC-Z, we orchestrated the guns, the demogorgons and the other stuff to figure out where we need the music, but as a minimal pulse first and then it can bloom into something.”
Giving advice to other editors to listen to their instincts in post-production and find common ground with their showrunners, Zimmer said, “Sometimes we need to take that liberty and freedom to better the show instead of [taking] the marching orders of, ‘I’m here to do this and that and that’s it.’ It’s about having the license to take that freedom and risk to do [your thing]. That’s what separates a good show from a great show.”
When it comes to the romantic comedy series Nobody Wants This, Dean has the challenge of balancing levity with naturalism in the whipcrack improvisations that can sometimes occur between lead cast members Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. “I joined in Season 2,” Dean explained. “The first season was set up wonderfully for me by those editors. And our creator, Erin Foster, always leans into making the show feel lived in, real and messy – [through things like] overlapping conversations. That’s something that we’re always building in keeping that familiar pace when people are together. And even though it’s a comedy, it’s funny, but it’s not silly. So, a lot of the time we’ll modify things granularly in that regard.”
Dean also added: “Kristen Bell is a pro and her chemistry with Adam Brody is great and [the rest of the cast] all give a good amount of range, so you can get into the minutia with the teeth of all their performances, but they also riff a lot and they are all so funny that they can go on forever. Meanwhile, back in Video Village, half of the people are just bent over laughing and the other half are [jokingly sighing] like, ‘Come on, we’re trying to make a 25-minute show.’”
As the editor for Beef, Connelly has her work cut out for her. Though the anthology series primarily focuses on themes of revenge or manipulation and the pressures of living under capitalism, there’s a lot of dark humor to be found in the undercurrent.
“Sonny [Beef creator, writer, showrunner and EP Lee Sung Jin], really has a singular voice. And what we talk about a lot at the beginning of the editing process is perspective, character and scene structure,” Connelly shares. “And by focusing on those things, it really does help us balance the tone. Because these actors are incredible, the writing is incredible and in this season we have a huge ensemble – we really have to get to know pretty much four different couples and all of their motivations, everything they’re going for and [how they navigate] all these absurd situations and knowing who each scene is supposed to be about [for focus] is really key for us. That way, we can utilize that to balance the tone of each individual scene and what we need to get out of it, and that’s something we talk about a lot.”
To learn more about how they crafted scene stealing moments and let their leading actors guide editing choices alongside sharing secrets about what’s been left on the editing floor, watch the video above.
