Cinema Editor
Tinker, Tailor, Editor, Spy: Sam Williams makes a successful show even better
Critically acclaimed from the start with
multiple Bafta nominations including for Katie Weiland’s editing of the
pilot ‘Failure's Contagious’, Season 3 landed a Bafta
win for Sam Williams editing of episode 1 ‘Strange Games’ (also ACE Eddie nominated) and a nomination for Zsófia Tálas’ editing of episode 6, ‘Footprints’.
“We're a little bit shocked to be
getting all these plaudits for season three because normally that doesn't
happen on a repeat show,” says Williams (Luther, His Dark Materials) who
joined for Season 3. “When
you come into edit a season of any show you are standing on the shoulders of
giants because they've already done a lot of the work.”
One of the production’s hallmarks is
that one director is handed responsibility for the whole six episode run. In
this case it was Saul Metzstein (Brassic) whose paths had crossed with Williams
on Dr Who but they’d never directly worked together. With
Metzstein’s regular editor committed to another project, Williams got the
invite.
Season 3 opens with an extended sequence shot on
location in Istanbul with Williams also in attendance. He explains, “They didn’t want to have the expense of having to
come back for reshoots so they sent me out there with a mobile edit suite to
begin cutting it together. The problem was that I then fell in love with every
piece of the shoot because I'd been so closely involved in it.”
The first cut for this sequence ran about 15
minutes when they ideally needed it around five.
“We were always aware that we might have
to compromise the sequence because editorially we needed to do two things,”
Williams explains. “We
needed to establish that our two lead characters (Sean and Alison played by
Sope Dirisu and Katherine Waterston) are in love with each other. We also need
to ensure that we re-introduce Jackson Lamb and the rest of the series regulars
as soon as we can.
“The whole motivation for the Season 3
story rests on whether you believe Sean and Alison are in love and the
emotional impact you feel at the end of the sequence when she dies.
That’s down to the quality of the direction
and acting but just the meeting and falling in love part of the story was
originally about five minutes long. In the end we trimmed that down to around
40 seconds.”
To do that Williams says he had to become more
objective. “No-one cares if we were up until four
in the morning to shoot and cut a scene in Istanbul. I had to make hard
decisions, trim the scene to its essentials, while retaining the action and
emotion.”
The ten scenes following this opening were the
trickiest to finesse and to order, he says.
“The task was to introduce all our
characters without stretching out 20-30 minutes and suddenly finding half of
our time has gone by and we’ve barely started on plot.”
The frenetic action which closes the opening
scene in Istanbul gives way to Lamb in a doctor’s waiting room.
“There's a slow tracking shot across a doctors waiting room and we
just see a pair of feet and hear someone break wind. You don't quite know it's him, but if you've
seen the show before then you know. The tracking shot ends on Lamb’s face where
he is ruminating on death.
The editing here is just very simple. It
says ‘now we're just
going to take things very slow’ and shows that we’re back in a world where life feels weary.”
Nothing works out the way you want it to. That
sort of feeling is imbued in a lot of those opening scenes, so naturally,
you're not going to start cutting all over the place.”
A follow up scene with River (Lowden) and Standish (Reeves) packing files of
boxes at Slough House continues the theme.
“Packing files is about the most tedious
job you can imagine but there’s something else going on that isn’t immediately apparent which is that the whole story is really about
files. If the camera team are favoring shots of boxes in this scene, that’s the reason why.”.
Season two hadn’t been released by the time they
started editing but Williams and Tálas were able to watch rough cuts and get up
to speed.
“Music is always a big thing to get sorted before you
start any show since it’s a large part of the look and feel and
pacing,” he says. “Obviously
here we already had a whole box of tricks to instantly call on whereas the
editing team on season 1 were still figuring it out.
“That said, we do as much if not more
work on the sound as on picture. Executives who have invested in a project or
are about to buy into it like to see as finished a product as possible so the
closer you can polish it with temp FX and music the more likely they are to buy
it. The process also helps you as an editor since a little bit of sound adds so
much to the drama.”
For example, Slough House, the operational hub
of Lamb’s division in a less affluent part of London, is intentionally
depicted as a dull environment. To help convey that Williams layers in sounds
of road works, police sirens and traffic.
“It’s supposed to be
in a rubbish part of town so by adding some atmos you can do a lot of the
storytelling.”
He continues, “It also helps your editing if you've fallen in love with the
characters. With two series under the belt, there’s a whole history
to rely on. You can note certain little looks or things that they do that are
short hand for their character. You know instantly that when you see something
in Gary’s performance that that is a very ‘Lamb’ way to do things.”
One short scene in episode 1 shows Lamb ordering
a greasy kebab from a high street take-away. He asks the shop owner to put as
much spicy sauce on the sandwich as possible so he can’t taste the meat.
It’s a typically rude and witty remark that tells you all need to know
about Lamb’s character. Williams thinks Oldman may have ad-libbed it.
“Did you notice the design team having
fun in that scene? It’s subliminal but there’s a wide shot where Jackson goes into the kebab shop and you see a
poster on the wall that just says, ‘Lamb is Great.’”
Williams edited episodes one, three and five
with Tálas cutting the other three. “We
critiqued each other's work and watched all the episodes together with Saul.”
Another signature of the show’s style is intercutting storylines, much of which is scripted but
still requires tightening in the edit.
“Many scenes are written a lot longer because the
writer won’t be quite sure if it’s going to work on screen. My job is to
ensure it’s to the point. I've always found that having a lot of material in a
scene really helps the actor with their performance. Even though I’ve taken some of it out, their performance is really strong
emotionally because they've worked through the original script.”
He says one of the joys of Slow Horses
for an editor is to show off different styles. “We go from the energy of a chase in Istanbul or the suspense of the
siege at the file storage facility in episode 6 to simple ones such as Lamb
when he's at the doctors.
“It was without doubt the best show I’ve worked on in a
long time. So much fun. Everyone was lovely. And then to be getting all these
accolades at the end just makes me realize how lucky am I to have worked on
it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment