Speaker 1: Oh jee is bolt it show die? People say good
Speaker 1: money to see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 1: They want clod sodas, pop popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 2: In the projection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 1: Cut it off, Hey, folks, Welcome to the projection Booth.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 3: talking with editor Derek Boonstra all about the new documentary Seized.
Speaker 3: It's a story that happened a few years ago but
Speaker 3: still continues to resonate today, all about the seizing of
Speaker 3: records in Marion, Kansas. Film premiered at Sundance twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Highly recommend that you check this out. Hope you enjoyed
Speaker 3: the movie when you see it, and I hope you
Speaker 3: enjoyed this interview. Before we start talking about Ceased, I
Speaker 3: really want to know a little bit more of your
Speaker 3: journey and how you got involved in filmmaking.
Speaker 2: It's kind of what I've always wanted to do from
Speaker 2: teenage years. So took a pretty straight trajectory. I was
Speaker 2: just a skateboard kid, made skateboard videos with my friends
Speaker 2: growing up in high school in Colorado, and used the
Speaker 2: very first version of Premiere before they slept pro on
Speaker 2: it back in the nineties. Dating myself. But you know,
Speaker 2: so I've been I came out to eventually. I went
Speaker 2: to undergrad in Arizona and then did grad school at
Speaker 2: USC and it was kind of one of the weirdos
Speaker 2: who wanted to do documentary there and wasn't necessarily going
Speaker 2: to do scripted content, and I just stuck with it.
Speaker 2: And it's been a long time now.
Speaker 3: You've done a lot of stuff over the years. I mean,
Speaker 3: looking at your IMDb, it's like camera and an electrical department,
Speaker 3: additional crew, sound department, producer, But the most of your
Speaker 3: credits are under editing, and I'm curious I gravitated towards that.
Speaker 2: Editing has really been my bread and butter. A lot
Speaker 2: of those credits are from like early just out of
Speaker 2: school things where I was just trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to survive out here. But editing. I knew I
Speaker 2: wanted to do documentary, and I took the sound curriculum
Speaker 2: at USC all the way through. I never took an
Speaker 2: editing course my entire time there. We had to do
Speaker 2: editing as part of other classes. But when I got
Speaker 2: out of school. I realized in the documentary world that
Speaker 2: editing is one of the things that you can kind
Speaker 2: of sustain yourself with. Is the role that it's somebody
Speaker 2: has to sit in the chair and push the button
Speaker 2: and make the movie come to life, and a lot
Speaker 2: of people find it tedious. It's a thing that I
Speaker 2: enjoy doing and realized I could do it and sustained
Speaker 2: myself that way. So I just sort of fell into
Speaker 2: it and fell in love with the process. That was
Speaker 2: sixteen years ago now that I just started doing that.
Speaker 3: One of your earliest credits as an editor is square Roots,
Speaker 3: the story of SpongeBob SquarePants. Can you tell me a
Speaker 3: little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a shout out to Pat Creeden and Christino O'Malley,
Speaker 2: who were the husband and wife director and producer team
Speaker 2: that are still among my favorite people in this industry.
Speaker 2: I saw them at Sundance this past time, and they're
Speaker 2: just great people, and they brought me on as an
Speaker 2: assist editor. I graduated into the two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: financial crisis, and so it had echoes of this era,
Speaker 2: you know, where things were contracting and there were strikes
Speaker 2: going on, and I ended up working for the first
Speaker 2: few months out of film school, for a good period
Speaker 2: of time doing my main paid job was working for
Speaker 2: a billionaire shooting his private Christian high school sons football
Speaker 2: games and editing them to Jock Jams music. I'm burning
Speaker 2: that to a DVD for their school. So it was
Speaker 2: not exactly what I wanted to be doing, but it
Speaker 2: was building my chops in terms of rhythm and pacing
Speaker 2: in a sort of crude way. But then when Pat
Speaker 2: and Chris found this editing position that was actually documentary world,
Speaker 2: which is where I wanted to be, I applied and
Speaker 2: Pat had me edit as a test gave me some
Speaker 2: footage from his children's daycare for a fundraiser that they
Speaker 2: were doing. I edited that together and he liked it
Speaker 2: so much that he just let me start editing on
Speaker 2: the SpongeBob documentary. So it was very fortunate in that
Speaker 2: I was able to go from didn't have to AE
Speaker 2: for very long before I started editing the things.
Speaker 3: How many projects are you working on at the same time?
Speaker 3: Where do you just go project project?
Speaker 2: These days it's mostly project project seized was entirely that
Speaker 2: was all I was doing for most of last year.
Speaker 2: In the past, I have done multiple projects at a time,
Speaker 2: but it's not the most ideal situation. As I've progressed
Speaker 2: my career, I really tried to focus on one thing
Speaker 2: at a time.
Speaker 3: So how did you get involved with cees. Did they
Speaker 3: ask you to edit their child's stakecare video or was
Speaker 3: it a little more professional this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't quite remember how Sharon and the team
Speaker 2: first got ahold of me, but that's sort of the
Speaker 2: nature of this. There's a lot of great documentary editors
Speaker 2: out there, many of who it's a community. We kind
Speaker 2: of know each other, and so I know that they
Speaker 2: talked to a couple of other people that probably would
Speaker 2: have done a great job too, But I was really connected.
Speaker 2: As soon as I found out what it was, this
Speaker 2: story about the Marion County Record and the read on
Speaker 2: this newspaper, I was like, Oh, that seems right in
Speaker 2: my avenue. I really liked journalistic stories. It seems like
Speaker 2: interesting characters. They showed me the sizzle and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: this looks like it's really well shaw. They had been
Speaker 2: filming for eighteen months by the time they reached out
Speaker 2: to me, so I immediately wanted to come on board.
Speaker 2: Even though we hadn't worked together and ended up being
Speaker 2: one of my favorite collaborations of my career so far.
Speaker 3: How did that go kind of feeling out Sharon and
Speaker 3: what she needed versus what you wanted to bring to
Speaker 3: the project.
Speaker 2: I have to say it was pretty aligned on this one.
Speaker 2: It feels like I consider myself flexible when it comes
Speaker 2: to like working with different styles of directors. But Sharon
Speaker 2: from the beginning, Sharon said, you know that she wanted
Speaker 2: me to bring ideas to the table, and she really
Speaker 2: understood that the editing process is a process of discovery
Speaker 2: and there's things that you'll find that you just can't
Speaker 2: you don't you have to find them in the edit.
Speaker 2: We did a lot of that, and they really put
Speaker 2: a lot of trust in me and gave me a
Speaker 2: long leash to do that. She had great, you know
Speaker 2: vision from the beginning of we want to start with
Speaker 2: the structurally, She's like, we want to start when year
Speaker 2: later with this character that we've been we started filming recently,
Speaker 2: which is what we did, and we kind of committed
Speaker 2: to that and never looked back. So she had some
Speaker 2: really great instincts to build on and then also give
Speaker 2: me days to myself to just dive into the massive,
Speaker 2: massive amount of footage. They really shot a lot of footage.
Speaker 2: I think it may be the most very tay footage
Speaker 2: that I've had for a single project. I've had more
Speaker 2: footage hour just pure hours wise. In terms of the projects,
Speaker 2: they had a lot of archival, like the Beg's documentary
Speaker 2: had a ton to mountains of archival, but for this one,
Speaker 2: she started filming shortly after the raids and was lived
Speaker 2: two hours away and would go there and shoot long
Speaker 2: days with sometimes multiple cameras, and really just got way
Speaker 2: more amazing footage than we'd ever be able to use.
Speaker 2: So it's a good problem to have, yeah, in that respect,
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 3: Don't imagine there's a way to shortcut like going through
Speaker 3: all of that footage and cattle logging what you.
Speaker 2: Have, what we did at the beginning. They came to
Speaker 2: me with a this is pretty rare. A lot of
Speaker 2: times I'm getting brought on and there's some sort of
Speaker 2: infrastructure in place where there's an AE and a remote
Speaker 2: setup and a server, and they've already kind of organized
Speaker 2: the project in a particular way. On this one, it
Speaker 2: was just they just had hard drives that had footage
Speaker 2: on them that had been reasonably well stored, but there
Speaker 2: was no project like we started with a fresh project,
Speaker 2: and I didn't have a dedicated AE on this project.
Speaker 2: We had our associate producer, Alexandra, who's very smart and
Speaker 2: able to wear many hats, and I was able to
Speaker 2: tell her, like, let's set up this project in this way,
Speaker 2: and so I had control over that from the beginning.
Speaker 2: And what I had them do is break down the
Speaker 2: days into sequences that were chronologically in order of what
Speaker 2: was being shot, and then broken into however many things
Speaker 2: were happening, so if somebody wouldn't got like b roll,
Speaker 2: that would be a new sequence. They cataloged the entire
Speaker 2: project in that way, and then we had a spreadsheet
Speaker 2: that we could kind of go back and forth between.
Speaker 2: It made navigating the project really easy and finding we
Speaker 2: did that initial setup probably took two to three weeks,
Speaker 2: but once we had that dialed in, it made it
Speaker 2: very easy to navigate the project later without any kind
Speaker 2: of like special plugins or anything like that. I was
Speaker 2: pretty old school. I was just on a hard drive
Speaker 2: with a mirrored hard drive somewhere else, and we've used
Speaker 2: no extra stuff on this one. But it worked really
Speaker 2: well for us.
Speaker 3: What's your method? Then do you go okay through the spreadsheet, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I like this, I don't like this, and just kind
Speaker 3: of pick and choose that way, or you like, what
Speaker 3: is that for you?
Speaker 2: We kind of started with the scene that is the
Speaker 2: first scene. It's the new reporter showing up for his
Speaker 2: first day a year after the raids have happened, and
Speaker 2: he's got it sort of like you put. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a pretty everybody clock. It's not a very sly move.
Speaker 2: It's he's an avatar for the audience. You know, He's like,
Speaker 2: I gotta figure out what happened here, and everybody watches
Speaker 2: the movie understands that that's what we're doing. But it worked,
Speaker 2: It works really well for this particular movie. We really,
Speaker 2: more than a lot of projects, just kind of built
Speaker 2: it out linearly. From there, I did like some thematic
Speaker 2: things that were not connected to the timeline, especially in
Speaker 2: those early phases, but I would say that probably by
Speaker 2: three or four months and we were just we were
Speaker 2: just building forward and then like you know, we'd learn
Speaker 2: lessons and go back and revise along the way. But
Speaker 2: we kind of built the film out pretty linearly and
Speaker 2: didn't want by the time we got to the end,
Speaker 2: we didn't end up changing the structure very much and
Speaker 2: really just kind of were able to refine the ideas
Speaker 2: and dial in the thematics and stuff. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: unique in that sense on this one. But what we
Speaker 2: would do is I would I would edit something, and
Speaker 2: then we'd talk about what do we want to work
Speaker 2: on next, you know, what makes sense, and then they
Speaker 2: you know, encourage me to you know, this is what
Speaker 2: you should work towards, but you know, follow the things
Speaker 2: that come up in the edit and go where you
Speaker 2: need to go that. We're always excited to see new
Speaker 2: things too, which is what you want as an editor.
Speaker 3: When you're editing. Do you have certain moments in mind?
Speaker 3: Because it feels like that's when I'm watching a lot
Speaker 3: of documentaries. It's like you go along, you think you're
Speaker 3: kind of getting that story, you are that reporter, like
Speaker 3: you said, you come in and then there's usually a
Speaker 3: few like rug pull moments where you're like, oh shit,
Speaker 3: that's a whole new twist in this. Do you have
Speaker 3: those in mind going into things or do you find
Speaker 3: those naturally?
Speaker 2: It's a little bit of both. I would say a
Speaker 2: lot of that was found in this documentary. I mean,
Speaker 2: we knew the exact distribution of those things was not
Speaker 2: known going in for sure. We didn't have those like
Speaker 2: mapped out necessarily after working on thirty or so films,
Speaker 2: you know that, like and just the way that movies
Speaker 2: get talked about these days when you take them to
Speaker 2: streamers or whatever, which wasn't the case on this project.
Speaker 2: But you know that, like, you need to have something
Speaker 2: happening every so many minutes to keep people's attention going.
Speaker 2: So it's really about kind of just keeping in mind,
Speaker 2: okay it's been a little time, like we need to
Speaker 2: vary something soon, you know, and just knowing how to
Speaker 2: feel those rhythms, which becomes sort of instinctual, I guess
Speaker 2: after a while. But it really just depends on any
Speaker 2: given piece as well.
Speaker 3: How do you stay fresh on something? I mean, I
Speaker 3: imagine looking at something all day long, living with it
Speaker 3: for weeks, if not months on end, you probably feel
Speaker 3: like you know it almost too well.
Speaker 2: It is a common problem. This project was kind of
Speaker 2: a unicorn in some ways in that, like I was
Speaker 2: really I mean I'm always engaged, but I was really,
Speaker 2: like really into this one from beginning to end. And
Speaker 2: really a lot of times I really like to bring
Speaker 2: in a consulting editor or I like to play that
Speaker 2: role towards the end as well. I like both. There
Speaker 2: are people that will I will come to when my
Speaker 2: project is eighty percent done and say, hey, take a
Speaker 2: look at this and tell me what you see, because
Speaker 2: you do lose that perspective. And we had some screenings
Speaker 2: on this, but for whatever reasons, it just wasn't It
Speaker 2: didn't feel like It's like, I feel like I could
Speaker 2: see this film the whole time, and it felt like
Speaker 2: the rest of the team could as well. I couldn't
Speaker 2: tell you exactly why that's the case for this one
Speaker 2: more than other ones, Probably because there was so much
Speaker 2: good footage. There was so much footage that I didn't
Speaker 2: have time to necessarily, there was always more to discover,
Speaker 2: I guess you could say, so that was part of it,
Speaker 2: But we didn't really We didn't pull in any consulting
Speaker 2: editors on this one. We just had a couple of
Speaker 2: screenings that really helped us to solidify what we were seeing.
Speaker 2: But I think the team was really good listening to
Speaker 2: each other and just the dynamic that happened to coalesce
Speaker 2: on this one between myself and Sharon and Paul and Sasha,
Speaker 2: who were the two producers and was always there and
Speaker 2: would chime in with good ideas too. But that was
Speaker 2: really the brain trust and our dynamic just made it
Speaker 2: so that we kind of were able to They were
Speaker 2: able to see the things that I wasn't able to,
Speaker 2: vice versa, and I think we just complimented each other
Speaker 2: really well.
Speaker 3: This might be a dumb question, but was there still
Speaker 3: shooting going on while you were editing or was everything
Speaker 3: just completely done and you knew the ending.
Speaker 2: No, there was definitely not a dumb question, but it
Speaker 2: was definitely going on until the very end. I think
Speaker 2: the last shoot was in It was maybe after we
Speaker 2: had gotten into Sundance. So I came on about halfway
Speaker 2: through Finn's tenure at the Record, so about six months
Speaker 2: into his time there. I came in at eighteen months
Speaker 2: and they ended up shooting for over two years, which
Speaker 2: was really great, and that was the right time for
Speaker 2: me to come in because there was this great file footage.
Speaker 2: But it was also time for me to be like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know, while you're there, go get a shot of
Speaker 2: the thumbtacks behind Finn. You know, we want to see
Speaker 2: how that smiley face at the beginning has evolved over
Speaker 2: these six months. I was able to say, you know,
Speaker 2: these shots are going to be useful if you go
Speaker 2: get them and really shape how the ending was forming
Speaker 2: as it was happening.
Speaker 3: Now, that's really nice, and especially that they trusted you
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of trust involved on this one,
Speaker 2: but I think they understood that was somewhat out of necessity.
Speaker 2: In order to get through this timeline, we had to
Speaker 2: refine as we went, I guess is the point. I
Speaker 2: would do a rough draft of things, and I think
Speaker 2: I was able to make something that functions as a
Speaker 2: good feeling on the first draft, which I think was
Speaker 2: useful for this. Obviously, things got refined a lot as
Speaker 2: we went, but they would get refined based on feedback,
Speaker 2: but also based on just how it interacted with the
Speaker 2: things that we continued to build. So the first party
Speaker 2: we got more and more refined as we went.
Speaker 3: When it comes to those screening you were talking about
Speaker 3: how many people were there and are you just constantly
Speaker 3: taking notes or how are you kind of inputting this
Speaker 3: ins to change that needs to be tweaked.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly how many screens we had. Maybe
Speaker 2: it feels like half a dozen. We I would screen
Speaker 2: it for my wife and they would have like miniature
Speaker 2: screenings as well, you know, but we really had one
Speaker 2: big screening in LA we had two screenings, and I
Speaker 2: think that were sort of like, you know, a dozen
Speaker 2: people or more. And I always want to I love
Speaker 2: my favorite place to be in the room when we're
Speaker 2: having screenings as the editor is like at the front
Speaker 2: corner of the room, like like kind of spying on
Speaker 2: everybody's faces and how they're reacting to any given moment,
Speaker 2: because that's the most useful data at that point is
Speaker 2: to see is this landing. Are there any points at
Speaker 2: which people are like checking their phones? We probably need
Speaker 2: to cut the fat out of whatever that section is.
Speaker 2: But yeah, for this this one, we were all pretty
Speaker 2: confident throughout most of the process with what was what
Speaker 2: was happening, So it was a lot more about dialing
Speaker 2: things in than it was about we weren't underwater in
Speaker 2: terms of, you know, are we even structuring this thing
Speaker 2: correctly or whatever. We felt pretty good throughout, which is
Speaker 2: which is fairly rare.
Speaker 3: So you're just getting back from sun Dance, so This
Speaker 3: is kind of an unfair question, but I'm curious if
Speaker 3: you have your next gig lined up already.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm consulting on something. I don't have my next
Speaker 2: long term thing set up yet. But you know the
Speaker 2: thing about working on these kinds of projects, it's nice
Speaker 2: to have a little breath, and maybe I'll do some
Speaker 2: shorter term gigs for a little while. It's really nice.
Speaker 2: It's really wonderful when a project like this comes along
Speaker 2: that you're really invested in, but it also can suck
Speaker 2: you in. You know, I'm glad to be having some
Speaker 2: time with the family more now. On the other side,
Speaker 2: I work from home, but there were days when this
Speaker 2: project was we're I was just consumed, you know, happily,
Speaker 2: but like I wouldn't see my family even though they
Speaker 2: were behind this door. For days at a time.
Speaker 3: I felt like, mister Booster, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: your time. This is great talking with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you too, really appreciate it.