Speaker 1: Oh jee is, folks, it's showtime. People say good money
Speaker 1: to see this movie. When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 2: They want clod sodas, pop, popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 1: In the Projection Booth, everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 2: Got it off?
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth.
Speaker 3: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 3: talking with Martin Bean and Kevin Hebberd. They are the
Speaker 3: editors of the new documentary Drift from twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: That is not the Drift, which is a narrative film
Speaker 3: also coming out this year. This is about Isaac Drift right.
Speaker 3: He is an Army veteran who loves to climb. He
Speaker 3: climbs a lot of tall buildings, take some absolutely stunning photographs.
Speaker 3: His stuff is all out on Instagram. I'm going to
Speaker 3: link to that. It was fascinating talking with Martin and
Speaker 3: Kevin all about how this project came together and how
Speaker 3: they work together to help shape this documentary, which was
Speaker 3: directed by Dion Taylor. As more details of the release
Speaker 3: come out, I will be sure to give updates otherwise.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 3: the interview. Kevin and Martin, I'm so curious. Tell me,
Speaker 3: how do you guys know each other? Why did you
Speaker 3: first start working together?
Speaker 1: And we met a while back. We were on a
Speaker 1: I think it was We're here. You don't know, it's
Speaker 1: been a while. I love Martin for at least a
Speaker 1: good five six maybe even longer than that. Years now.
Speaker 1: We were working on a either it was an Amazon
Speaker 1: project or an HBO project, and he was the lead
Speaker 1: on it. And so when I came in i met him.
Speaker 1: I always say, he's like always rough around the red edges,
Speaker 1: but you're always.
Speaker 4: Gonna love him.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly who he was. He like, he is
Speaker 1: who he is, and that's who what I love about
Speaker 1: him so much, so he doesn't just word it's what
Speaker 1: I love. We've known each other for a while. It's
Speaker 1: been really nice. Honestly, if we've done I don't know,
Speaker 1: five or six projects together at this point, so.
Speaker 4: It's quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Is that pretty typical to work with co editor frequently
Speaker 4: like that?
Speaker 1: After I met Martin, I wanted to work with him
Speaker 1: all the time. When we were on Escaping Twin Flames,
Speaker 1: an editor had backed out and I immediately called Martin.
Speaker 1: I said, you got to get on this project. So
Speaker 1: he's this great editor.
Speaker 4: How do you guys work together? How do you split
Speaker 4: up the project?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like it's more just taking scenes and
Speaker 1: seeing what, like we played our strengths. We don't have
Speaker 1: an unconventional approach to this. I don't think.
Speaker 5: I think we just we We compliment each other really well,
Speaker 5: and we work well together, and we understand each other's
Speaker 5: sensibilities instincts well enough that like we don't end up
Speaker 5: having to redo a lot of work. We can match tones,
Speaker 5: and we can retrofit sequences and work story in similar ways,
Speaker 5: and we communicate well. And we've worked well together long.
Speaker 1: Enough that like we have a we have an ability
Speaker 1: to communicate and like a shorthand that goes a long way.
Speaker 4: I imagine you both have to be working on the
Speaker 4: same type of software, are you both like Avid guys?
Speaker 1: It depends on what are the project calls for The
Speaker 1: last one that we did, Drift, that was all Adobe Premiere.
Speaker 1: For the most part, it's been Avid, but now Premiere
Speaker 1: is making its head away into the dock space. With
Speaker 1: this last project, there were so many different formats that
Speaker 1: we were working with. It just handled it like a pro.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there was go pro, drone footage, body cam docs, documentations,
Speaker 1: home movies from wayback in the early nineties. So what
Speaker 1: it could just handle any format it was. It handled
Speaker 1: it really well, thousands of hours of stuff like really,
Speaker 1: it chewed it all up and made it usable real quick.
Speaker 4: How did you guys get involved with Drift?
Speaker 1: So the last project we worked on, which was Escaping
Speaker 1: Twin Flames with the team and out Lesseners got involved
Speaker 1: with the company hit An Empire, and this project had started.
Speaker 1: There was like a loose rough cut of it, and
Speaker 1: since we had just worked with her, she reached out
Speaker 1: to both of us and said, this project would be
Speaker 1: great for you guys. So we're all like minded but
Speaker 1: have different We'll come from different you know, ethnic backgrounds
Speaker 1: and culture backgrounds, and we all just kind of like
Speaker 1: meshed well with the storyline. And I think that's another
Speaker 1: thing that why she reached out to us.
Speaker 4: And what kind of shape was the story in when
Speaker 4: you got.
Speaker 1: To it was it like wow, it was very long.
Speaker 1: It was a very long rough cut and so pacing
Speaker 1: story A lot of it was all over the place
Speaker 1: and it just needed to be reconformed, rethought a different
Speaker 1: way through, and Martin had started, actually had started before
Speaker 1: I did, before I came on. The previous editor did
Speaker 1: a really good job, but they didn't have enough time
Speaker 1: to really get the traction. They needed to figure out
Speaker 1: what the story was going to be and explored the story.
Speaker 1: And so got lucky because Martin was the one that
Speaker 1: sifted through all the footage and he parsed out a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that may not be necessary sadly
Speaker 1: for him. That's what I know, but I enjoy that,
Speaker 1: so it's my favorite part.
Speaker 4: So yeah, now, is that all the four hour cut
Speaker 4: footage or is that the raw footage? Are you going
Speaker 4: back to studs for this?
Speaker 5: Both end up using some of the framing that had
Speaker 5: been done, but yeah, no, a lot of it. Regardless
Speaker 5: of what you end up doing, right, you have to
Speaker 5: know what you have to work with, because otherwise you
Speaker 5: can never trust your decisions because like you're constantly second
Speaker 5: guessing yourself and saying, oh, because you accidentally explore it
Speaker 5: all the time. You got to be able to look
Speaker 5: at it and say, Okay, we're gonna approach this a
Speaker 5: certain way, and without an informed ability.
Speaker 1: To make that decision. You just you just hoping and praying,
Speaker 1: which is no way to get anything done, honestly. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: we took sequences and stuff, but yeah, for a lot
Speaker 1: of it was just rebuilding it.
Speaker 4: Have you gotten into a project like this before where
Speaker 4: somebody else would come in and done stuff and then
Speaker 4: you're being brought in to finish things up a few times?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a few times. Yeah. Yeah. It's usually because
Speaker 1: they just want to see another way through, get another
Speaker 1: editor's vision on at what you would do differently, how
Speaker 1: would you tell this story? And most of the time
Speaker 1: it's like how would you tell it more succeedingly? More
Speaker 1: like just type how tight can you make the storyline
Speaker 1: and bring it down? Like we had it was like
Speaker 1: a four hour cut, and so we needed to get
Speaker 1: it pap sharpen it and refine it into into something that.
Speaker 5: Arcs a little more cleanly and lands a little more
Speaker 5: succinctly and you know, moves more with more intent. A
Speaker 5: lot of times things get lost in the sauce a
Speaker 5: little bit and you have really good ideas, right, but
Speaker 5: it's this big thing that like, and things fall apart
Speaker 5: for a variety of reasons. But like a lot of
Speaker 5: times things become forest for the tree situations, or things
Speaker 5: become too precious with certain people.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to do this right, Like it's this artwork. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially with docs. The amount of hours of footage that
Speaker 1: you have if you can make you go crazy to
Speaker 1: think of, like how do I even start building this plane?
Speaker 1: Like with just the first edit, look at number one,
Speaker 1: so she when you know Isaac Wright, the main subject
Speaker 1: of Drift, he alone have what like two thousand photos
Speaker 1: that he had taken? How do you parse that down
Speaker 1: to what makes him who he is?
Speaker 5: Well, and turn it into a storytelling element, right, give
Speaker 5: it an arc and let it reflect the arc that
Speaker 5: you're trying to portray. You know, this guy gives us
Speaker 5: a bunch of photos that he likes, and so it's like, okay,
Speaker 5: how do we turn this into a thematic element? How
Speaker 5: do we make it part of the whole instead of
Speaker 5: just pretty stuff?
Speaker 4: Well, how do you even organize your thoughts around something
Speaker 4: like that? Are you doing like note cards or right now?
Speaker 4: How do you even decide this is how I'm going
Speaker 4: to start approaching this or how we are going to
Speaker 4: start approaching those I would say.
Speaker 1: No, cards are usually like a good start. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we used a lot of note cards on
Speaker 1: this one, because there was already kind of like it
Speaker 1: was already somewhat built, but I would think, like, no cards.
Speaker 1: There's like a program called MIRO. I don't do you
Speaker 1: know this? A mirror board was like we use that.
Speaker 1: I remember Martin when he first took it on, he
Speaker 1: was you just want to I just want to know
Speaker 1: how Isaac is able to do these things, And that
Speaker 1: was like, how does he get into a building? How
Speaker 1: does he take these photos? What is it that he
Speaker 1: does to even get to where he's at now? And
Speaker 1: that kind of was like ground floor. Right.
Speaker 5: When I go through things, I just take tons and
Speaker 5: tons and tons and tons of notes, not even because
Speaker 5: I'm necessarily going to use them again, but just because
Speaker 5: it helps me to like embed things in my mind
Speaker 5: and process things. As I'm watching footage, I'm constantly writing
Speaker 5: things down, just streams of consciousness, ideas for things or
Speaker 5: like shots that might match up with other things or
Speaker 5: anything really, and the mirror board helps tremendously. But at
Speaker 5: the end of the day, yeah, it's really about finding
Speaker 5: a hook for your beginning, right, because you used to
Speaker 5: know where your story starts, right, But in terms of constructing,
Speaker 5: like mechanically the beginning, you need a hook, get the
Speaker 5: audience in, and then you really got to be able
Speaker 5: to find a turn into your end, and you've got
Speaker 5: to be able to land something right. And if you
Speaker 5: can get those things together, then you can start stringing
Speaker 5: things together and finding pivots. Because to your point, like
Speaker 5: when you're constructing something, it's your pivots in your terms,
Speaker 5: which are really like the mechanical things, like not the
Speaker 5: story things, but the mechanical things that like can actually
Speaker 5: get you through a story and gets you through a doc.
Speaker 5: So it's about it's really about finding and isolating those things,
Speaker 5: and then you build into them.
Speaker 1: And build out of them as you can. I always
Speaker 1: start with what like grounds the subject. I guess what's
Speaker 1: like the human element, like what makes it evoke like
Speaker 1: some type of humanist to everyone that could easily understand.
Speaker 1: And once I find that one thing, then I can
Speaker 1: start building from there. That's pretty much actually the entire
Speaker 1: story of Isaac, right, It's like, why is he doing
Speaker 1: what he's doing? What is the cathartic moment that he
Speaker 1: would take the risk of climbing buildings to take photos.
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil anything, obviously, I don't know what,
Speaker 1: but his reasons for doing it is what I latched
Speaker 1: onto and I could build from there. He battles with PTSD,
Speaker 1: he battles with childhood drama, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: speak for Isaac, but that's that's what grounded beginning of
Speaker 1: the narrative of his story of why he's doing these things.
Speaker 1: We expand on it more and you get to see
Speaker 1: how he got to where he is now.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I've looked through a lot of the images
Speaker 4: that he's taken out on the Instagram and it's just amazing.
Speaker 4: Some of these shots just start rap picking.
Speaker 1: We were all in that group text and occasionally he'll
Speaker 1: just show us what he's doing video wise, so you'll
Speaker 1: see him. He'll say, lick what I did today. He'll
Speaker 1: climb like he was climbing Times Square a couple months,
Speaker 1: like maybe a month ago. He was just like, here,
Speaker 1: here's some footage, you know, not not to put in
Speaker 1: the film, just to show that he's still doing.
Speaker 4: Martin, you talked about the whole idea of building in
Speaker 4: versus out kind of thing, and I'm curious as far
Speaker 4: as what what How did you decide like this is
Speaker 4: what we're going to do, or Kevin, you talked about
Speaker 4: like here's the one thing that I hooked onto and
Speaker 4: then that gave me the grounding basically to start you're building.
Speaker 4: How did you guys decide, Okay, we're going to do
Speaker 4: this scene the scene, or are we're going to do
Speaker 4: the overall package first?
Speaker 1: It's there's a lot of exploring this scene work because
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're directed by your limitations, right,
Speaker 1: It's more about what you don't have than what you have.
Speaker 5: You say, oh, okay, any one of these scenes can
Speaker 5: hit this plot point or hit this idea, this character point,
Speaker 5: but like, we only have one scene that can do
Speaker 5: this one thing, right, or we only have this moment
Speaker 5: that isn't even a scene that anchors this this other idea, right,
Speaker 5: And so it really becomes often and I can't give
Speaker 5: you a discrete example right now, I'm sorry, but it
Speaker 5: becomes often filling holes, right, and then backing into figuring
Speaker 5: out how to build the most complicated, most difficult things.
Speaker 1: Right, you say, Okay, we got everything we need.
Speaker 5: We think we think all of these things can execute
Speaker 5: these emotional ideas of these plot points, and now we
Speaker 5: got to fill these holes, and we got to get
Speaker 5: this idea across across the entire narrative. Now the whole
Speaker 5: narrative has to reflect a larger idea, so it all
Speaker 5: grows up together. And again it's all through communication and
Speaker 5: discussing over and over what these things are, not only
Speaker 5: what they're supposed to do mechanically and the plot points.
Speaker 1: That they're supposed to hit, but what they're supposed to
Speaker 1: do emotionally in terms of the larger arc.
Speaker 5: As you get closer and closer to the finish, you
Speaker 5: tighten it up and it all starts to resonate through
Speaker 5: itself with a hopefully at least right a singular idea or.
Speaker 1: Some sort of philosophy.
Speaker 5: Right, So it's not just the worst thing a documentary
Speaker 5: can be, in my opinion, is just a list of
Speaker 5: shit that happened, and so without any emotional, full or
Speaker 5: real real thought, right should make you think.
Speaker 1: So it's like really all about trying to get to
Speaker 1: that point. The story is pretty linear. In his lifetime,
Speaker 1: we kind of made buckets too. It was like buckets
Speaker 1: of information that we wanted to deliver when it was
Speaker 1: at We didn't want to put everything up at the
Speaker 1: front because of some algorithm. We wanted actually to get dold.
Speaker 1: You get like parts information out when it was necessary.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's what made this experience a
Speaker 1: lot easier, is because we weren't beholden to any kind
Speaker 1: of narrative style. And I think that's what the director dion.
Speaker 1: He also mentioned too, he didn't want it to be
Speaker 1: like your traditional dock. He didn't want it to cut
Speaker 1: the same way as a traditional dock. Things that you
Speaker 1: would be that were expected to happen. Granted, there are
Speaker 1: some moments at the top. We obviously do need a hook,
Speaker 1: and we obviously need a little cold open, but going
Speaker 1: on forward from that, it was basically you've just let
Speaker 1: us have fun and tell the story how we think
Speaker 1: it should be told. And then working with drift, Isaac Wright,
Speaker 1: he would go He was present the whole way through
Speaker 1: making sure that his story was being called properly. And
Speaker 1: he's an artist too, so he in a sense of
Speaker 1: almost like an editor where you wish you could edit it,
Speaker 1: just like when we even take a photos. I wish
Speaker 1: I could have done it this way, I could have
Speaker 1: colored it that way, and That's what the best part
Speaker 1: about editing is is that with flalls and all, you
Speaker 1: can still make something beautiful from it. We're of two
Speaker 1: different worlds, but brothers in arms in the trenches of
Speaker 1: telling his story. He always knew he wanted like his
Speaker 1: story would be told on a filmic level. And I
Speaker 1: think our first watchdown he was in love. And I
Speaker 1: gotta say, it's so hard whenever you're having a subject,
Speaker 1: here's a mirror against yourself. Enjoy watching this yourself for
Speaker 1: another for an hour and a half to two Our
Speaker 1: first cut was like two and a half hours two fifteen.
Speaker 1: Wasn't crazy, and he took it like a professional. It
Speaker 1: was very interesting to see his thought process through the whole.
Speaker 1: Just like I said, having a mirror pointed her at
Speaker 1: yourself the whole time. I can't imagine, as you can see,
Speaker 1: we suck in front of the camp.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I would probably crawl out of my own
Speaker 4: skin if I had to watch myself for two and
Speaker 4: a half hours.
Speaker 1: That's wild, especially when his story, like we had a
Speaker 1: couple of breakthrough moments in the interview that we didn't expect,
Speaker 1: especially dealing with his childhood trauma that no one knew happened.
Speaker 1: It's just Dion and the was Kate co producer. Kate,
Speaker 1: you know, just got this information about his past that
Speaker 1: really solidified why he's going up there to climb and
Speaker 1: what it is that he needs. It's almost like you
Speaker 1: have the hole that you need to fill and this
Speaker 1: is the way he was able to fill it.
Speaker 4: Not to get too much into the brass tacks, but
Speaker 4: I'm very curious as you guys are working together, and
Speaker 4: I imagine you're working remotely. You're not sitting in the
Speaker 4: same office, back to back, fingers on keyboards kind of thing.
Speaker 1: We cut this a lot in the office. Granted it
Speaker 1: was like maybe three days on and two days in
Speaker 1: the office, or three days in the office and two
Speaker 1: days at home, just so we can take our informations
Speaker 1: to cutting and bring it back together. But it was,
Speaker 1: like I said, like Dion wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: it was like a family cutting this film together, so
Speaker 1: he'd ever wanted us to be at home cold time,
Speaker 1: like cutting docs. It's very hard to cut a dock
Speaker 1: isolate in isolation.
Speaker 4: Having each other as sounding boards has got to be great.
Speaker 4: And then how often does Deon get to see stuff
Speaker 4: and or the producer with Kate and they give notes
Speaker 4: on their stuff.
Speaker 1: It was every four days. Dion wanted this to see
Speaker 1: where we were at. He would come in and I
Speaker 1: call him like the idea. He's like an idea man.
Speaker 1: He's got these ideas, and then it's a hard job
Speaker 1: to take it back and see if we can accomplish
Speaker 1: it what he was asking. So Kate was.
Speaker 5: Working arm in arm with us every day, going through
Speaker 5: footage and grinding out story with us. And then Dion
Speaker 5: was coming in and wanted to keep himself fresh, so
Speaker 5: he he he would watch sections, but he wouldn't watch
Speaker 5: the whole thing, And so he gave us a lot
Speaker 5: of freedom to approach it the way we wanted to
Speaker 5: and the way we found, like to find our path
Speaker 5: through the subject. And then he would come in and
Speaker 5: give us notes on the whole thing, very like I
Speaker 5: don't know, it wasn't that common right to sit down
Speaker 5: and screen the whole thing and give full notes.
Speaker 1: So it was it was really the freedom was really nice.
Speaker 5: And he would come in and give us ideas and
Speaker 5: we worked to execute him and we'd meet each other
Speaker 5: halfway and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: But no, we had a ton of freedom to explore
Speaker 1: it and really figure it out, which I think is
Speaker 1: really what made it possible Honusly. Fortunately, I don't think
Speaker 1: there was a moment where he didn't like what we
Speaker 1: were doing, which is I think he said this south
Speaker 1: by Southwest, which was he just at one time he
Speaker 1: wanted to work with only people that he knew, and
Speaker 1: then he realized through cutting this stock that he wanted
Speaker 1: to work with people who are like minded. I think
Speaker 1: that was like his discovery in this process of cutting
Speaker 1: the stock, and it showed throughout the whole process. He
Speaker 1: would just throw an idea as crazy and wild as
Speaker 1: it could be and see if we could do it.
Speaker 4: How often were you guys at each other's throats and
Speaker 4: just screaming and yelling at each other and just like, no,
Speaker 4: it's got to be this way. No, No, it's going
Speaker 4: to be this way.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever gotten to that where we'rever
Speaker 1: at it like a standstill between what I want and
Speaker 1: what you want? Really right, Yeah, we're like we're.
Speaker 3: Below the line.
Speaker 1: None of our ideas are really going to survive anyway.
Speaker 6: Like we've been doing this long and yeah, we'll disagree
Speaker 6: about things and carry it through the whole thing, and
Speaker 6: it'll be like, I knew we should have done this
Speaker 6: with that instead of the other thing.
Speaker 1: But it's everything.
Speaker 5: Becomes subject to the to the thing itself, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. Our preferences are really neither here nor there.
Speaker 1: And there's only one thing ever fought for in that
Speaker 1: whole project. That was it. It was only one and
Speaker 1: it was ten seconds shot of Isaac running a touch
Speaker 1: like running football into a touchdown. Like, then, did you
Speaker 1: win that fight? I did? It went pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one fight. One thing I wanted to keep
Speaker 1: in this whole doc is just little Isaac running with
Speaker 1: a football and scoring a touchdown. It gets bigger later
Speaker 1: of that same scene. But I don't know why I
Speaker 1: was so passionate about that. That said part I was
Speaker 1: talking about about grounding people in the cathartic human elements.
Speaker 1: I'll fight for those. Honestly. We don't yeah, get at
Speaker 1: each other very much at all. It's not I'm just
Speaker 1: happy to have somebody share the work. And that's the
Speaker 1: other thing I was about to say. The only thing
Speaker 1: we actually do ripe about are always like notes, it's
Speaker 1: never us since the problem.
Speaker 4: You know, it sounds like you guys had a real
Speaker 4: sense of freedom on this project. I'm curious, is that
Speaker 4: fairly typical? Do you often have that amount of leeway?
Speaker 1: No, this is actually the first time I feel like
Speaker 1: we got to cut what we wanted to cut, and
Speaker 1: for the most part we in the film is what
Speaker 1: we actually cut. It was. This is it's very rare
Speaker 1: a lot of times. For one, it wasn't under the
Speaker 1: guise of a network and so it wasn't against some
Speaker 1: type of and the timeline we just had to We
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure it was going to get into
Speaker 1: a festival, so we had a lot of leeway to
Speaker 1: get to cut. I guess you would say, I don't
Speaker 1: remember there ever being any part where we were told
Speaker 1: not to do something because we didn't have the time
Speaker 1: to do it.
Speaker 5: I guess we were free to explore like we had
Speaker 5: to do internal notes, and internal notes are always difficult,
Speaker 5: right to get everybody in the same place as always
Speaker 5: a complicated feat. But like Kevin said, nobody owned this,
Speaker 5: so we didn't have to deal with network notes or
Speaker 5: like really any kind of over like larger entity coming
Speaker 5: down and telling us what this was supposed to be.
Speaker 5: So we just had to get everybody in the building
Speaker 5: on the same page, and that was pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, every wonder came in to see the I think
Speaker 1: it was like the two hour she was happy the
Speaker 1: first time I had never received notes from a company,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody just enjoyed. It's like you get
Speaker 1: a dock like this every decade, like something that's just
Speaker 1: it's you to where you can either a cut it
Speaker 1: like your standard dock, or b take it to a
Speaker 1: different level, and that's what Diana wanted to do, so
Speaker 1: we were all for it.
Speaker 4: Well, I can't see a subject like this being cut
Speaker 4: like a regular dock, just the like I was talking
Speaker 4: about the images and the just the awe that is
Speaker 4: being inspired by his work, but then also by the
Speaker 4: person too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just wish you could have seen here's the thing,
Speaker 1: Like there's a plus. Cutting with the different formats was
Speaker 1: also very helpful. You're seeing it from the police perspective,
Speaker 1: you're seeing it from his at the and concurrently at
Speaker 1: the same time he shoot a drone or a go
Speaker 1: he's got his GoPro cameras and you have the police camera,
Speaker 1: so you're seeing everything happen in real time when he
Speaker 1: is doing what he's doing, and it's like a pretty
Speaker 1: cool feat that we actually were able to accomplish.
Speaker 5: That would Kevin cut a whole sequence that is like
Speaker 5: a chase sequence where you cut between different perspectives all
Speaker 5: time and it's all as tribute to it there archival
Speaker 5: producer who got all this bodycam footage Morgan and security
Speaker 5: cam footage yet Morgan? Yeah no, And so Kevin was
Speaker 5: able to put together this incredible sequence that it feels
Speaker 5: like something out of a narrative film. It's doc work,
Speaker 5: it's it's you don't get futaged to work with very often.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's why this dock was so fun to cut
Speaker 1: was because it was like a nonscripted narrative film, I
Speaker 1: guess you would say.
Speaker 5: And a lot of interesting problems to solve right with
Speaker 5: like really really incredible footage. There were a lot of
Speaker 5: problems with the narrative and with the footage, but overall
Speaker 5: the visual aspect of it and the power of the
Speaker 5: visuals like may make it all doable, right because you
Speaker 5: can lean on that power.
Speaker 1: So easily to bridge whatever you need. Honestly, footage is
Speaker 1: so incredible and the feats are so amazing that it's
Speaker 1: just sort of like whatever failings it has, it's like
Speaker 1: it's easy to move through because you're just you're in it.
Speaker 1: I think, I hope also with Isaac being pretty much
Speaker 1: the only character in the doc for a good forty
Speaker 1: five minutes before you'll hear from his dad maybe once,
Speaker 1: but he's carrying the weight of this whole film. And
Speaker 1: to be able to do that, someone that's not from
Speaker 1: this world able to carry a carry a film like
Speaker 1: this is impressive on its own. And what do we have,
Speaker 1: like two hundred hours of interview footage from him is
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Plus he's also just talking to his
Speaker 1: GoPro sometimes while he's climbing, so you have that going
Speaker 1: up on like these climbs he and cutting like a narrative.
Speaker 1: A story like this kind of gives you the ability
Speaker 1: to like just start fresh. As an editor, I guess
Speaker 1: you would say, like, how do you how do you
Speaker 1: reinvent editing a little bit? We didn't really reinvent it,
Speaker 1: but it's like, how do you reinvent a doc that's
Speaker 1: been in a different way.
Speaker 4: This whole idea of the police footage and the dram
Speaker 4: footage and the copra that just sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: There have been climbing docks before. That's the thing, and
Speaker 1: it's like, how do we what's different about this? It's
Speaker 1: he's he's going up there. It's not just like a
Speaker 1: solo climb or or to climb something. It's more like, I'm,
Speaker 1: I'm the climb. Is is is the journey and the
Speaker 1: and the photo is the destination type of thing.
Speaker 4: Can you tell me about working with your sound designer?
Speaker 1: Marn and I love sound, so we gave him a path,
Speaker 1: like we showed him like, here's a blueprint of what
Speaker 1: we really okay, because we since we had the time,
Speaker 1: we actually soundscaped everything too. They actually, you know what's
Speaker 1: cool is I hadn't seen in the theater until we
Speaker 1: went to south By and to hear that in that
Speaker 1: mix of seven was it five to one or seven
Speaker 1: to one? It sounded amazing. So he more worked, he
Speaker 1: worked closer with Dion and he did with us, but
Speaker 1: he did take our blueprint and just elevated it.
Speaker 5: Working with GoPros so much right for it to feel
Speaker 5: like even in the screenings, for it to feel like
Speaker 5: to have the power that you need it to. It
Speaker 5: was like you you wanted to fill out a lot
Speaker 5: of that audio, so it didn't sound tiny and detached,
Speaker 5: but like you wanted to hear the wind and like.
Speaker 1: The atmosphere of all these places.
Speaker 5: And then it's like you give it to the sound
Speaker 5: and designer and have him continue to build it out
Speaker 5: and separate it a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Both we had a very small small crew. It was
Speaker 1: just mart I, Kate Are and are what was Morgan's role,
Speaker 1: perably and two other and Dion so was very small
Speaker 1: and once we realized, oh, this is going to have
Speaker 1: to get mixed, and he came in and I think
Speaker 1: he sat with us a couple of times, and so
Speaker 1: he just he was He took our notes really well,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the notes were make it louder.
Speaker 1: We wanted to feel like we're in this climb. And
Speaker 1: so the mix alone was just aces on it.
Speaker 4: And then he talked about how you saw it for
Speaker 4: the first time at south By Southwest. Can you tell
Speaker 4: me a little bit about that experience. What was that
Speaker 4: like for you?
Speaker 1: I don't want to see you for it because that's
Speaker 1: not what it was, because we had seen it before,
Speaker 1: but never in this soundscape. I think it was actually
Speaker 1: oddly enough, we had left the projects towards the end,
Speaker 1: so we're still a couple of legal notes. And I
Speaker 1: remember Caitlin, the producer, she was just so concerned about
Speaker 1: what had to be let go and what didn't. She
Speaker 1: was concerned about us for some reason, like what if
Speaker 1: we were going to be upset about what was missing?
Speaker 1: And for me, I was in for the ride the
Speaker 1: whole way through. My wife had come with me and
Speaker 1: she it was like just like an amazing experience to
Speaker 1: watch it with her, because you're like, every day you're
Speaker 1: in the grind, you're looking at the same footage over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. But to have someone else
Speaker 1: to watch it that has no idea of what the
Speaker 1: story is going to be, where it's going to go,
Speaker 1: and to see it through that eyes, that's I think
Speaker 1: that's the experience. I think that was amazing for me
Speaker 1: to experience.
Speaker 5: Do you never really know whether something's good or not
Speaker 5: when you're making it, or at least I don't.
Speaker 1: I never feel like I never have confidence with it,
Speaker 1: and so seeing it as south By well because I
Speaker 1: can never tell if anything's good. Whenever I'm watching stuff
Speaker 1: in my own room or in my bay, I'm always
Speaker 1: moving on the room or like changing the orientation to
Speaker 1: try to trick myself into having a sort of genuine experience,
Speaker 1: and so going to south By and seeing it on
Speaker 1: a big screen with an audience, And also it was
Speaker 1: the first time we'd heard the composed score. Eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the music had been.
Speaker 5: Swapped out, which is always extremely traumatic for me, because yeah,
Speaker 5: you work with music so closely and then it gets
Speaker 5: a little like swapped out, like it's nothing, and you're like.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus Christ. But it was like it was really
Speaker 1: neat because I was able to see it fresh in
Speaker 1: a different kind of way, in a way that like
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen it before. I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this is really good.
Speaker 5: This is this is good, Like people were responding to
Speaker 5: this and I was. I felt I felt a little
Speaker 5: detached from it, which was really nice. Actually, I felt
Speaker 5: it was it was maybe done, which was a good feeling.
Speaker 1: We had a test screading a few months before, and
Speaker 1: it felt like it was a completely different experience watching
Speaker 1: it this time at south By. For some reason, even
Speaker 1: though we had seen it recently. The music, the Tempt
Speaker 1: music was still in when we had the test audience,
Speaker 1: but it was the first time we'd ever seen it
Speaker 1: with an audience, and that's the other thing we had
Speaker 1: it with like industry. The audience was with industry people
Speaker 1: to see if this, if the story was tracking, if
Speaker 1: this that was not pushing the narrative further far farther enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I looked right you sat with me.
Speaker 1: He sat right next to me, and I was like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. There's always going to be something that
Speaker 1: you would want to change, But for the most part,
Speaker 1: the audience doesn't know that they're they're seeing it like
Speaker 1: this is the cut. So I loved it, Dune, And
Speaker 1: I think that's the other thing is when we started
Speaker 1: this project, we knew we had something, and to see
Speaker 1: other people now you know how it is, it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's not ours anymore, it's the world's and Dione,
Speaker 1: even the director had a different experience watching it in
Speaker 1: the theater with everyone too, which was an element during
Speaker 1: the Empire Stig climb. He always questioned one of the
Speaker 1: characters reasons for not doing something and hated that person
Speaker 1: for it, and then he saw it in the theater and
Speaker 1: he's like, now I understand how I love it. Nice.
Speaker 4: Even when the director finds something new about the movie.
Speaker 1: I think he made peace with the character in there finally.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But what are you working on these days?
Speaker 2: All?
Speaker 1: Right, now, I'm on a Hulu project. I can tell
Speaker 1: you much more than that, but it should be hitting
Speaker 1: this year. It's pretty good. It's going too so it's
Speaker 1: another one of those cathartic human stories. I guess you
Speaker 1: would say, Yeah, always fine when you get the drama.
Speaker 1: And Martin, how about yourself working on my house, the
Speaker 1: industries and shambles?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Could you just use AI to edit all this stuff
Speaker 4: going forward?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I know, right, that's the problem. I don't know
Speaker 1: what anybody's fussing about. We could just have one company
Speaker 1: own everything and use it. Yeah. No, I've been redoing
Speaker 1: my bathroom so it's been good. As soon as I'm
Speaker 1: wrapping on this project, all also have time to do
Speaker 1: my bathroom.
Speaker 4: Kevin and Martin, thank you so much for your time today. Guys,
Speaker 4: this was great talking with you. I really appreciate that you.
Speaker 1: Thank you or anything?
Speaker 5: Could d.
Speaker 2: L U s expanis.
Speaker 1: N oh.
Speaker 2: Goo anything? N Christ.
Speaker 1: Can you rest
Speaker 5: N three