A tale of two editors, both having last month earned their first career primetime Emmy nominations but for distinctly different projects–one a feature-length documentary on HBO, the other for a three-minute short on Saturday Night Live (SNL). Also distinguishing one editor from the other is the fact that one is no stranger to the Emmy winners' circle but in a different competition altogether–the News & Documentary Emmy Awards. And that Emmy wasn't for her main art and discipline of editing.
Sloane Klevin, an editor/partner at Union Editorial, won her News & Documentary Emmy back in 2009 for director/writer/producer Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side. While she edited Taxi to the Dark Side–which also won a Best Documentary Oscar–the News and Documentary Emmy was for her role as a producer on the acclaimed film.
For Klevin, now being recognized as an editor with a primetime Emmy nomination is particularly special. She earned this nom in the Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming category on the strength of another Gibney documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House of God (HBO), which exposes the abuse of power in the Catholic Church and a cover-up of clerical molestation of children that winds its way from the row houses of Milwaukee through the choirs of Ireland's churches all the way to the highest office of the Vatican. By investigating the secret crimes of a charismatic priest who abused over 200 deaf children in a school under his control, the film shows the face of evil that lurks behind the smiles and denials of authority figures and institutions who believe that because they stand for good they can do no wrong.
"To be nominated for editing such a powerful film is kind of huge for me," said Klevin. "I have never been nominated as an editor for anything before. I do a lot of stuff where the content is so important and the story is really powerful. Sometimes reviewers have mentioned my name and how well the film is structured or how well the story is told. They recognize that a documentary is written in the edit room and the editor is kind of a co-writer on the film. When I go into a documentary, I'm not thinking about doing flashy editing. The focus is on how to take 300 hours of material and distill it down to tell a story, to make it cohesive, to make it flow and to make it understandable. You take something unscripted, with no outline, and construct a story out of it. I'm thrilled with this Emmy nomination because it's recognizing all that an editor puts into a documentary."
Mea Maxima Culpa presented its own unique set of challenges. Although Klevin is a frequent collaborator with Gibney, one challenge remains constant throughout all the projects they have teamed on. "He's always an investigative journalist," said Klevin of Gibney. "That's what drives him. He uncovers so much information through research and drawing on other journalists. He gets his hands on legal documents and so much information and we need to include as much that's relevant as possible. This starts out as a personal film about a small group of guys in Wisconsin, which leads to an overview of the entire priest pedophile crisis. Alex always has so much information that he would like to include in his work. The trick is how do you structure the film to include as much as you can without overwhelming and exhausting the audience. The information has to come in the right place and at the right time so the audience can digest it. We work on that until the day we lock picture—what's too much information? What's too little? It's a balancing act."
Add to this the fact that five of the film's most important interview subjects are deaf and do not speak. They communicate via sign language. "Figuring out to shoot them was a challenge. Alex and the sign language interpreter were in another room that was away from the camera and soundproofed. Alex thus could hear the answers without the voice of the interpreter being on the soundtrack. We wanted to hear the sounds made by the deaf people while they were signing. We didn't want subtitles. We wanted our audience to watch their hands and performance. They act out with their faces. Cutting the sign language was really tricky. If I'm editing French, I know French and can make cuts that still make sense and retain what is being communicated. Sign language is a whole other thing. I constantly had people checking that our translations were correct."
Klevin noted that Gibney "reached out to famous actors whose voices we liked and asked them if they would lend their voices to these deaf victims. Pretty much everyone we asked immediately said yes." Those actors included John Slattery, Jamey Sheridan, Ethan Hawke and Chris Cooper.
Klevin's work spans features, documentaries and commercials. Amazingly, she didn't edit a documentary until Gibney called upon her to cut the acclaimed Taxi to the Dark Side. (She later cut Gibney's portion of the documentary Freakonomics.) Gibney entrusted Klevin with Taxi to The Dark Side based on the work she did for his company cutting trailers, promos and the opening titles–as well as additional editing on the Mike Figgis-directed portion–for the PBS series The Blues (exec produced by Martin Scorsese).
"Alex met me as a commercials and trailers editor," said Klevin. "He knew I cut features and that I hadn't done a documentary." Still, based on what he saw of her as an editor and the creative rapport they developed, he asked her to cut a documentary but her scheduling and commitments got in the way. Such was the case, she recalled with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Finally the fifth time over the years he asked her to cut a documentary, Klevin said yes, thinking "I can't say no. He'll never ask me again." But it was more than that which prompted her to take on Taxi to the Dark Side. "I got chills when Alex told me the story. I remember thinking that it we don't screw this up, this will win the Oscar [which it did for Best Feature Documentary]."
For Klevin, the learning experience of working with Gibney was profound. "He's making multiple films so he's not around much in the edit room. After long conversations about what he's trying to achieve, parts he would like to include, he disappears for a long stretch to work on his next project. You have a lot of creative freedom. You're thrown into a room with 200 to 300 hours of footage and six months later you have the first assembly of a movie. He comes in and out and when you need his help, you have his notes and he's responsive through the whole process. He has a great sense of humor and is incredibly smart. But the bottom line is that his editors get to spread their wings. It's scary and exciting. Luckily I had done a lot of narrative films and had strong narrative instincts. Because he threw me into that film and sort of left town, I learned how to edit a documentary."
Klevin also continues to cut commercials and branded content via Union Editorial. Her recent ad credits include: Diet Coke's "Stay Extraordinary" (co-edited with Tim Thornton-Allan of Marshall Street) featuring Taylor Swift and directed by Fredrik Bond of MJZ for agency Droga5; a three-spot Trojan Lubricants campaign directed by Peggy Sirota of Prettybird for The Joey Company; Reebok's "One Epic Day" directed by Jonathan Hyde of Boxer Films for mcgarrybowen; and a package of six commercials for Kohler directed by Raymond Bark of GARTNER for Arnold NY.
Adam Epstein
Our other alluded to Emmy nominee is also active in commercials. Adam Epstein is on the roster of Hybrid Edit where his spot cutting credits span such clients as Adobe and Stifel Financial, as well as a short film for Google Glass and its agency Anomaly. Epstein earned his primetime Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Picture Editing/Short Form category for the SNL Lincoln short (NBC) he edited starring episode host Louis C.K.
The piece stars Louis C.K. as President Abraham Lincoln in a send-up of the comedian's FX Network show Louie (which earned six Emmy noms this year, including Louis C.K. scoring as a nominee in the Director, Writer and Lead Actor on a Comedy Series categories).
The SNL parody seems so akin to Louie that the assumption of many was that Louis C.K. directed it. In fact, though, it was directed by Rhys Thomas (handled by Skunk US for commercials) whom Epstein has worked alongside as a film editor for SNL the past four seasons.
Epstein said he found the Emmy nomination gratifying. "This piece was my favorite last year. I look to what Louis does on his show and his auteur style of cutting and being the filmmaker for what he writes as something to admire and look up to. For me to try to emulate that and be recognized for getting that look down with a nomination is a great honor."
Epstein stressed that the majority of the credit for the success of Lincoln should go to director Thomas, producer Justus McLarty and DP Alex Buono. "If the footage didn't look and feel right, then the edit might be right but it wouldn't make a difference," assessed Epstein.
The parody came about on a tight turnaround schedule. "People don't realize the timetable on these SNL pieces," said Epstein. "We normally shoot Friday, the day before it goes on air. We shoot usually late Friday night into Saturday morning. It's a 24-hour film festival type of production but we can't have it look that way. What made this more difficult is that this was done during the Hurricane Sandy aftermath. All the opening scenes of Louis C.K. downtown and mirroring the opening of his show were done in complete Manhattan darkness. There was no power anywhere downtown. We'd have a generator turn on for a minute, run in, run out, grab a shot. We could not get to the subway exit Louis normally comes from in his show. So from a staging perspective, we found a subway uptown that looks similar."
Epstein recalled that Louis C.K. was a bit disappointed that the West 4th Street sign by the subway wouldn't be appearing in the Lincoln piece. But Thomas and Epstein were able to add that touch, compositing the sign into the final short.
During the SNL afterparty, Louis C.K. told Thomas how pleased he was with how the final short turned out. Thomas told Epstein that Louis said words along the lines of, "You guys did a great job but everyone's going to think that I did it."
Epstein affirmed, "That's the best compliment he could have paid us—that we were that successful in finding that [Louie] vibe."
This is the fourth installment in a 12-part series that will explore the field of Emmy nominees and winners spanning such disciplines as directing, cinematography, editing, animation and VFX. The series will run right through the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony and the following week's primetime Emmy Awards live telecast. In addition to appearing on SHOOTonline and in our weekly email newsletter, The SHOOT >e.dition, The Road To Emmy will also have its Part 6 installment in SHOOT's August 16 print issue.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 1.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 2.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 3.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 5.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 6.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 7.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 8.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 9.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 10.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 11.
Click here to read The Road To Emmy, Part 12.
