Q&A with editor Thomas R. Moore (Part 1)
I’m always pleased to hear from professionals who work in the movie and TV business who follow GITS. Recently I exchanged some emails with Thomas R. Moore, who is a producer, editor, and director. Tom received two Emmy nominations for single camera editing, winning for the hour drama, “Northern Exposure.” His TV series credits also include editing “Scoundrels” (3 episodes, 2010), “Monk” (7 episodes, 2009), “Life” (11 episodes, 2007–2009), “Bones” (13 episodes, 2005–2007), “Ally McBeal” (14 episodes, 1997–1999) — Emmy nomination for “Cro-Magnon,” and “Northern Exposure” (37 episodes, 1990–1995). Tom also was a producer on the TV series “Judging Amy” (115 episodes, 2000–2005) and directed episodes of “Northern Exposure” and “Judging Amy”. Tom earned an M.F.A. in Motion Picture/Television from U.C.L.A. and teaches a weekend course in Editing Aesthetics with editor Mike Sale at Video Symphony in Burbank.
As longtime GITS followers know, I’m fascinated by editing as evidenced by posts here, here, and here. Moreover one thing I try do is have conversations with industry professionals across the spectrum — from managers to marketing execs to script readers and so on — to give GITS readers a more complete understanding of how Hollywood works. Therefore I was quite pleased when Tom agreed to take time from his busy schedule to do a Q&A with me. Here is Part 1 of the interview:
You’ve edited comedy TV series (“Arli$”), dramadies (“Northern Exposure,” “Ally McBeal”) and procedural dramas (“Bones”). What are some of the key differences in how you approach editing from one genre to the next?
Unlike writing, where the artist is faced with a blank page, editing has the jump-start advantage of raw footage to begin the process. The dailies usually “speak to you” as to how to shape the material. Every edit is asking: Have you chosen the right frame size? Are you maintaining tension (by cutting tight enough to the line of dialogue). Have you included enough of the actor’s behavior (the non-verbal actions of the actor) before they speak? That said, editing dramadies is about maximizing the emotional moments that move an audience while simultaneously playing the comedy as “real” and naturally as possible. Procedurals are about clarity of information and building tension. Comedies are about constantly trying to find the behavioral “gems” that put a smile on the audience’s face. Generalizing, the editing pace on comedies (and procedurals) tends to be quicker than dramas. Comedy is usually more effective when the story-telling stays ahead of the audience, so the upcoming joke isn’t telegraphed. Drama is hopefully compelling without highly paced editing, and relies on the writing and the talent of the actors.
I find the writing in procedurals to be slightly different in the sense of clarity. Often it is necessary to convey where the characters “are going next,” then show them “at the location,” and then finally have the characters talk about “where they’ve been.” I believe audiences absorb emotional information much more readily (and for longer) than the exposition/facts that dominate a procedural or plot-oriented feature film. As an example, I’ll cite “Midnight Run,” starring from Robert DeNiro from 1988. Over two decades later, I can only remember two things from that movie: Helicopters chasing Robert DeNiro (not even a plot point) and the scene where DeNiro goes to visit his ex-wife and daughter. The only plot point that I recall (and still resonates for me) is DeNiro’s daughter offering her babysitting money to help him survive; clearly an emotional beat.
Even in a sophisticated procedural film, (for example, “LA Confidential,” “Seven,” or The Usual Suspects,”) the characters talk about the next clue, go find the clue, and then they talk about why that clue is important. In a character driven film, there are references to emotional events elsewhere in the story, but not near the repetition of a procedural. Soap operas could be considered an exception to this, but are perhaps more melodramatic because of their repetition.
There are all sorts of comedy, of course, but in our emails back and forth, you noted the importance of comedy being “based in reality.” What do you mean by that and why is that awareness important for a screenwriter or TV writer?
In a comedy scene, the actor can’t believe what he is doing is funny. As soon as there is a “wink” or a nudge” to the performance, the audience isn’t as concerned about that character and his plight. If the actor “indicates” the comedy, the stakes are reduced and the reason we care about that character and the movie/episode is diminished.
Once again, the success of a comedic scene goes back to the actor’s motivation and commitment to that objective. In fact, the intensity that an actor pursues his objective can be quite big in a comedy. For example, in the television series “Seinfeld,” when the character Kramer enters a room, it is with great ebullience and force. This is a very broad example of the actor “spicing” up the situation with an intense pursuit of a simple objective (entering a room). No one really throws a door open and slides across the floor. However, the reason these entrances work in “Seinfeld,” is that usually the other characters are behaving “normally” and discussing a real, (albeit often simple) problem. It is only because the conversation is “based in reality,” that we accept the broadness of the entrance.
In the movie “Sideways,” the Miles character, played by Paul Giamatti, upset that his book won’t be published, gulps down a giant spittoon of “guzzled” wine. He doesn’t wink at Jack (Thomas Haden Church) before he upturns the container; he simply overturns the container with such ferocity above his head that it surprises the audience in a humorous way. This sort of behavior is also a form of “heightened reality,” which can be quite successful in comedy. If Miles’ situation, the fact that his novel won’t be published, and he may spend the rest of his career teaching 8th grade English, wasn’t played “straight” and “based in reality,” the act of the overturned spittoon might seem very broad and tonally jarring. Because of Giamatti’s “centered” performance, we believe his distress and accept the resulting behavior as being real. This would be an example of a character who has a believable life problem, that is “based in reality,” so that when Miles exhibits an extreme behavior, the audience accepts it as real.
The audience will believe the strangest situation (the willing suspension of disbelief) if the filmmakers create a world, that is for the most part, very similar to our own. Then the introduction of a fantastic plot device or unusual behavior into this world will be accepted as believable. One reason the original Star Wars works successfully is that before Luke goes out on his quest, we observe him as a bored young man in domestic situations with his aunt and uncle. Once again, the hero comes from a very similar situation as our own, and we accept the fantastic things that Luke experiences later in the film.
This idea extends beyond the protagonist to the antagonist. A colleague of mine, Mike Sale, who has worked on a number of the Judd Apatow produced films has a saying: “stupid bad guy, stupid movie.” If the bad guy a comedy doesn’t feel “real” and grounded in reality, the audience will not believe the world created by the writer/film-makers and the stakes are diminished for the hero. The antagonist can perform funny, or have say “super-powers” but there must be a sense that the character could really exist.
You had a long stint as a Producer on “Judging Amy” (115 episodes). Could you describe what your job was on that show and what you learned about story-telling as a result of your work there?
After the director turned over their cut, (and collaborating with the show-runners), I would “polish” the cuts, sometimes restructuring, find solutions to performance or story problems, cut the shows “to time,” and integrate notes from the studio and network.
In the course of a full television season there are 22 episodes. Generalizing, during the course of a television season, there are usually 7 or 8 episodes that “work” on first viewing and simply need 3 to 5 minutes removed. Then, there are usually 7 or 8 episodes that are problematic. Either there is a plot line that is not working, a guest performance that is not up to ensemble cast, or the episode is 8 to 15 minutes long and the “build” of drama is murky. And even on the best episodic television shows, there are always two to five episodes in a season that are so-called “disasters” that have multiple problems that need extensive work.
On most shows, the “show-runner” or the staff “producing director” is responsible for solving these problems. Hiring an experienced supervising editor as a Post Producer can free up the show runner for the most important job in television: supervising the writing staff and doing necessary rewrites.
The difficulty is finding the 10 minutes to remove from an episode that doesn’t hurt the integrity of the episode. Character-driven television shows are often more malleable, in the sense the “A,” “B,” and “C” stories are often independent of one another and can be moved fairly easily. Crime procedurals are more difficult to restructure (in two years on “Bones” I can’t recall moving scene order, only where an act would end) because the clues to the crime are usually sequential, which makes restructuring impossible. On the character driven shows, some show-runners will move up the better scenes to the first half of the episode, hoping to “front load” the quality scenes, and hopefully entice the audience to become emotionally invested in the story. As long as the ending is strong enough (perhaps buying a song that gives a emotional/thematic summation to the episode), the audience will usually forgive a weak second half to the episode and hopefully return to watch your series.
Obviously you’ve read a ton of scripts in your career. Could you explain why it’s important for a writer to give characters strong objectives and how that is helpful to actors, directors, and editors?
First of all, I feel one of the most important aspects to writing is creating sympathy for the hero or primary characters. I call it the “why we care” factor. This may seem obvious, but I’m certain it is the primary reason spec scripts and television pilots fail to sell. I provide a service to help low budget filmmakers come up with a visual plan for the editing room, so I also read a lot of spec scripts. The number one problem I encounter is: NOT CARING about the protagonist’s plight. Even in the Neil LaBute film, “In The Company of Men” we oddly “care” about the fate of the two misogynist businessmen, even thought their behavior is reprehensible. Filmmakers don’t have to “like” the protagonist, but we do need to care about their journey in order to keep the audience’s attention.
In television, there is usually what the networks call the “franchise;” the ongoing problem the writers are going to depend on for 22 episodes a season to “make us care.” It can be: figuring out how someone was murdered (cop procedurals, CSI, etc.), trying to solve a medical problem (medical procedurals, “House”) or trying to determine guilt or innocence (courtroom dramas, “The Good Wife,” etc.). I think it is more difficult (but often more satisfying) to make us care for 22 episodes on a character driven television series, when the writers don’t have the built in conflict of the particular genre. That said, there is usually some ongoing profession by the lead character (for example: “Hung” a sports coach, or “The Soprano’s” a mafia boss) OR a familial situation with characters of conflicting objectives (“Modern Family” or Everyone Love Raymond”) that the writing staff can depend on to provide conflict.
I am a big fan of the theory of “undeserved misfortune” school of making an audience care. For example, in “Lost “ there is the huge misfortune on crashing on a remote island. Even if I am editing a project that is unfortunately handicapped with weak dialogue, if the writer begins the script with the protagonist at a huge disadvantage, his objective to solve the problem are more readily apparent and the stakes are higher. I recently rented the feature film, “Nine” with Daniel Day-Lewis. For me, this a great example of not caring about our protagonist. He’s a successful film director, has nine of the most beautiful women in the world lusting after him, drives a cool sport’s car, and yet we are suppose to care if his next film is a success?!
The next component I look for in scripts are strong conflict (at least implied sub-textural conflict) in EVERY scene. If the narrative is to have a chance of having conflict or tension, it obviously begins in the writing. Does the hero have a well-defined (but perhaps not known to the audience) super-objective that he must accomplish? Then hopefully there is also an (sub) objective and corresponding obstacles in each scene, which can be provided by the conflicting desires of other characters.
I believe reader’s of fiction (including film/TV scripts) will forgive (or not even notice) passages that don’t “move the story forward” on the written page. Our imagination and personal experiences’ fill in sections in the written word that may not have sufficient tension. However, usually these similar sections in screenplays, where characters don’t have strong objectives and the dialogue/situations are not progressing the narrative, are almost always excised during the editing process. It’s quite remarkable in episodic tv that dozen’s of people (myself included!) read a script and don’t see certain scenes or sections of the script that lack tension and go unnoticed as being problematic.
The most interesting writing is structured so these objectives aren’t always obvious, but fuel the imagination of the actor, director and other filmmakers. An example I recall from an Ally McBeal episode is a date between Ally (Calista Flockhart) and John Cage (Peter McNichol). Ally’s objective in the scene is to “deflect” the advances of Cage (she is uninterested in her boss) who has romantic feelings for his colleague. The writer (David Kelley) gives Ally dialogue in which she babbles incessantly about her make-up (colors of lipstick, “stiffness of make-up brush,” etc.) Not only does this create comedy by Ally’s inappropriate, inexplicable obsession with make-up, it makes her objective of “boring” John Cage easier and sub-textural. This type of writing fuels the creative work of the filmmakers. The actor (Cage) has a more complex, unspoken obstacle to overcome. The director now has a character (Ally) with a dynamic, almost manic, objective. And the editor has a scene with two actors with divergent, conflicting objectives, that has terrific “drive,” so everything flows dynamically, even inspiring the editor with motivated and humorous cutaways.
Tom offers some terrific insights into the story-crafting process and specifically screenwriting. Let me just highlight one:
The audience will believe the strangest situation (the willing suspension of disbelief) if the filmmakers create a world, that is for the most part, very similar to our own. Then the introduction of a fantastic plot device or unusual behavior into this world will be accepted as believable. One reason the original Star Wars works successfully is that before Luke goes out on his quest, we observe him as a bored young man in domestic situations with his aunt and uncle. Once again, the hero comes from a very similar situation as our own, and we accept the fantastic things that Luke experiences later in the film.
In the past, I’ve talked about the importance of establishing reader identification with the Protagonist character in a script. It is critical, not only in helping to pull a reader into the story, but also, as Tom illustrates so well with the example of Luke Skywalker, provide a point of emotional connection. By ‘normalizing’ the Protagonist — to the degree that a reader can relate to them — you can, as Tom points out, stretch the boundaries of your plot to include “fantastic things” that a reader otherwise might not be willing to imagine.
The opposite is also true, witness Tom’s later comment about the number one problem with most of the spec scripts he reads: The reader has no reason to care for the Protagonist.
What insights did you come away with from Tom’s responses?
Tomorrow: Part 2 of the Q&A with Thomas R. Moore.
Comment Archive