Editors William Goldberg and Tim Squyres discuss what it was like working on Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut.
“I don’t think anybody can edit a film to be the best it can be by themselves,” editor Tim Squyres, ACE, told me when I asked him about his first time as co-editor. “You need to push each other and try other things and react to what someone else is doing.” Which was exactly the push and pull process in crafting war drama Unbroken with editor William “Billy” Goldenberg, ACE, in the very next editing room. The second narrative feature directed by Angelina Jolie, Unbroken is based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand and tells the true story of US Olympic track star Louie Zamperini (played by Jack O’Connell), an epic that includes World War II, a plane crash in the Pacific, drifting about on a life raft for 47 days, and spending over two years in Japanese prison camps.
Post for the film started out with Squyres and a couple assistants at the helm, with Goldenberg coming into the process later. Cut on Avid Media Composer 7 at DNxHD115 on an ISIS, the technical part of the editorial process was a non-issue for the editors.
Squyres mentioned that “Everything just worked flawlessly,” with Goldenberg adding “I think I crashed once the entire time I was on the film.” Not bad. And paying as little attention as possible to the technical side of things allowed the editors to focus on their collaboration with Jolie, who bounced between edit rooms giving notes and watching scenes.
This wasn’t Goldenberg’s first time co-editing a film, and he praised the additional set of eyes the process affords him. “You can show an edit to the other editor first, a free pass, another person who is like a director — since most editors can look at something like a director — and you can take all their notes and make the scene better before you actually show the director. It’s one thing to be critical of your own work but when you’re sitting in the other chair, you can see things a lot more clearly.”