Understand Your Film’s Characters
by Jeff Turboff
I recently edited a feature-length film entitled, The Pack, directed by Alyssa Rallo Bennett, and starring Lucie Arnaz and Ryan Homchick, about a young man testifying against his own mother in a trial in which she is accused of killing her husband (his father) with her second-hand cigarette smoke.
The movie contains several flashback sequences of family life during the times prior to the father and husband’s illness with lung cancer, meant to reveal the family dynamic and the character of the main characters in order to give insight into the dynamic at play in the trial.
One of the flashback scenes has Eleanor Jordan (Lucie Arnaz) in a glass-encased atrium with her husband Jack Jordan (Scott Bryce). Eleanor is smoking and the entire sunroom is filled with her cigarette smoke. Also filling the room is loud rock music streaming in from young Jack Jr.’s (Ryan Homchick’s) stereo system.
Eleanor yells at Jack Jr., asking him to turn down the music and tells him he’s “infecting the whole goddamned neighborhood with that crap”.
Poetic, yes, but for me, the script never really resolved the scene. It was just a glimpse into a difficult dynamic between mother and son. An impasse that had perhaps lasted for years. It was functional, and did actually speak to the insensitivity of these two characters towards the effect their selfish actions had on those around them. Eleanor with her cigarette smoke infecting the sunroom where her husband was there with her, and Jack Jr. with his music bothering both of his parents.
But the scene kept leaving me cold, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I tried different types of music in the scene, and eventually found that the louder and more raucous the music, the better it spoke to Jack Jr.’s anger at his mother. I think the music I ended up with as a temp track for the composer to try to mimic was Motorhead, or early Uriah Heep or Wishbone Ash, something very loud. It had to be. Remember, this later becomes a young man who is trying to jail his mother for killing his father with her cigarettes. But somehow the scene never seemed to say anything more about these characters until I began to remember my own years of teen rebellion.
I began to think, “What would I have done, or wanted to do, when my own mother had yelled at me to turn my music down?” And, what if I were to exaggerate that to the utmost? What I decided I would have wanted to do is to turn the music up!
So, I had young Jack Jr. turn his music up as an act of defiance against his own mother whom he later grew to hate so much that he would testify against her in a court of law.
This opened up a lot of what the dynamic truly was between the two of them, that up until that point in the film had only been hinted at or appeared between the lines.
But this one subtle act of defiance between mother and son, clearly in their history, if not in their written history, spelled out for the audience in an overt way what they may have felt was there sub-surface at least.
It brought to the forefront a bit of tension between them that was meant to be evident to the audience but may not have been. This moment in the film announces an opening salvo of the war that eventually opens up between the two.
Without having Jack Jr. turn the music up, the scene would have played somewhat poetically, with the analogy being functionally drawn between playing one’s music too loud and smoking in the presence of others, but if Jack had turned his music down in compliance with his mother’s wishes, it actually would have worked against his character and what we learn about him later.
If he had ignored his mother’s request it would have been more in line with his character, but was still not quite far enough. Remember, this is a young man who so resents his mother he is willing to prosecute her for his father’s death by lung cancer, ostensibly due to her cigarette smoke.
No, this called for an angry young man, rebellious to the nth degree, spoiled perhaps, defiant definitely, but also a young man who for whatever reason wanted to punish his mother. First, with his music, and later, with his testimony in court.
And the only correct answer for the end of this scene was to have him turn his music up. It wasn’t in the script for him to do so, but it was clearly evident from knowing his character and the dynamic between him and his mother.
I made that choice in my own time on my own edit system with a flash of insight and a flick of the wrist; and it stayed until the final cut and remains in the final version of the film.
The point is this: as an editor, you can’t just follow the script. You must understand who your characters are, and know what it is they would do in a particular situation.
Your director knows. He or she may have forgotten to write a particular response or mannerism for a particular scene, but most likely, it’s there, somewhere in the footage.
Many times, the actor will give it to you. Sometimes it’s there in the script between the lines. Sometimes it’s a matter of shuffling the order of scenes to punch up a certain aspect of character, or making a cut to eliminate something that’s out of character.
But it’s your job as an editor to make absolutely sure everything that goes into the piece works for the piece. If it doesn’t, then it’s working against the piece.
A film is written three times. Once as a screenplay. Once in production. And once in editing.
As an editor you have tremendous power to reshape the first two “writings” of the film you’re working on. And your say, along with the way you can negotiate it with your director, is the final say.
So make sure you squeeze every bit of your director’s, and their actors’, intentions out of the film you are cutting. This means understanding who the characters are in the film you are working on, and what they would do in a given situation, and finding a way to put that on the screen as the final statement of your director’s intention.
Jeff is a freelance editor, with credits on many major networks and experience in subjects including war, sports, fashion, true crime, food, nature, medicine, music, and reality. Jeff is also active in narrative fiction, having edited the indie comedy short “Get the Script to Woody Allen,” the courtroom drama, feature-length film, “The Pack,” starring Lucie Arnaz, and has directed, shot and edited about twenty short films. Jeff is also a burgeoning screenwriter with several scripts in the pipeline.
