Author: Christine Margaret Dodge
When audiences first meet con man Tom Ripley in the new limited series of the same name, he’s dragging a body down a long flight of stairs in the dark: “Ding-dong, ding-dong, Ding dong”. This sinister moment draws us in—and somehow seems to make us complicit in the crime.
But that’s not the case with the script. This moment is an example of how writer-director Steven Zaillian (who won an Academy Award for his screenplay for “Schindler’s List”) opened himself up to reworking his own material in post-production. “This pop-up, which we discovered in post, served as a north star to signal to the audience the direction we were going while buying us some time to set up at the slower pace dictated by the photography and direction,” Pictures says editor Joshua Lee.
“From the beginning, we were on borrowed time.”
The series is adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s best-selling novel “Tom Ripley” and is set in the winter of 1960. The story follows Ripley (played by Andrew Scott) who is hired by a wealthy man to set off from New York. Ripley’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complicated life of deceit, fraud, and murder. F
Senior picture editor David O. Rogers worked with Zaillian as first assistant editor on the critically acclaimed 2016 HBO miniseries The Night Of. Make changes as you go, but do so fearlessly.
For example, the first episode had major script changes to get viewers to the infamous boat scene (in episode three) more quickly, Lee said, adding, “There was a lot of compression of the narrative action taking place in New York. Steve realized from the beginning that we were on borrowed time, the way the New York scenes were originally scripted and the way the timeouts in the early cuts were done…some of the scenes with Ripley leaving town ended up being basically condensed. into a two-minute montage.
Two years in office
Netflix’s “favor” gave Zaillian the editing time he needed—nearly two years in total—which the post-production team believed would make the show stronger. “You don’t usually spend that much time on TV dramas,” Lee added. “The approach to the series has always been more like a feature film approach, both in terms of timing and scale. The fact that it’s a writer-director, an auteur director, means we’ve always viewed it as a big feature film .
Likewise, for Zaillian, the extended airtime allowed for a more visual exploration of Ripley’s motivations, both through Highsmith’s description of the immediate events and what she detailed in the novel. Another important element in capturing the quality of film noir source material is shooting in black and white. Zaillian and his photographer Robert Elswit spent more than 150 days shooting across Italy, from Sicily to Venice, in city streets, squares, houses, buildings and churches, for the story The development offers a vast landscape.
While providing viewers with a more abstract viewing experience, the neutral color palette initially posed a challenge for Avid’s post-production team. “I think Steve said at some point that he didn’t even want to accidentally see color media,” Rogers said. “For ad-hoc green screen compositing, our initial process was to switch to color media for the sequence, pull a key, create an alpha channel, and then bring that alpha channel media back into the black and white project, but that would take a long time. So we switched to using only color media for the entire edit, and monitoring only in black and white. It saved us a lot of time and headaches.
Another challenging but ultimately rewarding experience for Rogers was editing a specific scene in Episode 4, in which Ripley is packing up brushes and tools in Dickey’s art studio.
“Although Maggie [played by Dakota Fanning] There was dialogue going on with Tom, there was a lot of blocking and prop movement, and it was shot from the perspective of Tom doing all these things with the A and B cameras,” he explains. “So the B camera usually follows Tom as an interlude, so we have a lot of different shots showing him throwing boxes and stuff into the suitcase and then moving and turning. The scene is kind of like a dance, trying to get everything just right with the lines. So. Steve had me try one out, all on Tom, without editing Maggie, just to do the blocking, try inserts and stuff, and then start weaving Maggie’s ingredients into it which ended up being a fun piece to piece together. ‘s puzzles, I felt like I was really happy with the flow of the scene, the objects, and how things worked.
For Lee, the final montage – which was not scripted at all – proved to be the most satisfying cut.
“The original ending of the script couldn’t be shot because basically the camera had to be underwater at the bottom of the Venice canals, which was just not feasible,” he said. “We tried animation to see if we could do it with CG, but it didn’t feel quite right. The idea for this montage came from Tom’s focus on a painting and a vision he might have. It was one of the images he saw. There’s a subtle dance between them, so it’s not just a retrospective of the series. We’d like to see more of the revisionist narrative of a great artist like Caravaggio or Picasso in Tom’s mind – by looking at this painting. to reflect on their own work. The final product packs an emotional punch and is the result of ideas and collaboration from the entire photo editing team, from Rogers and Lee, to first assistant editor Lillian Patchett (who contributed to three episodes). additional editors), to Assistant Editors Devon Halliday and Michael Crochito-Kenny.
It also symbolizes the dark and light nature of the work that Zaillian is known for.
“It’s a very strong team dynamic,” Lee said. “We always joke that Steve is the unofficial third editor of the show because he started his career as an editor and he always says that’s the most comfortable and fun part of the process.”
As for capturing the sounds of Italy and adding dimension to the story, Rogers said each episode had its own eerie soundscape under the end credits that teased the next episode, thanks to the talent of the Foley and Sound teams. “We know that when we create these things — doors closing, footsteps, creaks — few people will hear them, but they are there,” he said. “And then there’s something in episode eight as well, so we’ll leave it to whoever wants to hear the end of episode eight to decide what they think.”
“It’s a really strong team dynamic.”
The show’s musical choices (led by musical director Kier Lehman) were also an important way for the editors to build energy around the freewheeling, fun Italian culture of the 1960s, setting the stage for the darker moments that would follow. For example, songs by Italian singers Mina and Tony Rennis were specially written, while others were added to the final mix through experimentation, with a focus on authenticity.
So does the ominous score composed by Jeff Russell, Lee said. “He found his own way of interpreting classical sounds, but I think the energy of Bernard Herrmann’s score – a Hitchcockian score for a suspense thriller – is in the bones of his creation,” he added .
After a long road leading up to the show’s premiere this spring, Rogers said the response from fans and critics has been truly special.
“There was a sense of relief because after all the work and all the fascinating details, we were like, ‘OK, this is awesome.'” But we were so close to it that we were able to really push it. It’s gratifying to go out into the world and see people react to what we’ve worked so hard to do,” he said.
Zaillian’s meticulous attention to every frame is what impressed the team most about the project and will continue to carry it into the future: “All those things, like the source music, the score, the sound design, the look of things – every detail – we will Take that discipline and focus into your next job.
