Yeah, I went to the Oscars. It's super weird. But at the same time I was also not prepared because I got a lot of texts from people afterwards who said like, wow, it must have been amazing, especially with the must like. So I feel bad to say that like, it was a bit an anti climax. Let's say I never in my life felt more as a nobody than I felt there. Especially if you're like the editor of a documentary you're really like, who the fuck are you? We are.
I'm Nosovchenko. And Pierre Paulo Filomeno and this is Editors Anonymous. A podcast about film editing made by film editors. Like in a group therapy session, we chat with fellow editors about how they approach a scene, how they tune into a director's vision, whether they ever feel afraid when starting a new project, and the tricks they've picked up along the way. In short, we try to figure out how to live and survive in a job that's so subjective and and
almost mysterious. Editors Anonymous started in 2021 as an Italian podcast, but now offers episodes in either Italian or English. Check the title for the language. Today we are joined by Rick Choubert, editor of the Oscar nominated documentary Soundtrack to A Cup Data. Rick, so you're both an editor
and a director now. You directed short movies and music videos and soundtrack to a coup d'etat was your first feature length film as an editor and directly you went to the Oscars, which is great, but what is also very interesting is that you started with an internship with Johann Grimonpre. Yeah, sure. So indeed, like my director practice and my editor practice are very intertwined. As I see the movies that I direct, there's also a very big
focus on editing. And it's like I see this like the the place where I create my films, where I write the films or something. And in Belgium, looking at other directors discovering their films, I just, I bumped onto this director who has a similar approach, namely Joanne Hiri Montre, who also more it's with every documentary, but maybe more than other documentaries, really writes his films in the editing room. It's where they they get created
or something. So from this perspective of a director, I started doing an internship with the director, Joao Girimontre. It was in my master's, I think. And when this ended, it was just an internship like doing Yeah, you know, the shitty jobs coffee presents. What's coffee? Johan makes the tea always. So he's always running around tea for me. And at the end of the my internship, I graduated, I
needed a job. And that it was just around the time that Johan was in a very early stage together with producer Dan millions of like starting the movie that would become soundtrack to Kurita. Johan he he used to work in Final Cut Pro, but the decision was made to to make this film in Adobe Premiere and me as a cheap right out of school intern was put on board to learn Johan how to work with Adobe Premiere.
And so we worked together for 10 days to really which very early sketches of an idea of a scene for that would make it into the movie just from the idea of me showing Johan how Adobe Premiere works. But it clicked immediately and it was of course, I think because of me as a director Felden connection with the way Johan works. And so in these ten days, we, we constructed a whole scene that is like, I think almost barely changed how it is now in the
film. It's like when Nikita Khrushchev lands in America in 1959. And so that was the first scene that we created together. And so I stayed on boards since then, actually. So indeed, as a, as a starting editor with my first film getting to the Oscars, I skipped some a lot of exciting on the one hand. On the other hand, I must say, like I, it was, I worked like three to four years on this film. So it was not just I, I worked on a film and I was there
immediately. I, I had a huge growth process while editing this film. The scale, it was like every day on a high level sort of training. I sometimes compared to fitness that I was like really every day lifting a lot of weights, but a typical parkour maybe.
Yeah, we. Will talk about the writing of soundtrack in a moment, but first, what immediately struck me about soundtrack was the depth of its layers and teams like jazz, politics, literature and all are woven together through other three constantly interlaced media archives. Music, of course, and on screen text. So how did you manage balancing all these layers, both in organizing your workflow and in shaping how the audience experience them on screen all at the same time sometime?
Yeah, yeah. The making of this film took a very long time and it's existed out of different steps. And I think every step is important to understand why the movie is as it is. Let's say the first step is the archiving of all the footage is already a form of writing the story, let's say. The folder structure is a way of writing, let's say. And especially with this movie, before editing there, the folder structure was already split into three parts. They were like history, music
and poetry. And so in this distinction, to split it in these three folders is already the movie present in a way or something. And then out of these folders came like thousands of other subfolders. And so the, the archiving as a form of writing the story already is maybe very important. And then maybe this movie is it's like an Organism. It's in the beginning, it wasn't sure what it will be or something.
So it grew very slowly. And while editing, we had like breaks in which you started doing more research and reading more books. And while playing with certain scenes, we went on YouTube to look for like, oh, it would be great if we found someone say a quote about this. And then we went in a rabbit hole on YouTube and we bumped into a quote by Malcolm X and wow, is such an interesting character. Let's look more up on Malcolm X.
And voila. And then we do more research on Malcolm X and suddenly Malcolm X is one of the narrators of the film or something. So it's not as in like classical Hollywood's movies, like the movie's not a supply chain where the first step stops and then we go to the next step. And it was like really super chaotic. Everything Everywhere, all at once, the one defining the
other. This way of working, I think was in this intensity, mostly possible also because of the presence of YouTube, let's say, and certain software where you can just RIP a file from YouTube and the speed with which you can do all this. So I had this workflow in the beginning where we were editing and at the same time suddenly decided like, oh, it would be great if we found a shot of an
elephant. And then we went on YouTube on the second screen, went into a rabbit, told to find a shot of an elephant, suddenly discovered a completely different shots. And then I could just instantly RIP this video, put it in Media Encoder instantly on the timeline and start editing with this. And this was like after a while, speedy dance workflow that was that took me a few minutes.
And so it was like constructing these methods where you have like everything that's on the Internet at your disposal and that you can surf on it, that it's not paralyzing because it's so much, but that I could really dive into these rabbit holes, follow a hyperlink logic where you start somewhere and end somewhere else. And, and, and I really think this workflow started to fuse with the the form of the film itself. Like the movie itself feels like the workflow that I'm now explaining.
It feels like this hyperlink logic. About How did you manage to balance all these teams and media at the same time? I think my philosophy around structure, let's say, is like that. It is a tool to manage chaos or something like I think you can sometimes lose yourself as an editor in getting structure to stay structured or something, something. And for me, this chaos, it was not needed to be paralyzed by, but really try to surf on the speeds and capture it or
something. So for me, there are, I think 5 or more, let's say. So you have the archival footage, you have the music for me, you have the the texts and then also the voices like the the narrating, like the the speech. Yeah. And then also Foley, let's say, or something.
Not see one of these elements is like more important than another element, but really see them as like defining each other and reacting on each other as like a rhizomatic structure where everything defines the other or something. And so I also did all these things at once and while editing they defined each other. Let's say the music is a lot of the time very sampled. Let's say like in drum riffs, I sometimes loop a certain or something and then I put it back
a few times. And then at the same time we are defining the, the, the voice over what is being set. We, we play with the, the spacing of the, the timbre of the voice in relation to the music. But at the same time, the contents of what is being set changes. So of course throughout the years scenes change and it's always, how do you say butterfly effects or a ripple effect when you make one adjustments. So really if you change 1 words, the, the construction with the
music changes. So it means like you need to cut a drum out again or something. And the quotes are also really put on the rhythm of the music. And so these five elements are constantly changing. It's very interesting what you say, 'cause I was particularly curious when I watched the film, because I can imagine you can work and improvise with the image and the sound. But I was very curious exactly how did you work with the text? Because it has very solid and
special presence in the film. It has its character, right? Was it also in the game from the beginning? Did it jump in later? Was there like a pool of quotes, words, historical facts that you started to work with? So how did you work with text? Yes. So let's say what's Johan really did on this film and what I what's really impressive is the research he did.
He, let's say, read every book about the subject matter that I've done, had conversations with all the experts and like next to the editing table there was like this huge library with hundreds of books full of post its and like really crazy professor style and the the scripts of the film was just a collection of quotes already. It's like this, you know, the book by Walter Benjamin. Passage of Paris, yeah. Yeah, So it was almost like this the scripts.
So this was the starting point of the movie, let's say like this combination of all these quotes, like this funny, weird anecdotes about maybe it's important to say their layouts was done by Hans Litani, who did an amazing job to indeed, like find this relation with the the signature blue notes jazz label style. But for me as the editor, while working, it was like for all those years, like Ariel on black, not fancy. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and did you have to change the pacing of the writings after the final layouts or they were pretty much the same? Before the edit was locked, it was already that we were playing with Hans was already playing with the layout and finding the form. And so we already had some certain amount of quotes changed in the film. And again, but then it was like heavy because like we kept
changing the pacing and stuff. And so then I had like this alpha layer progress files in which I would crop started to, we kept changing the quotes or something. And then I needed this movie's like a form of action painting, which is also possible because of the speed of the process. Then combined with the other side, it's like really, it's a monk's work. It's like really nitpicking on every frame and really being like neurotic that everything is
at its place. And so it's this contrast between structure, chaos, action, painting, monks work. It reminds me, you know, you already said the word chaos couple of times and it reminds me, I don't know if you read the book from Newspack Anderson Ordering Chaos, no. So editing is put in ordering chaos, and that's apparently what you did. Yeah, I read a book. It's really inspired me. I think that is the the the most interesting book about film editing.
I would say way better than Walter March's. Blink Organized, yes. Walter marches for the masses. Yeah, exactly. Walter Marches for now. What I wanted to ask you is that, yeah, first I have to state that I'm a huge fan of Joanne Grimonpre, so since his first movie. So I want to ask you if you if you can, if you can describe your collaboration with him in the sense that, OK, you already told us that you don't have, you
didn't have any script. So, and I think that from what you say, it's basically his way of working, you know, his way of notating script, just know taking ideas from the images, from the sound, from the words. But I also would like to know, being this your first experience as a editor in a feature length film, no. So how was your collaboration with him also in that sense? Maybe I can link it to something Neil Spack Anderson said in his book and which I really love
this. Like what's what's for me, what's so inspiring is like every movie you need to start from scratch again as an editor or something and really see it as your first movie that you're editing and try to look for a new way of making it or something. And in that case, how I see myself as a first time editor, I, I try always to approach it. It's, it's an advantage. I, I think when I started the movie, I was 27.
And what's made me very important is that I didn't really had the feeling of hierarchy of like, oh, this is this genius filmmaker that everything he says is like true and he knows better and I'm just a dumb naive little starter or something. Joan had his ways of working. He had his experience with other movies. He had invented his own language, his signature style that you can see also in soundtrack that's links very clearly to his other films. So in the beginning, of course,
it was really learning. Then I have the feeling after a while I proved myself. Let's say there's a reason that I didn't wanted another editor on this project after a while. And I, I have the feeling that he, I earned his trust, let's say. And that's especially with let's say music or pacing of rhythm that he really As for me, every good director does like sees the potential of the people around you and directs you to push you to go further in that or
something on the other side. I hope me as an editor that's also been a fan of Johan, that's pushed him to go further in being the crazy director he is, I can't imagine that he worked with an editor who was like, push him to be a bit calmer or something. I saw myself sometimes as like the devil on his shoulder and say, like, yeah, go further, go
further, why not? But you all know it's such a complex thing like an editor, because it's like if you see an actor or something, it's clear what the actor has done. You see a DOP, you see the images, it's very clear. But as an editor or something, it's I'm very happy with soundtrack to put it up because it's an exceptional visibly edited movie. But in general, it's like for me, an editor, you, you, you do the cuts, you do the pacing, you do all this. But you also are in a way, like
a therapist. You, you guide this uncertain individual and create a safe environment where they can be themselves. You, you, you start watching with their perspective. I start watching the footage with Johann's perspective. I really went to Russia's and saw like this tiny funny detail somewhere in an image. And my look was like, oh, this is really a signature. You're agreement pretty short. Let's highlight it or something.
So it's like this, as an editor, you start to imitate and understand the perspective of a director. And maybe also what I really try to do is my position as an ignorant person, really try to embrace this because like, Johann really, really is an expert on the subject matter. Let's say you really read every book, as I said already, and this can also be a danger or something. Let's speak about your experience with music because it's one of the subjects, but is also present all, all, all the
time. So it's like there is this continuous soundscape in the in the music, in the film and and I think that. Sometimes you use music to underline or highlight some key moment in the film with not to achieve the dramatic effect. But in your case it was more the opposite so you had to use silence to achieve this. So this was my impression and especially love 2 moments when it happened, when you have this orchestra conductor and in another moment you have called training.
So they both are playing music. So in both cases we are seeing music but we cannot hear it. And it was so strong, so powerful, so beautiful. How did you approach in general the presence of the music and the use of the music? And you mentioned before you were looping, sampling some sound. So this this, at least in my practice, in my process, it's uncommon.
Yeah, so the the example of the conductor, what I really like is this taking influences from stupid YouTube videos and like doing something else with it and like you have this YouTube trends of like music less music video yeah. So what silence does, or Foley in that case, then it's it makes you look differently at the image or something. So I'm very proud to be the music editor of this movie that
I also got these credits. And what influenced me is like the music I listened to when I was growing up. And it's like this chop and screw mentality, let's say, of sample music really inspired me. I have the feeling that I've edited this movie on the rhythm. It's not thinking and doing, but really being in a beat of clicking. Like my clicking was really in the rhythm. And so to be staying in the rhythm, half of the time I'm making mistakes and I'm pressing commands set like the undo
button. So I'm really like just, but it just to keep in the, to stay in the basing of like editing on the rhythm. It's like click, click, click, click, click. That you could say because it's a form of percussion. Me as an editor, I try to synchronize with the music I'm listening to with respect for the original intention and intensity and energy of the songs. Sample it to let it relate to the other layers, the image and the voices and the text.
What I find, a very strong example maybe, is the way how music deconstructs the image, how it makes you look differently. It's the original intention of the image, let's say, which is maybe with archival footage from that era. Very important since a lot of footage we're working with is like films by colonial races. So you work with a different perspective. What's dangerous about archival footage or just original footage, I think is that it's it's pretends to be objective.
It's pretends with archival especially you think like heights from history. It's like this uncontaminated artifacts from history. And that's of course not the case. I remember in my research face, we I was like looking for you have this moment of Patrice Lumumba. He got captured and they put his speech in his mouth and it's from it's a news reel.
And then I was in my research meeting to check all the different news reels from this moment to see if one has the best footage or if one has something else. And it's like super interesting then to see all these different perspectives from this events and all the tiny differences in montage, in narration, in music, even again, to create this news reel. So we worked with like the the Dutch one, the American one, the British one, the French one, the
Cuban one, the Russian one. And they all have like these different edits, different construction of this of events that they all pretend to be neutral objective. Let's say if one where they focus on his wife crying that her husband is going to die, one is on like eyes of communist good, good rhythms. 1 is on like the strongman Mobutu watching from afar. 1 is on like the the killer Mobutu. So every newsreel is like tiny different edits.
And so, but I think with soundtrack, what we did is like it's super objectively edited. It's like a construction with like deconstructing, taking the sound off, putting music underneath. And what this for me does is like show that all this footage has been subjective all the time or something by giving a different subjective edits. And maybe the last thing that music does very well for me is
maybe in relation to the voices. What's we did a lot is like edited the speeches on the music that it sometimes starts feeling as if it's the the lyrics of a song, let's say, as if they're like singing on top of these songs. And this is not, I think, just a gimmicky fancy construction. This is for me really getting to the the core of this movie and what it shows for me is that all these speeches that we hear, all these rhetorics are a performance in themselves.
And like Khrushchev in the United Nations, Patrice Lumumba, they they're all a performance. They use words in a certain way. They they take pauses. They have their own stomping on the on the beat or something. They all have their way of singing in a way. And like combining this with music shows this this on one's, but on the other sides, I think shows that this music has always been political. I had the next question from a little bit different dimension
from the editing process itself. When I saw the credits of the film, I saw there's a huge segment of special thanks to the people who gave feedback. So I was wondering how soon did you open the rough cut to the people outside of the editing room? How the rough cut screens or feedback sessions were organized? How did you take in the inputs and feedback that people gave, if you can tell us a bit about that?
Yeah, we, we did a lot of feedback sessions and a lot of screenings from very early on. I think we started, we very fasted after a few months like this 45 minutes version. It were like 6 scenes, which they also used to get more funding and like this 45 minutes we show to a lot of people and it was really integral to the process. Indeed, these feedback sessions, they were always just never like in fancy settings, just behind the computer with crappy boxes. That's just a few people came in.
Afterwards we had a drink and talked about this. And for me as an editor, these were very important because also you can get stuck on giving your own opinion or something.
And what I love to do is like when discussing further with Johann directions of the movies, like quoting feedback or saying like, I can even not agree with certain feedback, but really try to note down everything that's being said, every perspective that every person gave and try to understand this perspective and read it and not just blindly follow what they said. But really they said probably this because 10 minutes earlier
we did that. And maybe if we change this 20 minutes earlier this, then his complaint about 20 minutes later is solved or something. So this not too blindly follow, but you all know either like this cliche of like when people come and give me they they started, I would do this. I would make this movie from it, especially if you ask other film makers, they they start to make their own film and and that's not the most interesting feedback.
And another important thing about these feedback sessions is with this movie, I really try to embrace my ignorance and not think like, Hey, I know everything about this. I'm I need to hide what I don't know because I need to show off how, how smart I am about this subject and blah, blah, blah. But it's really about like, understand that you have your limitations as a person from your perspective, and be open to understand these limitations and these perspectives.
And maybe especially with the movie that we're making is like me and Joan, we're both white men. We're white Belgian men telling this story that's like international, a mix of Congolese perspectives, Russian perspectives, Iron Irish perspectives, all these different perspectives. It's tapped from an experience
that Johan and I don't have. So in these feedback sessions, it's important that a lot of people who watch this footage from different perspectives, how they respond to it, how the how the movie resonates with them. And sometimes they don't even need to say it, But it's really weird when you're watching this footage that you've been seeing for a few years and suddenly sits next to someone that's that's crying with a scene that you are on automatic pilot watching for the way 200th time.
And then it's suddenly surprising like, ah, yeah, ah, yeah, wow. I, I can, I can understand. I never thought of this. That's that it's emotionally resonates with you and I find it so beautiful about our profession like this letting go of it or something that now an audience claims it and like makes it their own and feels things with this movie that I understand why they feel it, but
that I not per SE myself felt. And in that way, maybe the we makers are, I think, a bridge between this original footage, this original energy and people. That's what. See it for the first time or get in touch with it in a way. You said that, you know, which is connected to what you're saying. You know, you've been working, you usually work on a movie for years and you said that you've been working on this movie for three years. But I, I, I, I don't think you've been editing all day
long, every day for three years. So can you number like let's say really can you say a number of weeks if you can or so how did the process went? I don't know you had you worked for a month, then you took a break, then you worked for another month. Or how did how did it work? Yeah. So OK from the beginning, I started in September 2020, it was in the Covic period. You are also sometimes lives in Greece.
So we were doing separate work. It was like me doing also a lot of you aren't reading a lot, you aren't finding a lot of footage. Me also just diving in the project, checking all the footage, making selects and learning a lot about subject matter. That's that's went on for 1/2 a year, let's say. And then we continued editing again the periods and then the movie got formed. There got more funding. Other people got involved like Remit Veletti, another producer. And then I think mid 2021 it
became like full time. And then it was with this idea, OK, we're rushing to this 2022 Sunland's deadline. And so then it was like really way too intense, non-stop, long days, weekends. I decided, OK, I'm not going to take a summer break. I'm not going to go on a holiday because we're rushing towards this deadline. And then the deadline was there and there was decided, yeah, it's not yet finished, Let's continue.
And that was a moment that I discovered like, yeah, your, your personal life needs to be on the 1st place. And there will always be an important next deadline. And so like, it was a good lesson for me in boundaries or something. We compare this movie often with like a sprinting, a marathon. The pacing at which we did it, it was like not chill. It was like constantly rushing to get to the deadline. And once we reached that deadline, it was again rushing to the next one.
OK, let's switch to something glamour now because you attended the Oscars night this year. So how was it? Can you tell us about the behind the scenes? I don't know, some juicy stories. My analysis of the Oscars. It's super weird to see all these celebrities and how normal it feels, let's say. But at the same time, I was also not prepared because I got a lot of texts from people afterwards who said like wow, it must have been amazing, especially with a must like.
So I feel bad to say that like it was a bit an anti climax. Let's say it's like it's funny because like you're at in the movie worlds, like on the top of the, the, the team, like the the big thing, like the Oscars. But I never in my life felt more as a nobody than I felt there. Especially if you're like the editor of a documentary, you're really like, who the fuck are you? But yeah, it's a weird place.
It's like there are like a few thousands people and everybody wants to see these 50 celebrities and doesn't really care about the rest, let's say. And so I think it's not fun for these celebrities. I saw them and I felt a bit scared. Like you see them like because yeah, it's a job at the moment. But like everyone's, you see that. Everyone's trying to look at them. And I took some selfies with some celebrities, but I didn't ask them.
I just put my face those when when they were in the back. I have a nice selfie with Ariana Grande which I'm proud of. Did you do any campaign like some parties or things like that? I think the Johan, Dan, Johanna and me and I think Dan also, they were there earlier. I was like, it was really the crazy week of my life. I'm so I'm as a director shooting my feature fiction
film. And it was during that period and it was really I moved some scheduling dates to shoot my own film to visit the Oscars. And so I really, I was there like a week. And so I had a week of filming my own feature. Then I flew to LA and went to the Oscars and then I came back and started shooting my own film again. It's really funny because my movies like the the most low budgeting ever.
So it's like really me, the OP sound woman and the actress like in a living room, very DIY crappy, but super amazing. So much fun and it's so crappy. And then while I wish we stopped shooting, I took a flight to LA to be there there on like the Super fancy glamorous. It was like a really fun clash of different worlds. Let's say it's not that fun. And I think it really helps to know because like now I know like, Hey, I don't you don't need to do it for that.
Like this idea of success or something like the journey is more important than the destination. It's like this cliche people say, but I'm I'm really happy that I can have experienced this cliche and also like the movie premieres at Sundance and I was also there and that for me was really the celebration of the finishing of the film. Like really wow. We made it. We got it through the finish line.
Congratulations. While for me, the Oscars, they were like the, the finish line of the the promo of the movie, not of the making, but of the distribution in Philly. The Oscars are like, it's celebration of the distributors and the, the, the producers and, but not really for the makers or something. So it was less of a celebration of, hey, we made it together. Although I, I, I think it, it will be that for the distributors, so. We usually ask editors what would they have become if they
wouldn't be an editor. But in your case, I would say after now you edit your first feature film and then you went to the Oscar. I I want to ask you if you feel like your career took a turn after that event or after the movie. But more important, I want to ask if you want to be an editor now, if you want to work only as an editor, you want to edit. And if you got any any requests already or any job software or whatever.
Yeah, I'm, I'm not super happy at the moment about like it's a bit overwhelming and I so I get some requests and I have a lot of like what if or something like, oh shit, I need to grab this momentum and is this the right choice or something? Or will I say yes to the wrong film and then not be able to do this other film that's better that's I haven't heard of because they need to contact me in the future or something.
And I know with my heads, I know the answer and it's just see what happens and go with the flow. And I don't need to be stressed about saying yes to the wrong film because it's also a super interesting experience, a bad one or but also it's just life happening. And I'm really happy to discover that I really love my job, but it's also a job I love. Life next to editing.
Let's say while when I'm in the editing room, do my job super hard, but also think like to do this job so well that it's important to have a healthy life next to it. I think I get most job offerings because of the subject matter, but I really hope to get typecast or ask for formal innovation to work on film sets are cinematic experiences or something and really look at documentary or fiction, it doesn't matter as a like a cinematic experience that an
audience goes through. So I hope to be asked of that. But of course at the same time I am like I cannot control what jobs that I get offered. So I just need to chill a bit and say but maybe you guys also have like feedback for me on how do you approach this or but. It's a matter of, you know, if lack of being no, it's always even if you make the right choices, then you know, maybe the next time you are in the wrong place or no. So it's just a matter of how the
world turns, I think. This, yeah, yeah. But I, I love this idea, like this healthy curiosity about where life brings you or something. And in a way, it's also this mentality that you have as an editor to approach life with this. Like when I as an editor, I, I, I get an hard drive where there's footage on top of it. I don't think like, it would be great if we had this other footage. Too bad that they did film it like this and not like this.
You just see it as this and see like, how can I make the best of what I have here or something in like this mindsets I want to approach to my life. It's more like curious to what will present itself to you and how can I make the best out of this? Editor Synonymous is a podcast by Pier Paolo, Filomeno, Beppe Lonetti and Anna Savchenko.
Music by is a KOKIAF. If you enjoy the podcast and want to stay in the loop, follow us on Spotify, Instagram or Facebook. Thanks for listening and see you next time.