Stoned on Set, Unsung Heroes, and an Alice Cooper Situation (w/ Guest Frances Parker, ACE)

Announcer | Welcome to the Two Stops Over podcast with your hosts cinematogrpaher Vance Burberry and director Nigel Dick. A show about stuff that goes on behind the camera, along with some mischief, and special guests tossed in for fun.

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Nigel | Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we're back. We've been away, we've been busy. And that's what we do when we're not making a podcast. We actually do stuff, don't we?

Vance | Yeah, we do. I've been doing stuff. You've been doing stuff. You've been traveling. also uh I went to NAB and uh got to see some new toys, which is always exciting.

Nigel | and I think the public should know that we were trying to nail down a guest. Uh, two things happened. We couldn't find the right nails. And also, we could not agree on his rider about the uh number of M&Ms, the color thereof, and how much money he was going to be given. And the big secret we're going to release during this episode is that nobody gets paid.

Vance | Really? The only person I remember having their head nail to the floor was a gentleman by the name of Dinsdale Pirana, [laughs],
 
Nigel | Dinsdale will be appearing in a future episode, just so you know.

Vance |  later in the show, Nigel is actually going to respond to my comments on shooting multicam concert films in episode five, he's going to talk about uh his perspective as a director. So that's going to be interesting because it's a good bookend to my comments.

Nigel | Most importantly, we have a fabulous guest on the show today, somebody I have known my entire life, and I'm not exaggerating. And I know you're very excited, Vance.
 
Vance | Well, what's very cool, she's currently cutting House of the Dragon, 

Nigel | just so listeners are aware, we got an advance warning that we were not allowed to ask questions about what the dragon eats, um how long it sleeps, whether it's a grumpy dragon. So I know you all wanted to know that information, but we were forbidden from asking that kind of detail. 

Vance | Yeah, I was wondering about the dragon poop cleaner-upper as well.

Nigel | You had to go there, didn't you? You had to get to dragon shit.

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Nigel | So I think we should explain to our people who listen that um we've not been away on purpose. It kind of just happened that way. We were trying to chase down a fantastic guest who unfortunately has disappeared into the ether. 

Nigel | Where have you been?

Vance | Oh, Everywhere. Where have you been? I hear you've gone somewhat Nordic at one point.

Nigel | I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere. Did they ever play that record on the radio in Australia?

Vance | Oh, yeah. I've been everywhere, man. Who sang that anyway?

Nigel | Oh, I should have that piece of trivia anyway.

Vance | Dave Clark 5 or?

Nigel | No, no, no, no, no. It was... Because it then follows with a list of states in America, I think.

Vance | Oh really? Okay. 

Nigel | Yes. If I had, if I had any brain, I would be able to recite the list of states. So what have you- you've been underwater?

Vance | A little bit underwater, but, went to NAB. I've been working, shot a project at Disney Concert Hall for five nights. We talked about the eight millimeter lens on the last episode Anyway, I got called to shoot a hip hop video recreating the 90s hip hop look with the 8 millimeter fish eye lens, which I end up using the Alexa 35 on, which turned out to be pretty incredible. 

Nigel | Did you have 80s drugs to go with the lens for the shoot to really be in the vibe?

Vance | Okay, all I can tell you is one thing. We did not need a smoke machine. [nigel laughs] We had one there, but barely used it.

Nigel | Steve Golin always used to say to me when I first started working with him, Rock video, 24 hours in a smoke filled room with cold pizza.

Vance | Pretty much- circles of death, as we used to call them. The crew did anyway. But remember, we used to use those smoke cookies. They looked like a uh, an oatmeal cookie and the they would kill your lungs and you couldn't breathe and they were horrific.

Nigel | And I always remember them being in a 16 mil can lid.

Vance | Yup

Nigel | So what would happen when you sent the exposed dailies back to the lab? I don't know, with a bit of smoke cookie in there. Perhaps that had something to do with the look from that era.

Vance | Well, we love to play with film chemistry, you know that. We'd do it with chemical smoke cookies. That'd be fantastic. 

Nigel | Ummm, well I've been editing. I've been editing on the Carl Verheyen piece, which I've shot some of in LA in January and some of in Dallas. And I've been slotting that together. Then I went away for a wedding in Scotland and then went to Norway to shoot some B roll footage. This is my new thing. I like to go to exotic places, or in this case, freezing cold places and, and masking it as a holiday. But really, it's an excuse to get the camera out and go and shoot some lovely stuff, which hopefully I can either sell or use in future projects.

Vance | Well that's kinda fun.

Nigel | Yeah, and I actually when I first got into this, I bought a super 8 camera and shot some footage on one of my first trips to California and also in Egypt. And I remember writing down that I was going to be using this for stock footage in the future and thought, and part of me was like, Yeah, right. Well, I've been transferring it recently and I've actually used some of that footage that I shot an entire generation ago. in the 80s, 

Nigel | And the interesting thing is that sometimes the bad operating is part of the beauty of the footage

Vance | I guess that's why you're framing it. My bad operating was really beautiful.

Nigel | Well, I mean the camera I bought, I bought in Singapore Airport on another job, which is a story for another day, but it's powered by one double actually two double A batteries. And you look through the tiniest hole and it's got a little focus bit on the edge. And it's just, I mean its really driving blind. But it gives you very interesting stuff.

Vance | I remember director Wayne Isham, I shot a lot of concert music videos live, concert shows. He once bought 50 of these Bell & Howell plastic cameras and handed them out to everyone. and just gave them to the audience and collected them at the end of the night. They ended up using a bunch of that stuff. But I did get one of those cameras and actually used it to strap underneath a remote controlled helicopter and chase cars across El Mirage with it. I mean It's like a really cheap, lightweight plastic camera that took maybe a double A battery.

Nigel | you went to NAB as well, right?

Vance | Yeah, I did check out some cool stuff at NAB this year. Black Magic came out 
with a new version of their URSA 12K camera with an OLPF filter in it

Vance | We also got this Chinese little light. It's super tiny, has a battery, but man, it's bright and it's bi-color and it'll fit in your pocket almost. So we grabbed one of those a couple of other things there were, Astera tubes have some new accessories for lighting control, which are really great. Um There's the new DJI Inspire 3 drone, which is pretty

Vance | Spectacular, even though it's 16,000 plus dollars. So it's kind of expensive. But um 8K camera, large sensor, And lastly, Tilta came up with their new version of the Nucleus nano focus system, which is really great on these small cameras. And uh they've definitely improved that system quite a bit.

Nigel | That's an awful lot of letters and numbers and funny names to me. So, I mean, I'm interested in the ELP filter on the Ursa...

Vance | OLPF?

Nigel | No, you said an ELP filter. Does it...

Vance | Lay Tarkus?

Nigel | Does it, how does that work?

Vance | Well, it's an OLPF filter, not an ELO filter. And not the Electric Light Orchestra.

Nigel | I was saying Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Nigel | Okay, I want to see the pictures. Enough of these numbers and special codes and whatnot.

Vance | Yeah, it's actually called a low pass filter, which actually manages IR contamination on the sensor and also reduces the effects of moiré with clothing and especially Led screen. So that's kind of a nice upgrade.

Nigel | That strange sound in the background is me snoring.

Vance | You sleepy fucker.

Vance | Speaking of Dick, I see you visited somewhere. Like you had Dick sign out the front or on the front of the building. What was that about?

Nigel | Well, here's the thing. Throughout my life, of course, so many times people say to me with a very straight face when I'm asked to give my name, so what is your real name? And I was in Scotland, and Dick is a Scottish name derived from Duncan, and uh we saw a store, which was called Dicks. So my wife took a picture of me outside it, and I put it, up on that new fancy thing called social media.

Vance | Oh, nice.

Nigel | But, yes, there are many Dicks in Scotland, and you can translate that any way you like.

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Vance | I was reading an article in Rolling Stone the other day, about P. Diddy or Puff Daddy, or whoever he happened to be at the time, about um royalties paid to Sting for the "I'll Be Missing You" video that Puffy sampled, and it featured Faith Evans, which I actually shot many years ago. I guess that Diddy said he paid $5,000 a day, but apparently it turns out to be only $2,000 a day. when we were making this video, there's a scene where Puffy falls off the motorcycle, which was actually real. He's following behind us on a shot maker, and I had a camera on the back with a 10 millimeter lens on it, and Hype, the director's, going, Come closer, come closer. And he's waving him, waving him, waving him, and he gets right on top of the lens, and then he stands on the front brake and the back end comes around, he drops the motorcycle. Well, couple hours of um rest and paramedics, and all the rest of it, he was pretty scratched up. He then decided that, you know what, I fell off the motorcycle, I've hurt myself. I'm going to make it part of the video. So we laid the motorcycle on the road and he's laying on the road and he gets up and he looks at his hands and he just starts singing the song, just like he fell off and got right up. It's pretty cool, actually.

Nigel | Well, that's very interesting. I have a story about that video, too, in that where I used to live in LA. At the time. My house was right around the corner from the Motor Museum where Biggie had been the night before, and I would always go to the diner on the corner of Wilshire and whatever the street was. I've forgotten now. It's a long time since I lived there.

Nigel | Fairfax. I think it's Wilshire and Fairfax. So I walk, I'm going to my diner, which I did every day at lunchtime, where I go and sit down, have lunch, and read Daily Variety. And I walk around the corner and I hadn't been listening to the news. And there on the sidewalk is an ugly stain and a bunch of flowers and comments like, we love you Biggie and blah, blah, blah, because that's where he'd been shot and murdered the night before. So, the blood was still on the pavement. And then I was doing a shoot a couple of days later, and the client said to me, "would you be interested in shooting a video in memory of Biggie and, with Puffy and whatnot?" And I was a bit nervous, and I said, "well, uh..." and this is perhaps not to my credit, I said, "well, am I going to be shot at?" And the client said, with a completely straight face, "don't worry, we'll provide you with a bulletproof vest." [vance laugh] Here's the truth of the matter. I don't think I should have been doing a video like that anyway, because I don't understand that kind of music. That's not, deep in my soul, I'm a rock and roll guy. I'm a soul guy. You know, grew up with rock and roll and the Temptations, and Smokey, and all that kind of stuff. So I don't think I would have been the right pick for it anyway. But that was a very interesting conversation to have about a client asking me if I wanted to do a job and whether I should be having a bulletproof jacket or not.

Vance |  I've actually been shot at myself um, on a hip hop music video, actually, with Hype Williams directing. we were doing a project for Tribe Called Quest. And I forget the video. We did Stressed Out, and there was another video we did with that. Um, anyway, we're in a dry cleaners in Queens at, like, two, three in the morning, and there's Busta Rhymes, and QTIP, and myself, and Hype. And we're in this dry cleaners, and all of a sudden I hear pop, pop, pop, pop. And we all, like, hit the ground. And I look over to Hype and I go, "Hype, that's a wrap". And he looks back. Y"eah, that's a wrap." We went outside and there'd been a pass van sitting there, and there's a PA in the pass van, asleep. And on the side of the headrest was a bullet hole. Just missed his head by probably two inches.

Nigel | Wow! 

Vance | So that was kind of, kind of a scary night.

Nigel | I've been stoned on set.

Vance | Stoned?

Nigel | Stoned, yeah. And I don't mean drugs either. 

Vance | Oh I was gonna say, so have I

Nigel | I was shooting a video in um, in Dublin in a very rough area, and we're in the middle of a take, and suddenly a bunch of, like, 20 kids showed up and started pelting me with rocks.

Vance | Oh, jeez.

Nigel | And here's the thing. They'd not even seen the cut yet.

Vance | [Hahaha.] Oh, God. Well, Thank goodness. Maybe they would have used larger rocks.

Nigel | Yeah, maybe they would. Maybe they would. So, that's the interesting way we lead our lives.

Nigel | So I asked you guys a huge favor 'cause I wanted to bring a family member onto the show. And, in fact, this is the only living member of my family, I think. And more importantly, this guest is an editor, and um I think editors are the unsung heroes of our trade. What do you think?

Vance | You know, I agree. As a director of photography, I think it's something we all need to keep in mind thinking about coverage and staying on top of things. editors, at the end of the day, they can bring a great performance to new heights, or they can uh repair, an average performance. 

Nigel | And, God bless them, they're never on set, or very rarely on set. So we're all having a good old party. And even when it's very stressful, it's a team thing. And meanwhile, there is a poor soul in a small, dark room somewhere in a different time zone doing all the hard work.

Vance | from time to time, I have received little lists from editors. Do you think you 
could possibly shoot, [laughs] blah, blah, blah and insert here and insert there? Would be really nice to glue such and such together. but I think they're valuable notes because you know what? At the end of the day, they bring all your work to life. So I have a ton of respect for editors,

Nigel | So I think the really interesting thing about this interview that we're going to 
listen to, or perhaps one of the interesting things, certainly, is that, Vance, you are a huge G.O.T. fan.

Vance | Yes, I am. I love the Game of Thrones. And I think she cut 13 episodes, I believe, over seasons one, two, and three. man, oh, man, what an incredible piece of work. and getting to talk to her about that was marvelous. 

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Nigel | Since we started Two Stops over, it's been my great hope that we could persuade today's guest to appear on our show. Frances Parker, ACE, is a multi-award winning editor who started her career with the BBC. Perhaps her most prestigious award is a primetime Emmy for her work on HBO's Band of Brothers. Amongst her more recent work, she's edited two episodes of The Crown and a staggering 13 episodes of Game of Thrones. Last year, she edited an episode of the Star Wars prequels series, Andor, and is currently working on the Game of Thrones prequels series, House of the Dragon. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also point out that Fran's dad and my dad were brothers, and both pilots and officers in Britain's Royal Air Force, which therefore makes us both Air Force brats and cousins. Fran, welcome to Two Stops Over.

Fran | Thank you. It's such a pleasure. I can't tell you.

Nigel | Thanks for joining us. So, here's my first question. Even though I've known you my entire life, I've never really discovered how you got into this malarky, but I know you somehow wound up at the BBC. What- what was that process like?

Fran | Well, yes, I sort of stumbled into it as Nigel and I share some ancestry, we're both into the arts to some degree. Both our fathers were good at drawing and art. That was the only thing I was actually rather good at at school. I wasn't very academic. So I went to art college and kind of stumbled into filmmaking. It wasn't a proper course. It hadn't really been established. This was sort of in the early days. And we were just turfed out to go and make a film. There were four students, And uh we made a documentary which was quite groundbreaking. I took a lot of the responsibility for a lot of things, but I took full responsibility for the editing for some reason. I had no idea why. And uh ended up in a cutting room, really not knowing a great deal about what I was supposed to do. I didn't have any instruction. But the light bulb went on. It was, it was by far and above the most exciting bit of the process. And from that moment on, I thought, Well, I just have to get into the industry in some way, shape, or form. And in those days, you had to have a union ticket.

Fran | Um but the only way you could bypass that, because of course it's catch 22, you can't get a job without a union ticket and you can't get a union ticket without a job. But in the UK, the BBC offered um employment and you could work towards your union ticket that way. I was told to just join in whatever capacity I could. So I was a projectionist for the longest time because at that point they were using film. so that was how I got into it. And then ultimately, they did training courses for all the disciplines, They did the different cameras and sound and editing. And it was the most fantastic um instruction. It was a classroom of about six weeks where you learned all about film chemistry and all sorts of processes,

Fran | And then you were allowed out as a trainee to join whatever cutting room. And in the end, I opted to go into fiction, the drama department, and that was it, really. I served my apprenticeship as an assistant and very fortunately was made an editor fairly early on. And so I really had some really good, good, solid BBC high quality drama behind me before I went freelance. 

Vance | you started off cutting on film, yes?

Fran | Yes, yes, which is um, I suppose, has informed much of what I do now.

Vance | that was sort of the follow up question to that is, I know me as a director of photography, I have found that that film knowledge still very much applies in a digital world and is very helpful to me. And do you find the same as an editor in a non linear editing world that that film foundation,

Fran | Absolutely...

Fran | Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And in many ways that isn't necessarily obvious. Quite often it's to do with the discipline of thinking. And I'm sure you're the same. We've been used to the uh discipline of the expense of stock, film stock, and uh the ratios of drama, particularly uh used to be much smaller. But you had to think about how you were going to put them together because you couldn't just throw them around like you can now. Um, there is no get out clause for filmmaking, whereas I know digital is a proper discipline, uh but you have some leeway. [laughs]

Nigel | So there's a theory that every film has three scripts. [Ha!] We're going to talk generally about film, even though you're doing stuff which is on HBO or Netflix or whatever.

Fran | Yeah, yeah.

Nigel | There's the script you write, the script you shoot, and then the script you cut. You can, you know, choose very

Nigel | Different approaches to which bits of the performance you take, whether you want to take it left, right, up or down. How often do you do that as you're preparing your first cut, which will go to the director and the execs? And I'm wondering how often they come in and they go, Don't like it. This is not the way I saw it. I'm wondering what that - how that process works for you.

Fran | Well, it's one of those things that is so difficult to quantify, and that's what makes editing so difficult to describe. Because, for performances, there's a huge variety of acting styles and competence and genius and there's everything in between. I doubt very much whether you would steer their performance necessarily, but you have to cherry pick it in order to find, to get the very best essence of it. Even the very best actors, there'll always be a take that just blows your mind and you think that's got to be in there. And it's not necessarily the selected take. Maybe it's just one line that just happened to hit a particular emphasis. So as a matter of course, I would try and figure it all that out before it goes to the director. And as you say, the director can at that point say, Oh, well, that wasn't really what I intended at all. Or else he can say, Oh, I really didn't see that. And yeah, that's pretty interesting. Ultimately, for the performance itself, uh the director will probably have the maximum say over it.
Fran | But what you present as an editor can very much color how they feel about it. And uh you should have done all the groundwork up to that point. And that's, of course, one of the most satisfying parts of it.

Nigel | I was watching one of your Crown pieces last night, which is the one where Lord Mountbatten is murdered by the IRA. in the way it's constructed in the script, Prince Charles talks to Mountbatten. They have an argument, essentially, over whether he should be seeing Camilla or not. And they have a row on the phone. The phone gets put down. And of course, they never get to talk again because Mountbatten is murdered. after the news is delivered, Prince Charles is obviously very, very upset because he can never take this conversation back. And there's a lot of silence in his acting. You know, but it's very obvious that he is terribly upset. He's not crying. in a scene like that, which is obviously very often helped by music, do you start with the performance and then slug some music in later to help it out, temp music? I mean, what's the process through there? Because that's very difficult , a scene like that.

Fran | Well, that's an interesting example because... there were those moments when, as an editor, because you're the first audience, you're the first one to see this material. Everybody on set, they're looking at it, they're evaluating it. Have we got it? We got it. But it's when you see it in the cutting room you say you can see actually what was achieved at that moment. And that particular scene, uh it was a set up where he's come to talk to his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, Mountbaton was his surrogate father, too. and the actor who played Charles, Josh O'Connor, , from the moment on take one that he walked through the door and walked towards his father to have this very intense and emotional conversation, uh I just wanted to stay on his face. He was just sublime in his interpretation of what it was to be that shattered. Without you know, without the tears, without any histrionics, but you could see how devastated he was and how his father, who was being acerbic, how that was playing off, playing on him. And so for the first cut, I did actually keep it on him for most of the time.

Fran | No, certainly for the opening section, I didn't cut to Prince Philip. I thought, We know who's saying this stuff behind him. We know how hurtful that is. Why not just stay on his face? I have to say I was steered away from that, ultimately. But it was interesting. And that's, I guess, the way that you sort of find your way. You work your way through these scenes. Um, as for music, never put music on before I finish the scene. Never. Um If I'm happy with it and I think music could work alongside it, then I will obviously temp it up because that's another thing that is very misunderstood about editing is that there is a rhythmic sense of where music should be and where it shouldn't be. Of course, we could be wrong, but it's always good to have a stab at it. And so you have a sense of where that theme is going to come in, at what point it peaks, at what point it decays. And so in that particular scene, of course, what I had was the previous season's music from the composer Martin Fipps. So I laid up a piece of that at the pertinent point, which is not the beginning of the scene, it's not the end of the scene.

Fran | It's somewhere in the middle where you want to pull the audience in, into his head. invariably when you find the right piece of music, the one that provides the right emotion, you will find that it will always sit in the cut perfectly because you've cut for the emotion and the music is reflecting the emotion. 

Vance | So you speak of emotion. And I know for myself when I light, as much as it's a craft, at the end of the day, it's an emotional process for me. Is it for you?

Fran | Yes. I mean your stresses are very different from mine. You're on the ground and I'm in a pokey little hole somewhere. Well, I'm not actually. I'm at home at the moment and it's lovely. But ummm, I have no body looking over my shoulder. I have no constraint on time. I could be here all night if I wanted to. But I mean, you must have a self imposed discipline. You've got to be done by this point. That's not the case with me. So the emotion that I carry into this it's not very sophisticated, but I'm a huge fan girl. I'm such a fan of what I look at. [laughs] I look at the camera moves, I look at the production design, I look at the costumes, I look at the performance. And I'm generally, I'm just thinking this is just fantastic. And what I need to do is make the very best of what I am looking at and do it justice, to be frank. Yeah. You know, even production design, if I see a really lovely set, I'm going to make sure that bloody set is on the screen.

Fran | I think everyone who is involved in filmmaking has a really, really special eye or a special ear. And it's such a privilege to work in this industry, I think, because of that everything you see is exciting. Well, unless it's crap, in which case that's really difficult.

Vance |  haha.

Nigel | Talking about crap, a question I've always raised with with people who very often not are not in the industry. Is that, of course it's very easy to be awarded and blessed as an editor when you're sent fabulous footage. [Yeah, yeah,] and my comment Oscar time is that, you know, Joe Smith has been given an Oscar for best editor. And I say, somewhere in Hollywood right now there is some person who really needs an Oscar, [yeah,] for best editing because they were given a complete pile of garbage, and they made something out of it. that I think is

Nigel | An interesting distinction, Do you agree with that?

Fran | Oh, totally and utterly, utterly. And I think that perhaps there should be a way that we could devise an award for that particular craft. Because you know, editing as is if you're a layman and if you're not in the industry at all I'm always said, if I say I'm an editor, they say, oh, you cut the bad bit out. Not really. No. I mean, we do. We just don't entertain them. But that's not the point. But every editor in all sorts of disciplines. I worked on a FIFA World Cup film, which sounds very unlike me, but it was being directed by Michael Apted.

Fran | And this company, super rich footballing you know sort of Dynasty company, had decided that they wanted for the final, they wanted Michael Apted to put in 35 mil cameras around the pitch. So they were looking for a team of editors to come in and place this together. So it's very different from an outside broadcast. and in this instance, it was an astonishing uh revelation because one of the editors I was working with was one of the guys who does those montages at the end of professional matches.

Fran | And, if you pay attention to those, they're extraordinary pieces of art. You know, they've conflated everything that happened on the pitch, off the pitch and emotionally. And obviously it's set to music and they've got some guide or whatever, but they do this within sort of in 2 hours. And I just think that's incredible. Um, same with lots of documentaries, you know, because as Vance will know, it's like you can shoot the hell out of anything these days. You imagine the amount of footage that these people get in. And I know a lot of producers rely on the editors to make the story for them out of what they get. And that's hours and hours of meticulous combing through. 

Nigel | So I think it's your turn, Vance. Go.

Vance |  I'll admit I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan. Actually, I watched a couple of episodes you cut and then think, oh, man, I love this so much. I started episode one, season one. it's incredible. But,you know, there's a lot of VFX in those films. And generally, I know for me, when I'm sitting on a green screen or a blue screen, sometimes it's pretty hard to imagine sort of the world that I'm in. Um, how do you find that editorially?

Fran | I suppose, in the main I've lived fairly close to the VFX department. So we do talk about this stuff all the time and you kind of know what the intention is. Uh. of course, budgets aren't limitless and in the cutting room you have to be very aware of what it is that is to be achieved and the time You have in which to achieve it. I think you just have to know that it will all be made marvelous. [Vance laughs] And I'll go to an example that I was on Andor which I've worked on, which is the spin off of Star Wars. I had some discussion with VFX, and what have you, but the world that they created around what was actually there in the camera. I don't know if you've seen any of it Andor at all.

Vance | Yeah, I did. I actually watched the episode that you cut.

Fran | All right, then. You'll know, towards the end there's this location which is called Nyamas which is like the Florida, of whichever star galaxy it was.  that was shot in Blackpool on the most um dull [ laughs ] dull and windy day. So what they made out of that is absolutely phenomenal. This isn't answering your question, really. I suppose it's me being a fan girl again. 

Vance | Well, you can be a fan girl, it's okay.

Fran | Yes, Game of Thrones, I suppose because I've had such a long history of going through I've kind of seen it from such early stages. I worked where green screen was something that you put back projection on.  so the advances now are, are so great that I don't honestly think too much about what's going down. All I know is I'll be absolutely thrilled when it goes down. So you always play for the drama. You play, for the moments and the structure of the scene.

Vance |  I mean, having watched the series and loved it, there's so many threads throughout the series that go between different uh, even different seasons, and it all ties together. Is this something you're consciously aware of when you're cutting?

Fran | Uh, Yes. yes, I only worked on the first three series uh of Game of Thrones before it broke me, but we worked with other editors, and it's one of the revelations that I've realized that it's great to have teamwork. I mean, we don't interfere with other people's cuts. we don't generally analyze what each of us is doing, um but there's always that sense that you can call upon, you know, if you want to know where this thread is going and how it's being approached in an episode down the line. You just talk it through.

Fran | Location wise, it was very um complicated. at the beginning, people found it very, very difficult to take on board all these various characters. But little by little, bit by bit, of course, you know, because of the performances and the look of it, uh you were very comfortable dotting around. You knew where you are if you were with a man, dothraki, you were across the sea, and if you were with a shaggy man, you were either north of the wall or you were in winterfell, you know. So it was all, yeah, you began to be able to relax into it, I think, a bit more. 

Vance | second viewing through already, it's like, oh, I'm already seeing things I missed. So I think it's going to be an enjoyable process going through it again because it's just so many layers, yeah, but it's the most brilliant series, I think for me personally.

Fran | Well, strangely, yes. I started watching it again and I was suddenly taken with how amazing it was. The writing just, and performance, and the production design, oh unbelievable.

Nigel | I've got a question. speaking from my perspective, directing perspective, I've often had some very interesting comments from my clients when I have delivered a cut. And in fact, Vance and I did one music video a number of years ago, and the client came up to me at the beginning of the shoot and said, Save them from themselves.

Fran | Hahah, yes. [vance laughs]

Nigel | So, um, we shot all through the night, which was quite an experience. We then did a cut with my fabulous editor, who I believe was Michael Hellman at the time. And, I sent the cut off and the client rang me up afterwards and said, "This is fantastic. It's so good. We're so happy. But now I want you to go back into the cutting room and make it better." And that was the end of the detail She also said, "Don't change a thing, but make it better."

Fran | Oh, for goodness sakes.

Nigel | this is sort of a two part question. The first is, have you ever had that sort of crazy direction from upon high? And also you're doing all these shows which have a specific time length. So if you were doing, you know, The Godfather 4, as long as it's under four hours, it's probably going to be okay to put into the cinema. But you've got to do something in whatever it is, 58, 30 or whatever Netflix, blah, blah, show is nowadays. I mean, how do you deal with all that stuff? 

Fran | Well, to deal with the last point first, um it's changed hugely with streaming because you're dealing with studios. You know, they're not tied to the idea of advertising or anything. As long as they have a decent length. They can be as long as they want, or as short as they want. I think the wisdom is not to go above an hour, but these are very tightly scripted. I mean they're huge visual effects things. They're not going to go over the top. I know on The Crown, it was always deemed if it was anywhere near an hour, it was too long because uh Peter Morgan's disciplinary way of thinking was such, you know, he knew that his audience didn't want to sit there while we indulge ourselves. You know, so he always wanted to make it much tighter. But that was the point I was trying to remember, which was on Game of Thrones, when the first season, which was quite a delicate baby, there was no guarantee that it would be a success. There was every hope that it would be.

Fran | They'd done a pilot of the first episode, which had, rather sadly, failed miserably. Not miserably, no, it- it wasn't going to work. And they had to rethink so much of it, they practically refilmed all of it, recast some characters. Anyway, okay. I started in and I was cutting the episodes three, four, and five, and I was realizing that they were coming in really short. And, that's all well and good, you know, with HBO, you can generally get away with it, but this was too short. I mean there was one that I estimated by the time it was shot out, it wouldn't be much more than 35 minutes. And so David and Dan, the showrunners, went off, and wrote scenes that were then crowbarred in at the end of the shooting period. And they obviously, they had to use sets that already existed. They couldn't build new sets. They had to use maybe one or two actors max because they couldn't afford to get everybody back in. And they did some of the most brilliant dialog scenes. I don't know, Vance, if you remember, if you've watched the first season recently, there was a scene where King Robert is in his rooms and Searsie comes in and they have the most meaningful conversation.

Fran | He's stressing about this Dothraki princess, and so on. And they begin to talk about personal matters, and it is, nothing is obvious. Uh It isn't exposition. It was just a sublime bit of writers responding to something that was under length. And it, you know, It blew everyone away, that scene.

Vance | You know, that's interesting You mentioned that, and the value of writing, I mean, it's the beginning of everything. And the fact that you can bring a scene to life with two people like that and be so engaging, um obviously, that's the marvels of having that dialog to start with and obviously great performance.

Fran | Yeah, yeah. And well, you know, given that there's a strike on at the moment, we applaud those writers.
Vance | Yeah, we do. Without them, we have nothing. 

Fran | Yeah.

Nigel | So Vance and I have probably done, I don't know, over 100 music videos together, and I'm in the 400s now of how many I've done. And I've often read this comment about how music video editing styles have affected cinema. And certainly, if you see you know a Marvel Universe film, I would agree that's affected it. I'm not seeing that in the work that you're doing. I mean, granted, certainly with the Crown stuff, the material would not support that kind of style. Have you ever felt the need to reflect the current trend at any point with your work? Or have you just said, no, I'm going to do it the way that makes it work right, which I'm sure is probably what you do. 

Fran | I think there are films... um, The amazing uh Everywhere, Everything All at Once. Everything Everywhere, All at Once. I mean that's a, that's a tour de force of editing, because it can be, because that's the way it's conceived. I think editing has evolved hugely anyway. You know, I mean now it's crossing the line. It's not a big deal anymore. Even continuity is sort of up for grabs now. [laughs] So there are areas where the sophistication of the audience is greater and greater and greater. And um so Everything, Everywhere All at Once ( is going to appeal very much to that type of audience and they're going to feel very excited by it. but it wouldn't do for everything. so you know, out at the same time as the Banshees of Inisherin, which was beautifully cut as well. So it's horses for courses is what I'm saying. And um, you know, I'd love to have a go at a music video because I think ummm,

Nigel | Careful.

Fran |  [laughs], that sense of, I think there's a pattern. I'm not familiar enough with it, but I can imagine there's, pattern and movement in what you see in the frame and how the eyes drawn uh, and how rhythmic or arrhythmic and how that relates to the music, and the track, and the artist. I think all that's really, really interesting.

Nigel | So I was listening to an interview you did with somebody else and you were saying, you know, the dailies come in every morning and you assemble them, you must find that you're like a train on rails. You're racing down the track. So I mean, there must be a point where at 4:30 in the afternoon, you're just sort of starting to get a sense of this scene which they shot yesterday. And then suddenly you've got the knowledge that tomorrow morning, whatever time it is, a whole new bunch of stuff is going to arrive.

Fran | Stuff is coming in.

Nigel | And this gets to a crucial point, which is a funny story I had on the third movie I did, where on the third day of the shoot, the editor came racing in. This is in an era where we're still cutting on film. And he signals me, Come over here. Quick, quick, quick, quick. And he said, I don't know if you realize, but your lead actor, every time he starts talking, he's scratching his balls. [Fran laughs] So you've got to tell him not to do that. And I'm like, What? And sure enough, the next scene, I'm like, Okay, action. And he walks in and he looks around. And the minute he starts talking, his hand goes down to his crotch.

Fran | Down to his crotch.

Nigel | So obviously, this is a crucial point [laughing] at which the editor changed the course of the movie.

Fran | And your career.

Nigel | Yes! And my career. Actually, it did not change my career because the movie was crap and it was going to go down the toilet anyway. Ohh, But um obviously, there must be a point where these dailies arrive at eight o'clock in the morning and you're just trying to, "Okay, I've got a wide, I've got over the shoulder, over the shoulder, a couple of punch ins, blah, blah, blah." There must be a point where at some... Oh, actually, this takes us through to the infamous Starbucks coffee cup, you know, is that you see something which needs to be changed. I mean, how often do you get a chance to get into that piece of detail and then ring production and say, you know, I saw a guy standing in the background in ripped jeans and we're supposed to be in the 12th century?

Fran | Yeah, I mean first of all, I'm absolutely gobsmacked that that got through because the degree of scrutiny that every single frame of it that production had is... I can only think someone planted it as a a naughty joke. 

Vance | The $100,000 Starbucks paid right?

Fran | Yeah, yeah probably. Ummm, so yes, it is part of the job too, yes, to be, as I said, first line of defense. So you're looking at stuff and uh quite quite dispassionately because as you know, when you're on set, there are so many distractions and You know, you've got to do this and you've got to get this right and maybe something's happening that you're not really concentrating. But so yes, yes, the editor is expected to flag those things up. But um, it hasn't happened for me for a long, long time. And that's mainly because um it's not necessarily required. The script supervisors now are so savvy about what's needed for a scene, and they're the ones that will jog the director at the end of the day and say, You sure you don't want an insert there, you know? And they're, Oh, yeah. Okay. Or else they got later on. So we often at the end of, you know, a certain period, we'll have wish lists for pickup shots. the experience that I have has taught me that it's not often a good thing to go to the director because generally they're horrified that you're about to say something that's going to just stymie them completely.

Fran | if I've walked onto set and the director goes, Oh, Jesus, what? You know, they're petrified. And you know, they're working against the clock. They can't, shoot another go of that, you know. Because it's a day later, they've moved off that set, We do do it, but we do it um not against the clock. If there's a problem with the performance, well, they watch the dailies, you know. I'd have to be a very brave person to say to a director, you know, what do you think? Is this working or not? I don't think I've ever had to do that. Um and I don't think I'd be thanked for doing it either. Uh, 'cause as you know, the relationship between the director and the actor is a very delicate thing. And if they're not getting what they want out of the actor, then you have to fix it in the cutting room. and you, you can fix it in the cutting room. I've had scenes where you've got, you know, a first rate ensemble of good, good actors, really good actors, top of the game, and you've got one who's just completely out of their depth.

Fran | And you have to be able to pull him or her up to meet the pack. You know, he can't be this sort of outlier. So you have to, by fair means or foul, make his or her performance, sit within that scene as if he was one of the good guys, you know, one of the really good actors. what's strange is that we know performance so well because we get to scrutinize it all the time. And it's so little acknowledged what the editors do for performance. Often it's honed, and it's cherished, and it's um shaped, and it's polished, and, nobody thinks twice about it. The actors all go, Oh, I was quite good in that scene, wasn't I? [laughs]

Fran | Forgetting all about the fact that, you know, they had to have 15 takes and were stumbling over every other word. I don't mean that in an arrogant sense, When I was much younger and uh, you know, I was in this fan mode and one of the actors who I just thought was just the bee's knees. And I met him subsequently and um I thought he'd be thrilled that the editor thought he was really good. He didn't give a shit. You know, I was a nobody. And uh I think if actors actually knew what the editors do, and how much they do for them, uh and how much they appreciate a fantastic performance, they'd be a little bit more responsive.

Vance | Humble.

Fran | No, not humble. No, that's impossible

Vance | No, never.

Nigel | Editor bracket, unsung hero.

Fran | [laughs] yeah

Nigel | So, Fran, I could quite happily talk about this for another three or 4 hours, but in the same way as your producers said, anything longer than an hour, the audience. [Hahaha.] So we're assuming that the people who are listening to us are now in the parking lot outside where they started [revving up.] Yes, revving up and going, God, I need to get out of the car. So, I'm so grateful that you have come and joined us. Thank you so much. And you've done an extraordinary body of work, and I'm so proud of you.

Fran | Oh, well, me two of you. Yeah. My favorite cousin. [Hahaha.] And uh It was a real pleasure to talk to you both, I can't tell you. Yeah, it was lovely.

Vance | Thank you Fran. And what you do is, I'm certainly aware of what an incredibly amazing craft that it is. 

Fran | One of the few DPs that does. Haha

[music]

Nigel | So in episode five, Vance gave a bunch of comments about multi camera shoots for live shooting. And I agree with every single thing that he said, but from a director's point of view, I thought I would throw in a few things which might be useful to any of you out there who are considering doing multi camera shoots. And here's one for the producers actually, get non appearance insurance. The very first live show I ever shot was for Tears for Fears. And we were at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. We had all the trucks outside. The film had been downloaded into a bunch of magazines. We're all ready to go sound check. Roland arrives, walks on stage and goes, "Shout, shout, Let." And he didn't get to the end of it. He did the old hand across the throat and walked away. And the show was pulled. And there was about 50,000 pounds worth of expenses as a result. And we had not got non appearance insurance. So that's one thing that's very important. 

Another thing that I think is very important is choosing the right gig. Many times I have been told this is the gig you will shoot the show at, because the audience are fabulous and this, that and the other.

Nigel | And of course, very often when you get asked to do this, the gig is thousands of miles away, so you can't go and scout it. And on one occasion, the label hired me and the label gent said, I want you to shoot the band in this place and they have a fantastic stage set, so make sure you get that stage. We've invested a lot of money in it. And I sent him the cut after doing the shoot. And the phone rang and he was furious. Where is my stage set? Why is the stage set not in the video? And I said, Because it wouldn't fit through the door of the gig. It was still in the truck. So we'd flown halfway across the States to go and shoot the show. And his set was was not in the was not in the filming because a practical thing that nobody had researched. 

Another thing when you go and do a show is seat kills. Seat kills is when you say, these seats have to be taken out so we can put a camera there and nobody can buy those seats. On one particular show, which I shot in San Diego, ummm, the entire show had been sold out.

Nigel | So it was very difficult to find places to put camera. And the artist at the end complained and wanted to know why he'd been shot in profile. And the answer was that there was no other place to put the cameras but on stage looking at the side of his face. And he was very upset. 

One thing we always need to do is to shoot audience footage. Having a show without people clapping is not a show to watch. And in an extreme level, I would actually, if I ever could, I would spend a night just shooting the audience. 

Back in the old days, when we shot film, we would stagger the film so that when people ran out of film, not everybody stopped at the same time. So if you stagger the start, and even now in a digital world, if everybody has a card which lasts for 1 hour, it's important that you stagger the start of your cameras when you do the show. 

I think also it's important to watch your monitors when you're in the truck when you're directing, because if you look away or take care of something else during the show, you'll come back and you'll find that every single one of your operators is probably shooting a cowboy shot, which is waist to head.

Nigel | And what you have to do while you're making this show, while you're directing and shooting the show, is basically think on your feet of how you're going to edit it. So you want to make sure you have a wide shot, a close up, a cutaway to the drummer, all that kind of stuff. you also have to be imperious inside that truck. I did one show in Italy, and there were three or four people behind me on the sofa having a good old time, drinking, chalking, yaking. And eventually I had to turn round and be very rude and say, either shut up or leave the truck. Because I have one opportunity to shoot this show and I'm talking to a bunch of people and they need clear direction and not the noise of people talking in the background. 

By the way, when you're shooting in a foreign country, make sure you've got a good AD who's got very good translation skills, because any information you're giving to your cameraman has to be translated into the local language. 

I always do a complete run through of the show on my own. I write out the entire show, bar for bar, so I know what's happening.

Nigel | If you don't read music, you can't count to four, find somebody who does and get them to sit beside you. And give you the cues so that you can be on the guitar player when the guitar solo comes. 

One thing which I went through, which was a horrible experience, was with a very famous singer who re-recorded her vocals after the show and did not tell us. And of course, when we came to the final cut, none of the shots sunk up, and that was a big nightmare. 

Two more things. Make your crew wear black. And if you have a six foot three operator who's bald and is not wearing a black cap, do not have them down the front, because you will see that person and his big bald head in every shot that you do. 

Final story. Me and Vance were shooting Alice Cooper in Birmingham and it was an amazing show and showed really how professional Alice was. First thing that happened during the show, halfway through the show, his mic went dead, but he still kept singing into the mic, walked to the edge of the stage, swapped mics very quickly to a working mic and kept on singing.

Nigel | And I said to him afterwards, you know, why did you do that? And he said, Well, I know you might have needed that shot. So I kept singing even though you couldn't hear it, because I figured we could throw it in later. And on the second night, or rather the second afternoon, he volunteered to mime to the entire previous night's show with all the cameras rolling so we could get more footage. Which is very generous of an artist and just shows how professional he is. But it's a big deal when you do a live show and you get one chance to nail it, unless you are very lucky and you get an Alice Cooper situation. 

But um yeah, lots of practical things there with a few nightmare stories. So please learn at my expense. 

[music] 

Vance | Thanks for listening to this episode of Two Stops Over. If you have a question for us, you can send us a message on Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok @TwoStopsOverPodcast. We just might invite you to ask your question live on a future epsiode. 

We'd also love it if you could leave us some good reviews on Apple Podcasts

Nigel | And I'm going to be very silly and say it would be interesting to get a couple of bad reviews because then we can answer back.

Vance | Oh yeah, we can...

Nigel | We can slag people off if they give us bad reviews. But any review is good. And definitely, let's have some questions, people. We want questions from you so that we can respond.

Vance | And sound like we know what we're talking about.

Nigel | Speak for yourself, pal. Hahaha.

[music]

Announcer | Thanks for listening to Two Stops Over with Vance Burberry and Nigel Dick. They'll be back soon with a new episode. Until then, and if you have the time, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also follow and share on Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook, @TwoStopsOverPodcast