by Jack Giroux
Ben Baudhuin is always asking himself, “Is it satisfying? Is it entertaining?” The editor’s collaborations with filmmaker Christopher Landon are nothing but. The duo have worked on four feature films, including “Happy Death Day 2U,” “Freaky,” and as of last year, a tight chamber thriller from Blumhouse, “Drop.”
Baudhuin crafts an airtight piece of suspense, mostly set in a fine dining restaurant high above Chicago’s skyline. Violet (Meghann Fahy), a widow on her first date in years, is the audience’s eyes and ears. There’s anxiety from the start for the big date, but fear balloons when airdropped messages inform her she must kill her date, Henry (Brandon Sklenar), or her family will die.
Everyone in the restaurant is a suspect. Baudhuin – who was, in no small part, inspired by “Goodfellas” to become an editor – always cuts away and lingers long enough to sell the effect. In a movie packed with suspects and moving extras, the editor always kept Violet’s point of view at the forefront. The more the edits tell her story, the higher the intensity.
For a guessing game thriller like “Drop,” the artful handling of red herrings is critical. What reads as too much or too little when communicating clues?
What I love about editing is how it can influence the audience’s mind or how they view a character in the film. When you’re going into a movie like this, any character you meet, people assume that they’re part of it. It’s funny, some people we had to do a lot more with, other people you just show on camera and audiences go, “Oh, it’s got to be that person.” Really? That guy is just in the background eating a snack.
Adding a glance from somebody at the end of a scene all of a sudden puts them into question. You set up the pieces and let the audience’s mind fill in the blanks. They’ll create their own red herrings.
Speaking of communicating with an audience’s psychology, did you make certain choices with cuts and transitions to subtly unnerve viewers?
I think people are the most uncomfortable when they’re firmly in Meghann’s character’s point of view. If she’s feeling unhinged or out of control, I’m trying to keep the pace of the cutting a little unhinged or out of control.
How so?
There are ways to accelerate things. A lot of the time when I want something to move faster, I will try to stay in tighter, because it’s easier to control the pace. You’re not relying on continuity from people around the subject.
With all the cutaways to cell phones, how did you keep that fresh and avoid repetition?
I’m so excited to do a period movie where there are no phones or TVs, that’s my dream editing job now. When I read the script, I was like, “Oh God, there are going to be so many phone inserts.” Then I talked to Chris about it, and he always tries to – in almost everything – to shoot the phone stuff practically, which is great. My assistant’s not having to go and temp in 600 phone screens. There’s also a fair amount of text messaging back and forth in the movie.
Did your background in commercials prepare you for handling the amount of temp graphics needed for ‘Drop’?
I used to work a lot in TV promos and commercials where you had to do a lot of your own graphic and text work, if you wanted titles and such. A lot of the time that was thrown on you, too. For “Drop,” we just didn’t want it to be little bubbles. I thought, what if the text in the messages was more integrated into the scene, more interactive with what was happening around the screen?
For the assembly, we were doing it ourselves in Avid and putting it up there. I always tended to add some movement to some of it. Some of the stuff that’s in the final cut was in the temp, which they made better or smoother, did some of the same movements that we put on it, or motion-tracked it in a way that we were doing in our temp graphics.
How’s Avid with title tools?
It was sort of a pain. I thought the Avid title tool couldn’t get worse, but the newer version of Avid’s title tool is not great. It was crashing every time. I ended up having them get me a copy of Photoshop, doing all the titles in Photoshop, and would import them into Avid and make it easier to position them around. Anyway, not trying to throw shade at Avid, but that title tool is a bummer. I do think we found a good way of not showing a phone a million times.
Since you do use Avid, though, what do you appreciate about it?
This was maybe the second time I’ve used the new version on a project for so long. At the end of the day, Avid or Premiere or whatever, it’s what works best for you to get to where you want to go. For me, I’m faster in Avid. It’s better for sharing media so that our post team can be working, too. Our VFX editor and my assistant were working all at the same time. Honestly, I do like Avid a lot and don’t think I would use anything else. I’ve tried to cut movies in Premiere; it’s always been a drag.
You’ve now steadily edited major films over the last few years, so how do you reflect on the early days of your career? How did your initial gigs prime you for the career you have today?
I worked with good people as an assistant that were really good teachers and mentors. I worked with John Axelrad, who was a great influence. Watching that guy work was amazing. He let me cut scenes, would give me notes, and use them. He was always trying to get me to do more and get me to improve. I owe a big debt of gratitute to John, Steve Mircovitch, William Yeh, Luke Doolan and Matt Chesse. They were all great mentors and were so giving with their time. It’s always a struggle when you’re trying to make a jump from being an assistant to being an editor, but having people more experienced than you to learn from was a huge benefit.
Which gig helped propel the jump?
I was very fortunate to get to work on this movie, “The Gift,” at Blumhouse a long time ago. I started out as an assistant on that movie but was cutting scenes the whole time during the shoot, assembling scenes with the editor. I was putting myself out there, giving my opinion when appropriate. I’m not walking into the middle of a meeting and being like, “Hey, here’s what I think!” When the time came that we needed a second editor on that movie, the editor, Luke Doolan, and Joel [Edgerton], the director, said, “Let’s have Ben do it.” It was by virtue of being interested, working hard at cutting scenes, and asking questions.
It’s a bummer that people don’t want to come into offices. I’ve worked on movies with assistants who flat-out would not want to come into the office. That’s the most fun part – being in the office. You can see the process. You can put yourself out there and try things. I’ve had PAs who’ve shown me graphics they did and been like, “Oh, that’s amazing,” and then, it’s in the movie. If you’re offsite and working virtually, that’s not happening. Of course, people have their own reasons for everything. Whatever works for you.
As someone who was always very present in the editing bay, what else did you learn about the profession during those formative years?
It taught me so much about the politics of everything and how to deal with personalities and how to get by. So much of this job is personality. You gotta be somebody the director wants to be in a room for six or eight months with. If you’re a bummer, it makes it hard.
I worked hard to be ready for when some opportunities would come. I was always practicing and trying to cut a short film on the side if I was an assistant. When I used to cut short form stuff back in New York, I was always on Craigslist trying to find a short film to edit because I wanted to work in narrative. If you don’t put yourself out there, you never know what opportunities you’re going to miss.
