By Rob Feld
A Vince Gilligan-created series has a style and sensibility recognizable to any fan of “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul” — and now, “Pluribus” (on Apple TV+).
Extreme close-ups that raise curiosity cut into expansive wide shots that play out in single takes; shots composed with precision to create tension while keeping the viewer’s eyes refreshed; and scenes with no dialogue that explore character through the choices they make as they go through the minutia of building a meth lab or trekking through the jungle. Part of maintaining this voice has been the extended collaborations Gilligan brings from series to series, none more critical than the one with his editors.
Of his team on “Pluribus” — Skip Macdonald, Chris McCaleb, and Joey Liew — Gilligan said, “I couldn’t make ‘Pluribus’ without them … or at least I wouldn’t want to. It wouldn’t be the same show, that’s for sure. These three brilliant editors have been with me for a long time now — particularly Skip, whom I’ve worked with for nearly 20 years, going back to the early days of ‘Breaking Bad.’ They find the most creative and elegant solutions for making every scene work, surprising me in wonderful ways. All three have keen eyes, a writer’s ear for storytelling, and flawless noses for detecting bs. They’re great partners to me.”
“Pluribus” stars Rhea Seehorn as Carol Sturka, a wildly successful but chronically unhappy romance novelist whose world is upended when a mysterious global event, “The Joining,” links most human minds into a state of blissful coexistence. Unjoined and appalled by the enforced happiness around her, Carol is assigned a serene chaperone, Zosia (Karolina Wydra), as she fights to recruit the few existing unjoined to help her restore the old order. The series blends thriller tension, mystery intrigue, and dark humor as it asks whether a smiling world is utopia or dystopia.
Aided by the rare and captivating gravity Seehorn brings to each scene, these editors maintain extended shots of silent behavior, tease obscure information, and weave together some of the most composed frames on television. They take each element given to them and maintain intrigue in a strange world while drawing their audience in. Given the best to work with, they make the most of it.
CineMontage: Talk to me about the aesthetics of this show, which are particularly Gilligan’s.
Chris McCaleb: One of the things I found the most rewarding and sometimes challenging was finding the tone; it’s humor combined with pathos and deep emotional resonance, and it’s often all happening at once. There is a huge tonal shift from the first episode to the second, which I think is a big part of why they aired the first two when the show premiered. You don’t get a sense of where the show is going or its sense of humor until the end of Episode 1, when Carol is talking to the guy on the television.
CineMontage: The shots are so composed, and there’s a great deal of silence in this show, which lets the viewer follow behavior. What sort of footage are you receiving to work with?
Skip Macdonald: Vince always storyboards, but there’s also lots of footage. You have multiple choices for everything. It makes our job difficult in the moment but easier in the long run because we have so many options.
McCaleb: The challenge becomes, “Which good stuff do I use?” That’s a luxury problem, but it’s definitely a challenge as an editor. Joey had one of the more silent episodes; there’s nowhere to hide with that silence.
Joey Liew: There was a lot of coverage and different ways of coming into and leaving a scene. We normally cut without music. If it’s a montage, we either pitch some music or we go dry and see what works. We contact Thomas, our music supervisor, for options and go from there. When you’re cutting in silence, it really tests the timing of your cuts. There’s a lot of cutting with action and with minute details — the scenery, the faces.
McCaleb: One unique challenge, as far as the silence goes, is having to build out a sonic landscape just to demonstrate what a cut is going to do. Some cuts won’t work if you still hear traffic. In real life, people are around; we can’t completely eliminate civilization in production. So we use the iZotope RX filters to bring everything down to almost-silent levels, except dialogue. We’d strip away the world and then rebuild the worlds that Carol and Manousos are living in, which are very different lives from those most of us have any experience with. I couldn’t tell you the last time I was truly off the grid. On other shows, you can sometimes paper over emotions with different sounds or with music. On this show, we generally don’t do either. We don’t tempscore. Our amazing composer, Dave Porter, will watch it for the first time, and then in our spotting sessions with Vince, we’ll talk: Is this a spot for music? If a scene doesn’t work without music, it’s never going to be as great as it could be. If you’re using music as a band-aid, it’s always an additive, never the foundation.
CineMontage: Can you talk about an emblematic moment that captures the cutting pattern — the minute detail into those big wide shots; that Gilligan grammar?
Macdonald: For me, it was the opening of Episode 2. We start on the boots walking up the hill, and when she gets to the top, we come around wide and see the whole landscape — where she is and everything that happened. That’s the grammar we work with. Over the years we’ve worked with Vince on different shows, the wide shots have become standard for us. They’re beautiful, and they can sustain a hold because the characters are so strong. We’ll stay in shots much longer than most other shows on the air. It’s a testament to the look of the show and the actors that we’re able to do that.
CineMontage: How about a moment that speaks to the show’s humor?
Liew: The sequence in Episode 5 when the drone picks up the trash. The drone was supposed to pick up the trash and swing it toward Carol, almost hitting her. There was a lot of coverage. We found that if we just played it in the wide shot after the trash pickup, it was better. The bag was so heavy, and seeing the drone, in one practical shot, move at that angle and wrap itself around the light pole — I think that’s pretty emblematic of Vince’s humor.
McCaleb: It had that Buster Keaton quality: play it in the wide; it’s going to be funnier if you do it as practically as possible. Over the years, you become exposed to someone’s sensibility. Vince has a very specific sensibility, and part of that is: Don’t cut if you don’t need to. He also prefers, when possible, not to reuse shots. When he’s directing, he designs his shots around that strategy. With other directors, you can’t always do that because the schedule only allows so much coverage. Some scenes will require reusing an angle, and he totally understands that. But whenever we can, we try not to reuse shots.
Macdonald: He’ll shoot different angles of the master — different places in the room — so you can go back wide but not reuse the same piece.
CineMontage: Gilligan loves tracking the minute details of processes his characters go through. What’s a memorable sequence from “Pluribus”?
Macdonald: Zosia flying the C-130. People in that world know everything, so she knew how to fly a plane, and we got to experience the entire startup process. There was a lot of footage, too. That was a lot of fun to put together.
Liew: What would this character do and how would they do it? Sitting, opening a can of dog food —
McCaleb: — or taking a painstaking trip across South America. It starts with genuine curiosity about why people do what they do and the processes of how things work. That curiosity is infused in every frame of the show, every frame of the dailies. Then the challenge for us is how best to tell that story and where to be, which is the same challenge any editor has: Whose perspective are we in? Where do you want to be, and when? Especially in scenes like that. In an episode Joey edited, Carol is covering Helen’s grave with paver stones. That’s a montage about process, but at the heart of it is a woman grieving the loss of her wife, the woman she loved. There’s always something going on under the surface behind that process, because just like real life, there’s always something behind all of our processes —
Liew: — and layers and layers.
Macdonald: Everything ties to something else down the road. At some point, you get the answer.
CineMontage: The show trusts the audience.
McCaleb: You just said it. I think we all share the ethos of trusting the audience: assume they’re intelligent and perceptive, trust them to put the pieces together, and have the patience to know the story is going somewhere. Peter Gould did this as well on “Better Call Saul.” We’re going at our own pace, but ultimately it’ll be worth it.
Macdonald: I’ve come to realize the audiences that watch Vince’s shows are smart. They pick up on this stuff really quickly. We do trust them and rely on them to find these things. It’s special to work on a project Vince created and to watch the story unfold. We’re also figuring this out as we go, which is fun — opening all these doors and seeing where they lead.
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