A common thread between editors Emelie Mahdavian and Bryan Mason, whose films are a part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, was a quick turnaround for picture lock. The duo…
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
Perfection is rarely achieved in movies, but this heaven-sent concert doc hits the sweet spot. Over two days in January 1972, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin — she was 29 at the time — sweeps into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts in front of a congregation and testifies to God in song. The blessed thing took nearly half a century to come out because director Sydney Pollack failed to sync the image with the sound. Then digital angels stepped in, and glory, glory, hallelujah!
A common thread between editors Emelie Mahdavian and Bryan Mason, whose films are a part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, was a quick turnaround for picture lock. The duo appeared on a panel in Park City as part of Editors on Editors presented by Adobe. Variety‘s senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson moderated the discussion.
Mason was candid about finishing the edit on “Jimpa,” the semi-autobiographical family drama from director Sophie Hyde, the Friday before the festival started. He described that as “not an unusual Sundance experience” having brought multiple films to the festival before.
“We were so stoked to get in, but it meant we had three months worth of post to do in about four weeks. So it was a crazy busy four weeks,” he added.
Mahdavian, who previously directed the female rancher documentary “Bitterbrush,” echoed Mason’s sentiments about the rush to the finish line for the Sundance premiere “Heightened Scrutiny.” The movie follows lawyer and transgender rights activist Chase Strangio as he navigates anti-trans legislation. The crew was shooting Supreme Court footage up through December.
“This was observational footage and there were these couple moments of this gut thing of, ‘Let’s try this or let’s try that,'” Mahdavian explained. “I’m really looking forward to seeing it again because I sort of got to step away.”
Flashbacks are a major device used in “Jimpa” in order to tell a multi-generational story. The movie stars John Lithgow and Olivia Colman. Mason described how “there’s about 70 flashbacks woven throughout the film and finding how they were going to work in the story was definitely the hardest journey in the edit … They ended up being these tiny moments that you cut to, but they reveal a depth and a kind of complexity of back history and history that you just glimpse at. And when they work, they work so well. But it took us a while to find that.”
Mason is a frequent collaborator with Hyde, having worked on “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” and “52 Tuesdays” as both editor and cinematographer. However, Mahdavian found herself working with director Feder for the first time on “Heightened Scrutiny.”
“I think it’s really important to hopefully find yourself in a position of being on a project where you have a director whose vision you believe in, right?” Mahdavian explained. “It’s also really hard to be a director, so I try as much as I can to offer myself, serve that vision and to just be me.”
