Sam Williams (‘Slow Horses’ editor): ‘You let the footage guide you’ whether you’re editing action, comedy or drama [Exclusive Video Interview]
“The skill is to not get in the way of the joke” declares BAFTA-winning editor Sam Williams about the best pacing for the razor-sharp sarcastic one-liners bleated by the grumpy Jackson Lamb in the acclaimed third season of “Slow Horses.” For our recent webchat he adds, “If you want the joke to play out, obviously you’ve got to give it a little bit of space,” noting that “the key to it, is when you’re in the edit, you let it play and then you watch it. You’ve always got to watch in context, and you’ve got to watch it again and again.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
SEE Exclusive Video Interview: Danny Cohen (‘Slow Horses’ cinematographer)
“Slow Horses” is based on Mick Herron‘s series of novels, adapted by showrunner Will Smith (“Veep”), about a group of MI5 agents who are consigned to a dumping ground for rejects paying the price for their past mistakes. The outcasts and misfits of the British intelligence agency that are banished to the administrative purgatory of Slough House are known as “slow horses.” They’re expected to endure interminably dull, paper-pushing drudgery, along with occasional berating from their rude and abrasive boss, Jackson Lamb. Oscar winner and Emmy nominee Gary Oldman plays the rude, crass and often drunk department head with a bracing panache, reveling in being as unapologetically miserable as possible, while showing flashes of the intellect, perceptiveness and savvy from his former life as a respected spy. The spy drama co-stars Jack Lowden, Oscar and Emmy nominee Kristin Scott Thomas, Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Kadiff Kirwan, Freddie Fox, Tony winner and Oscar and Emmy nominee Sophie Okonedo, Chris Reilly and Tony winner and Oscar and Emmy nominee Jonathan Pryce.
“You let the footage guide you,” Williams continues when discussing how he approaches any given scene on the Apple TV+ spy drama, whether it be a an often hilarious dressing-down between Lamb and his long-suffering team, or a more action-oriented scene that requires a punchier rhythm. “I don’t really like to go in with a preconception of how how I’m going to do it, and obviously the story is leading you to that,” he says. “You know what you like to watch, and there’s a certain rhythm to those things that you like. So, if I was watching this story, where would I want to be at this particular moment? That is a general guiding principle I go by, but then in saying that, when you’re watching the rushes, you should be able to start to figure out what the director’s intention is, that should start coming across to you when you’re watching it,” the editor explains. “Then there’ll be certain performance elements that catch your eye. And then really, it’s just a question of balancing those all together and going ‘right, we’ll start here, we’ll do that.’”
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