Keeping Beats

MARK LIVOLSI

2001 Vanilla Sky (coeditor), dir. Cameron Crowe

2003 Pieces of April, dir. Peter Hedges

2004 The Girl Next Door, dir. Luke Greenfield

2005 My Suicidal Sweetheart, dir. Michael Parness

2005 Wedding Crashers, dir. David Dobkin

2006 The Devil Wears Prada, dir. David Frankel

2007 Fred Claus, dir. David Dobkin

2008 Marley and Me, dir. David Frankel

2009 The Blind Side, dir. John Lee Hancock

2011 The Big Year, dir. David Frankel

2011 We Bought a Zoo, dir. Cameron Crowe

AWARDS

2006 Eddie Award (ACE) nomination, Best Edited Feature Film—Comedy or Musical, Wedding Crashers

2007 Eddie Award (ACE) nomination, Best Edited Feature Film—Comedy or Musical, The Devil Wears Prada

With a computer screen glowing off to the side of his New York cutting room, Mark Livolsi spoke of some of the box office smashes he has edited, including Wedding Crashers, The Devil Wears Prada, and Marley and Me. Livolsi peppers his comments with some essential metaphors (playing jazz, handing off batons, making a stew) that many editors here, as well as in the first volume of First Cut, have evoked in discussing their art and craft, establishing the multilayered nature of being an editor. In addition to metaphors, Livolsi offers practical illustrations of the many day-to-day decisions and pressures that an editor in the twenty-first-century cutting room faces, including the need to work faster because of tight schedules, excessive amounts of dailies, and "infinite" possible edits that the new technology facilitates. As Livolsi also notes, technology has finally eliminated the physical tedium of splicing film and the clatter of sound cuts that were prominent in editing on celluloid. However, the fundamental principles of editing—to find the story, tap into emotional truth, and present the material for maximum impact—remain key editorial responsibilities, as they have since the beginning of narrative cinema.

Because many of Livolsi's films to date have been comedies, he offers a strong analysis of the editorial necessities of that genre, but he has also been extending himself beyond comedy to explore other types of film. Cutting across all genres, however, is perhaps editing's greatest challenge: discovering the "story" and its related concerns with pacing and rhythm. Livolsi reflects enthusiastically on how actors' improvisations, special effects, and the occasional "crane shot" can impact his efforts to pull the most effective story out of the chaos of feature filmmaking.

When did you start editing?

I started when I was a kid. My father had an 8mm camera and shot home movies and I was fascinated by them. One day I found his camera in the closet, and I bought film and started to shoot. It slowly occurred to me that movies—which I loved—were something I could make as well. I started with little zombie movies. Back in the seventies, I was obsessed with George Romero and Night of the Living Dead, and zombie movies seemed easy to make. I was also into theatrical makeup, especially scars, so it seemed like the way to go.

Just you and your friends?

And my brother, Tim. In one film, I had my next-door neighbor attack and eat my brother! I have that movie somewhere in the attic, and my brother still talks about how I forced him into it. (Laughs.)

Did you edit in camera?

I did, actually. In fact, I remember the moment when I first made an edit in camera. It literally was a shot of my brother walking down the driveway, holding a BB gun, and I shot it in a wide. Then I paused my brother midaction and grabbed a medium shot from another angle. When I got the film back from the lab and looked at it, here was this professional piece of work! It actually told a little story in two shots and that fascinated me.

Did you have any editing equipment at the time?

I had a small hand-cranked splicer. My dad used it to cut out all the overexposed bits of film. I used it primarily to watch those old Castle Films, which were eight-minute condensations of my favorite movies.

How about scripting?

I'd say my movies were done on the fly, although I did write some scripts, but silly ones that were ten, twelve pages long involving massive special effects and alien invasions. I remember showing one script to my art teacher who remarked, "It's a good script, but I think you bit off more than you can chew!" He was right because I never shot it. The planning, the coordinating, the sheer magnitude of what it took to actually make a film was to me so painstaking and daunting that very few of my epic projects ever left the planning stages. I was beginning to realize that each shot is a setup that has to be lit separately. Before that, I thought you'd just run out there and grab it like in a documentary, right? And then I realized, my God, you mean each of these shots has to be created separately and you have to move the camera here, move it there, set up lights? Forget that! I'll wait till it's all in the can and then work with it.

Aside from wanting to avoid those filmmaking logistics, why did you gravitate to the editing process itself?

I found I had a natural inclination for editing when I was in college. I tried everything at Penn State, which had a wonderful, very small film program. It was amazing because I had the opportunity to use equipment as opposed to competing for it. I learned how to write screenplays, direct actors, record sound, edit ... but of all the filmmaking crafts, the only one that came easy to me was editing. In fact, with editing, I could get lost for fifteen, sixteen hours in the basement of the film department and just create, you know, put the film together. It was clear to me and it was clear to my girlfriend, Maria (who later became my wife), that editing seemed to be the right direction for me.

Did the detailed nature of the work appeal to you?

I think there was an obsessive component, a need to make order out of chaos. The chaos of infinite options, of infinite ways of cutting, of infinite performance choices, and what seemed like an infinite amount of dailies and turning it all into one final, decisive piece of storytelling. It was all instinctive. I never sat down and said, "This is what I like." I just did it and didn't think twice about it. When I got out of college, I focused on that. I said, "Okay, I'm not going to try to...