1 Degree from Quentin Tarantino
Filmnut 122
Guest: Joe D’Augustine
Projects: ‘One Night With You’, ‘Kill Bill’ I and II, ‘Death Proof’
Crew Position: Writer/ Director/ Editor
Website: http://www.khpreleasing.com (For the latest news about One Night With You) http://www.filmforno.com (D’Augustine’s blog on film)
Joe D’Augustine offered great tips and insight into the editing process where his career began. Having worked with Quentin Tarantino of course I had to ask him a few questions about those experiences.
D’Augustine brought some good clips from his comedy directorial debut, “One Night With You”. One in particular is where his camera operator talks through and walks us through how they execute a night time driving scene. We showed that clip and then we showed the clip of how the scene came out in the movie.
Filmnut’s executive producer extraordinaire, Brian Gramo, was a bit more chatty this evening and added some great comments and questions as well.
For the low budget filmmaker who has less of an ability to overcome mistakes due to budgetary restraints I would encourage you to involve your editor as early on in the filmmaking process as possible. That really applies to all crew department heads. Pick their brain, get their point of view from the perspective of their particular expertise. They may see things that relate to the creative, shooting, budget, schedule, wardrobe aspect of the film that you do not.
As I’ve said in prior blogs the phrase “we’ll fix it in post” is a dangerous philosophy to live by. A more accurate saying would be “we’ll make the best of it in post.” Translation, sometimes you can fix it in post… more often then not — not so much. The irony is, the more diligent you are (by doing things like shooting plenty of b-roll, as talked about on the show) the better position the editor will be in to make fixes if they are needed.
Finally, for those wanting to research or study editing further, two editors that D’Augustine mentioned of influence are: Slavko Vorkapich and Bud Smith. (google em baby)
Check out the show if you haven’t already it was a lot of fun talking to Joe. www.thestream.tv/filmnut will take you directly to this episode as well as all past filmnut shows.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!
Jeff Schubert
PS During the show, Joe mentioned that he has been invited by Quentin Tarantino to attend the Venice Film Festival’s retrospective on Spaghetti Westerns starting at the end of this month as Joe was heavily involved in the restoration of “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. One of Tarantino’s all time favorite films. Check out Joe’s blogs for updates at the filmforn website listed above for updates.