Blair McClendon's Voice as an Editor

McClendon on what makes Joe Walker great, how Ozu influenced 'Aftersun,' and why he doesn't think movies are really about stories.

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A few weeks ago, I published an interview with Vera Drew drawn from a long Filmmaker Magazine article I wrote about how — if at all — an editor’s voice shows up across their filmography. This week, I’m running another conversation that contributed to that article. This one is with Blair McClendon, who has edited The Assistant, Aftersun, and most recently Union and The Last Showgirl.

While McClendon obviously works in service of a given director’s vision, he was also quite aware of his own sensibilities and how they may show up in his work. “I think I am most interested in how much space and breath you can put into a movie,” he says, adding that on any project, “the thing that's most paramount is the rhythm.”

In this conversation, we begin by talking broadly about the role of an editor, before zooming in on how McClendon and director Charlotte Wells found the ending of Aftersun.

On narrative films, across your work with different directors, I'm curious how your sensibility comes through in the edit. 

When I'm talking to assistant editors or rising editors I'll tell them I kind of know how the programs work. If what you want is someone extremely good at the program and who can execute directions fast, you should hire a twenty-one year-old at NYU who's certified in Premiere, because they're going to be faster than all of us. The real reason to hire me is that you have some idea either that our sensibilities overlap or that where they don't overlap that tension is productive. 

I guess I can think about what my taste is and what it runs towards. In fiction, I'm always like, editing isn't actually making a cut, and so what I'd like to do is keep whatever images on screen for as long as it's compelling. Which maybe is longer for me than for some other people. I think I am most interested in how much space and breath you can put into a movie. Music video cutting doesn’t come to me instinctively. I don't think to cut fast enough. Whereas, I think what comes to me is if a shot's good, hold it. 

To me, the thing that's most paramount is the rhythm of a thing. And basically you can get away with anything if the rhythm's right. My giveaway from Aftersun was when Charlie and I needed to figure out how to repeat the pillow shots from Ozu — the sequence of nice little still lives in between two sequences — we just watched a bunch of movies that had them and timed them, and we found that they all run like five to seven seconds. So that was cheating. They all run the exact same amount of time. 

You mentioned being good at finding the rhythm of a thing. And I'm wondering if you have any kind of a musical background. 

Not in a long time. Once upon a time, I thought I would be a good musician, but no longer. 

But I guess the reason I'm always on the fence a bit about editing and writing and writing and editing and their overlap is that my answer is often, "Yes, if you take writing at its most expansive meaning." In the sense that people also write music. And to me, I think that's what is actually happening. Or it's like you're taking some sort of fluxus directions for a poem: "Here's the sandbox that you can play in, and now you have to construct some feeling out of that." To me, the writing is in the revision of the story, but — and this is probably going to make people feel weird about hiring me — I just don't think movies are about stories. I don't even think they're not about stories because I like quiet, austere films. I think Star Wars is not about a story. I think movies are often about these gestures and these emotions that land. And I think you produce those in a sort of musical sense through a particular rhythm, through a resolution or lack of resolution of that rhythm. 

And I think of that on a very small level — with those interstitial shots, you can feel if a series of shots are running the same amount of time and then suddenly one doesn't. In the same way, you can feel something when those shots go from very small to very big. And what I often find is a very common problem early in editing a film is all the scenes run about the same length, which you can totally feel because it’s totally stultifying. So my feeling is it often comes very close to that. 

And then I think there are some editors where you can clock who did it. I think Joe Walker, who does Denis Villeneuve's movies and Steve McQueen's movies, is one of those people. I think that even though Denis Villeneuve and Steve McQueen are very different filmmakers, I often am like, "Oh, no, that is Joe Walker cinema." They are cut very similarly.

How so?

I think part of what makes Denis Villeneuve work compared to a generic blockbuster of the last decade is there's a little more patience in those shots. He certainly loves to design a shot. But I think there's a real patience in those that I think has disappeared from a lot of Hollywood cinema, though if you go back not too long ago it was pretty common. It's hard to put language to this, but I often think of both the Steve McQueen movies he cut and the Denis Villeneuve movies he cut as having very hard edges. I think some of it is in the shot design. I think some of it is in his patience and his willingness for there to be silence in just the shot. And I also think it's this real interest — which is not unique to Joe, but his movies seem to do it a lot — in what two images up against each other really produce. I think in an ideal world everyone wants to do that. But I also think there's a form of editing that tries to be more fluid. 

I've been trying to tease out this idea of how two movies would be different if two different editors switched movies. Do you ever watch something and think about how you would've edited the movie differently?

I think it's easier for me to see if it's someone I've worked with before and then they work with someone else. Then it's like, "You know what, I wouldn't have done that." But let's say Joe Walker and I switch Dune and Aftersun, I think probably — well, you know, in some ways it's hard to say what would change, because I bet in the back of my mind there is a part of me that's wondering what he would do when I'm cutting something. I think probably, and this may be a virtue of the filmmakers we're working with, Dune would be slower in my hands on the scene level. I mean, if he cut Aftersun, he probably would've done it faster than I did it. I just think he would've hit upon ideas I had much faster. Maybe the tagline is if you're thinking of hiring me, Joe Walker could probably have done it faster. 

I think another reason it's hard to pull apart is you find filmmakers you want to work with and you keep working with them. And then it becomes a little hard to see how somebody would do it differently. I think there are types of films that I would be less likely to do, and so my answer for what would happen is they'd be very different because we don't do the same thing. I think if you flipped me and a Marvel movie, I'd just not know how to do it. I think in [Marvel] kind of filmmaking you're really running the emotion through faces. And I think a closeup is such an unnatural image in the world. You just do not experience someone's face like that unless you're in a fight with them or kissing them. A closeup or even a medium closeup is this insanely powerful thing, so don't waste it. And I think there's a lot of filmmaking styles right now that are like, to register the emotion it needs to be with the actor. I think it works for a certain kind of filmmaking. But I think you're better off registering the emotion somewhere else. Which I guess gets back to the rhythm thing. I think if you want to produce a feeling you don't produce it in the scene you're in. You make it so it lands somewhere after that.

It seems like you and Charlotte Wells have pretty similar tastes and sensibilities. But what are the areas of tension between you two as you work? And how do you rub off on her?   

With her and I, it's sort of a particular thing because we've known each other for eleven years. I worked on her shorts before she made her feature, so we had some familiarity of how the other person worked. And I actually think when we first started working together our taste was probably further apart than it is now. Me, her, and the DP, Greg [Oke], all went to film school together, and there's a circle of us who often work together. I guess where our taste winds up converging is we all believe Edward Yang made perfect films and nobody else has ever matched them. 

I think in terms of where these productive tensions are, I’d go back to a useful thing we did on Aftersun. There's a point where you've revised something so much that none of it works for you anymore and it doesn't produce anything in you anymore. At that point, we laid out: What are the two or three moments in this movie that still make you feel something? This was after two or three months of working on it. And they didn't necessarily overlap. And we were like, OK, if it [still produces a feeling], then let's keep that in and we will make the movie work to keep those things in. I think one of mine was when she wakes up and he's recording her on the camcorder. He drops the camera because the phone rings, and there's just this pinkish color field because the camera's not looking at anything in particular. I think I always have an interest in the back of my mind in how long you can get away with not saying anything. But also, there's a very particular feeling and a quality in her voice there that's producing something. 

There were a lot of ways to end that movie. It could keep going. There's some other shots that exist in the world. There's something else the camera could do there. And I just remember in our discussions on where it should end, there's some back and forth amongst a lot of us about if it should end on him — because it's not really about him, it's about her. And I was just like, "The whole movie's been about her, so it's impossible to think at this moment that it's not still her thing." But also I just had a very simple feeling that it's a strong image. I think when I say I care about endings what I often mean is literally the very last image, because it's the only image you can't make up for. If you have to have a weak image somewhere else that sucks, but then you keep the movie moving and hopefully everyone forgives you. 

Aftersun feels like a movie where there was a lot of playing with the ending. Could you talk about the process of constructing that? 

We knew we were headed [to the final rave]. We knew that the whole movie had to work backwards. You have this big blow out dance sequence. It's very ecstatic. But we had to find a movie where that would be both surprising and it would not feel like you guys are just trying to end the movie. We are slightly breaking what we are doing the rest of the way, and that has to feel totally acceptable. The ending was hard, but it was clear that there just wasn't another good way to end this film. So this maybe is the place where it's closest to writing — or at least how I write — is I'm often like, "Here's a good sentence. How do I get to that sentence?" And I think this movie was very much about, "How do we get to that part?" So in terms of constructing it, when I look back at very early cuts, the ending came along pretty quickly. Especially once "Under Pressure" was in there. 

But I think what was actually being constructed a lot was the flashes of the rave that appeared before. I think those were revised more than anything else that appeared in the movie. Because it has to prepare you for where we're headed at the end and it has to happen often enough that you don't forget. But it also can't really overwhelm what's happening. And there were many versions of that. There were versions where there's somewhat of a narrative happening in those rave scenes. There are versions where you can see much more. The quality of light is different. And then we realized, after a lot of work, that what's working effectively is that you can't see very much. So it's really forcing you to grab onto something in there. And ultimately we were like that is what's happening in this movie: She is trying to grab onto a memory. 

So we stopped using the footage where you can see more. And we realized the stuff that made it seem more narrative just isn't the point. There's no need to follow some plot in this section. I think if those sequences didn't work then the ending is just fake and it's not clear why there's a rave and why'd you do that. That was the thing that got revised the most and was always moving around. We were thinking very hard about what kind of image could come off it, what kind of image could come before it, and how long you could last before you saw another one. Because there's only one rave sequence in the movie that's tied to the image it's in. Which is the one when he's drunk in bed and then it goes to him at the rave and then to her in bed. And that was only tied because it has a very particular camera movement. So you don't really land the thing in the place, you land it somewhere else. What wasn’t hard was the ending. What was hard was making a movie that justified that ending. 

I had a conversation recently with another editor who wanted to have no fingerprint on the movie and just execute the director's vision. 

What I think when I hear that is that when you're in film school there's this horrible phrase that goes around: "Write what you know." I hate it because I think it causes people to narrow their vision, rather than learning new things. And obviously I'm not against making a movie about yourself, given the movies I’ve worked on. But I don't think you have to try very hard to make a movie about yourself, because obviously you're going to make a movie about yourself. So if you're trying not to, you'll still accomplish that task. And I feel similarly when I think about, How can I execute the director's vision? Even if I'm trying very hard to do the exact thing the director wants, it's sort of not up to me. Because if you tell me “Go cut it and do this kind of thing,” inevitably it's going to be filtered through my understanding, my sense of what's good, the things this movie is reminding me of. 

You and Charlotte came up together, so there's probably more room to shape each other than if you were going onto, say, the next Wes Anderson project. 

What's very hard in talking about this is you just don't know what else is there. One difficulty in thinking about how different a Wes Anderson movie would be if I edited it is, well, he might shoot it tight enough that you can't hold after that. Charlie holds for a while. They were very smart about counting even after the scene was done. And that buys you a certain amount of ability to hold. And then you're on a project where they don't and they cut very tight to the action and it's like, "I can't do it. You didn't let me." 

I think a reason filmmakers use the same editor again and again is you do get to be shaping each other and then that's the form you understand. To me, there's so many people involved in a film that whoever the filmmaker is, you're also talking about this team around them. To a point where it does become hard to disentangle. Because you just don't know if someone on the set was like, "I think you should move this light a little to the left," and then that becomes the signature shot you guys do. It's kind of just like you've constantly just written a draft and then you hand it off to someone else to revise. 

I'm very rarely on a movie where I have a massive disagreement. In some ways, if you do, it was the wrong fit. I think where you have that productive tension is ideally just produced by showing each other the work — because inevitably you're not cutting it the way they're actually thinking about. I think what you really want is people who are actually filmmakers — and I don't mean in that they've made a film. I think it's very easy in the film world to be like, “I'm doing my job and my job is to do this thing.” Because the whole thing does run like a factory. But I think you want people who aren't just thinking, “How does this shot look?” They’re also thinking, “Will it do anything in the film? Or maybe this cut is really good, but does it do the thing?” If you have those people on your team then inevitably they're actually not quite making your movie but taking your movie and trying to make a different movie — and if you all trust each other, you actually make what the final movie is. But I think there are very few projects where what you want is just people to execute your vision. If you do, you're sort of wasting having those people there. 

Listings

• Carlos Lopez Estrada’s upcoming feature film, Ded, is looking for musicians to play main roles. This is a paid opportunity with no acting experience needed. Email BMCASTINGDED@GMAIL.COM. Deadline to submit is end of day Nov. 4.

• Will DiNola (he/him) is a film composer open to new projects. He is interested in people’s passions and pushing the art of film scoring to new horizons, blending genres, and telling unique stories. He also writes about his experience in a newsletter called “do.”"

• Multitude Films and Brown Girls Doc Mafia are seeking proposals for four doc shorts that explore reparations beyond the financial models most often covered in mainstream media. Deadline Nov. 15. Application and more info here.

• Antigravity Academy is taking applications for its second Screenwriter’s Camp. Applications open Oct. 21 through Nov. 22. Camp runs May 23 - 28, 2025. More here.

• Josh Palmer is seeking a Gaffer for a micro-budget feature in Cape Cod, shooting Nov 10-25. Ideally owns equipment or can source lights. Seeking sensitivity, communication, and taste over technical ability. DP: Marcell Lobenwein. Paid, lodging + travel covered. contact: jeliaspalmer@gmail.com.

• Casting call for a new feature film shooting Spring 2025 in NYC. Non-Union and must be able to work as a NYC local. Synopsis and project details on this document:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hqKKWIRmHndfIMAwZqGZLfvsG58blVqDdwTPNO-1UAg/edit?usp=sharing, submit to: freakscenellc@gmail.com.

  • The same project is seeking production designer. Synopsis: A game developer enters into a love triangle with an older investment banker and a former college classmate. Paid, must be able to work as a NYC local. Email resume and work samples to freakscenellc@gmail.com.

• June & Naya Get A Perm, a short coming-of-age film, is casting two leads (both paid): June (24, East Asian, effortlessly cool yet genuine) and Naya (12, Black, optimist in the face of insurmountable insecurity). Shoots in NJ Nov. 8, 9, 10, 15. Apply here.

• Nepali Female Filmmakers is holding a free cinematography workshop for Nepali women filmmakers Nov. 10 - 16. Deadline to apply Oct 25. More here.

• No Film School recently published a massive list of fall film grants, labs, and fellowships. Check it out here.

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