Louise Ford's Voice as an Editor

The 'Nosferatu' editor on working with Robert Eggers, what makes a good director-editor pairing, and finding a career in film in her 30s.

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From a young age, cinema made a big impression on Louise Ford. She can remember queuing around the block to see the original Star Wars; being seven years old and suffering a week’s worth of nightmares after witnessing the evil queen transform in Disney’s 1937 version of Snow White; and staying up late to watch Hammer horror films with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. But growing up in a small town in the northwest of England in the 1980s, working in the film industry never seemed like a real possibility. Instead, Ford found success in journalism, working as an editor in London for outlets like The Sunday Times and Cosmopolitan.

By 2001, Ford wasn’t feeling creatively fulfilled from journalism. So when her husband — who is a TV and documentary editor — got a job in New York, she left her own job and moved with him. There, Ford encountered a thriving independent film community. “For the first time, I was able to see a path,” she says. She took a six-week Art of Editing course at the now-shuttered The Edit Center. “And as soon as I sat down to edit my first scene, I realized I had all these amazing elements at my disposal — beautiful images, acting, music, sound — that I could use to craft into whatever story I wanted to tell, in whatever way I wanted to tell it,” Ford says. “It was the proverbial thunderbolt. I was like, ‘This is what I should've been doing all along.’”

Since then, Ford has gone on to be the go-to editor for filmmakers like Robert Eggers, Cory Finley, and Paul Dano. I spoke to Ford this past summer for a long Filmmaker Magazine article I wrote about how — if at all — an editor’s voice shows up across their filmography. It was an illuminating chat, in which Ford described what makes a good director-editor pairing and how she collaborates with different directors. As her latest film, Nosferatu (which I loved!), is about to hit theaters, I thought this would be a good time to share our discussion.

Still from Nosferatu.

Do you feel like your journalistic editing is similar to what you're doing now, editing films?

I was in my mid-30s before I even got behind the keyboard for film editing, and I think the experience of copy editing had made me familiar with the process of manipulating other people’s work, so I don’t feel so precious about the material; I’m not scared to make a cut, rearrange scenes, try stuff. Experience gives you the confidence in your decisions, which is a great thing about getting older! Plus with digital editing, nothing is irreversible, anyway.

What was your first professional film editing experience?

I was an edit room intern on a film called The Savages, directed by Tamara Jenkins. Both she and the editor Brian Kates were incredibly generous and let me sit in on the edit, and even during phone conferences with producers and the studio. I couldn't believe that I was able to watch take after take of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, these brilliant actors, doing their thing. Three months before, I'd been back in England working as the Deputy Editor of Cosmopolitan, having interns fetch me the coffee; now I was the intern fetching the coffee, and I could not have been happier.

Still from The Lighthouse.

That's awesome.

Editing is endlessly fascinating to me because you're constantly analyzing the realm of human psychology while you're editing these performances. What's more interesting than that? And I have been so incredibly lucky so far to have worked with some true artists in every discipline — writers, directors, actors, DPs, production and costume designers, composers, and sound designers. I mean, I’ve had some wonderful puzzle pieces to play with and put together. Not only am I in awe of everyone else's skill and talent, which constantly pushes me to do better, but I love feeling part of a team where everybody is giving their all to this collaborative creative endeavor.

Did you feel like there was something you brought as an editor beyond having a facility with the programs?

Having a facility with Avid is 1/10th of being a good narrative editor; 90% of film editing happens in your head. To me, what any editor brings to a film is their own experience in life and their own understanding of human emotion and psychology. Everyone brings their own sensibility, and everyone's sensibility is unique. It's molded by their specific experiences.

All I'm aiming for is to tell the story the director wants to tell in the best way possible. The challenge is how do I help the director bring his or her vision into being. Sometimes that does drive you to try stuff. My personal style is the more invisible style of editing. It's more about helping the audience get lost in a story and then not getting in the way of the story, not interrupting that flow. To me, the highest compliment is you don't notice the cuts, you get completely lost in the story.

Having said that, some of the editing I admire the most is visible. Take a film like La Chimera, which is a somewhat tragic — but thrilling — story: the editor Nelly Quettier has some sequences where she sped up the film, so it looks comical, like those silent Charlie Chaplin films… and it’s so counter-intuitive, and yet it works perfectly to add another element, a feeling of oddness… I can’t quite put my finger on what it does exactly, but it makes me feel something unique, maybe it just knocks you off-balance because it’s so unexpected, which actually makes you feel like anything unexpected could happen at any time in the story, which is kind of what transpires. So the editing there is adding to the impact of the story in a subconscious way. She’s an absolute genius, phenomenal.

Can you remember when you first met Robert Eggers? And do you remember what you bonded over?