POS T- PRODUC T I ON . HAWKEYE
PERFECTLY BALANCED The editing team stressed the importance of getting the right mix of sequences – blending action scenes, like the one above, with humorous and emotionally charged moments
“Throughout the episodes, we added more edits, polished up and triple-checked everything, before presenting and reviewing edits again – all within Avid Media Composer, which was really cool”
for someone like Kate. Roche and Tan made sure I found a good balance and calibration for some of these shots, given I was so close to the canvas at times, playing on the importance of what’s not being said.” Roche’s perspective on this is quite similar. In an earlier scene between Kate and Clint, at the diner in episode 3, various directions came through to the editors. “It could have been excessively comedic, for example. Kate had so much
excitement, with the fan/mentee mindset. We had to work out if this was a scene where she annoys him, or he wants to be back home with his family. There are different ways to work a scene and you won’t know until you’ve cut it together, shown it to various people and received their feedback.” The character Maya, who had such a difficult life before transcending into a villain, was another interesting figure. “To see her go up against Clint and Kate, witnessing her character arc from the beginning and throughout the episodes, was fascinating,” says Roche. “Working with American Sign Language (ASL) was something very new to me. We wanted to make sure it was given the amount of time and light it truly deserves. We had to make sure the edit was respectful, but also portrayed the emotional differences between what Maya went through and Clint’s own narrative. Of course, Maya is completely deaf, but Clint is slowly losing his hearing. “We didn’t want to disrespect any characters, and really told their stories through the lack of any sound, which was a tricky process.” SOUND DESIGN When it comes to sound and audio, Tan says that they cut everything at once, to avoid waiting for sound design. “Typically, an editor would cut a scene, then hand it over to an assistant editor who would do the sound design. Then, we would go back and forth to tighten
those edits up. Personally, I’ll cut the scene and apply the sound design myself,” she explains. “But for those scenes where Maya can’t hear other voices or sounds, that’s where we experimented a little bit. In episode 3, when she’s in a classroom, we didn’t want to make it feel like she can’t hear anything, so we left it with just a score taking over. The assistants built it from there on. The moment she witnessed her dad killed, we took a more creative approach with the edits, because she cannot hear all that. We wanted a dreamscape, where you can hear the shooting through muffled sound design.” Tan slowly took the score down and added sound design, bringing in Roche and Gibson to check it worked from an emotional perspective. “Throughout the episodes, we built it up, added more edits, polished up and triple-checked everything, before presenting and reviewing edits again – all within Avid Media Composer, which was really cool.” Gibson notes the importance of the tools used to edit the audio. “We had access to the full toolkit of Marvel Skywalker Sound, as well as the Avid library. We also tapped into older archives within the MCU, so that we could match that universe consistency across all
THREE IS A MAGIC NUMBER The editors at the Hawkeye premiere, held at the El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood
34. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
Powered by FlippingBook