Editor Jamie Kennedy, ACE, was nominated for an Emmy for Roku’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story in the category of Outstanding Picture Editing for A Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. The film, a fictionalized version of the parody singer’s life starring Daniel Radcliffe, was directed by Eric Appel and shot by DP Ross Riege.
Jamie Kennedy
We recently reached out to Kennedy, who credits also include The Summer I Turned Pretty and Love Victor, to talk workflow on this unconventional film, which earned eight nominations in total.
What was your typical workflow on Weird?
The movie was shot in 18 days, so we had a quick turnaround and a tight workflow going in post. My AE/additional editor, Peter Dudgeon, would try to have all the previous days’ footage for me prepped by noon the next day, and then I would dive in and assemble the scenes.
We didn’t have a lot of time to screen many rough assemblies for Eric, our director, while he was shooting, but we prioritized some major moments in the movie (The Rocky Road musical performance, the Doctor Demento Pool Party, and the Diner Fight) to send him while he shot to make sure we were on the right track and weren’t missing anything. After production wrapped, we had 10 days to finish our editor’s cut and then we slammed right into working with Eric on the director’s cut of the movie. All in all, it began shooting in February of 2022 and we were mixed and delivered by mid-July.
So we were trying to keep on pace with camera as best we could because it was such a tight turnaround. The first day was the lightest day in terms of scenes, which gave them more freedom with coverage, which was fun to play with — but after that, we hit the ground running and had to turn over between four and five scenes a day to keep pace.
What direction were you given for pace?
Both Eric and I come from TV comedy, so we’re used to working with a pretty brisk pace in our storytelling to keep things flowing and to keep the comedy punchy. We had a lot of ground to cover in our movie and a lot of set pieces, so we were always trying to pace things up as naturally as we could to fit everything in. This pace also allowed us the luxury at times to slow down for the more dramatic moments and for those moments to feel earned among the comedy.
This isn’t your typical biopic, and it’s funny and, well, “weird.” Can you talk about pace and cutting for humor?
My mentor, Tony Orcena, has a credo I’ve always followed, which is that “oxygen fuels fire and kills comedy.” There are always moments you want a movie to be able to breathe, again, for dramatic impact, but when you’re cutting for comedy, I think it’s so important to keep things moving and punchy. Jokes should land on camera, the cutting rhythm should match the speed of humor, and if you’re cutting for comedic impact that alone is a good tool in your belt to sometimes make a scene even funnier.
At the same time though, you need to know when to not rush through the humor, and certainly never run away from it. So knowing the difference between keeping a scene quick and punchy for comedy’s sake and when to take a beat to appreciate a joke is also an important skill.
Why did you submit this for Emmy consideration? What made it special?
We joked a few times during the process of cutting the movie that in the most ridiculous moments of the film, they were our “Emmy Submission,” but we truly never expected the film to gain the traction it did with audiences and awards!
If we had made this movie in a vacuum and no one had ever seen it, I still would have been prouder of this movie than anything else I’ve worked on. There’s so much heart to this movie because it’s powered by people who truly believed in it and gave it 100% sincerity. And not for nothing, feature comedies are such a rarity that I hope are coming back into public favor, and I hope we may have had a small part in inspiring a return to.
Any challenges in the edit?
There’s an old saying: “If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait five minutes and it will change,” and I like applying that to our movie as well. If you don’t like the genre of the movie —wait five minutes and we’ll enter an entirely different genre! It was comedy, drama, musical, LSD VFX trip, action scene, traditional biopic — the movie was SO much fun to delve into all these different styles, but each style also offered their own challenges in cutting adjustment! But the challenge was half the fun.
What system did you use?
We cut on Avid Media Composers on remote systems provided by Hula Post, which was so convenient and well maintained — we were able to work from home during the dailies process and then the move into a hybrid office with our director was seamless!
[Editor’s Note: postPerspective also spoke to the film’s supervising sound editor Anthony Vanchure and sound designer/sound editor Michael James Gallagher.]
