By Randi Altman
Everything Everywhere All at Once is quite a ride – tons of action, some messy family dynamics, true love and some super-weird multiverses. It has it all. But keeping track of all those timelines and action scenes was no easy feat. In fact, the film’s editor, Paul Rogers, has received an Oscar nomination for his role on the film. It was well-deserved, but he had help — namely, assistant editors Zekun Mao and Aashish D’Mello.
Zekun Mao
Everything Everywhere All at Once was directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as the Daniels. It has received 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.
We reached out to Rogers’ assistant editors to talk about how they worked on the film, going remote and using Adobe Premiere.
How early did you guys get involved on the film and with Paul Rogers?
Zekun Mao: I received an email about a film looking for an AE who could speak Chinese. I applied and met Paul and the Daniels for the first time when I interviewed for the job in late 2019. I eventually started the job when production began in January 2020.
Aashish D’Mello
Aashish D’Mello: Zekun approached me toward the end of principal photography, as the film was looking for another AE. I started the job in April 2020 after principal photography had wrapped and post production had gone remote.
Can you talk about your roles on the film?
Mao: I was mainly responsible for supporting Paul and the Daniels, which included prepping dailies and adding English subtitles for the non-English dialogue. As we went remote in March 2020, I had to quickly come up with a remote workflow and make sure the edit process was working smoothly for everyone.
D’Mello: I was mainly responsible for coordinating between editorial and the VFX team. I would prep and turn over VFX shots to the artists, keep track of each shot as the edit was constantly changing and, eventually, make sure all the VFX were delivered for the color process. I was also helping out Zekun whenever needed.
Mao: The script was pretty much the blueprint for the editing process. Paul was editing during production, and he was able to communicate with the Daniels about what they were shooting while they were shooting it. Paul would sometimes ask me to prioritize prepping certain scenes because he wanted to work on them sooner than others to make sure they were playing well in the edit. If he felt there was anything additional needed, he would communicate that to the Daniels.
I imagine that keeping track of all the different timelines was a huge process. How did you pull that off?
Mao: We were dealing with two separate kinds of timelines. One was all the universes in the movie, and the other was the actual editing sequences. The number of universes seemed rather complex initially, but as we got more and more familiar with the footage and the story, things became easier to understand. We ended up referring to scenes and shots by their universes instead of scene numbers because it was easier to remember them that way.
D’Mello: As for the edit sequences, the remote workflow made it difficult to wrangle. There were many different versions of the cut, with multiple people working on it and VFX shots changing all the time. We really had to pay attention to labeling each cut with date and other specific information, always backing up previous versions so that if Paul and the Daniels wanted to open an older cut, it would be available. Toward picture lock, we were able to tidy up and simplify the Premiere projects and sequences, as a lot of the cut was already pretty final.
Were you guys asked to take a look at Paul’s edits for feedback? Were you given scenes to edit yourselves?
Mao: Yes, absolutely Paul would ask us for feedback. He would not only ask about our overall feelings of each version, but also about any specific moments, especially when there were drastic changes in the cut.
We were constantly busy with different tasks each day, so it became difficult to find time to edit scenes ourselves.
Can you walk us through the editing workflow in general? How was the team getting and implementing notes from the Daniels?
Mao: Paul was assembling cuts during principal photography. Sometimes he would go to set to look at cuts with the Daniels. When we went remote in March 2020, Paul and the Daniels initially used Zoom to edit, but most of the time Paul would just post a sequence to Frame.io, and the Daniels would leave comments on it.
Later, they began using Evercast for their edit sessions. The Daniels would edit on their own as well, and I was asked to prepare those sequences in separate project files for them to work on. Because we were using a new feature in Premiere Pro called Productions, it was easier to exchange projects/sequences with everyone involved. Paul would then incorporate these sequences from the Daniels into the cut. Toward picture lock in 2021, the Daniels and Paul went back to an in-person setting, where it was easier for them to bounce ideas off each other.
There are a ton of VFX. Can you talk about the VFX workflow and the edit? Were you using temp VFX?
D’Mello: We had approximately 500 VFX shots in the final movie. VFX supervisor Zak Stoltz was on-set during production and had made an initial list of potential VFX shots. During the edit, Paul and the Daniels would work on temp versions of the VFX shots in Premiere Pro to see how they played in the edit. The final versions of these shots would then be redone by our VFX team. Our VFX team was a total of six people, most of whom were involved since the beginning of post, so it was easy for the Daniels to communicate with everyone directly.
Because we were all remote, Zak and I created an editorial/VFX workflow using Resilio Sync that enabled us to quickly sync prepped and rendered shots. I had two separate sets of Premiere projects: one for editorial and one for VFX prep. I would take the temp VFX from the edit project to the VFX prep project, relink to the raw footage and render the portion needed for the effect. Using that portion, I would then prep the shot in After Effects to match the edit. I would then sync all these files directly with the VFX artists. The Daniels would also do a bunch of VFX work themselves, so it was important to include and incorporate their process into our workflow as well.
Were some scenes more challenging than others? Can you explain why and how the team dealt with that?
Mao: For me, it was the staircase fight toward the end of the movie. That whole portion of the film was shot over the course of a week. We were getting bits of footage of the fight each day, so when I was organizing the scene for Paul, I had to keep track of which portion of the fight was already shot and which parts were missing.
Moreover, there were parts that were shot as pickups later on. In order to help Paul go through this enormous amount of footage, I arranged the shots in order of the actions taking place in them. It just took a while to go through all the footage and get a complete sequence.
D’Mello: The sequence where Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is flashing through multiple universes (right before we go to the rock universe) definitely stands out. We had to keep track of so many stock footage shots that were used as backgrounds, even for a single frame. The VFX artists also created some of their own backgrounds for the sequence. We ended up doing a little precoloring on the greenscreen shot of Evelyn’s face and then sending it to VFX to combine with the backgrounds instead of coloring each and every single background separately.
Because of how many backgrounds were involved, we went through multiple versions before the sequence could be finalized. It was a crazy process for a crazy sequence in a crazy movie.
I’m sure there are a ton of things I haven’t touched on. Can you both share something that I might have missed?
Mao: Paul, along with the Daniels, had crafted very specific resizes and complicated speed changes/time remapping in the edit. In order to prep the edit for coloring in the most accurate and precise way, we had to use a very specific workflow for the online process — relinking to all the raw media within Premiere while leaving all the resizes and speed changes untouched. We then rendered the full film to 4K DPX files, which were directly sent to the color house.
Adobe was really helpful during the editing process and was always asking us for feedback about Premiere Pro. We would report certain issues or bugs that occurred while using the software, and they would do their best to get us new versions or provide workarounds that addressed the issues.
Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 25 years.
