By Iain Blair
The Banshees of Inisherin has scored nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Martin McDonagh and Best Film Editing for Mikkel E.G. Nielsen, ACE. The film, another dark comedic drama written by McDonagh, is set in 1923 on a mythical and remote island off the west coast of Ireland. It follows lifelong friends Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), who find themselves at an impasse when Colm unexpectedly puts an end to their friendship, leading to disastrous, anarchic consequences.
Mikkel E.G. Nielsen
I spoke with Nielsen, who previously won the Oscar for his work on Sound of Metal, about the editing challenges and the post workflow on the film.
Tell us about collaborating with Martin for the first time. How did that work?
Although we’d never worked together before, it was a very easy collaboration. I did the first assembly on my own in Copenhagen then showed it to Martin, and from there on we would sit together and work on the edit and find the film. He loves post and the whole editing process and discovering how even a tiny change in the edit can make a huge difference to the tone and feel of a scene… and then to the whole story. It was great working with him, and we had a lot of fun.
This was shot on location on two islands off the west coast of Ireland. Were you on-set?
No, I never went. I started on the job very late, and they’d already been shooting for a few days. Sadly, his usual film editor, Jon Gregory, had passed away suddenly, so I met with Martin and took over the role of editor.
Where was all the editing done?
After I did the first assembly, we moved to London for all the post work. We cut it at Gravity House in Soho with my assistant editor, Nicola Matiwone. Carter Burwell’s score was recorded and mixed at Abbey Road, and the DI was done at Goldcrest Post with colorist Adam Glasman.
Tell us about the workflow. What editing gear did you use?
We cut on Avid Media Composer Version 2018.12.8, which I really like, and we used two of them. Editorial storage was on an Avid Nexis system. I traveled around quite a bit, so I was always able to access material and work wherever I was.
What were the main challenges of the edit? How did you approach the material?
The big one was keeping the simplicity of the story but also finding the right balance between the comedy and the drama, and then turning it into this tragedy. It was also about making it about the characters and tracking all of them along with the animals and so on. Little by little you find that balance.
We also tried to edit in a way that told the story almost like a fable. You’re on this remote island, and you introduce the main characters. And then you treat the island and nature and the animals almost like characters as well. So all of that was a huge challenge for me, as I’ve never done anything like this before. It was a big learning process and really interesting from an editorial point of view to see just how much the material changes with the pacing and pauses.
Finding the rhythm was so important, especially with the dialogue, as Martin writes dialogue almost like a piece of music, and then the actors bring so much rhythm to their lines as well. The smallest elements can make big changes in an edit like this.
Fair to say you and Martin treated all the animal characters, especially Jenny the donkey, with a lot more attention than is usual in films?
For sure. Martin is a huge animal lover, and we really treated them with the utmost respect. We set out with the idea to almost give Jenny a voice with that little bell. It becomes almost like dialogue with Pádraic, and that had to do with creating a soundscape where you hold back so that the dialogue is all-important. And along with the bell, you have all the ambient sound in the distance, so it becomes almost claustrophobic at times. All the animals and nature around the characters function like commentaries on the story.
Any surprises in the edit?
I wouldn’t say there were any in terms of the story and the structure, but there were some happy accidents as we worked with the material. For instance, there’s the bit with the small birds jumping up at each other, and that suddenly worked as another commentary on the whole conflict between the main characters. They’re like small hidden gems that suddenly reveal themselves in the edit. You’re trying to find the essence of the simplicity in a scene, and often it reveals itself and the rhythm it needs. It’s a very simple story we’re telling, but it’s also very complex, and it allows you to reflect on all the themes and topics it deals with.
Did you use a lot of temp sound?
We did. We also did a full pass on the whole film for screenings for us to see and feel how much we should hold back in the audio. It’s actually a very quiet film from a sound perspective, but it also has these small elements that almost have their own language.
We see these amazing images with huge waves in the background, but we really hold back so you almost can’t hear them. And we really wanted to focus on the dialogue and characters all the way through, and ‘plot sounds,’ like Jenny’s bell and a horse-drawn wagon. It’s very interesting just how much we were able to hold back on the soundscape and how it makes it all feel more – not less – claustrophobic. And that also gave more room to Carter’s music, especially in the montage sequences.
There are quite a lot of VFX by Union and Goldcrest.
Yes, there are quite a lot of VFX, which you might not expect in a film like this, but they are mainly for body parts and for period accuracy. Union did previz for all our screenings, and they worked closely with my assistant editor, Nicola. And it was very easy working with VFX super Simon Hughes and his team, as they were right down the road from Gravity House. They would send us files, and we could check stuff as it came in.
How would you sum up the whole experience? Where does it rank in terms of challenges and satisfaction?
It was a huge challenge to bring this slow-burn tragedy and all its characters to life, and my dream was to be invisible in the editing process. It’s an extremely simple premise – two old friends fall out — but it just adds and adds to that, and it was so difficult trying to balance all the elements. It was probably far more difficult than editing Sound of Metal, and that wasn’t easy.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
