By Ben Mehlman
Odds are you have either watched or heard the buzz surrounding the Netflix series Wednesday. The show was shepherded by showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with the first four episodes directed by filmmaker Tim Burton. In an already iconic performance, Jenna Ortega portrays Wednesday Addams as she tries to solve a murder mystery at her boarding school, the Nevermore Academy. Joining Ortega is a cast that includes Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán and Gwendoline Christie.
Jay Prychidny
Working directly with Burton on the four episodes he helmed was editor Jay Prychidny, CCE, whose credits include Orphan Black, the TV version of Snowpiercer and the much-anticipated Scream VI, which is releasing in March. I recently spoke with Prychidny about collaborating with Burton, and why the show had him bouncing between Romania and the UK.
How’d you become involved in the project?
I was going stir-crazy at home during the pandemic (laughs) and needed to work with collaborators. Even now, a lot of work is still remote, unless you’re working with people who request in-person, and working remotely with Tim Burton was never an option. He needs to be in the room with the people he works with. So I flew to Romania and worked on-set while Tim was shooting his episodes. When he wasn’t shooting we flew to the UK and worked together there. I basically just followed Tim wherever he went.
How long was post on this one?
Filming started at the end of August 2021, with Episodes 1 and 2 being shot in a block. I was bouncing between Romania and the UK for about seven months. But of course, post can kind of dwindle on indefinitely [laughs]. I remember doing the last audio mix on Episode 1 and realizing it had been exactly a year since filming started.
What was your setup like? What’d you edit on?
It was bare bones. My assistant and I each had a room in the Romanian production office. For a long time, it was just the two of us in the entire post department — there were no coordinators or PAs, which was kind of crazy. I wouldn’t recommend that as a way to do a huge show.
My assistant and I were working on Avid Media Composer off of a shared RAID system and as production went on, we added another assistant.
[Editor’s Note: Prychidny assistant editors included Mihai Cosmin Popa (Romania), Galina Chakarova (UK), Tom Lounsbury and Brandy Hamilton (Toronto), Razvan Alexandru Ilinca (Romania) and Lavinia Terletchi (Toronto).]
Given how close you were to set, what was your workflow with Tim Burton like?
The way he’s used to working is to shoot during the day and edit at night, even looking at scenes that were shot that day (though his process was adapted a little to accommodate the accelerated schedule of TV). Regardless, working with editors is a crucial part of his creative process. He needs to be working on the edit as he is shooting. It informs how the project is evolving and even how he’ll shoot upcoming stuff.
Each day, we would give him polished cuts of what was shot either the day before or sometimes two days before. If his shoot schedule allowed it, he’d come in, or we’d output the scenes onto an iPad for him to check out on-set. This is what usually happened if he was shooting on-location.
The first four episodes were directed by Tim and edited by you. How was that broken up? Were you balancing four episodes at once?
The first block was Episodes 1 and 2. The second block, with Gandja Monteiro directing, was Episodes 5 and Episode 6. I believe this was to accommodate Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán’s schedules because they’re in Episodes 1 and 5.
That is also when we shot all the stuff at Nevermore Academy. After that, Tim came back to direct block three, which was Episode 3 and Episode 4.
Is it normal to have a director do a block, jump a few episodes ahead for the next block, and then have them return later for a second block?
That definitely happens, but in this case, it was mainly for Catherine and Luis’ shooting schedules and for the logistics of getting everything shot at the Nevermore Castle.
For a long time, it wasn’t even a sure thing that Tim was going to direct Episodes 3 and 4. His original plan was just 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 were directorless for a long time [laughs]. They were looking for someone because they weren’t sure if Tim would want to do them, but he enjoyed working on the show so much that he ended up doing all four.
What were your early conversations with Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Tim Burton like?
Usually, the big question when I start working on a project is “Why are you interested in telling this story?” I like knowing what the spark of inspiration is for someone because that’s something I feel I should be preserving. And so much of Tim’s process is learning as you go and seeing how things evolve. So I don’t know if Tim’s answer was mysterious to him, or maybe he didn’t know how to verbalize it, but his answer was always a version of “Well, let’s get into. We’ll start working and see what happens, see how things evolve.”
And that’s how it was.
I remember telling Alfred and Miles beforehand that I’m the kind of editor who likes to put a stamp on things and have a strong perspective while still being open if collaborators down the line have different ideas and want to change things. They told me that was perfect because Tim likes being shown strong ideas and going from there. So things evolved in a very natural way.
How was it having to define the show’s own palette in relation to previous iterations of The Addams Family?
It was definitely interesting. My investment in The Addams Family is from the ‘90s films with Christina Ricci. I watched them a lot as a kid and thought Wednesday was such a cool character; I loved her. I was also a big fan of Angelica Houston’s portrayal of Morticia.
So, I came in with an idea of that being our tone, and we did evolve away from that a bit. Tim, especially, wanted this to be its own thing. We never talked about how it would reference other Addams Family properties or anything like that. Tim wanted to avoid things getting too plucky and comedic in the way the earlier films were. I then took it from there and pushed it more into an in-between zone, which I was happy about because, for me, the show needs to be fun and quirky while also having a darker edge to it.
The show does have a playful macabre sense of humor. How was it striking the right balance between the comedy and that darker edge that pushes into horror?
It was interesting because, as I said, I came into the show thinking about making it lighter and more comedic. Ana Yavari, who edited the other four episodes, came into it with a different perspective. She was thinking it would be darker and more disturbing. Then we reached a point where she looked at my episodes and was like, “Oh, this is a comedy?” [laughs].
The first episode she edited was Episode 6, which is when the monster chases them through the “creepy” house. From her perspective it was like a dark horror environment, and for me it was just light and funny. So there was definitely a meeting in the middle that happened stylistically with the show.
For me, it never made sense for this to take place completely in a horror world because it’s a show about Wednesday, and it should be grounded in her perspective as the main character. I never even thought about it being dark and horrorish because I was always thinking about how Wednesday sees the world.
So I treated the horror elements as more or less like surprises that intruded into her world. Which, when you think about it, is what horror is — something horrible barging into your universe without consent.
Jenna Ortega’s performance has been universally praised, and you’re currently working with her again on Scream VI. How was it crafting that performance? What was it like when you first started getting dailies?
Jenna is so smart and dedicated and a perfectionist with her craft. She puts a lot of thought into what she does.
Wednesday is such a strange performance because it’s so contained, and that could easily become boring or one-dimensional because a lot of her footage is literally just her statically staring into the camera. Theoretically, that seems like it should be awful, but I was constantly amazed by how many layers she could bring to that. Even though there wasn’t a lot of physical acting going on, you got such variety with all her takes. On one take she looks vulnerable, one she looks aggressive, one she looks fearful. I still don’t understand how all these shades are readable to an audience, but they are. I guess that’s the magic trick of that performance, which was a lot of fun to craft.
What was the most difficult scene or sequence to crack and why?
The hardest sequence to crack was the canoe race in Episode 2. For one, it’s a really hard thing to film. Canoes on the water are not the most cinematic or exciting. That was a sequence that evolved a lot, pretty much during the entire length of production. From Tim’s perspective it was always a sequence that was going to evolve.
After we finished block one, we would continue to shoot pickups for new little story beats, and after a certain point, it was no longer fall. So we continued filming that sequence in a water tank in front of a bluescreen in a studio in Romania. It wasn’t our original intention to shoot it in front of a bluescreen, so the VFX geniuses we had were creating background plates out of whatever footage they could pull from the original photography.
It took a lot of work to make the action beats clear while making sure they were exciting and entertaining.
Were there any other big story moments that evolved over post?
That happened more in the last four episodes than in the ones I edited, though one thing did evolve in Episode 1. We went back several months after production to shoot the scene with the hiker and the trucker in the woods when he gets attacked by the monster. That was shot in the UK instead of Romania; they even had to ship the Addams Family car from Romania to the UK to shoot it. Netflix felt strongly that the mystery around the monster needed to be set up really early in Episode 1.
As we wrap up, what have you been watching that you’ve been enjoying?
One of the most recent shows I watched was Season 2 of The White Lotus, which I loved. I love the characters and the style of it. I love that it feels like it’s really thought-out ahead of time, with a real plan of what they want to create. So much television feels like it’s being made up as they go along, or they are just trying to fill episodes to hit a running time. I find those things really hard to watch because I’m too aware of the construction behind it.
So, it’s so nice to see a show like The White Lotus from the mind of one person with one vision who is able to execute it the way they see it.
Ben Mehlman, currently the post coordinator on the Apple TV+ show Presumed Innocent, is also a writer/director. His script “Whittier” was featured on the 2021 Annual Black List after Mehlman was selected for the 2020 Black List Feature Lab, where he was mentored by Beau Willimon and Jack Thorne.
