The heist thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which premiered at last month’s Toronto Film Festival (TIFF), follows eight young environmental activists engaging in a principled act of property destruction. The film is a loose adaptation of Andreas Malm’s manifesto of the same name.
The film’s editor was Brooklyn-based Daniel Garber, a long-time collaborator and friend of director Daniel Goldhaber. Shot by DP Tehillah De Castro, the film’s production took place in New Mexico. California and North Dakota, while post took place in New York.
We reached out to Garber to find out more about his process on this film…
Daniel Garber
How early did you get involved on this film?
The entire process unfolded rapidly — it took only about 18 months from conception to completion. Daniel and his co-writers, Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol, told me about the idea before they had begun to write in earnest, and I immediately ran out and bought a copy of Andreas’s book. It’s a quick read, and I was immediately invested in their vision for the project.
I reviewed several drafts of the script and gave feedback leading up to production. Then I was on call throughout principal photography, reviewing dailies and having frequent check-in calls with the team. That’s how I like to work. Writing and editing are just different phases in the storytelling process, and I like to work closely with the other “custodians of story,” both before the shoot and during the edit.
How did you work with Daniel? What direction were you given for the edit? How often was he taking a look at your cut?
Daniel’s earliest professional experience in film was in post, so he understands the importance of the edit and the sacredness of a director-editor bond. In college, we basically learned how to make films by making shorts together, so I have a shorthand with him that I have with virtually nobody else. On this project, he, Ariela, Jordan and I had many conversations at the script stage and reviewed a lot of the same reference films, so there was already a shared understanding of the style and mission of the film before a frame was shot.
I’m a firm believer in taking some time to myself to get acquainted with the footage without being beholden to the writers’ and director’s preconceived notions, but my favorite part of editing is spending time face to face with collaborators and working things out in the room together.
After my initial assembly, Daniel was in the editing room almost daily for most of the process. We had a uniquely fluid and inclusive process in this edit, with writers Ariela and Jordan offering frequent feedback and putting in long hours in the editing room as we approached picture lock. The four of us were aligned on the fundamentals but came from distinct sensibilities and backgrounds within the film world, resulting in a film that melded our variety of perspectives into a shared vision.
Was there a particular scene that was most challenging? If so, why? And how did you overcome that challenge?
The film has an unusual structure. The main action unfolds over the course of only two days as the crew of activists attempts to pull off their act of sabotage, flashing back intermittently to the backstories of each character in the ensemble. The flashback structure itself was hard to pull off organically, but the first flashback was the toughest to edit. It sets the stage for all of the additional flashbacks, establishing the expectation that we’ll continue to return to the past and gain greater insight into each character.
Additionally, that flashback contains the one scene we spent the most time on in the edit: an argument between Xochitl, who has recently lost her mother to an extreme weather event and is becoming increasingly radicalized, and a well-intentioned pro-divestment activist named Orin. The debate articulates some of the core ideas from Andreas’ book, dramatizing the ideological clash between devoutly pacifist environmentalists and their more radical counterparts.
That scene always risked coming across as overly didactic and cerebral, but by focusing on Xochitl’s subjective experience and working to foreground her psychological state rather than the political ideas, we managed to make the conflict come to life in what I think is an engaging and emotionally charged scene.
Can you talk about working on this during the pandemic? How did that affect the workflow?
Fortunately, the pandemic was not a huge setback for this film. Much of the film was shot outdoors on-location, with ample COVID precautions that kept everyone safe. During the edit, we worked primarily in-person, possible only because our team was so small. We were always prepared to switch at a moment’s notice to remote work, though, knowing that the course of the pandemic was unpredictable.
What system did you use to cut and why?
After two successful feature edits in Premiere Pro, I was eager to do it a third time, a decision that was hugely rewarding. The way Daniel and I work together, the ability to make rapid changes on the fly is paramount—and I simply find Premiere to be the speediest editing tool around, making it possible for me to easily try out numerous ideas and variations.
Sound design and temp VFX were such critical aspects of our edit, and the ease of taking on those tasks in Premiere helped streamline our workflow and make for way more productive test screenings. I used a number of split screens to adjust timing or combine performances, and Premiere makes it simple to mock up effects like that. The Productions feature has been a particularly empowering aspect of the software. You can keep the entire edit stable and organized while also allowing AE Emily Yue and me to collaborate seamlessly from wherever we were located. It’s been a game-changer, and we’re already working on setting up another big project in Premiere Productions as I write this.
Any tips you would like to share?
Most of my tips are not deep-cut tools but just ways of making the basics work more efficiently, especially when doing sound editing. At the beginning of each project, I create a template sequence from which I make all of my editing sequences. That template sequence has tracks laid out just how I need them, with dialogue, music and effects all separated out with some basic processing (compression, de-essing, EQ) on the relevant tracks. It’s a really simple way of elevating the sound from the very beginning of the editing process.
You mention your AE. How did you work with her? Did you allow her to edit scenes and/or give input on your edits?
Emily Yue was a phenomenal assistant editor who is just starting out in her career but has so much knowledge and skill already. She took on a ton of technical and organizational responsibilities and ultimately ended up stepping up to share the duties of post supervisor during a hectic finishing process. On time- and budget-constrained indie projects like this one, especially with the added demands of syncing piles of 16mm film and handling loads of VFX, the job can sometimes wind up feeling mostly technical, and that’s something I’d like to work against.
I really valued Emily’s creative input — from initial reactions to dailies to ideas on where we could tighten up the fine cut — and hope that the next project we’re doing together, a documentary, will give her more opportunities to actually cut scenes.
How do you manage producers’ expectations with reality/what can really be done?
We had very reasonable, trusting producers who supported the filmmaking team through and through. It almost never felt to me like demands were being made that could not be accomplished with the resources we had available to us. Toward the very end of the edit, on the eve of our picture lock deadline, our producers brought forward some new ideas that we on the filmmaking team agreed deserved more time to fully explore.
We ended up extending the timeline by a couple of weeks, and that last leg of the edit wound up being transformative: Just when we thought the film was as good as it could realistically get, we discovered improvements that hadn’t previously occurred to us. It was a blessing not only to have such great insights from our producers, but also to have their full support in taking the time to get things right.
How do you manage your time? Do you manage expectations or try everything they ask of you?
Time management becomes crucial leading up to test screenings and submissions to producers. While talking through notes, I start by prioritizing. What’s essential to tackle now — for instance, easy fixes that will instantly improve the viewing experience or bigger changes that could fundamentally reshape the film — and what can or should wait for later? I find that keeping a record of our notes from each version of the film and maintaining clear communication about priorities are essential to keeping everyone on the team feeling heard and invested in the process.
This team was so supportive and committed to talking through the story and ideas of the film each day, which gave me a lot of space to push back on ideas that I thought would be counterproductive. That level of trust is crucial. But editors get a bad rap, often coming across as naysayers who shut down many ideas out of hand. I’m not proud to say that I’ve been guilty of that myself, but I’ve learned that things go best when I try to give each idea my best shot, even if I’m confident that it won’t work.
Much of the work I’m proudest of has come from trying out ideas that I initially found suspect. After all, what would be the point of collaboration if others’ ideas didn’t meaningfully contribute to my work? And sometimes it’s more time-consuming to debate whether or not an idea should be tried out than to simply to make the change, audition it and have a more educated discussion based on what’s in front of you rather than a hypothetical.
Finally, any tips for those just starting out?
Try to balance these two truths in your mind: Trust your instincts because you know more than you think, and you still know nothing, so try to learn from every project and artistic collaborator.
