By Iain Blair

The rollercoaster ride and intense angst that is high school has long been a rich vein to mine for drama, and the HBO show Euphoria has drilled down deep. Now in its second season, Euphoria follows a group of high school students navigating love and friendships in a world of drugs, sex, trauma and social media.

Aaron I. Butler, ACE

An American adaptation of an Israeli show of the same name, it’s written, directed and executive produced by Sam Levinson. The series features a large ensemble cast that includes Zendaya, Maude Apatow, Eric Dane, Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney.

Emmy Award-winning editor Aaron I. Butler, ACE, joined the show’s editing team — which included Julio Perez and Laura Zemple — for the second season.

I spoke with Butler, whose credits include the IMAX film Jesus is King for Kanye West and the film J.T. LeRoy, about the editing challenges and workflow on his first scripted television show.

What were the main challenges of the new season? I heard it was shot on film, which is a little unusual.
Yes, and the way the show’s run is also very different from most TV series. It feels a lot more like a hybrid between a feature film and a scripted TV show. They have two blocks of shooting of four episodes each. It’s a very collaborative process.

Julio is the supervising editor, and he’s worked with Sam for years. They set up post and the whole editing workflow to really focus on creativity and high quality, and we’re given a lot of freedom to experiment, try different things and get really creative. But at the same time, we’re held to these insanely high standards by Sam and Julio.

They’re both big movie fans and there was always this push to do something very cinematic and to go beyond the usual TV series look and sound. We’d sometimes go through 25 music cues to find the perfect one for each spot.

Tell us about the workflow in Season 2. What gear and lab did you use?
We were all on Avid Composers at The Lot in West Hollywood, where we shot and posted it all. As it was shot on 35mm film, it was then sent to FotoKem for overnight processing. They turned the film into Avid media files that were then imported by our AEs. We used a Nexis to store our media. A-Frame was our tech company.

How did COVID impact it?
We had our little post bubble, and inside that there was the editing team — three of us and five AEs, and we all bonded pretty quickly.

How closely did you work with Sam Levinson? I assume he’s very hands on?
Very. We didn’t get a lot of time with him during the shoot because he’s so busy, but as soon as post and editing began he was in there every single day. And as I said, he loves to experiment and try different things, and play with structure and intercutting, but he’s also very confident. If he sees something he likes and it works, it’s done. He’s not precious about it. He’s very happy to drop lines or scenes. And we work with Zendaya too, who is the lead, but also an EP, and she’d come in and give her thoughts. She was great.

You edited episodes 202, 205, and have a shared credit on 208. But you also cut about 60 scenes for other people’s episodes. How did all that collaboration work in terms of the workflow?
Post is very collaborative on the show, very team-oriented, and because it was so scene-based, we were always helping each other out. We had our main episodes we were responsible for, but as all the footage rolled in, sometimes someone would be totally swamped, and if one editor wasn’t so busy, they’d step in. We’d watch each other’s episodes and discuss them a lot, so it was a very organic team effort.

I heard you have a very personal story that ties into the editing of Episosde 205?
Yes. The through-line of the whole show is drug addiction, and Sam himself was an addict and brought a lot of his own experiences to the show. I also had a very personal connection to the story as both my parents were addicts when I was a kid and struggled with it.

My dad got sober and basically saved us. But my mom was never able to beat her addiction, and it eventually killed her. So I relate to Rue’s journey on two levels: the addiction side of things and also dealing with the death of a parent. It influenced me a lot when I was cutting scenes dealing with those two topics, and the big family fight scene was very hard for me to edit as I recognized so much of the behavior. They also shot for a whole month for that one episode, so there was a huge amount of footage to deal with.

Was that the most difficult sequence to cut?
Absolutely. The first 15 minutes was the most important, and we cut it down from 30 minutes. It was also the most difficult emotionally, and I actually cried a couple of time while I was cutting it. Sam kept stressing, “It’s not about the dialogue or the camerawork — it’s all about the emotion.” That was his directive to me.

There are a few VFX. Did you use temp VFX and what did that entail?
We’d use temps. Most of the stuff was shot practically, but the scene in 205 where Rue’s running across the street has some VFX cars — but only in the background. The main VFX vendor was Van Dyke Visual Effects [Rhythm and Hues, Ingenuity Studios, Mr. Wolf, Pixomondo and Blocked by Fire also contributed], and we worked closely with VFX supervisor David Van Dyke and his team right from the start. We don’t wait until we lock. We also worked very closely with the sound team and our sound designer, Wylie Stateman, and we had rolling mixes, so all the sound and VFX were going from day one.

We spent a lot of time on our temp mixes since there’s so much storytelling going on with the sound, and a lot of that comes from the editors. For example, in Episode 205, in the car scene where the cameras are outside the car windows, you don’t hear what’s going on inside. You just hear the rush of other cars going by, and that’s a choice I made. I was trying to capture that feeling of her being trapped like an animal in the car, and it made it feel more dramatic and emotional. That’s just one example of the editors being allowed to get really creative with the sound.

How would you sum up the whole experience?
It’s been the best job of my career. I’ve never worked with such an amazing team before. Everyone was at the top of their game, but it was also one of the most difficult experiences as the creative bar was set so high all the time. Every cut had to be just perfectly motivated. Every choice had to be unexpected and creative. So it was very challenging, but so satisfying.

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.