The Reinaldo Marcus Green-directed King Richard is a biographical drama following the life of Richard Williams (Will Smith), the father and coach of tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams. The film follows the young sisters growing up in Compton, California, their father’s unwavering belief that they could make it in pro tennis, and their rise to world fame.

Pamela Martin

Warner Bros.’ King Richard was recently nominated for six Oscars, including one for editor Pamela Martin, ACE. We reached out to Martin, who also got an ACE Eddie Award nod for her work on the film, to discuss her workflow and collaborating with Green.

How did you become involved with the project?
I met the director Reinaldo Green at the Sundance Lab, where he workshopped his first movie, Monsters and Men. I was a creative advisor at the lab, as was Robert Elswit, who became the cinematographer on King Richard. Rei approached me a few months before King Richard began filming to discuss the project.

Two of his references for the film were Little Miss Sunshine and The Fighter, both of which I had cut. We talked about the challenges of shooting and editing tennis, which I had experienced in my work on Battle of the Sexes. When it got closer to the start of production, he asked me if I was on board. It was one of the best screenplays I had read in a long time, so I agreed. (Check out postPerspective‘s interview with Reinaldo Green.)

How was your team set up to work on King Richard?
We began our work at Hula Post’s West Los Angeles location in an editing suite that was built out to fit my needs. My first assistant editor, Staci Pontius, started prep for King Richard about two weeks before principal photography began. She worked closely with Hula’s technicians to set up the editing rooms with Avid Media Composers and establish an efficient workflow.

I began the job in February of 2020, but the COVID pandemic shut us down only three weeks into production. We left everything as it was, expecting to come back in a couple of weeks. It ended up being seven months.

When you did come back to work, what was that like?
I came back to Hula in October of 2020 along with my post PA, Nicko Sandy. But Staci, Jouvens Exantus (my second assistant editor) and VFX editor Michael Nouryeh all worked remotely using Hula Post Everywhere.

For me, it was challenging creatively without having my crew around. I don’t just rely on them to prep dailies and import music and sound effects, etc. I also need their creative feedback. I couldn’t call anyone on my team at any given moment to come into my cutting room to say, “Hey, let me show you this.” I’m not accustomed to working completely alone, so it was challenging. Once production wrapped, I worked with the director in person.

Did you do temp VFX, and if so, can you talk about that?
Until a VFX editor comes on board, I temp some VFX, and my assistant editors do the rest. Luckily, Michael came on board at an early date and took that off our plate. He was a tremendous help since filming during the pandemic resulted in more VFX than initially intended. We also used a postviz team to create more complicated temp effects. Our biggest challenge was filling the stadium with crowds, which we were unable to do during the shoot. Our VFX supervisor, Jeremy Burns, was on set most days. He filmed small groups of people to use for tiling. We also used CG crowds. It was a laborious process.

What was your most challenging scene and why?
The final tennis match was challenging because it wasn’t a typical sports scene. I had to calibrate the scene precisely so that the subsequent ones came together emotionally. Most sports movies use sportscasters as a tool, but King Richard didn’t, so it was harder to shape. I had to tell the story with the images, the sound and the music. I temped a lot of music to help with the nuances of the emotional turns in the scene.

Kris Bowers, our composer, took it to the next level, subtly supporting the emotional beats of the scene. It was really a dance between picture and music to contour the scene, making it more like an action scene seen from Richard’s perspective.

He’s not courtside but in the wings of the stadium. There had to be an understanding of what that gesture meant — deciding to sit with his family — in terms of his level of support of Venus. It ended up being the scene we worked on the longest, right up until we finished the film.

It was also a challenging scene because we had little to no crowd shots due to COVID restrictions. Luckily, we were able to do a pickup shoot months later with several hundred extras. This allowed us to film specific reaction shots, which gave us another way to experience the ups and downs of the match.

Can you describe the pace of your edit? What direction did you get from the director?
The day-to-day process took longer because my assistants had to get into the Avids remotely, slowing down the dailies process. I often wanted Staci and the rest of my crew to look at the scenes as I put them together. On Evercast, the sound isn’t optimal, nor is playing footage over a laptop the best way to view scenes. And because of the large amount of footage coming in, I put in a lot more time at the front end of the production. This really paid off because King Richard began to take shape at a very early stage in the edit.

Once production wrapped and I had a first cut together, Rei came to the edit room to work with me. We collaborated daily, reworking scenes and restructuring the film where needed. King Richard was the first movie that I ever screened for friends and family at Week 4 of the director’s cut. We knew we still had a lot of work to do, but the film was up on its legs. The early feedback we got from that screening (and the subsequent ones) was invaluable. Typically, I wouldn’t do that until about Week 7 or 8 because it takes that long to put a movie together and get it really singing.

Did you keep up with camera? If so, was there a scene you felt was missing? Did you talk to the director about that? 
I couldn’t keep up with the camera because, as I said, they shot a tremendous amount of footage. Fortunately, I had a couple of opportunities to catch up to camera due to production stops related to COVID.

During production, the scene between Serena and Richard — when he tells her she will be the greatest of all time — didn’t work on the first go-round. They ran out of time on the day and restaged it in a location that didn’t really work. It was rushed. I showed the scene to Rei and suggested we reshoot this scene. The wonderful thing was since they had wrapped the earlier location, it was restaged at the stadium. It’s as if the scene was always meant to be there.

During the edit there wasn’t a particular scene that I felt was missing, but it was a lot of movie, and some scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Often it came down to getting the scenes to the length that they needed to be. There was a lot of debate in the middle of the film, like “should we lose this scene?” or “should we lose that scene?” But every time we tried, it unraveled something. It then became more about calibrating what we had and being very economical with the film’s middle section. The most significant work was in the final act. I took scenes out and restructured them because they felt redundant and too long once they got to the pros.

How did working with Green side by side, rather than remotely, during the pandemic benefit the editing?
Rei and I decided we needed to work in the same room. We COVID-tested regularly. I think it’s always good to be in the same room with the director because the communication is so much better. Rei is such a joy to work with, so lovely, warm and creative, which was great for us. We talked deeply about scenes, discussing what worked or didn’t or why something wasn’t working for him. There were times when he was traveling or home for the day, so we used Evercast. But in person it’s much easier to pause while watching it to say, “Right there, let’s take a look at that more closely.”

Once I had my first cut, he came in almost every day. Our process was to watch the whole movie and talk about it, then he left or went to his office to do some other work. I made changes, and then we looked at them together. Usually, on any film, as we get closer and closer to the final cut, I am in the room more and more with the director, kind of hashing out the little things.

DP Robert Elswit and director Reinaldo Marcus Green

When we watched the first cut, we knew that our biggest problem was the first act. It wasn’t working yet, so we tried different things, like, “Let’s open with this scene.” “No, let’s try this,” or “How about we lose this?” Ultimately, we ended up reordering scenes, combining Richard’s searching for coaches and collecting used tennis balls at the clubs, and opening the film that way. You immediately get into Richard’s head and understand his point of view. After that, he goes to Compton to take Venus and Serena to the court, then they come home late, and he goes to his night job. You see how exhausted he is when he gets there, but he opens a magazine to keep looking for a coach. You see that he is not giving up, despite all the rejection. Even hearing Richard’s voice at the beginning — the pitch to all the coaches — was a game-changer. This was something that happened very, very early in the edit, which was great.