Jason Pollard edited two documentary films that were featured at this year’s Tribeca Festival 2021, Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James and the short Game Changer.

Jason Pollard and his wife Nicole Tucker-Pollard

For this piece, we are focusing on Bitchin’ , a biographical film about Rick James that seeks to show a different side of the troubled musician, who is best known for his hits Superfreak and Mary Jane. The doc was directed was Sacha Jenkins, with whom Pollard has worked before, and featured a variety of cinematographers, including Hans Charles, Bryan Donnell and Antonio Rossi.

We spoke to Pollard about his work on the doc…

How early did you get involved on this film?
Pretty early, while it was still in production. There were some interviews that were shot already that I was able to review, but shooting was still going on while I was editing. The great thing about that is that I was able to have some input with the questions that were asked to some of the interview subjects.

How did you work with the Sacha Jenkins? What direction were you given for the edit?
I’ve worked with Sacha Jenkins before, and what I always enjoy about working with Sacha is that he gives me a lot of room and freedom to work/edit. At the beginning of the project, he gave me his general thoughts about Rick James, his life and his story — specifically telling me what he enjoyed and what he found intriguing about Ricky’s life.

After that we went through the general story beats/progression of Rick’s life as well as the points that we wanted to highlight. Because I’ve worked with Sacha before, I generally know the direction he wants to go in; he wants to make things fun and interesting. More specifically, for this project, he wanted to uncover facts about Rick that should be fresh to the audience, and we wanted to reveal a lot about Rick’s complex life.

Rick James had a lot of adventures and encountered many famous people throughout his life, and we wanted to show all of that. Rick’s unique verbal style was apparent throughout the many archival interviews we had of him, so we definitely wanted to include that as well. At the end of the day, Sacha wanted to tell Rick James’ entire story — warts and all — of a musical genius who had some awful demons that he struggled with throughout his life.

Sacha likes to take a look at my cuts often and provide feedback, so he would watch a cut at least once or twice a week.

Can you describe the pace of the edit?
It’s a moderately paced film. I took my time in the beginning of Rick’s life in Buffalo and then slowly picked up the pace as his life progresses and as Rick tries to find himself musically. When we get to the funk section of Rick’s career, the pace picks up considerably and we’re riding high with Rick through the apex of his career.

Once the heavy drug use and legal troubles begin, the film slows down again to reflect the hazy and unsure state of  Rick’s life and mental state. This pace pretty much continues until the end of Rick’s life, which unfortunately spiraled downward until his death.

Was there a particular scene or scenes that were most challenging?
One of the toughest scenes was showing Rick’s descension into drug use and depravity. It was tough because how do you illustrate drug use when there’s no footage or stills of the protagonist/Rick doing drugs? For me, the solution was to show the descent happening at the same time he was shooting a music video for his biggest hit song. So while he is celebrating this huge success, there are also hints and signs of the drug use starting to affect him.

Editorially, I showed this by slowing down the music and footage of Superfreak to signal that something is going wrong — all is not well. From that point on in the film, we’re watching Rick’s career and personal life go downhill. The music becomes darker, and the stills I use of Rick in this section seem to show him in a troubled state of mind. This continues throughout the latter part of the film. There is a brief possibility of hope after he gets out of jail, but then Rick reverts back to his old ways. I also want to give a shout-out composers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge for creating a fantastic soundscape to go along with the story.

Did you do more than edit on this film?
No, but this is my first writing credit on a film, and I’m beyond grateful that I was able to get that credit.

Was the edit done during the pandemic? If so, how did that affect the workflow?
The edit started before Covid, but we finished the film during the pandemic. Editing during the pandemic was tough; what ended up happening is that the assistant editor (who became my co-editor) Chris Bravo and I took drives home with all of the footage on them. Then Chris updated our Adobe Premiere projects and supervised the ingesting of all of the original production and archival footage.

We would upload cuts on Vimeo (we did this before the pandemic as well) and then Sacha and producer Steve Rivo would review and give us notes through email and on Vimeo. We also had weekly Google video chats to keep everyone up to date with our progress.

So you cut on Premiere. Why was this the right choice for you?
Production company Mass Appeal wanted us to edit on Premiere.

How did you manage your time?
At the beginning, I was screening interviews making sure I marked them in Premiere with my notes. After doing that for about two weeks, I went on to create a rough assembly and then a rough cut, which took a few more months.

Jason Pollard

Can you talk more about working with your assistant editor on this? Do you see the role of assistant editors as strictly technical or as collaborators?
My assistant editor on this was Chris Bravo, who I’ve worked with before. I trust Chris for his technical prowess as well as his editing expertise. Chris was able to take care of all the technical things that allowed me focus on editing, but he was also able to contribute artistically by helping to assemble and then edit a lot of sections in the film. He did such a fantastic job that he was promoted on this film from assistant to co-editor.

I never see any assistant editor that I work with as strictly a technical collaborator; I’m always interested in creative thoughts from assistants and always looking to collaborate with them.

How do you manage producer’s expectations with reality/what can really be done?
For me managing a producer’s expectations always requires constant communication about how the edit is going, any problems or issues that come up and — if it feels like I’m going slower than necessary or needed in response to deadlines — making sure the producers know why this is the case and discussing possible solutions about getting help for me in the edit and possibly help the process go faster.

How do you take criticism? Do you find yourself defensive or accepting of others’ ideas?
I’m usually okay with taking criticism as long as everyone understands that editing is a process. I’m constantly experimenting in the early stages of editing, trying to find the story, emotions, great characters and story moments. I’m usually good with accepting other ideas, and if I don’t like an idea, I will try it out and put my own spin on it.

Early on during the editing of this film, I tried to do some things verité wise right before a screening without taking the time to make sure that it worked editorially. Unfortunately, this was one of the few times that a screening didn’t go very well, the sequence was too rough and unfinished and not working at all. It was tough taking criticism that day, but I understood that the criticism was right about what I had presented, and I was able to make changes immediately after the screening.