By Twain Richardson

One thing that seems to have brought many people joy during the pandemic is David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, a documentary narrated by nature historian David Attenborough. In his 93 years, Attenborough has visited every continent on the globe, exploring the wild places of our planet and documenting the living world in all its variety and wonder. This documentary is a firsthand account of humanity’s impact on nature and a message of hope for future generations.

Martin Elsbury

Directed by Alastair Fothergill, Jonnie Hughes and Keith Scholey, A Life on Our Planet was nominated for five Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Cinematography For A Nonfiction Program. It was shot by DPs Gavin Thurston and Roger Horrocks.

Another Emmy nod was for Outstanding Picture Editing For A Nonfiction Program. Martin Elsbury was nominated for cutting the film, which was produced by Silverback Films for Netflix. Elsbury had previously edited Attenborough’s eight-part Netflix series, Our Planet, a precursor to this film that looked at different habitats and ecosystems on the planet. It also dealt with the difficult subject of how the human species is impacting those habitats. The film was designed to go further and deliver a thought-provoking witness statement from Attenborough about his experience of the natural world changing in his lifetime and his growing awareness of the imminent crisis of habitat loss and climate change.

We reached out to Elsbury to talk about his workflow on the film and his editing philosophy.

Tell us about A Life on Our Planet.
The film is structured in three parts: Part 1) David’s early career and the dawning realization that all was not well with the world. Part 2) A look at how the actions of humanity are impacting the planet. Part 3) A more optimistic and positive vision for the future and the laying out of changes that need to happen if we are going to pull back from the edge of the abyss. This section also contains the sobering thought that if we do not manage to pull back in time, the real damage will be to humanity and its civilizations.

Could you take us through your process of finding the story in editing?
The story structure of the film was largely driven by a prerecorded performance of David delivering his thoughts directly to camera. As this had been largely prescripted, it formed a very stable framework for the film to evolve around. There were some restructurings of the narrative framework that became part of the editing process, and these were creatively taxing, but we were always dealing with a narrative structure that had a predefined beginning, middle and end. So the main work of the creative process was to find ways to manage the ideas coming from the recorded narrative and weaving illustrative material through the flow of David’s words.

I had several sources of material to do this with. 1) There were clips of David’s past films from the early 1970s onward. 2) There were scenes of the natural world from more recent sources, mainly material that had been used in the Our Planet series. I tried very hard not to use the same shots that had already been seen in Our Planet. 3) I had new rushes that had been specially shot for the feature. 4) I had several archive sources at my disposal.

What were some of the editing challenges?
One major challenge in the construction of the film was to try not to make it an “illustrated lecture.” It had to be more than that. I achieved this partly by choosing illustrative material for its metaphorical value rather than just its literal value. The way in which David’s on-screen shots had been directed also helped in this process.

There were two styles to David’s delivery pieces. 1) His conventional, straight-to-camera information delivery mode, which I used when I needed his authority for explaining things to the audience so they could grasp the sometimes difficult concepts. 2) A more relaxed, conversational and personal style recorded in between some of the scripted takes. This was often the result of a genuine conversation with the director and often contained some moments of surprising insight.

We quickly realized in the edit  — I cut on Avid Media Composer — that when we tried to incorporate these off-script moments, the pieces gave a new depth to the film. They allowed for a more emotional style of delivering the narrative, a style that was used to great effect in several places. There were also shots of silence and contemplation from these unscripted camera pieces, which I was able to use to create a sense of deep reflection from David.

What advice can you offer to get through complex edits like this one?
Very few edits are simple! If the edit is complex in terms of the material, then the answer to the question is good organization. Develop a bin structure that becomes second nature for you to navigate through, and don’t create too many subdivisions within it. It’s better to have an imperfect but simple bin structure than a perfectly subdivided but overly complex structure.

If the problem is a complexity of ideas, my advice would be: 1) Work closely with the producer/director and make sure you both have a solid understanding of the subject and story development. 2) Always question whether the complexity is working in the film’s favor. Would it be as powerful a film if it had a simpler structure? Sometimes this simplification will occur naturally in the evolution of the edit, but it’s no bad thing to be aware of the possibility of simplification early in the edit. Don’t hold on to complex structures if you believe the film can be just as strong by cutting a straight line from point A to point C without going via point B. Always remember that less is more. It’s an important principle to apply at every level of the editing journey.

Charles Dyer is listed as an additional editor on this. How did you work together?
Charles came on board the project at the very end, when I had to move on to another booking and there were some final tweaks requested by one of the execs. Charles had already been involved in editing a series of environmentally themed short films that were produced in conjunction with the Our Planet series. As such, he had a really detailed knowledge of the archive sources that he’d used and was able to make good suggestions about material for the feature edit — and where we might find it. We used his knowledge and ideas to great effect in the main edit.

What is your overall philosophy about editing?
Back in 1978, my grandmother was heard telling one of her friends about my new job with the BBC. When her friend claimed to have no understanding of what an editor did, my grandmother explained, “The editor is the person who cuts out the bad bits.” That was a wonderfully simplistic explanation! After nearly four decades of “cutting out the bad bits,” I now know, of course, that there’s more to it than that. (It’s also a lot more than “joining all the good bits together”!) I think that at the most fundamental level, editing is all about the management of energy.

So, here’s the first part of my editing philosophy: Any image has an energy within it as perceived by a viewer. Some of that energy will be created by the dynamic forces of movement in the shot. Some will be created by a composition of shapes and subject. Some by color and light. When an editor makes a cut between one shot and the next, that energy will enter into a relationship with the energy of the next shot to create one of the fundamental forces of building a story. Once a few shots are joined together, that story-building process takes on an energetic life of its own. It can be managed and manipulated by adjusting the position of the cut, the rhythm of the sequence, a reordering of the shots, combining the images with words and sound and music, etc.

But beyond this “energy management” aspect of editing lies another phenomenon that needs to be acknowledged – and that’s all to do with the nature of reality. Here’s the second part of my editing philosophy: The process of editing creates new realities. If a camera captures an image of, for example, a chimpanzee in a tree, it has removed the chimpanzee from its original context. What you have now is something that looks like a chimpanzee, but it’s not a chimpanzee. It is an image of a chimpanzee. The way that image is used in conjunction with other images will determine a new reality for the chimpanzee. And there will be an infinite number of new reality states that the chimpanzee can exist in. For example, if I cut from the chimpanzee looking out of the tree to a shot of another chimpanzee in a neighboring tree, and I am careful to make a feature of their eye contact, I will create a relationship between the two animals — a relationship that wasn’t there before. If I cut from the chimpanzee looking out of the tree to an approaching poacher with a gun, I put the chimpanzee in a state of danger. I create a new reality of tension and fear.

What is one thing that you would tell an aspiring editor?
It would probably be this: When people want to talk to me about what editing software I’m using to create the films I work on, I simply tell them that it doesn’t matter. It’s got nothing to do with technology. It’s got everything to do with the power of the editor’s imagination.

Finally, how did you get interested in editing?
In my school years, I was not a high achiever. I floated through school with little thought about what I might do afterward. I had an interest in photography and a fascination with the behind-the-scenes aspects of television and theater. Microphones, spotlights and cameras were things of interest to me. After graduation, I studied documentary film at Newport Film School in Wales. This was a one-year practical course that introduced me to the crafts of filmmaking and allowed me some brief glimpses into the world of television. I did my first editing there.

Martin Elsbury

I left college with a better understanding of film craft, but due to my undriven nature, I had little idea of what I might do with the experience. A few months later, I heard that the BBC studios in Bristol  had a vacancy for a trainee assistant film editor. I applied and was offered the job straight away. The BBC in Bristol was the home to the Natural History Unit — a renowned production center for wildlife television films.

The art of wildlife filmmaking for television was still at an early stage of its development back then. It was little more than basic observational documentary. It was my early years in the edit rooms in the BBC that made me aware of this. I was also aware that the sophistications of the world of cinema were slowly creeping into the wildlife film genre. I watched from the sidelines and took it all in.

I was an assistant editor for five years and then promoted to full film editor. It was from this point that my own editing style developed. I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time, but I think I gradually developed a wildlife edit style that borrowed elements from the more sophisticated world of image entertainment. I was adding an entertainment value to the traditional factual documentary. I left the BBC in 1989 to follow a freelance path and have worked for many broadcasters and production companies across the world between then and now.

Twain Richardson has worked in post for over 10 years as an editor and colorist. His list of credits includes TV shows, short films, commercials, music videos and documentaries, such as the Oscar-shortlisted All In: The Fight for Democracy for Amazon Prime. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.