Georgia Dodson Archives - postPerspective

Georgia Dodson is an editor at PS260, a boutique editorial house in New York, Los Angeles and Boston that specializes in commercials, music videos and feature films. PS260 also has a motion graphics and visual effects department as well as a sound studio.

Born and raised in Appalachia, the now-LA-based Dodson has always been a storyteller. She discovered her love of film editing with Matt Lenski’s short Meaning of Robots, which premiered at Sundance, screened at MoMA’s New Directors/New Films, and shaped her decadelong career in docustyle commercials. As a graduate of the College of William and Mary with a degree in English literature, Dodson’s strength as an editor comes from her background as a writer. She is accustomed to telling succinct stories on tight deadlines.

Let’s find out more about Dodson…

What would surprise people the most about what falls under the title of editor?
As someone who often edits nonfiction content, I become a writer on many projects.

CVS

What’s your favorite part of the job?
I love getting hours of interviews and splicing them together to write a clear narrative. I love it when my timeline is a mess one moment and the next moment, everything suddenly works, and it’s a thing.

I also like going to offices with open floor plans, where people ride scooters and play pingpong.

What’s your least favorite?
Dark rooms, screen time overload and sitting.

What is your most productive time of day and why?
I’m really sharp early in the morning. If I have a big deadline, I’ll get up at 4am or 5am, make a pot of coffee, and start cutting straight away.

If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
I’d be a writer and illustrator.

How early did you know this would be your path?
This path has been more of an evolution than a clear-cut decision. I was an English and cultural studies major in college, with a minor in studio art. In the early 2000s, nobody had cell phones, and I had the only digital camera amongst my friend group — it was a whopping 2 megapixels. Making movies wasn’t as accessible as it is now, and I’m not sure I even thought about filmmaking as a real career path until I started taking film theory classes.

I moved to New York from Virginia in 2004 to pursue comedy while waiting tables. After a year or so of struggling (I’m profoundly unfunny!), my roommate, a runner at Final Cut Edit, got me a job there as a receptionist. I then worked as an assistant to many fantastic editors. I learned from them, and here I am today. Even though I never explicitly set out to become a film editor, I’ve realized that this job is the perfect intersection of my writing and visual arts skills.

Madu

Can you name some recent jobs?
In 2022 and 2023, I edited a feature documentary for directors Matt Ogens and Joel Kachi Benson about Anthony Madu, a Nigerian boy who gets into an exclusive ballet school in England. Madu follows him on his journey over his first year abroad. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age story exploring themes of home, identity and belonging, and it will be released by Disney in 2024.

I just locked cut on a three-part documentary series for Netflix that I’m not allowed to talk about, but I can say that it involves pop music and true crime.

My first feature documentary, Underplayed, premiered at TIFF in 2020 and was released on Amazon Prime in 2021. I’m very proud to also share a writing credit on that film with the amazing director, Stacey Lee.

Now I’m hoping to dive back into commercials for a bit.

Are you often asked to do more than edit?
I focus on music and sound design and how they help construct a scene. I worked closely with the directors and the composer of Madu on the score, and several of my temp tracks made it into the final film. I really enjoy promoting more diverse artists that way, too. In one scene, we use a track by Loraine James, an electronic producer from London, diegetically on a radio.

I had also been getting into 1970s Nigerian rock before working on the film. I absolutely love a group called Ofege, so it was fun to place a track of theirs in a scene as well. I did the initial sound design on Madu, and I was over the moon to take it to the next level with Bonnie Wild and her amazing team at Skywalker Sound.

Underplayed

What system do you edit on?
I’m a big fan of Avid, particularly for massive feature projects. For commercials, I use Adobe Premiere to keep my knowledge up to date.

Do you have a favorite plugin or tool that you call on a lot?
My assistant on Madu started calling me “D-Verb Dodson” while we worked on sound design, so I guess that’d be the one.

How did COVID change the way you work – the good and the bad?
From a practical standpoint, it’s great to do your laundry and clean your house while you wait for edit notes, but I mostly miss the personal interaction. Editing is collaborative! I thrive on riffing with my assistants and involving them in the edit. Working with clients satisfies the wannabe comedian in me. A lot of people think of editing as a solitary job, but I think the best moments come from working the room.

What are three pieces of technology you can’t live without?
None of this is editing-related, but my smart speakers, my Roomba vacuum and my Litter-Robot all get me one step closer to my dream of a Pee-wee-level automated home. (RIP Pee-wee.)

This is a high-stress job. What do you do to de-stress from it all?
Books, cats, dirty martinis, Enya.

Georgia Dodson has traveled a long way, literally and figuratively, to where she is today — a full-time editor at Cut+Run in New York City. This Bland, Virginia-native left home at 17 and hasn’t looked back. Now she spends her days in an edit suite helping tell stories, and one of those most recent stories is the short documentary film Call of Duty from director Matt Lenski.

The two have worked together before. Back in 2012 Dodson edited Lenski’s Meaning of Robots, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, won Best Short Doc at the Nashville Film Festival and screened at SXSW and MoMA’s New Directors/New Films. This year she reunited with the director once more, this time on his new short film Call of Duty, which also made the festival rounds. In Call of Duty, Manhattan jury duty clerk Walter Schretzman wants you to remember that you are the only thing standing between civilization and anarchy.

What was the original concept presented by director Matt Lenski?
Matt had filmed and interviewed three jury clerks working in Manhattan. They were each engaging, but Walter brought something a little more existential to the table. While the others tried to sell us on the merits of doing jury duty, Walter was self-aware. He spoke about what it was like to be in the same room, every day, with people who are constantly trying to get out of that room… and he likes it. So I think the idea of Walter’s identity in relationship to the perceived monotony of his job was what Matt was going for with Call of Duty.

How did that evolve in the edit?
It took a long time. The ending and beginning came together quickly, but once we got into how to convey these feelings of waiting, boredom and peppering in Walter’s zingers at the right places… it was really tough. For the most part, we had all the best pieces picked out early on but had to figure out the right arc. Somehow, things fell into place magically. For me, the piece that finally pulled things together was Walter talking about being at the same job for 20 years, doing the same thing every day, while he’s counting hundreds of juror slips. He says, “It is what it is.”

You’ve collaborated with Matt before — give us a little background on your work together.
I met Matt when I was an assistant, and by chance helped him with a director’s cut when my editor was out of town. We became friends and have worked on projects together since. The first big one was Meaning of Robots, which evolved from a chance encounter Matt had with Mike Sullivan, a hoarder who makes Metropolis-inspired robot pornography. Our little portrait of him ended up in Sundance, which was a pleasant surprise for us. That project definitely has parallels to Call of Duty, in both subject and style.

What were some interesting moments with Walter that ended up on the cutting room floor (or the digital trash bin)?
He talked about his love of avant-garde jazz that’s difficult to listen to but will “wake you up.” I tried for the longest time to work that moment into our edit, paired with an appropriate jazz track over sleeping jurors… but it didn’t work in context of the whole piece. Too bad. We could make a feature length film of Walter saying amazing things.

What piece of this exploration surprised you the most?
It’s really funny, but I also think it’s darker than I expected it to turn out. Early on, I cut together the part where the prospective jurors watch the jury duty film. (I saw the whole thing when I did jury duty. It’s ridiculous.) I quickly connected the man drowning with the ticking clock, Walter checking his watch and then the infinity loop of the screensaver behind him. It makes me laugh, but it also kind of helped set a dark tone for the whole thing. Also, sound. Sound is always important, but weirdly, it’s especially important in a film about nothing happening, where, theoretically, little sound is being made.

What are you hoping people take from the film?
I like Walter’s sentiment, toward the end of the film, that “people are more than what they do.” Walter is definitely more than what he does.

Have you been to any of the festival screenings?
I was able to go to Rooftop Films, and I met Walter there, finally. He retired a couple of weeks later, so the timing of the film is pretty perfect. It was amazing to hear people laughing so much throughout the entire piece, because after working on something for so long, it’s hard to see it.

What is it about editing longform/short films, as opposed to commercials, that resonates with you?
I come from a writing background. I was an English major in college. I love documentary editing, because I become the writer. My favorite thing is getting an interview and cutting it up to create some emotion or humor.

What are some other recent projects you’ve edited?
This is my latest short film. I’ve been doing a lot of commercials. I just finished a documentary style commercial for Hershey, directed by Jonty Toosey, that will be out soon.