postPerspective Update

The Holdovers Oscar-Nominated
Kevin Tent Talks Editing Workflow

By Iain Blair

Editor Kevin Tent, ACE, has had a long and fruitful collaboration with director Alexander Payne. Their first film together was 1995's Citizen Ruth, and he's edited all of Payne's films since, including the Oscar-nominated Sideways. Tent earned his first Academy Award nod for his work on The Descendants.

Tent was just Oscar-nominated again, this time for his work on Payne's new film The Holdovers, a bittersweet holiday story about three lonely people marooned at a New England boarding school over winter break in 1970. I spoke with Tent about his workflow and editing the film, which got five Oscar noms, including for Best Picture.

I know Alexander shoots very precisely, so assuming there's not a ton of material you have to wade through and cut?
He's super smart about coverage. He doesn't want to burn out his actors on wide shots and masters. So he gets what he thinks he needs to get us in and out of scenes. Then he spends a lot of time letting the actors find their footing and their characters and give their performances. He's a four-to-six takes guy on average, but he allows his actors to take their time and get these great performances. It's our job when we get to the cutting room to try to condense them and make them efficient... pace 'em up, that kind of thing. We're getting great raw material, and then our challenge is usually trying to get it all moving and flowing together.

You worked on the edit at his home in Omaha for a while and then came back to LA?
We would go there for a month, come back to LA and then go back again. We would cut there using Jump Desktop — we'd log into that and do all the editing. It's just the most amazing thing. And we were able to cut away on the computer in California from his place in Omaha. We would then use Evercast for work sessions with associate editor Mindy Elliott, apprentice editor Alyssa Donovan-Browning, music editor Richard Ford and sound supervisor Frank Gaeta. The whole process was efficient and phenomenal.