Latest / Gilbert. K Show / Super Troopers 3 Editor Spencer Houck Reveals All

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Super Troopers 3 Editor Spencer Houck Reveals All · Gilbert. K Show

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Today on the Gilbert K Show, karate kicks, comedy chaos, and the editor who knows exactly when to cut.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: From Cobra Kai and Community to Grace and Frankie and Super Troopers 3, Spencer Houck turns great performances into moments we can't stop watching.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's give a big welcome to the one and only Spencer Houck.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Spencer, pleasure to have you on the show.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: How are you today?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm good.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks for joining me.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, let's start.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're gonna start with our first segment, Childhood and Discovering Editing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, before the editing room, the deadlines, and the hit TV shows, what kind of child were you and what could hold your attention for hours?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Huh.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I was uh I guess I was a pretty curious kid.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was always um, my dad was an engineer, and um I think I got a little bit of the the bug of like always wondering how things worked um from him.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh didn't end up kind of utilizing it in the same uh way that he did, and that he was very technically minded, and I kind of applied some of those ideas to like a more artistic direction, but honestly still very technical.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because computers ended up being the thing where I kind of uh found myself interested.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that ended up being a little bit of the vector towards filmmaking, um, in that um I started playing around with uh with visual effects, and that was sort of my my way in was seeing movies that looked really cool and being like, oh, I wish I could, I wish I could make a movie with dinosaurs in it, and trying my best and failing, but you know, learning along the way.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I I I self-taught myself, you know, uh stuff like After Effects and stuff when I was in high school, and um that I think is sort of what led me eventually to editing, you know.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: But um yeah, uh, and what could hold my attention for hours.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um at first it wasn't movies.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I I wasn't really uh I don't think I really got into movies really until high school, uh, and not because I didn't like them, because my my parents weren't particularly into them and therefore the trickle down you know of that.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was really into music, my my family's uh uh my sister's uh musician and I I played the trumpet.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that was a huge focus for me when I was younger, yeah, which probably influenced things.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, but did you know that you wanted to be an editor or something in filmmaking?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or you just having fun, probably at the beginning of the yeah.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, in terms of the interest that led me to where I am today, uh, I don't think uh yes, like so many people, I don't think I knew that it was even a real job exactly.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: It was just they were just it was what it was fun to me at the time.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've heard that from so many people, you know, where it's like, oh wait, that the there actually are people that do get paid to do this.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: There are not many of them, granted.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you when you know I grew up in in uh in northeast Ohio, and uh you're about as far from Hollywood or anything like that as you possibly can be uh in that uh place and um you know in the Midwest.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so the idea of like it actually being a job was like hadn't at all occurred to me.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: It was more like, oh, my English teacher will allow me to make a video instead of write a paper?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'll make a video then.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, I heard a lot about that actually.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Some kids do that, yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So was there a movie or TV show or family experience from your childhood that first made you wonder how stories were put together?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you said you were dabbling into VFX and stuff.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yes, undoubtedly.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I was 10 years old when I saw Jurassic Park, and I, you know, uh as much as I just said, my parents weren't particularly into movies, they knew how much I was into dinosaurs, and uh I was just old enough for it to be modic, moderately acceptable to see that movie because it is really, really scary.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I, you know, I I think I remember seeing that movie three times in theaters, which is two times more than I'd ever seen any other movie in theaters before.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because I was so obsessed with dinosaurs and uh the confluence of a movie that could bring them to life in a way that like my parents found the movie cool and I found the movie cool.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was I was a 10-year-old, like of course I'm gonna like dinosaurs, but like it was a it was I don't think I knew it at the time, but how legitimately great of a film it it was.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just a spectacle, it was so much more.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but to me, you know, as a 10-year-old, the spectacle is what did it, and the spectacle was phenomenal.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that is really, I think I count that as like one of the ones where I go, wait a second.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: So like dinosaurs aren't real, you know, my 10-year-old brain, but look at what I'm seeing, uh this doesn't compute.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then I started to go, like, well, how does that happen?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then you start learning about ILM, and and so I for a while I think my my whole path was kind of more heading towards the idea of like doing effects.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and then at some point I realized that not all movies need dinosaurs, but all movies need editors, so yeah.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's good.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So do you remember the first time where when you changed the order of images or scenes and realized I completely changed how the story feels?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good one, you know.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: So often, and still to this day, like my my first cuts are always a representation of my representation of the script.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not sitting there and being like, okay, he says that then this character and then I need to cut exactly.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not I'm not that tied to it, but by and large, my first cuts reflect the script.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, uh, whether that whether whether I feel like it should be shorter than that or longer, you know, whatever.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I kind of always start there.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if I have a script, of course, for my life, I I tend to work in scripted.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I fall back or whatever you want to call it on on that at first and really kind of lay it out to the best of my ability, trying to discern, you know, the filmmaker's intent and then think about reordering or changing or whatever.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so usually that ends up happening, usually when you have problems, you know, and it so much of our job is problem solving that then is reinterpreted or or consumed as a great edit.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: But in reality, what it was, it was it was it was us solving a problem that somebody had.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: And some, you know, we are problem solvers.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: So people come to us and go, I'm really not feeling uh the emotion, the beginning of this scene, you know, what if for whatever reason.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe maybe the director doesn't feel like they got it out of the actor, maybe you know, the lighting wasn't great for whatever reason.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then we go, okay, so what if we start the scene here?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, those kinds of conversations.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then inevitably those those limitations end up being the thing, hopefully, that people go, Oh, I loved how you how cool was it that you came in right in that part?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, oh yeah, that was because like that other stuff sucked, um, you know, or whatever.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: But it but it looks it looks like a bold creative decision.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: But so much of uh, you know, so much of what we do is reactionary.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's so hard for me to have an interview with a filmmaker and tell them how I envision cutting their movie because I have to react to dailies, like dailies first, and then I can tell you, you know, it's such a yeah, it feels weird, but like I have to see something and then I react to it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, anyway.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: So so it's been a while um since the first time that I've reordered images, but um I think I think at in my youth it was all about giving things giving things back to people as scripted, and then us together sitting down and going, oh, this doesn't work, and this doesn't work, and that didn't really work, and then then you start having those conversations.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So do you have like some writers?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, some some writers they're very they have um uh methods they they say okay, this is act one, this is act two, this is act three.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: In editing, is there such thing you follow some kind of or your instinct and how the reaction is, or right?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, I mean again, so much so much of what I do is like in instinctual, and I and at times I have um I have difficulty explaining sort of how I got to certain places, and it's been fun.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, these offer great opportunities for me to attempt to kind of go back and yeah, yeah, almost retroactively understand what it was that my method was or whatever.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, because sometimes you're just so in it that, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: The process is just whatever's happening in the moment.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, but but uh for me, I think it's a again, it's it's kind of always about reacting to the material and then helping people, whether it's another filmmaker or you know, I've made a couple of short films of my own, but I haven't really done a lot of directing of my own.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: But helping collaborators tell the best version of the thing that they're trying to tell.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And and oftentimes, you know, it's not the thing that they had intended or originally intended.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's helping to guide the process and listen to the listen to the material and turn it into what it ultimately sort of wants to be.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's great.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you moved to LA in 2006.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: What did you believe your career would look like then?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And what did Hollywood quickly teach you that you could never have learned in a classroom?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I moved in 2006.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I graduated in 2006 and uh from Ohio University with a uh a large group of sort of filmmaker friends, and uh a large group of us went to to Los Angeles together.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um I caravanned with several of my friends um from my home in in upstate uh in northeastern Ohio.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: We caravanned for six days or five days uh across the country to LA.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: So for some reason, all of us moved into Hollywood, like Hollywood, Hollywood.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: We must have thought that's where you needed to live to work in Hollywood.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And we that's one thing that we quickly realized it's like, let's get the hell out of Hollywood proper.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, just because there's so many other places you can live.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like we can live within walking distance of uh Hollywood and Highland, which is where all the stars are, which if you've been to Los Angeles, it's not the cleanest, fanciest, nicest area to be.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um so we were to say we were naive is like a massive understatement.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um so we were naive in physical location, and then we're naive in like what it took to to be in the industry or to work in the industry.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I'm very fortunate to say that so many of those people that moved out here is now, you know, that's 20 years ago.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um almost all of us are still here.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and a lot of us have you know grown into huge uh uh contenders within the fields that we all kind of came in from.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um in in college, I was the editor.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: There were other people that were the directors, other people that were producers, and they've all you know, I have a friend that's produced a lot of Star Wars movies now.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have a friend that's directing TV, you know, all these things.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: They keep that that keeps that sense of challenge or whatever, of like, oh man, did you just see what you know your friend Jordan just got?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, now it's time to like just bring up it up editorially, you know, or whatever.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I think I think I think that motivated all of us to kind of stay alive because it's so hard to stay alive in this industry.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know if that fully answers the question, but it's uh something like that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: It did, it does.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: So so like you you were you knew for like uh when you finished your school and your university, you knew that you wanted to be an editor and this is the only thing you wanted to do, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't open to other to do other things.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, I mean, so the preference button.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny you should ask that.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, my uh my first day at college, uh, I had I had started at at Ohio University in this program called Visual Communications, and it was a very challenging school to get into.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was like a you know an audition process.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: You had to show them art to approve yourself getting in.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I had taught myself all this stuff and after effects and and uh you know motion graphics and visual effects.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I got into this school, it was about visual art, visual communication.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and on day one of orientation, my gut goes, This is wrong.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like, this is the wrong.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody, somebody has guided me in the wrong way, or they misunderstood what I really wanted, or I misunderstood what I wanted.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And literally in the middle of that orientation, and they're telling me about what the program is gonna have in store for me.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: I started panicking and I left the room and I walked over to admissions and I said, Nope, this is not the right school for me.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, somebody somebody has made a huge mistake.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I transferred into film and television.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: At the time, it was just uh it was uh telecommunications or telecommunications program, and then I got a minor in film while I was there.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I actually didn't really know.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and and I was like, oh, art and and graphics and motion design and 3D and all these things.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then it was like, no, I kind of want to learn filmmaking, not not just visual art.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and those, but that was the bifurcation there is that I was in a program that was going to be a fine arts program, um, which I'm sure I would have enjoyed for so many reasons, but I I think I realized immediately that like I think I'm trying to do like artistic communication in the broad in a much broader sense.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I switched gears immediately and I've never looked back, and I was very happy that I did that.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: But so so when we were in college together, we made a short film that uh there used to be this channel called MTV University, MTV U.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um of course I think it's long, dead, but it would run like in the cafeterias when you were in college, uh things like that.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we entered the competition, a filmmaking competition.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: We ended up winning this thing.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And um one of the awards or one of the one of the things that we won was an internship at MTV, uh, which was a film production company, MTV Films.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so myself and my friend John Swartz um got to intern.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so we spent uh the summer between junior year and senior year in Los Angeles interning on the Paramount lot, which was as cool as you could expect that to be, to be on a movie lot, you know, when you've had no experience with any of this stuff before.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, the actual nuts and bolts of working at MTV uh was making photocopies of scripts and stuff.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was a development office.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like that it ultimately was not where I saw myself fitting within the machine of filmmaking.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: But working there, I met um a producer.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I think she was like the head of physical production at the time, uh, a woman by the name of Momita Sangupta.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Momita's cousin worked at a trailer company, a place that cut movie trailers.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, I can see, you know, one of the things that MTV did was really sit down one-on-one with their interns and say, What do you want to do?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll see if there's any connections I have.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: And she hit me up with her, with her uh, I believe it was a cousin, a woman by the name of Sohini.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I got an internship at that trailer house.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: So when I first moved out uh or moved from from college uh when I finally graduated, I had a a job.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't paid, but I had a I had a thing to come and do um and work at this movie trailer company called Mark Wollen and Associates.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so that really was sort of that started the whole thing.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow, that's very inspiring.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, Spencer.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna take a break, our first break, and we're gonna play a game this or that, and it's a rapid fire game for the audience to get to know you.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, are you ready?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in some instances, you can say both.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: So let's find it out.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: So okay, comedy yes, comedy timing or action timing.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's tough to say which one.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Better, harder, easier, faster?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh uh comedy timing is more difficult.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh perfect reaction shot or perfect punchline.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Boy.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Both.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh first assembly or final polish.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: I have such a soft spot for my first cuts, so I'm gonna say that.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh editing alone or having the director in the room?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Both.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's a time for both, but I like to do the first work alone.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh great scripted moment or unexpected improv?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: For my world, it's both.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's always both.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, community study room chaos or Cobra Kai Dojo Chaos.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh god.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Those you pick my two favorite shows that I've ever worked on, and my two favorite shows that I I just liked before I worked on them.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like they were my favorite shows before I got to work on them.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, community was uh undoubtedly my favorite show, and then I lucked into an opportunity to work on it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm gonna go Cobra Kai only because I loved the fact that I got to cut so many fights.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty cool.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Grace's sharp wits or Frankie's free spirit.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love Frankie on that show.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Lily is just, I mean, they're both phenomenal, but but I think I my ADHD, you know, brain gravitates towards Lily, I think, in that world.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a type A like uh yeah.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh karate showdown or highway chase.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go with karate showdown.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's something fun about hand to hand because you still you get you're getting this a lot more.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: One flawless steak or ten surprising options.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: One flawless steak.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and finally, six seasons and a movie or super two pers 4.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely both, but I if six season and if the movie, uh, I would I would die and go to heaven to get to actually experience.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to work on it, but that's never gonna happen.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I would love to at least experience it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I think I recently saw Dan Harmon speak to that again, and I think he said, I can't say that it's dead, but I can't say anything else.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know what that means, but I'll take it as a maybe.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, we're gonna move on with our next segment: Community Cobra Kai and Grace and Frankie.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, on community, the storytelling could jump from a heartfelt character moment to a wild genre parody in seconds.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: How did you protect the character's emotions while still landing the show's fast jokes and big creative swings?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Boy, that is a great question.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I want to say that community and cobra guide both had this ability to kind of on a dime shift from like insanity to earnestness.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, as I've said a thousand times before on this.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's what I do is so reactionary that that the first step is you're taking stuff in a dailies form and you're going, oh my god, like I'm really connecting to this moment or whatever.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and sometimes it's how somebody timed a joke, and sometimes it's you know, uh what um Jeff, what is his name?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jeff Winger.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Is that is that the lead character's name?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: I can never, I I can never I always call him Joel McHale.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think it's Winger.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he would do these long speeches, you know, that was like one of his things.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: He'd do these winger speeches, and they'd be like kind of heartfelt, and and uh it was kind of like a a football coach sort of type speech or whatever.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: It would he would have like several of them per season.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and they would always be immensely empathic.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, that was that was something that I think Dan, I never I didn't work on a season with Dan Harmon.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: I happened to work on the season that he was not on, but being that this was his brainchild, he seemed to be so interested in the intersection of like earnestness and comedy and earnestness and insanity, and like those things just they just live so nicely together.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: And the you you think that they don't, but um, and so for me, I guess in terms of like how you how you how you do it is that you you hope that your performers give you real, genuine uh emotive takes.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I'll say that because I think that Cobra Kai also feels the same way and that it can switch on a dime.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: There were times when I'd be watching, you know, beats with uh scenes with Billy Zapka, the lead character of Cobra Kai, uh, where I'd be I'd be crying just watching the dailies.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, speaking of that that question you just asked, like 10 10 great options or one that just blows you away, or whatever, one one performance that blows you away.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like you when you're watching dailies, sometimes you just you see moments and you're like, well, like it would be a travesty if other people don't see this moment.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that's those are those moments that you're like so excited that you see this thing and you go, like that.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, if people don't see that, I will have done of them the actor a disservice, I'll have done the show a disservice, and uh, you know, yeah, that's what's so fun.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: And like Billy would get there really regularly as an actor, um, to the point where even in medium wide shots, you're like, I'm welling up just watching him perform this, and yet, like that character, maybe in that same scene, you know, will have used some slur that like I would never say in a million years.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: And like I might have been lobbied to edit out because I think it makes him too unlikable.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, uh uh John Hurwitz and all the uh the big three on on Cobra Kai, uh um uh Josh Heild and uh Hayden Schlossberg uh were so smart and so good at um knowing when you can let a character kind of say the stuff that maybe we don't like characters saying, and then six seconds later you give them this other thing, like a really empathic moment, and boy, does that empathic moment hit even harder because of that.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so that those juxtapositions are just really fun to play with uh insanity and you know, karate fights and drama, or or you know, yeah, uh a table scene in a in a community college that seems really funny, and then you know, uh a puppet episode or whatever, you know, the absurdity just like has to balance it.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: So a joke can be won or lost by a reaction shot or a fraction of a second.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: What did community teach you about the invisible rhythm of comedy?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great one.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um well, first of all, I learned I can't even begin to tell you the amount that I learned while I was on community.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um I had managed um prior to community to uh I'd been working at a place that cut movie trailers, and I started as an intern and eventually became an assistant editor where I learned the avid.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I learned that on the job.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't use the avid at college.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was all final cut at college.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: So um I learned on the job there.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually, while I was at the trailer house kind of being an assistant editor, I was cutting uh a feature film on the side with my friends, all the friends that I'd mentioned that came out to LA from OU together.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we made this little movie called OJ the Musical, and it was an OJ Simpson musical, or more re more more specifically, a mockumentary about somebody putting on an OJ Simpson musical.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it was it was it was one layer removed from the absurdity of an OJ Simpson musical, but still very absurd.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yet also was a depiction of a character who really wanted something and was striving.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so there was real human humanity and empathy in this movie as well.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually, after a year and a half of crafting it with my friend for free on the side while I was at this trailer house, uh, we got a sound designer and a and a mixer to work on the movie.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that mixer uh happened to work on community, and so uh through a huge amount of luck, I managed to score an interview on community.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: And as a result, uh uh the postproducer happened to be from Ohio.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: I got very lucky.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: I had no union hours at the time.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: I had qualified because I was working at the trailer house.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: I had to join the union, join the guild, all these things to join community.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I learned everything to get onto community.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then when I got on community, I learned about uh, you know, the the whole show is uh is essentially, you know, editors know that uh sort of dinner table scenes are sort of notoriously difficult scenes, and that there's a lot of coverage.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, cinematographers also know that dinner table scenes are are hard because there's a lot of eyelines, there's a lot of coverage, there's all you know, there's just a lot of challenges about shooting and and and cutting shows like that.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and community heavily features a dinner table, basically, a study table.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so those scenes were were absolute, you know, film schools in a box, in that my first cuts would be way too fat.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'd have I'd go around the table and see everyone's reactions to everything.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, I'd be like, Well, Chevy, you know, I'm cutting on a show with Chevy Chase all of a sudden.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: He's doing funny stuff.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: I need to show you what Chevy is doing.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then slowly but surely, through through showing, you know, first cuts that were way too long, um, I come to realize, like, oh, you I don't need to show my my my producers and filmmakers every last thing that I thought was funny uh in a in in a bit of dailies.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I, you know, that's such a such a rudimentary thing to learn.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: But like I was, I was my cuts were were very, I would call them, you know, they were loose, they were fat cuts.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I have since gotten a lot more uh condensed with my like, okay, I'm gonna show you everything I loved in the dailies, but like within reason.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I think at first I was like, I'll show you everything I love.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, Spencer, you've you've added shows with completely different voices, Community, Cobra Kai, and Grace and Frankie.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: What part of your editing style remains unmistakably Spencer, even when the genre changes?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a like a signature uh edit?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think I do, and I think I think you shouldn't.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think I don't want to impose that on on other editors, but I I I think you know, I think of myself more, I I guess like um the way that I I used to hear about the concept of like journeyman directors, which you don't really hear about that idea as much anymore because so many people kind of stick to the genre or lane that they're in, but like that idea of a journeyman director, which I don't even know if I know the actual real definition, but like the idea that you can kind of work, well, this is this is this filmmaker's comedy, and this is this filmmaker's version of an action film, and this is this filmmaker's version of a drama uh or an indie or whatever.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I feel like that's that's sort of the world or the pocket that I feel like editors should live in, and that in a perfect world, you should be able to slip sort of into whichever role the material asks of you, I guess.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Again, I go back to this idea of reaction and that like yeah, I am an editor only after material is given to me, and so like I everything I do is reactionary.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um and um yeah, yeah.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, um, oh no, no, yeah, yeah, it's good.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's good.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna take a final break and we're gonna play a game true or false, and it's time to test some facts about your life and career.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, are you ready, Spencer?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Also, the same thing.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: If it's uh the so let's try it out.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: So true or false, a reaction shot can be funnier than the joke itself.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: True or false, the best edit is often the one the audience never notices.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: True, often often.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh true or false comedy is harder to edit than action.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say those are equivalents.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: I would say those are equivalents.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: I I might get flamed for this, but I do think comedy is more difficult to cut than drama.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh true or false, an editor sometimes understands a character before the actor or the director does.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I think definitely.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: True.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh true or false, a beautifully shot scene, may still need to be removed if it slows down the story.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: I hate to say it to a cinematographer, but true.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: True or false, the most complicated Cobra Kai fights are built around emotion before technique.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: 100% true.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that show lives and dies on emotion.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: And true or false, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin can make an editor's job both easier both easier and harder because every reaction is worth keeping.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's a hundred percent true.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: And true or false, working with Broken Lizard requires a strong edit and an even stronger ability to keep a straight face.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Very true.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: Those guys are so much fun to work with.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And your first true or false, your first cut is usually closer to the final version than people would expect.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, after Super Troopers 3, you're ready to trade the editing room for a Vermont state police uniform.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: False.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's it's great to watch those boys on the screen, but uh I'm all set.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh okay, we're gonna jump into our next segment.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Supertroopers 3 and lessons uh and lessons.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: After editing Supertroopers 2, you returned for Super Troopers 3.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: What did that history with Jay Chandra Sikhar and the Broken Lizard team allow you to do faster, braver, or funnier this time?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: Great question.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, I uh my connection with Jay, yes, it goes back to Super Troopers 2, but it goes deeper.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um I so my first job was community.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was very lucky and fortunate to get that.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I believe that was my first show to to get a a Jay Chandra Saikar episode, meaning, uh, if people aren't aware, when when you're hired as an editor on a show traditionally, or at least at least 13, 14 years ago, uh, there would be you know two to three editors, you know, depending on the length of the series.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you essentially there's like a rhythm that you are assigned, you know, episode 101 goes to the first editor on.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Theoretically, that might be considered a lead editor.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: It might not, there might not be a hierarchical kind of consideration.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: But so you get 101, 102, 103, and 104, 105, 106, and you kind of rotate which editor gets which episode, and and by virtue, you rotate which director each editor is going to be working with.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a crapshoot.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, ultimately it's a it's a combination of when you got hired on that show, uh, which order the directors are working in.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it could be that you go, Oh, I'm gonna work with so-and-so, and then scheduling changes and the block shift, and then all of a sudden you're actually working with another director.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, like it really, it's you as an editor are very much not in control of that.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: But I got very lucky that I worked on several shows, several broadcast comedies, uh, at the same time that Jay is a very um uh successful broadcast comedy television director.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: So, one of the things that that Jay has been doing since the success of Super Troopers is he's turned it into a really, a really productive television ed uh television directing uh career.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I managed to get Jay on community, uh, get Jay, meaning I I got a Jay episode on community, I got a Jay episode on this show uh called Bad Teacher.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I got a Jay episode uh on I I think maybe one other show.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: And and and by virtue of that, uh you get to work a little bit of a shorthand in, and he goes, Oh, I'm excited.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I I pulled Spencer again, and we had a great time on community, and that means we're gonna have a great time on this one, uh that kind of thing.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, ultimately I start hearing rumblings about Super Troopers 2 is gonna is gonna happen.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: At that time, it was gonna be a crowdfunded thing.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I immediately start sticking my nose in and go, Hey, I send Jay an email.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, you know, if you happen to need anyone, let me know.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm available.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and at the time he did not need anyone, at the time they had actually already brought somebody on.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and this that show was a little odd because of the crowdfunding component.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they had shot, they had shot, I believe it was about 40 minutes, 30 minutes of the movie, maybe 20 minutes of the movie, uh, in one season, and then shut production down and then had to start production again later.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: And in that time, they lost the availability of their editor.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had been emailing Jay pretty regularly, saying, Hey, just let you know, I'm still available.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I got an email back that said, Hey Spence, are you ready to move to New York?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Or actually, at the time it was moved to Boston because they were shooting outside of Boston, and it was like in two weeks, you have to be here in two weeks.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: And at the time I was I was cutting on a on a really awesome show called Brockmeyer.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was a uh baseball comedy starring Hank Azaria for IFC.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it was the first time I've ever had to do it, and I think I've never had to do it since, but I had to tell them like I just got an opportunity to to work on a movie, and it's it's the sequel to a movie that you know, I went to college between 2002 and 2006 in in uh the Midwest in Ohio.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there wasn't a time when Super Troopers wasn't playing on a TV at some point, you know.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh it was just one of those movies that was just always on.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: It was infused into the into the culture.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: People, you know, people in Ohio loved that movie, or maybe where I was, whatever.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so to to to find myself with an opportunity to work on it is is and was mind-blowing.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so the shorthand that you get from working with Jay leads itself into the opportunity for Supertroopers 2, and then you hope that you do a good job.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: That movie did, you know, much better, I think, than a lot of people were expecting it to do.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, both, both kind of like in in reception, but then specifically like financially, uh, it did well.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it costs very little, I believe, to make.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so these guys look like a pretty awesome proposition.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's like their the movies are popular, it cost much money to make.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I got very lucky that that uh uh you know, two years ago or a year and a half ago, Jay I got another phone call that was like, hey, they're they're they're gonna make another one.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: Are you excited?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: Are you interested?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, sign me up.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where did they shot it also?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: The the so this one also shot um outside, I think outside of Boston, but this time, so I think the the first one shot the production office was in, I used to call it Concord, but I I was I was taught that it was Concord, Concord, Maine, uh or Concord, Maryland.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh I believe this one might have shot around the same area, but I did not get to go to set for this one.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: So uh for the for Super Tubers 2, I was lucky enough to actually be there uh on, you know, staying at the hotel that everyone else was staying at, which is so fun to actually be.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: I was editing at the production office.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's so exciting.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's so it honestly it's pretty rare for an editor to kind of feel that much part of the mix.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was I was just outside of the casting office.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was, you know, there was props were like two doors down, like that was so exciting.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: But this one, I just I had to go to New York.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Boo-hoo.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: I had to go to New York.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's great.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the broken lizard comedy style can feel loose and chaotic, but the finished movie still needs precise timing.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: How do you shape all that energy without polishing away the spontaneity fans love?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that really is a juggling act on a broken lizard movie because why they are so why they are who they are is that you like the sort of rough edges of their stuff.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like their stuff is just it's so at times zany and insane and so specific.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um that we would find ourselves, I mean, there there was a uh a specific scene in in Super Troopers 3 where uh like the the conceit of the scene was that the guy like the character was gonna like over-explain something um that we had just seen or whatever.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and like that was the really the joke was that he it was gonna take him a while to say this stuff, even though we had sort of just seen it.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, you get a note from somebody somewhere it's like, I think we can trim that down.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you go, Oh, okay.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: Of course we can, of course we can.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we can try.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I go in there and I attempt to like, okay, so we cut to a reaction shot here and we try and trim a line out.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, the the continuity of of dialogue, like if I'm just listening to the, you know, people use the term radio play, if I'm listening to the radio play, the lines make sense, it functions, you know, or whatever you want to call it.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: But then you watch the scene and you go, well, what's the point?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Of the the point of the scene was that they're reiterating something, and that that you know, mundanity of the reiteration is the comedy.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, how do you remove, how do you cut time without removing the thing that that makes it what it is, that is essential to what it is.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's really it can be really tough.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, again, my first cuts tend to be pretty big, and then they get really tight.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then what our process was, at least on on Super Troopers 3, and of course, it's so different on every movie, but on on this, we would get real tight, and then we'd test it, see how it does, and then slowly but surely bring back a couple of things and then test, you know, test it, see how see how it plays, and then maybe those go away again, and then maybe something comes back right at the end.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, we would we would it would just it would we would just find our way through it.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, there was one specific thing where you know we'd already tested the movie.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we we test it once, we got you know, like a 70 something, which is it's moderate, it's okay.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then we make all the changes, trim, you know, eight minutes out of the movie, nine minutes out of the movie, um, which I needed, I wanted to trim before, but we had to test it.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: We had to test it big.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh trim those eight minutes out.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: All of a sudden that 70 is a 90, which is like the highest score that that I think searchlight had ever uh gotten on a on a movie.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's entirely through this this art of condensation.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's a it's it's That works, but that doesn't.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: This works, but once we remove this, this works even more.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like this that the fun of of going through and making those changes and then seeing how they can make huge impacts is just it's just so fun.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: But at the very end, Jay would get to go, okay, we've trimmed this scene to the bone.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm bringing back blah blah blah and blah blah blah.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm bringing back these two jokes.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because I've always, you know, I've always loved those jokes and I think they're funny, and I think that's why people come to see our movies.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so all of a sudden, like, really that there were times where like there's a a scene in particular where like a joke came back, like I think it was the day before locking that had never been in a cut.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was never, we'd never tested it.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden it was like Jay's like, you know what?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: I've always wondered, could we put that in?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, okay.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's in the cut now.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's it's fun that it can be that malleable all the way to the end.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: So Spencer, when you say that that we you tested, you you had like test screens with the public with like a private screening, right?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, yeah.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, depending on the movie, it kind of depends which one of those things you're gonna do.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: Super Troopers 3 was was very much a studio picture, and that it was now, you know, searchlight is now owned by Disney.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so even the even the people involved are are sort of the hierarchy is different than it was uh the last one.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and with that comes, you know, a lot more.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, we've you know, you've gotta you've gotta put this movie through its paces because there are a lot of people that want to make sure this movie is going to perform the way they expect the movie to perform.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, you know, in comedy, you gotta you gotta play your movie.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I can't do it in a vacuum, a director and I can't do it in a vacuum.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it is so important to have another human being in the room so you can start seeing it from in between their perspective and your perspective, and you go, oh my god, all of a sudden I'm really embarrassed about like half the movies too long.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: And like I felt it was perfect before.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so so audiences of any variety, whether it's trusted friends, even just your filmmakers, or in this case for super troopers, big official, real, you know, test screenings, like like, you know, there are companies that that run these test screenings, and they're there only a few of them that that uh that do it, and they you know it's a it's an empirical process.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're trying to receive data um about your movie and and and try on a sheet of paper to boil it down.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what's working, here's what's not working, and so that you can try and diagnose and and fix whatever you want to call it, address the problems.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so you know, one of the ways that you can do that is that it comes down, they end up boiling it down to a number, um, you know, and and that ends up being a representation of uh, you know, audience's uh desire to tell other people to go see the movie, audience's uh appreciation of what you just did.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it depends on you know which age grape, age grade, uh, age range those people are in, all these things are factored into that number that gets boiled down.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: But ultimately you you kind of get this number at the end of the day, and that number ends up being useful to either know you've got to move the needle further, or you maybe you're good, maybe that maybe you're you know, and so we we hit that 90, or I believe it was a 90 or 91 or something.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um and when once you get a number like that, the conversation around your cut starts to change, it starts to be like, hey, I think we're getting pretty close to locking, you know.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh, you know, clearly the the the movie's working for our core audience, the stuff like that.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: And and with that, you can start, you know, pouring concrete on some things.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I like to keep everything very malleable until the very end, but you start going, yeah, hey, you know what?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think this sequence or you know, this reel, you know, we work in reels.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe this reel's done, or this, you know, I thought we were gonna go back and tweak this action sequence, but people are loving it.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's done.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then all of a sudden you can go, oh, sound department, get going on this, but because I'm I'm not gonna tweak on it anymore.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, the the audience, again, I I am theoretically, or the editor is theoretically meant to be the surrogate audience.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I always envision myself as that.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh this idea of me being the reactionary person, it's because I'm an audience.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: I you know, even when I'm watching dailies, I'm an audience.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and at some point that has to shift away from me and into other people because uh, you know, I get stuck in my head.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so that testing process, it's different on every movie.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: Most movies I work on, or a lot of smaller movies I work on, don't have they don't have the money to do an official deal.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, you have to go to a real theater, rent the theater out, pay for this company to administer this thing, they pass out iPads, and now they're now their iPads that used to be sheets of paper.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, people have to fill out stuff, they get interviewed.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a really elaborate process.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: For my for my little movies that I do with my friends, we just ask our friends to come watch it.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we print out a little sheet of paper that says, you know, I think one of the stereotypical questions is if you had a magical pair of scissors, what would you cut out of this movie?
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's John August made some uh a reaction uh handbook um and released it as a PDF.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think everyone uses that now, so everyone's talking about a magical pair of scissors.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we ask everyone those questions, like, and and you have to take it all with a grain of salt because your audiences are not editors, but they you know you have to trust that if 15 people uh out of a crowd of of 20 say, you know, that your beginning is too long, maybe you should listen to them.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, um Spencer, when you look back at the child you described at the beginning of our conversation, what would make that younger Spencer most proud?
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: And what's the next editing challenge you still dream of taking on?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's tough.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean, I think I'm it's so easy.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I will forever, ever and always have imposter syndrome.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't, you know, I'm I'm now whatever it is, 20 years into having moved to Los Angeles, you know, whether you consider that whole thing to be the breadth of my career or when I got my first job on community, whatever it is.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I've been doing this for a while now, and I'm still just as nervous uh uh uh delivering a first cut as I was back then.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's important.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's good that I'm still nervous about it because I think that means that I still care.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um I hope that I hope that weird 12-year-old sitting in his room learning how to, you know, green screen himself into a short film.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I would hope that he's pretty proud of what I've already accomplished uh in terms of getting a couple movies in theaters and and working on these big shows that are making a lot of people either happy or or you know, bringing enjoyment and relief to people's lives.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what we do is so far, and and I and I use this term so so often, like we're not curing cancer.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I have to tell myself that when I'm you know up at 12:30 still watching dailies or whatever, like you you can go to bed.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but also what we do is like there is import to importance uh to um to the little niche that I found myself in.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I I have to try and sometimes I try and remind myself that it's like it's cool that you got to do the stuff that like you know, somebody probably had a really crappy day and got to go home and watch an episode of Community or or or Cobra Kai or whatever, and really be like, okay, you know what?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: I can breathe, I can face tomorrow.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: And like that's pretty cool to be a participant in that.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like it's so removed from my what I do.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: I you know, I don't get to experience other people having those moments, but it's cool to think that they might be.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, uh Spencer, do you have any tips for upcoming editors or any recommendations that you wish somebody told you?
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's just to work with your friends and make stuff as much as possible.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still doing that.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the industry is not getting any easier to exist in at this point in time.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so we are, you know, you got to be motivated and push kind of all the time.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: I I am still those pals that I moved out here with, I'm still making stuff with them on the side sometimes.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: Not as often, not as frequent.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: We have kids now.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: Our time is a lot more valuable, um, etc.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: so forth.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I I I'm cutting a short film with my buddies from college right now.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so in a way, in a in a lot of ways, I I still feel very connected to that that kid.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so work with friends and make cool stuff, and hopefully people will see it.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, um, any anything you can talk about, any upcoming projects you can talk about?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: Not really, not really.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh, you know, I think um the California Post Alliance, the the push to bring the tax incentive to Los Angeles is gonna be such a large component, I think, of our of my industry moving forward.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh it's yet to be seen, of course, what the signing of the what is it, AB1.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get the number the name wrong.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: AB125, whatever, whatever the number is.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: I I I apologize for not knowing it off the top of my head.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um yet to be seen, of course, what productions, how many productions are actually gonna even benefit from that.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: But I can speak to the fact that um, you know, I I cut super troopers and super supertroopers two and three in New York City, and that was in pursuit of the tax incentive uh that New York offers.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that time is fun.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: I like being there, but on Super Troopers 3, I had a four-year-old child at the same time, and I had to spend eight and a half months in New York while my child was here in Los Angeles, and uh so things like the incentives in Los Angeles or or California are going to be crucial to the to the maintenance of this as a career that one could actually feasibly have.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um because I I can't I can't pick up and move across the country again uh for myriad reasons.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so I'm excited over the notion that uh my reps hopefully are out there trying to bang down doors and figure out which jobs are gonna get those incentives first, and I hope to be somebody that benefits from them in the in the future.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but right now I'm cutting a short film for free with my pals because that's what you do when you got nothing going on, and we're about to submit it to some festivals, and the game continues, you know.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: You just you gotta stay hungry.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Spencer, we're nearing the end of the show.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's all, folks.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for watching, Spencer Hauke, everyone.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Spencer.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's always a pleasure.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Gilbert.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_02: I really had a great time.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: Same here.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.