Antebellum - The Rough Cut

Our guests on this edition of The Rough Cut, editor John Axelrad ACE and his assistant editor Jared Simon, can certainly speak eloquently on the subjects of storytelling and editing techniques, but when you listen to their interview, it absolutely comes through how methodical they are in their organization and communication, because success with that is what frees them up to be as creative as possible and to think about all those wonderful storytelling conundrums.

John and Jared first teamed up on the film Ad Astra, and they are back together again on their new film, Antebellum. Originally scheduled for a theatrical release earlier in the year, the film was delayed until now as a video on demand release due to the impact of the pandemic.

It’s not often that we have both the editor and the assistant, or assistants, on the show together. And that’s a shame because it really adds a lot in terms of what we can learn from them. And with mentoring and career building and “passing the torch” to a new generation being so vital to this industry, hearing the assistant share their experience on how the editor, or any mentor, helped to bring them along, is very cool. We even get to talk about one of the editors John learned under, the amazing Anne V. Coates, who won an Oscar in 1963 for her work on Lawrence of Arabia, and then went on to be nominated four more times; the last being for Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, the first picture John worked on with her. And we get into all that plus; the importance of a good editing room “codebook”, making the most of markers, how to properly prep material for 5.1, and much more!

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