Zack Arnold

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“The Force Awakens” Associate Editor Julian Smirke

About Episode

Editor Julian Smirke is convinced that he ended up being an assistant and then associate editor on Star Wars: The Force Awakens because of sheer luck and nothing more. But I don’t believe in luck. I believe that luck should be redefined as “when hard work meets opportunity.”

In this episode Julian and I talk all about his path from starving and unemployed artist to working on the largest film franchise in cinema history. I break down every step of his journey and show you how anyone can take a similar path if they are willing to put in the work.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: So I am here today with Julian Smirke, who is the associate editor of Star Wars Seven: The Force Awakens, a little tiny indie film that you may or may not have heard of. Was released in December. Very obscure, very limited release schedule. But if you’ve heard of it, then this will be an interesting, relevant conversation for you today in the post-production world. So, Julian, it is a pleasure to have you here today.

Julian Smirke: Oh, thanks for having me, Zack. It’s my first podcast, so I don’t know what’s about to happen, but we’ll see how it goes. Yeah, so

Zack Arnold: I’m. It’s it’s going to be really really cool to to talk about the film from this perspective because I would assume there isn’t a single person in the civilized world that has not heard of this film, and most likely, according to the box office numbers, most of them have seen it at least once. So that that being the case, I think the obvious thing is to get Marianne and Mary Jo, the two editors of the film, have them on the show. Like that’s the obvious thing. But what I really want people to see is what it looks like a little bit more behind the scenes. Because for somebody to look at them and say, “Well, I want to edit Star Wars someday. It’s almost like it’s this unattainable, unreachable, like pie in the sky that’s never going to actually happen to me. But then you look at somebody in your position and you think, all right. Well, he’s in that same world. He’s you’re not that old. You’re about my age, or maybe even a little bit younger, very young, very hungry. But you’ve kind of moved into this world. So, what I want to do first is I really want to give people a picture of where did your journey start and how did you actually get to the point where you were working on the biggest film in the history of cinema.

Julian Smirke: Well, first of all, we’ll see about that with the biggest film in cinema history, definitely domestically. But it’s funny because my wife, Kristen Young, is also an editor as well, and she worked on Avatar. So we have like a household competition going, jokingly in the background, you know, wondering if Star Wars is going to beat Avatar in global box office. Which I think it’s that goal seems kind of unattainable at this point. But for a while there, it was kind of a running joke in our house. But well, that’s a big question. So, how did I get to be working on this film? Well, the short answer would be that I started working with Marianne and Mary Jo on Mission Impossible Three back in like 2005 2006 is when the movie came out, and that was JJ Abrams’s first feature film. You know, as a director, I was hired on that film basically as an apprentice editor at the very beginning, and ended up on the movie as an assistant editor. And then, you know, that kind of snowballed with jobs for me after that because Marianne Brandon asked me to be her first assistant on the next movie, which was the Jane Austen Book Club. It was a smaller film that we did together, and then pretty much every movie since then, especially you know all of JJ’s films we’ve done together since then. So you know when I think about doing Star Wars, it kind of just evolved to sort of being lucky, I guess, in some way that I was a part of that crew and working on his films with Marianne and Mary Jo. So you know, the the history of that working environment and that family of you know working family of people that I’ve been working with for so long now, is kind of goes back about 10 years ago. So you know, it’s not like you know I got lucky and got the gig on Star Wars, although I did. But you know there was a lot of groundwork and and years and different movies that we went from one movie to the other to get there. But before that, you know I was I kind of started in the industry back in 2001 actually in 2000 I my wife Kristen and I we moved to Vancouver, Canada, all the way from Australia, and we’d never done film work in Australia, and we sort of dived into it as PAs on set in production, and we’re in Vancouver working on sort of day calls and weekly calls on various different movies and TV shows, all sorts of stuff for about a year, and that was our introduction to the film industry. And it was a great learning ground to see all the different jobs that everyone does on set. And most of it, we were pretty uninspired by because on set, if you’ve ever been on a set, there’s a lot of technical utility stuff that goes on, and you know it’s not extremely glamorous unless you’re maybe an actor or maybe the director or a producer or something who’s got a lot of creative input going on, or or one of the heads of department like a a DP or a production designer. So it was good to it was a good learning experience for us and for me to see you know what how it worked and what was out there and then eventually we moved from Canada down to Los Angeles in LA is when we started to and when I started to pursue post production just to see the other side. Of how everything works, and it was then that I sort of realized this is so much better because you really get to see how a film is made and put together, and you so there’s that satisfaction of seeing the thing through to the very end and seeing how it gets shaped and and comes together and and gets completed.

Julian Smirke: So, so I started a long time ago, or it feels like a long time ago, and very specifically, once I moved to LA, it was it was all about editing and post production, and started out as a PA, and then just worked on feature films, you know, from the beginning as a PA, and just tried to learn a lot of stuff, and met a lot of people, and spent a lot of time out of you know unemployed at the beginning, and then it just sort of evolves, and you know, goes from one job to the next eventually. And and sort of here I am working on Star Wars. Never would have thought that would have happened.

Zack Arnold: Well, the the one thing that I want to bring up right away is you you had mentioned several times that you got lucky, and anybody that has heard me on this show in the past or has heard me on other shows where I’ve been a guest, to me, luck is a four-letter word, and I don’t believe in it because to me, luck is when hard work meets opportunity. And there is no way that you spent eight or nine years in the J. J. Abrams system and you were asked back just because you got lucky. So the the reason you have done that many films with his crew for nine years is because most likely you are pretty good at what you do. Because I can’t imagine that JJ or Mary Jo or Marianne or anybody on the post team is like, well, Julian’s not very good, but we’re good. He’s a nice guy, so you know we’ll we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Like no, people drop the ax at a moment’s notice, when this kind of money is on the line, so I don’t believe in luck, and there’s a reason that you got where you are. So I want to make sure that you get the credit for all of that.

Julian Smirke: That’s that’s very sweet of you to say. I I totally agree with what you’re saying, except the luck factor. I think in my mind really comes into play in occasional moments. So for me, the lucky part of it was getting hired on Mission Impossible Three back then, and I didn’t. You know, you didn’t. I didn’t realize that at the time. I do feel like I was lucky enough to get that specific interview for that job and get the job. And of course, exactly what you’re saying, there’s no luck involved in the longevity of you know keeping a job and being good at what you do, and then you know, working with the same crew for so long, and you’re absolutely right. There’s nothing lucky about that side of it. It’s just the initial part of it, and I think there’s benchmarks. Probably everybody who listens to your show, too, especially people who work in editing, would I would think would agree to a certain extent that there are lucky moments, and it’s not all about luck. It’s really about hard work and good attitude and all the rest of it. But the the moments of luck really they’re tiny moments that can turn your career into some some specific direction that you didn’t think it was going to go in, or you know that’s what I mean by luck.

Zack Arnold: Sure, and I can understand that, but what what I actually want to do that you actually kind of stole the next question out of my mouth. You probably don’t even realize it. But when I go to all these different industry events or listen to podcasts and I hear people give their quote unquote story, like here’s my story, here’s the path that I took. What I always felt when I was younger, listening to these, was saying, “Well, all that’s great, but I can’t actually do that. Like I, I’m not going to have the story that you do. So for me, the the pivotal point in your career has nothing to do with Star Wars. It has to do with Mission Impossible Three, like you said. So what I like to do is really break down how things actually happen and be able to apply them to other people’s lives with actionable steps because it’s one thing to say, well, you know, I got the job on Mission Impossible Three, and I did this movie and this movie and that movie, and I was a hard worker and I did my job and everybody liked me and they invited me back and I did Star Wars, but to me, where that story really starts is you got the job on Mission Impossible Three. So the most logical question for somebody that’s a little bit younger, maybe they’re an apprentice, maybe they’re an assistant, and they’re saying, “I just feel like I’m really good at what I do. I put in the time, I put in the effort, but where’s my Mission Impossible Three? So listen, I actually want, and I don’t know the story at all. I have no preparation. I know nothing about your story, but I want to. I want to hear some of the steps that led you to getting your job on Mission Impossible Three, and I want to break that down for people so they can say, “Well, that I can do. So it doesn’t feel so like, “Oh, well, yeah, he got on Mission Impossible. That’s not going to happen to me. I want to encourage people to realize that anybody can make this happen if they do the right thing. So let’s talk specifically about what the steps were that got you on Mission Impossible Three.

Julian Smirke: Well, that’s that’s an interesting one coming from Australia and then via Canada to Los Angeles, you know, I was starting fresh in a very new city, which is the a lot of people in Los Angeles have that here because it’s made it’s a city made up of a lot of people from somewhere else. So you know, I’m sort of no exception to that. And when when I moved here, it was. Barely know anybody, and sort of trying to you know break into an industry where you’re sort of starting out fresh. And my work ethic and and sort of drive of wanting a career and all the rest of it was certainly something that you know I I had a pretty strong work ethic. So it wasn’t about that. It was more about trying to get a job. So at the beginning, definitely, you know, spend a lot of time unemployed trying to weigh up the options of like, well, can I pay bills this month, or should I be holding out for a job that may or may not come? And I, you know, I was fortunate enough that you know my wife does exactly the same job and in the same, you know, field in editing in post production, and and we were both sort of as a team, kind of like trying to do the same thing. And we would get jobs at different times, and sometimes she’d be working, sometimes I’d be working. So, but you know, fast forwarding and getting closer to Mission Impossible Three, I actually it was tough for me because I spent a couple of probably about a good, I want to say 15 months, so like a year and a half leading up to Mission Impossible Three, I spent most of that time out of work and unemployed, and all those questions come up in your mind. Like first and foremost, the negative side goes, “Oh my God, I’m not good enough to do this job. Nobody wants me. Nobody wants to hire me. And then you sort of go through the spectrum of like, well, it’s not that. You know, I just don’t know enough people. And then you know, it’s like how long? You know, you start questioning how long am I going to hold out just to try and get a job? You know. And so as the that 15 months you know rolled on. I’d come off a movie called The Alamo, which was a film that I was on for about a year, and I started that film as a PA, an edit an editing PA, and I got into the union and became an apprentice about halfway through the show. Halfway through the show, being an apprentice, it was a great. You know, that was sort of another benchmark turning point for me in my career because just you know getting into the union back then was kind of it felt like a very uphill mountain to climb, and once I got in and was able to sort of you know get slightly better pay as an apprentice because it’s union regulated, and then finishing that job, that was a tough one because I was on it for almost a year, and I felt like it almost took me out of the loop of hearing about other jobs or being in contact with other people that would sort of pass you jobs. So then after that, I was out of work for a big chunk of time. I got a couple of jobs here and there that were sort of small little stints of work that was sort of almost like little bites, and one of them was the Polar Express, which was great and a good experience. And that was working on a Robert Zemeckis film. It was a motion capture film, and it was quite unique and at the time especially. And but I still it still wasn’t a solid job that I was, you know, staying on for a long period of time, and then through a mutual friend of ours, someone Kristen had worked with, an assistant editor, her name’s Paula Sui. She was very, very kind enough to get me an interview on Mission Impossible Three because they needed some more crew.

Julian Smirke: She was a person who was working on the show already, or had just started, and and when I say you know going back to the luck thing, it was just the timing. It was lucky that I happened to be at a at a party of a friend’s, and we saw her and caught up, and the timing of it was good. And she said, “Oh, you know, we’re looking for someone, and and if you’re looking for an apprentice job, and I had been an assistant on on a couple of those smaller jobs in between. She was like, you know, come in for an interview. I can’t promise you anything, but you know it might work out. And then talking about the luck factor, I I do feel like that was a lucky moment because you know the planets aligned for that little tiny time you know space in time, and I was able to get an interview, and then you know got the job, and then the journey on that film for me was a unique one because not only was it a work thing, it was more of a personal thing for me because of being out of work for so long before that job, and so while I was on that job, I was extremely determined to learn as much as humanly possible, because I felt like, you know, I just come off 15 months of basically being unemployed, and oh my god, if I can’t take this opportunity now to, you know, I’ve got no hope, you know, at all. If if I don’t just stay, you know, unpaid after hours, do some free time. Don’t worry about getting paid. And just and luckily enough, the crew was really good crew. They were very supportive and very helpful and willing to teach me. And I learnt from not just one or two people, but like three or four people on the show, different sort of things. And by the end of that move. I found myself as an assistant editor on the show, and probably like I think it was like maybe two or three months before it finished, and then it kind of set me up in some way. Now at the time, I didn’t realize it was going to set me up to keep working with Marianne and working on JJ movies. For me, I didn’t even think about that at the time, it was more about I’ve got to learn how to do this job really well. I’ve got to learn all the stuff that I don’t know as much as possible from everybody else, and then take that opportunity and see you know how I can get the next job after this is all done. Because I think the fear of another 15 months out of work was like if I’m out of work that long, why am I in Los Angeles? And I might as well go home to Perth, Australia, where it’s a nicer city and a lot calmer. And you know, I could do something else with my life. So it was a little bit of a personal journey for me on Mission Impossible Three, and I really do feel like that was a turning point of a movie for us, for me, I should say, and I wish there was pearls of wisdom I could give people, but you know, it’s it’s kind of that was my journey, and that’s how it happened for me, and and and really in my mind, it was the determination in that moment on that film just to learn everything that I could learn.

Zack Arnold: Well, and I think that the important things that you really brought out are, and these need to be heard by everybody that’s in the industry that has gone through the struggle or struggling now, is that you were unemployed for 15 months, and you’re now or were working on Star Wars, now working on another film. But all people see is you have Star Wars on Star Wars on your resume-that’s so cool. They don’t realize that there’s this long, drawn-out period where you’re questioning whether or not you should even be in the industry. I’ve had that period too. Mine lasted over two years, and it wasn’t literally two years with zero paycheck whatsoever. But it was two years of not getting any work that I wanted, getting stuff that just paid enough so I could pay the mortgage and survive, but I wasn’t making any headway forwards in my career. But you, it’s a very important growing and learning experience, and I find that it actually will help forge you into a much stronger person and a much stronger editor or assistant or whatever stage you’re at. So I want to I want to dig a little bit deeper because I know you said you can’t find any pearls of wisdom, but I want to try and mine some out of there. So I’m going to ask you a question, and I just want you to. And you may not even have the answer to it, but when you were going through those 15 months, why didn’t you go back? What was the thought in your head that made you keep going, where you said, “I’m not ready to go back to Perth yet”

Julian Smirke: Well, that’s an interesting one. There’s probably so many factors involved in that. One was my wife was here and working, and of course, you know, we had plenty of those discussions about, oh my God, you know, I should go. Why am I here? And Kristen would say to me, “I’m here, and so that’s why you’re here. So, you know, all joking aside, with that, I think I think the drive and determination is like not wanting to go backwards in life generally, and I’ve never had that. I never really wanted that, so I felt like if I did sort of, you know, part of it would feel like giving up, part of it would feel like moving backwards in life and going back to Perth, and you know, all the rest of it, but you know, it’s hard when you’re in that moment because you know you do have all those, or I did, or have all those thoughts of like, well, you know, how long is too long before I should just get on with my life and do something else because this is clearly not working out. That’s a that’s a tough one. So it was like a lot of discussions and very, you know, having a very supportive wife was a good thing at the time, and you know, spending I guess a few years leading up to that point, you know, I didn’t want to see that wasted either. To to go, oh well, okay, I’m going to go be a bartender now, or you know, do something else, and that’s something that I’ve always had is a lot of drive, regardless of whatever whatever it is that I’m doing at a certain point in life, you know, career wise. I’ve always had sort of a focus to try to focus on something specific and not flounder and go all over the place to like switch, you know, careers or switch different directions and all that sort of stuff. And quite honestly, I think a big part of that for me is attention span, because if I’m doing something that I am not really sort of into, my attention span is just really short and lacking, and then I’m not really giving that particular thing, you know, my 100% Whereas if I, if you know, because I liked editing and I wanted to get into it, and I could see making movies like being the thrill of a lifetime, and you know just being into into it so much and passionate about it. It’s it’s somehow makes it easier for me. It does anyway. So so yeah, there was plenty of times in that 15 month period where you know I just kept thinking, why am I doing? You know, how long do I hold out? All that sort of stuff, and and you know, I was in that 15 month period. Like I said, I was I got a couple of jobs, one of which was Polar Express, and those little nibbles of jobs and employment was like, well, you know, maybe I’m maybe I’m crazy with all these negative thoughts, and you know, then you get sort of a positive, a second wind, so to speak, and then you’re unemployed again, and it’s like, oh, okay. So how do I capitalize on what I just had? That’s hard because I can’t. That movie’s done, and you know. So that’s a tough one. I think it was just it’s a personality thing for me. You know that big chunk of unemployment that I guess the the thought of either giving up or moving backwards and going back to Australia was much more of a terrible thing in my mind to do than to just keep trying to be unemployed and try to get what I wanted. And then the funny thing that grew out of that, or the interesting thing I should say that grew out of that. What I learnt from that experience, and you, I don’t think you could sort of teach this to anybody. You really just have to go through it. Is that you know?

Julian Smirke: It it just now when I’m unemployed, I kind of welcome it, and I don’t worry about getting the next job because you know obviously in editing and in working in feature films and any sort of editorial capacity on on certain jobs in this industry, we’re all freelancers, and so and in doing the freelance work, you’re inevitably unemployed when until the next job comes along, and I saw a lot of people, a lot of assistants around me, and a lot of people in the industry worry about the next job, and because I’d gone through that really tough period, I stopped worrying. It completely disappeared for me. Like, not even that it lingered a little bit, like 5% or something. Like, it just it’s just gone. So, in between jobs now, I never worry about anything. And the funny thing I just think to myself and say to other people: Is if you determine enough and you have enough drive, it’s really not about you know worrying about oh when’s the next job going to come? Is it ever going to come? It’s more about the timing of it. It’s just it’s going to come. That job will always be around the corner. It’s just how far away is it? Is it a week away for you? Is it a couple of months is it a year and if you don’t give up there’s no chance that you’re just going to be unemployed for the rest of your life that just won’t work so I mean if there’s anything to take away from my experience or what I took away from it was simply it’s a matter of time before that next job will come around and it will come around. It always does.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that that’s absolutely key, and I could not have said it better myself. That it’s all about the perseverance and the drive. And you also said something that’s really key, which is that you had the focus, and you were kind of specific about what it is that you wanted to do. And if you weren’t doing something that didn’t specifically fit into this overall framework of the job that you wanted, you didn’t have the attention span and you didn’t have the passion, and I think that’s key. And I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole too much because I literally have a 120 minute podcast episode that goes down this exact rabbit hole about how to be specific, how to break down your goals, how to go towards them, how to network, all these things, the skill set you need to build. So I’ll have a link to episodes 56 and 57 which go down that rabbit hole extensively. But that’s the key, and the other one is like you said, you just didn’t give up. Eventually, something’s going to come along, and I will never forget those moments that I’ve had. I don’t know if you’ve had them or not, but when I went through that two year period where I just could not get anything that I wanted to work on, you just sit there with your head in your hands, and you say, “Why am I doing this? Like, what? Where is this going? But then the the next question is, “Well, what what could I be doing instead? Oh, not editing. Well, that’s not an option because I don’t want to do anything except this job and this career. So I just have to kind of keep doing the crap work. And passion doesn’t pay bills, so sometimes you have to take really crappy projects. But my philosophy was always: as long as I’m editing, I’m not going to be editing the next Citizen Kane. But if I’m just editing something, I’m still, in a way, honing my skill set. I’m still learning something. Even like for me, there’s no better way to learn how to be a great editor than work on horrible films, and I have worked on the marketing campaigns for a lot of really, really, really bad movies. And I feel like a lot of my my skills and my toolset comes from working on bad movies. So I think that when people have their head in their hands and they have that moment, they say, “I’m just trying to break in, and I want to work on Star Wars someday, but I just the only offers I’m getting are for these crappy little projects. Those are learning experiences no different than any other, and you shouldn’t look at them as just failures. And even if they are failures, if you talk to anybody that’s immensely successful in any industry, it’s not just film editing, but in any industry, they’ve just failed more and they failed faster than anybody. They’re not magical. They just decided I’m going to keep pushing forwards. I’m not going to give up, and I’m just going to learn from these failures. And then all of a sudden, something tips, and they become great. And it sounds like your story is very, very similar, where you just went through that dark period of, am I ever going to do anything like this again, or am I going to work at Starbucks the rest of my life? But you you had planted seeds, and those seeds started to germinate, and bam! One of those seeds became Star Wars.

Julian Smirke: Yeah, that’s right.

Zack Arnold: You know, I think that that’s it’s it can be very encouraging, but people have to realize there’s a lot of patience involved because you weren’t unemployed for 15 months last year with no credits, and you got Star Wars. There’s a long journey that you went through to make that happen, but it did end up happening because, like you said, you persevered, you didn’t give up, and you were focused on continuing to go down that path.

Julian Smirke: Yeah, that’s so true.

Zack Arnold: So, so there’s a lot of gems and pearls to pull out of that, and I still don’t believe that any of it was luck. I just, I really don’t believe in luck. And there, yes, you were at a party with somebody, but if there wasn’t a reason that they would have said to you, “Oh, well, you, you know I can get you the interviews because you’re good at what you did so it was you you done the hard work and you met opportunity the two had a baby and there you were so that that’s kind of the way that I see it so now now that we’ve kind of taken people down the path of where you started and how you got where you are the reason that I really wanted to have this show is fitness in post is not just about post production. It’s about maintaining some form of sanity and health in this industry, which is frankly next to impossible. Yeah. So what what I want to do now is I want to paint a picture for the audience of what a day in the life actually looks like working on a gigantic tentpole film, and I know that there are phases where it changes a lot versus when you started the film, and you can talk about when you actually started, in what capacity you started, what the process looked like, how it changed and evolved. But I want people to kind of understand what does a day in the life look like, because it’s one thing to say I want to work on Star Wars, but it’s another thing to actually be able to survive the day to day, rather than just have it on the resume.

Julian Smirke: Yeah. Well, the day to day, I think everybody can attest to this. That works in editing is long hours. I mean, everything you know, and it can be. It certainly goes through worse periods and nicer periods, but the hours can be absolutely brutal, like just really long hours. I mean, an average day for the most part, and and and sort of an average to sort of standard good day would be, you know, you’re starting work at like nine or 930 in the morning, and you’d finish somewhere around you know somewhere between nine and 10 p.m. And working on feature films, it’s it’s kind of the norm, or at least it’s been the norm for me for many years for many movies, and you know some somewhat of those hours certainly get worse in in real crunch time periods, and and sort of other times you know they’re a little better, but usually the little better is not that much better than that. Like you know we very rarely, if at all, ever get out at seven or 8o’clock at night. I mean, it’s it’s a pretty rarity in working, or at least from my experience working in feature films. Depends on the movie, of course, and it depends on, you know, the size of the film and and the the pressures of it and all the rest of it. But you know, on a daily basis, I guess you know, you you just sort of depending on the process you’re in post production or during production, it’s just it’s really about you know, like everybody would just you know come in, grab some breakfast or grab some coffee, and and you know start working, and then you you have a lunch break in the middle of the day, and sometimes your editors work through it, and sometimes you have to work through that lunch as well, and then sometimes you you you can take a break and you know sit with some colleagues and you know chill out for half an hour or an hour, and then you’re back into it again. One thing I will say that they do do, at least in my experience working on these films, is they look after you. You know they usually provide lunch for you. They provide dinner for you if you’re staying late. So they they they find all these incentives to keep you there, which is not you know it’s not big big brother intentional. It’s just sort of the nature of the the the work and and sort of that you have to. It’s just time consuming and you have to be there. So I don’t know if that’s even answering your question, Zack. No,

Zack Arnold: I think that that’s a really, really great place to start. It’s just for people to understand that it is extremely long days. You’re coming in at nine or 930 and on a good day, leaving around nine or 10. And then I’m sure there are plenty of bad days as well. Are you doing that for five days a week, six days a week, seven days a week.

Julian Smirke: Most of the time on these shows, it’s it’s yeah, it’s five days a week. You know, from one movie to the next movie, it can be a bit different. We did a lot of six day weeks on Star Wars, whereas on Star Trek Into Darkness, it was more five day weeks. And then you know, at crunch times, sometimes it is seven days a week. Some. Times at six day weeks, but we did a lot more of the six day week thing on Star Wars consistently, just because of just the amount of sheer amount of work we had to do. A lot of that was during production as well, when we were in London for a little bit, and you know some of that carried over into post production at the beginning of post production, and then of course you know hitting benchmarks for certain screenings, especially the the lead up till you know the movie was released in the last few months or so. Again, you’d end up doing six, seven day weeks pretty consistently, just because there’s so much work to get through. But yeah, it definitely depends on the project and the movie. It varies ever so slightly, and you know there are some, even some horrible shifts that you get to do where you don’t go home at all. And unfortunately, those I mean, fortunately, those don’t happen that often. But they seem to happen consistently for me at least once in the course of a show. At some point, there’s always some big screening at some point, and it’s usually either the first or the second one. Usually the first screening that we’ll do, which is either for the studio or presenting it to a very important person or something. And those screenings always you end up or I end up working, and so does the crew through the night into the next day screen and then go home, and you know there’s some stories that I could tell you that were sort of beyond just working overnight. I had one particular movie where I had to do two day, two two nights in a row, which was horrible, and you know nobody’s forcing us to do this. By the way, nobody’s saying you have to sit there and do this. It’s just you’re the thing is you’re in the trenches and you’re part of a team and and you just want to like at that point. I mean, regardless of you know how you really feel about it, which is all you want to do is crash and go home and go to sleep. You know, you’re sort of in this team effort, and everybody wants to sort of hit the screening and not let anybody down, which is a good thing, and and that happens. So yeah, the the one of the toughest things about working on these films is is definitely long hours, and you know, and in certain waves of leading up to screenings, there’ll be consistent nights instead of coming home at between nine and 10 o’clock at night. It might be somewhere between 11 and 12, or it might be between 12 and one, or it might be somewhere in the one to 2o’clock in the morning phase. In which case, then you come in at 10 o’clock the next day, have eight hours of turnaround, and then get back to it again. But luckily, what’s great about it, or looking at the positive side to this, is it doesn’t? It’s not like you’re on a movie and that happens every day, every week, the whole time. Like there’s definitely comes in waves of you know periods of where things are a little chiller and you’re you know you’re in the groove and you’re working and everything’s great, and then it’s usually in the ramp up to a screening or to a specific, you know, deadline of some kind, and that ramp up could be a week. It could be like three weeks leading up to that period. Sometimes more. It just depends on what’s happening.

Zack Arnold: So let’s walk through a little bit then of what your actual duties are day to day, because I know that your credit on the film is associate editor, but you kind of evolved a little bit over the course of the film, correct?

Julian Smirke: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I started the film as as I do, you know, all of these films, especially working on JJ’s movies and with Marianne and Mary Jo as a first assistant editor. You know, essentially that’s what I’m hired to do. I’m hired to be there and assist Marianne Brandon. We have another first assistant editor that assists Mary Jo Markey, and so there’s like two editors and two first assistants. So when we jump on board and we’re in production, it is the dailies grind, so to speak. It’s you know probably my least favorite part of the entire process because it’s a lot of technicalities where you’re getting in those dailies, and it’s great to see them, but you have to prep everything for your editor, make sure everything technically is going to go smooth, and it’s not about the moment of like making everything smooth for the moment. When you’re on these movies, you have to make sure everything is up and running and going to work well for you in like a year’s time, sometimes, like right at you know you have to think ahead and go when we go to finish this movie and go through the DI process and go for the final conform or the final color timing, are is any of these dailies coming in now? Are they missing information that is going to create problems for us in a year when we’re finishing. So, having gone through the process several times now, we sort of have it down, which is great. But it’s sort of the the the production side of things is sort of the the you know the dailies grind of syncing and making sure things are accurate. Done, and then you pass off the dailies to the editor, who’s then you know to Mary Ann or Mary Jo, and then they start cutting the scenes as they come in, and you know on top of that, on a you know in that phase of of the process during production, once you’ve done that, we’re also dealing with an editorial code book, which is like FileMaker Pro databases, which is essentially like a a database that lists every scene and take of of everything that was shot on the entire film. Like absolutely everything is accounted for, and it’s just like a it’s a whole bunch of technical numbers information. Really, is what it is, and it’s a good place to search and find for stuff later when you when you’re looking for something, plus it’s sort of studios. It’s really helpful for studios to have it, and marketing departments to have an editorial code book. And then, on top of that, it sort of branches out from that because then we have a VFX database that our VFX editor would use for turning over shots for the film and keeping track of, you know, scanning stuff because we most quite often shoot 30-five millimeter film when we work on JJ’s films. So those databases will sort of keep track of the technical side of everything. And so, so on the daily basis, you know what what our day looks like during production. It’s really you come in, sync dailies, check all the metadata, make sure everything’s working properly, make sure there’s no problems, prep your dailies bins for your editor, and then deal with the code book. And then you also sort of get an apprentice or another assistant editor up and running and going on scripting, doing scripta in in Avid because our editors it’s a extremely useful tool for them to have to have quick access to all the takes and line readings, and then just keep doing that grind and the repeating that process until you’re sort of finished and then ultimately as scenes get built even while they’re still shooting in production things start shifting, and what happens there is we start to get involved more, a little bit more on the creative side, which is we start, you know, cutting in temp sound design to the editor’s sequences, and because they’re still focused on cutting each scene as they roll in, we start doing temp sound, putting in temp music, and then the evolution of that is once you’re done in production, it’s more of my favorite time during the process, which is when you sort of get dailies off your plate and you’re not dealing with that stuff anymore.

Julian Smirke: And then basically, what happens is you shift into this more of a creative mode. And quite often, I’ll find myself in Marianne’s room because she’ll say, “Hey, Julian, come and have a look at this. And you know, is this scene working? Is JJ going to like it? And I’m like, I don’t know if he’s going to like it, but let’s see if I like it. And then, you know, we have a pretty good rapport because we worked for so long together that sort of she has really good instincts, and I feel like she trusts my instincts as well, and we’ll talk about scenes on the creative side of things, and see how you know she can make them better. And sometimes I’ll try something that might make it better or help something, or it might just spur an idea for something else that might come up. So that daily grind, you know, from dailies, which is a grind, shifts into sort of more of the pleasant, creative side of things in post production, and then that just sort of keeps evolving and gets stronger and stronger as we move on. The temp sound gets better and better because you have more time to work on it, and then we start sort of screening stuff internally, screening the movie so that we can you know have a look and see if things are working. You know, and JJ can start pulling things apart and seeing what things don’t work in the story and shifting structural things around sometimes, and quite often there’s rewrites and reshoots and all that sort of stuff. So, so the daily process does shift depending on where you’re at in the process, and

Zack Arnold: How long were you actually in the kind of the daily grind of dailies and production before you went into that creative phase of director’s cut?

Julian Smirke: Yeah, well, so we started, God, we started back in May of 2014 when we start right around the time or just before they start shooting production, start shooting. So that went through, and we shot until early to middle to the middle, early to mid November. So it was a big shoot, about six months or so of shooting, and then we shifted into post production in sort of you know a month or so, mid November up till mid December. You know, before the Christmas break, we had like a couple of weeks off over Christmas, and you know, we were just in the in the post production phase at that point. And then, you know, we had the luxury of having basically a year of post production on the show. And you know, I say it’s a. It’s on a big film like this. It’s quite common for that to be the case. Just, and I think a big part of that is visual effects take a long time, especially when you’ve got a movie that has a lot of shots and a lot of complicated stuff going on. So yeah, we basically shot for about six months. I think there was like 103 days worth of principal photography on the on the film, and then we shifted into post production and had basically just a little bit over a year of post production on it. So the the entire time period for me on this job was probably between 19 and 20 months of work, which you know working on Star Wars, it’s awesome, you know. But it’s funny because it’s not that unlike the system and the process we do on every film. So it just happened to be Star Wars this time around, which was kind of exciting.

Zack Arnold: So then, if you started as a first assistant primarily, for those that are listening, saying, “Well, I’m a first assistant as well, and I’m really trying to start making that transition and trying to get credit so I can become an editor. You walked away from the film being considered an associate editor. So, what are some of the processes and things that you did that you took you from starting first assistant to now having an associate editor credit on a huge film?

Julian Smirke: That’s that’s an interesting one because I feel like that is there’s no sort of hard, fast set path in terms of all of that. I think that a big part of the advantage that I had is working with these editors for a really long period of time on several movies, and I think a big part of it was their willingness and generosity to include me in the creative process. And that’s not to say that I’m editing the movie because they certainly did all of that, and it wasn’t me doing that. It was just sort of that. It’s kind of that gray area that’s in between. It’s almost like a transitional credit in some way. That it’s to say that yeah, I was a first assistant editor doing my regular first assistant editor duties and job on the movie, but then it sort of took it to another level in the sense of like another step in towards the creative side, and that really wasn’t my doing. Part of it was, but a big part of it also is the willingness of Marianne and Mary Jo to include me in that and include Matt Evans, the other first assistant editor, who became also became an associate editor on the on the movie. So Matt and I were lucky enough to be included in in those creative discussions and input into the film as it goes along, which is not unlike what we’ve done in the past on previous movies. By the way, on this one, it was just there was more of it than on previous films. It’s a tough one to answer because it really depends who you’re working for, and it really depends on your on the editors that you’re working very closely with, and obviously, you know, working with them over a long period of time. There’s a trust that’s built up over time as well, that you know is sort of a trust that you know. There’s certain things that happen in editing rooms and certain discussions that are happen along the way where you wouldn’t want sort of the outside world to know about certain things. And I feel like this goes with every job. You know that that you there’s somewhat you trust when you have conversations, confidential conversations with people. You know, behind closed doors about certain things, and I’m talking about creative things on the movie, where you know it might have started in a place that was horrible, and we all agree that oh my god, that was a terrible idea, and then it ends up evolving into something where you get there in the end, and it’s so much better than when you when you started out. So just being included in that, I think, helped you know get the associate editor credit, and it’s also it’s a tricky one also because it’s not really a union recognized credit because it’s not really a union position I should say I guess it’s it’s one of those things that basically I mean in my mind the way I look at it is that it’s really being a first assistant and then taking a step up in terms of your input and and the time you spend and the and the attention that you spend on it creatively with your editor and and first and foremost what has to happen is that editor and for me that was Marianne Brandon and also Mary Jo Markey, but mainly Marianne because I assist her. Is her willingness and generosity to include me in that process? So, like I said, you know, somebody could take that information that I’m saying and apply it to their movie that they’re on, but it might not work out because their editor might be in a different situation and not able to do something like that for their first. Sometimes they would love to and they can’t. Sometimes they just don’t because they don’t want to. So it really depends on who you work for. And I’m fortunate that I work for very supportive editors.

Zack Arnold: Well, and you’re also fortunate that you’re providing a service that they really want. Doing a great job at it too, so I think that that that certainly factors into it. Yeah, and I think that the other thing I won’t go down this rabbit hole at all because I actually again did an entire hour long show that’s all about making the jump from assistant editor to editor. I’ll just put a link to that episode in the show notes. That was 59 but I’m sure that there’s a lot of it being that because it’s not like you’re just doing dailies, you’re not just tracking metadata. You are an integral part in building the temp sound, building the world, doing the temp score. Like even if they’re not saying, “Here’s a 10 minute chunk, Julian, you get to cut all of this from this point in the story to this point in the story. You have such a creative hand in so many parts of the process that you are in essence an associate editor or an additional editor, which is another very common credit, and I think that those are things that people need to realize that it’s not just busy work. You are contributing yourself creatively, and if you are in a position where you can have an editor that understands that, sit down with them and say, “Hey, we’ve been working together for a long time. What kind of opportunity is there for some type of different credit or an opportunity to do more? And yes, there are politics involved, and studios involved, and money involved. But it all has to start with a single conversation. Otherwise, it’s never going to happen, and you’re going to say, “Why isn’t this happening to me? You have to start that conversation.

Julian Smirke: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And and the other thing I’ll say that I didn’t really get to in what I was talking about there is also Marianne will throw me scenes. Like she will say, “Hey, Jules, try to cut this scene. You know, I’m having a go at it. JJ’s been working with me on this particular scene. It’s kind of tough. It’s not working. It’s not doing what he wants us to do, what he’s hoping that it would do. And they’d been working on this one particular scene for a couple of weeks, and then she’d throw it to me and go, “See if there’s anything you can try with it, because we’re just not having any luck. And then I’ll try to have a go at it. And of course, when you’re at that point where they’ve already worked on it, you know those amazing creative minds and that creative team going at it for a couple of weeks. There’s no chance in hell that I’m going to be able to make it better than they can, but what Marianne is looking for from me giving it a shot is really, you know, maybe he’ll just find something in the material that I didn’t. Maybe he’ll find a shot or a reaction of Hans or you know Han Solo doing something that I didn’t see or did or missed or interpreted in a different way. So she would throw me scenes to cut, which is really awesome. And then there were other times where she was just insanely busy in certain periods, where she would say, “Can you assemble this kind of bigger sequence for me? Because she just didn’t have the time, and there was sort of deadlines coming up, and she just had to get through other stuff. So there was times where, like you know, I was I think I did an assemble of assembly, which you know was like the castle battle sequence in the in the film, and that was fun and great to go through it. And certainly, what I put together was nowhere near what it ended up being, but it was at least for her, it was helpful to have some kind of an assembly together, so she could work from something that wasn’t starting from scratch with nothing, and and those time factors, and and of course she’ll take that, it’ll evolve into something that’s totally her own, and and then JJ will work with her on it, and it’ll become something else again. Those opportunities too is is very valuable to to get the experience of actually having your editor throw stuff to you and say here try this you know try and be creative try and go and cut those scenes so those are sort of you know you really have to be doing the editing work as well it it can’t just be just sitting in a room and giving your opinion and going you know this is not working and maybe you can try this so it’s kind of a culmination of all of that sort of stuff.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I know assistants as well that’ll that’ll see it almost as like, oh, they’re just they’re passing my work their work onto me. Like they they just want me to do their busy work for them and assemble something. And it’s just the absolute worst way to look at it because if you take that scene that Marianne and JJ worked on for two weeks and they they’re banging their heads against the wall, and they say, “Julian, take a shot at this. And a lot of people think, “Well, come on, like, come on, he’s J. J. Abrams, like he’s going to look at anything that I did and care. So why would I give this any effort? But the important thing to realize is, when you’re working with the right types of creative professionals, you might do a new version of the scene, and inevitably, the editor and the director are going to say, you know what? It’s not everything that we want, and it’s not perfect. But there’s this one cut that you did that I never in a million years would have thought to do. That was brilliant. I didn’t see that one little look and that one shot for two seconds. That then sparks an entirely new direction, and a scene is built around that one little inspiration, and to have the power as an assistant to be able to spark that inspiration-that’s the kind of thing that people remember, and they start to rely on you more, and they start to throw more in your direction.

Julian Smirke: Yeah, that’s that’s so true. And a part of this process too is that JJ himself is very, very open and really, really. Genuinely wants to hear people’s opinions on stuff. Like he’ll be like, you know, come and have a look at this while he’s in the room with Marianne, and we’ll sit there and we’ll watch it. And he’ll be like, what do you think of this? And we’ll talk about it as well with him. And there’ll be you know times throughout. Not every day. It’s not every day like that, obviously. But there are sort of times throughout the process when you know we might have had a screening or something, and he’ll just sort of walk past me at some point, and he’ll be like, “You saw the screening, right? And I’ll be like, “Yeah, and he’s he’ll be like, “You know, if you can think of anything, if you if you have any ideas, you know, just email me, let me know. And he’s always been like that. What’s great about working for him is he’s not precious about what he’s shot. He’s not precious about the material in a way that sort of locks him into, oh my God, this has to be in the movie because of this reason. He’s very open to changing things and losing things that don’t work, and and he’s also very open to and receptive to the input that he gets from not just me, but like a lot of people that work around him. That’s a very fortunate position to be in, where where we’re all working for a guy who is extremely smart about it and very film savvy, and really knows that he can’t hold on to things that might not work. You know, for for various reasons, like sometimes they do a huge setup on during production, and it might take them two days to set up this one amazingly massive, huge shot. And it looks beautiful in the dailies and on in the moment when they shoot it. It’s amazing, and everybody’s like, “Woo! Look, we just got that shot! And then you know, in post production, six months later, he’ll look at that shot and be like, “You know, if it’s not working, let’s lose it. You know, I don’t think every director can do that, but he’s really good at doing that.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I’m sure that there are people that are writing the checks for it that are like, really, oh my god, all the money we spent. But some and some directors are precious about that, but it’s great to see that he isn’t, which I think is a huge testament to the success that he’s had. Because if he can say to an assistant or an associate or anybody, and be like, “Hey, send me an email and let me know it doesn’t work. That’s why things become great because it’s not my ideas, and this is how I want to do it. It becomes a collaborative and a collective process, and everybody gets a say in making the film, and that’s why I think he’s had the success that he has.

Julian Smirke: Yeah, that’s true, and he’s also then looking at. I mean, you know, no stone is unturned for him. Then, like I think, the part of his process which is very important for him is that he’s thought about every possible which way to to go and what things to lose and what things work and don’t work. And by the end of the process, he can feel you know he can sleep well at night knowing that he tried and at least thought about everything that could be thought about to make the best of the material that we have, and in some cases, they there are certain situations where we go, you know, we don’t have this, we need to shoot that, and so they’ll go and reshoot, or additionally shoot another scene, or a dialog line, or a shot that would help to connect something in a scene, you know. So we quite often do that as well.

Zack Arnold: Well, I want to be very, very protective of your time because I know that you have a brand new three-month-old daughter that’s waiting for you, and I certainly don’t want to keep you away from that. But before we go, I just want to let people know what are you onto next, whatever, at whatever level you can talk about

Julian Smirke: It. So the next project-it’s an exciting film. I just started about a week ago, actually, but it’s a movie for Sony Pictures. It’s a movie called Passengers, and it’s directed by Morton Tillam, who did The Imitation Game, and it stars Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. It’s a space movie, so it’s a sci-fi thing. So it’s right up my alley and right up Marianne’s alley too. You know, her and I love science fiction stuff, and it’s it’s really cool. You can probably read stuff about it online without me telling you too much, anyway. But but it’s an exciting film. It’s a really big film. It’s big undertaking. They’ve been shooting it for a while, so we’re coming on a little bit into the process, and we are supposed to be. I think the film is released at the end of the year in December, unless something changes, which you know you never know. But yeah, it’s exciting, and I’m going to be an additional editor on this, and and it’s a bit different to last time or on the previous movies because, like I said before in this discussion, you know usually I’m getting hired as a first assistant editor and then see how you go through the process and you’d hope that Marianne or whoever your editor is throws you some scenes to cut and see how it goes. Whereas this one’s a little different. I’m actually hired from the beginning, as an additional editor, so I get to skip all of the assistant technical stuff and just edit every single day, which is a dream come true.

Zack Arnold: Well, I’m I’m fan. It’s just fantastic to be able to hear that. That’s where your trajectory has led you, and you now from day one get to actually do cutting because that’s really what it’s all about. So, is there anywhere that you want to send anybody in the audience to, like, a website, or if they want to learn more about you or your story, you have any any links you want to include? Oh my

Julian Smirke: God, I’m not that technically geeky savvy in terms of the world of having my own website, so I apologize if people are looking for stuff. I mean, I have an IMDb page that just shows you all the work that I’ve, you know, all the films that I’ve worked on over the years, you can always look that up, you know. And of course, I’m on Twitter if people want to have, you know, very minimal chats, right?

Zack Arnold: And what is your Twitter handle?

Julian Smirke: It’s it’s just my full name. It’s Julian Smirke, J U L I A N S M I R K E.

Zack Arnold: Awesome. Well, I’ll make sure that that’s included in the show notes if people want to reach out and just just start, like you said, 140 character conversation. So it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the shows. I learned so much just myself, and I hope that everybody else did too. So at this point, I will relieve you and let you go back to your family and your brand new daughter. Thanks very much for having me, Zack.

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Making the Jump From Assistant Editor to Editor

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Minority Report editor Tyler Cook and Empire editor Zack Arnold discuss what it takes to make the jump from assistant to sitting in the editor's chair.

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Making the Jump From Assistant Editor to Editor