TS

Based upon the three-hour play by Tracy Letts, August: Osage County brings together an ensemble of top actors to tell the story of strong-willed women brought by tragedy back to their Oklahoma home and the world of their drug-addicted, dysfunctional mother played by Meryl Streep. Editor Steve Mirrione admitted he is drawn to dialog-driven material. One of the challenges in converting the play into a film was retaining all the subtleties and great language, while paring down the story to a condensed movie length. The tightening process began in the screenwriting by re-writing scene-by-scene – then reading through and determining whether it felt like anything was missing ­– and continued in the editing, after the film was shot. […]

When editor Joe Walker worked with director Steve McQueen on the film, Hunger, about Irish republican Bobby Sands leading prison inmates in a hunger strike, the company took a break from shooting for actor Michael Fassbender to lose weight. During that time they fine cut footage that had already been shot. When they resumed production, McQueen went into the final week of shooting with a clearer notion of what he needed to capture. This included not only pick-ups that would augment the story, but also eliminating scenes from the script that were now unnecessary to shoot. […]