Filmcraft: Julia Bloch
Filmcraft: Julia Bloch
Filmcraft is a Metrograph column that gets up close and personal with some of today’s most sought after film craftspeople—cinematographers, production designers, make-up and costume departments, and special effects technicians—as they open up about their process and inspirations.
The series profiles both rising stars and legends in their field. Our latest subject: editor Julia Bloch, acclaimed for her contribution to the visceral impact of Jeremy Saulnier’s indie thrillers Blue Ruin (2013) and Green Room (2015), and for her work, alongside Taylor Levy, on Halina Reijn’s slasher hit Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022).
Filmcraft: ACE plays at 7 Ludlow from Friday, September 15.
Why do you love being an editor?
Green Room (2015)
One of the things I love about editing is that there are many different stages to the process, and along the way you get to touch on almost every aspect of filmmaking. You have to find the best parts of everyone else’s work—the acting, the cinematography, the music, the visual effects—and then put it all together in a way that makes the story work, along with elevating ideas that are less explicitly stated in the script. It really makes you use both sides of your brain—there’s a technical aspect to it, and there’s a more abstract, creative side, and they go hand in hand. You also need to be able to focus on the micro and the macro at the same time—to get extremely detailed about each beat in every scene at the same time as you’re holding the entire film in your head, staying aware of character arcs, pacing, and overarching themes.
Watching the dailies as they come in during production is fun because you’re seeing it all for the first time; paying attention to how a scene evolves (or doesn’t) over successive takes can give you a lot of insight into the director’s thought process. But I prefer working together with the director once the shoot is wrapped. If you can get into their head while also holding onto your slightly more objective perspective, the exchange of ideas can be really inspiring. Once you recognize the inherent logic and language in what they made, you can start to build and expand upon their original ideas.
What’s a day like for you in the cutting room?
Blue Ruin (2013)
Your days can vary quite a bit depending on which part of the process you’re in; you’re often working from the beginning of production all the way through to the final sound mix. Sometimes I will even give a director script notes before they go into production. During the shoot, I watch all the dailies and put together the first assembly cut. Once you’re in the edit proper, it depends on how you and the director like to work. Some days you’re alone, working and reworking a scene that needs to have more impact. Sometimes the director is in there with you all day, and by the end of the week you’ve completely rewritten the ending together.
A big part of the job is how you work with the director, especially since you’re often alone together for months on end in a small, windowless room. You have to be able to work collaboratively, which requires patience and strong communication skills. You have to learn how to give and receive notes, and you have to be open to trying everything—that’s just as important as being able to get the action stunt to work exactly right, or convincingly hide a line of dialogue that came from another scene.
What part of the process is hardest for you? The most gratifying?
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
Post production is definitely one of the least glamorous parts of filmmaking—no one knows who you are, there’s the aforementioned daily grind in a dark room—but I’ve had truly transcendent moments while editing, where everything just makes sense and I’m in flow with some deep well of creativity. There’s an almost mystical quality to it, I think—the endless ways in which you can shape and reshape a finite amount of footage, and the way that putting two shots together can create a third idea.
I love finding really subtle moments in a performance, when a thought or a feeling flits across an actor’s face, and using it to land a specific emotional beat that might not be what the actor was actually responding to on camera. I love showing the director a surprising way to get out of a scene, or a different way to start the film than what was scripted. Of course, those moments are interspersed with long stretches of tedium and frustration. But when it sings, it sings.
Watching the first assembly with the director is always tough, though: it’s usually really long, because you’ve kept every emotional beat and every line of dialogue from the script, and it doesn’t have any rhythm or style to it yet. I have to be careful how to present it, especially if I’m working with a less experienced filmmaker who’s expecting the cut to already look exactly like what they had in their head. I have to remind them that an assembly is just what it sounds like—it’s a gathering of pieces, a useful tool to get a sense of the whole. Sometimes they still freak out, though.
What are some of the first films you remember watching that spoke to you through the editing, not just the story or direction?
Green Room (2015)
I never really thought about editing specifically until I went to film school. I just watched movies without breaking them down into separate parts. I always thought of myself as more of a book person—I studied literature and I was obsessed with text and language—and movies felt like a break for my brain, a way to get lost in a visceral, emotional experience. In retrospect, I think a lot of what I was responding to was the editing, I just didn’t know what to call it. There are so many films I could talk about, but here’s two:
A guy I had a crush on in college told me to see The Dreamlife of Angels by Erick Zonca (1998)—and maybe I was paying more attention because of that—but that’s one of the first films I remember really being curious about in a different way; I wanted to understand why it had the effect it had on me. It’s a realistic film about the daily life of two young women who meet working at a sweatshop in Lille, but it feels like there’s an undercurrent guiding the story on another level, asking you to look beyond the surface—and that’s the editing. The cutting is subtly aggressive, a lot of hard cuts and no score to smooth things over, which reflects the hand-to-mouth existence of the two women. The film spends a lot of time with them in their quotidian rhythms, but it never gets repetitive; the tension is such a slow burn you almost don’t know that’s what you’re feeling until all of a sudden you realize you’re holding your breath.
Shortly after that, I saw Majid Majidi’s exquisite, heartbreaking Children of Heaven (1997) at an Iranian film retrospective. As the title implies, the two main characters are children, a brother and a sister, and the story on the surface is, again, very simple: he takes her shoes to the cobbler to get repaired, the shoes get lost, and he tries to keep their parents from finding out, because they won’t be able to afford new shoes until the end of the month. Within that framework, an entire world unfolds—with most of the subtext of class, shame, and familial bond told through silent looks between the children. The small gestures and familiar rhythms of daily life become a stage for a much bigger story; even though for much of the film you’re watching kids take turns running back and forth from school, sharing a single pair of dirty sneakers, the editing is so precise and perceptive that the stakes feel as high as a political thriller.
