

Sher operated B-camera, along with camera operator Geoff Haley, he often explored alternate ways to visualize a scene, sometimes taking the camera across the 180-degree-line. They each had a purpose, so Groth was able to lean more heavily on the creative energy captured on-set. But, he also knew Sher shoots with intentionality, so it was important to leave certain angles and frames. Having worked with DP Lawrence Sher before, Groth knew he could rely on plenty of coverage from shooting. This process required removing some extraordinary work from the first cut. I’d rather try to cut it down than to fill it up, and I’m taking a little extra time during that first assembly to make sure all these aspects are represented.” “My first cut always runs long anyway, or at least I hope it does. ”When you get done putting a scene together, it’s very clear nearly all of those bits of purpose have their place,” he explained. Sometimes we wound up letting shots play a bit longer, which let the whole thing breathe.” Once we had a significant amount of the film cut together, we would go back through scenes periodically to see where we could remove edits. It wasn’t about building something that wasn’t there in the material, because he always delivered the goods-he was phenomenal in his explorations. “We didn’t want to distract from the performance Joaquin was delivering. “The first goal of the editing was to stay out of the way,” Groth says. So, the earliest material usually winds up changing the most by the time you reach the end of the process, when you can make more informed judgments to evaluate what you’ve already done.”īut, one aspect was clear from the very start of the editing process: Joaquin’s performance. “But no matter what project you’re doing, the first week or two is always difficult, because a context hasn’t emerged.

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“Understanding the material is an ongoing process and with a movie called Joker, you know how the story is going to end, so it’s all about how you get there,” Groth says. Anytime somebody wanted to see what we had, they were seeing a more refined progression of the edit versus how I would typically cut a film in a more non-linear fashion.” I was always trying to fill in the early portions to get the movie built. So I would cut scenes 1 and 2, then leave the rest for later. For example, on day one, they might shoot scenes 1 and 30 and then shoot scenes 2 and 35 on day two. “But since this is such a character study, we wanted to be able to watch his progression from where he starts the film to where he ends up character-wise. “Previously, I cut scenes as they came in,” Groth says. Groth’s approach to this edit was handled with extreme care to truly reflect the vision of Arthur Fleck’s transformation. Joker is a film that is subtle, nuanced, and evocative meaning the edit needed to reflect these qualities to allow Joaquin Phoenix’s performance to progress over time. The workflow Groth established on these earlier projects required modification to develop the backstory for the DC villain.

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On this project, Director Todd Phillips employed many of his past collaborators, including film editor Jeff Groth, who worked on series such as Community and Entourage and later joined Phillips as the editor for The Hangover Part III and War Dogs.
