Sirens

Today on Art of the Cut, we’re speaking with the editorial team of Sirens. With us are Editors Catherine Haight, ACE, Laura Zempel, ACE, and Isaac Hagy, ACE. Jen Bryson is also credited as an editor on the show, but wasn’t with us for the interview.

Cate has been nominated for an Emmy and an ACE Eddie for her editing of the pilot of the TV series Transparent. She also was nominated for an ACE Eddie for the pilot of Girls. She also edited the TV series High Fidelity and feature films like The Good House and Puzzle.

Laura has been on Art of the Cut several times for the TV series Beef for which she won an Emmy and an ACE Eddie, Euphoria, for which she was nominated for an ACE Eddie. She also edited Lessons in Chemistry.

Isaac has been nominated for an Emmy and an ACE Eddie for the TV series Mr. And Mrs. Smith, won a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy and an ACE Eddie for the TV series Atlanta.

Can you tell me about the post schedule for the show?

HAIGHT: I think we started shooting in early July 2024.

HAGY: Yeah, I think it was up until almost Thanksgiving. A little bit before that. Maybe beginning of November.

ZEMPEL: Molly was with us for Halloween, so they were probably shooting until September or October.

HAIGHT: That sounds about right. Our schedule was actually pretty down-to-the-wire in terms of mix dates. I think we mixed the last episode about five weeks before the show launched.

It was a tight turnaround, especially for Netflix because they have to do their sub-and-dub for all the episodes, which takes some time for a streaming show. It actually was pretty quick in terms of when we finished and then it released.

How did you collaborate on the episodes? Did you each take a couple of episodes and then share, or how did that work?

ZEMPEL: It’s a five episode series, so it’s short for a TV show. Cate did episodes one and four. I did two and five, and Isaac did episode three, but they block shot, so they shot one and two at the same time.

They shot three and four at the same time, and then five was a standalone. Cate and I cut one and two alongside each other, so we were both figuring out the tone of the show at once.

Cate had this great idea that we should do weekly screenings with her, myself, and our two assistants - Jen Bryson and Lilly Wild.

So I think every Thursday morning we sat together and screened everything we had cut that week, then we had the rest of the day to make any changes before we sent those scenes to our director, Nicole Kassell.

So that was our way of figuring out the tone together early on, and it was so helpful because - for episode two - I got the scenes in the jail with Lilly Rose first. That was my first day of dailies, and that’s the most heightened comedy I think, of either of those episodes.

And Cate was getting Simone with the staff, and we were a little confused at what show we were making. So those early days of watching scenes together really helped hone in on the tone.

HAIGHT: Our director had asked to see scenes. We were figuring it out as we went, and she just wanted to make sure that it was all working.

Normally she said she doesn’t ask an editor to send scenes during production, but for this, she thought it might be a good idea just so we made sure we were all on the same page.

It was so much fun to sit and watch this stuff together and really hash it out. It was another example of why working in person is such a dream in terms of the collaboration and our assistants, Lilly and Jen were as involved in the process as Laura and I were. It was a really fun, collaborative thing to have those screenings every week.

Isaac, I want to make sure that we get a shout out to your assistant as well.

HAGY: Yeah, totally. My assistant is Cameron Ross, who’s amazing. He’s been my long-term assistant on many projects. I came on with block three.

They made it pretty damn easy for me in that they had already done a lot of the hard work in establishing tone in terms of performances and temp music, so I had a little bit of a cheat sheet coming in, which was really nice.

Of course as the show evolved as we started working with Molly and the directors. Everything changed with that, but I really feel like I came into a relay on the second lap on this one, so I was really grateful for that.

Cate Haight, ACE

Talk about the value of being in the same location with your assistants and with each other.

HAIGHT: I find it priceless. Honestly, I’m not wired for remote work. While I’m very grateful that we were able to do it during the pandemic and that we didn’t have to stop work altogether, I am a big believer in working in person.

Collaborating in person is just a whole different thing. You actually really get to know somebody, whether it’s your director and showrunner or your assistant editor.

For assistants especially, I think the remote world is tough in that showrunners and directors don’t get to know them in the same way, so I think moving up is harder for assistants in a remote world, just in terms of building those relationships.

But in terms of the work itself, I just find that so much comes from lunches… from just hanging out. Suddenly saying, “You know what? I was thinking about that thing that we were talking about yesterday and it occurs to me…”

When you’re at home, even if that pops into your head, you’re not gonna say, “Will you get on Zoom so we can talk about this thought I just had?” Whereas if you’re in person, you just blurt it out. A lot of creativity comes from that.

HAGY: It’s particularly true on a TV show where we’re all collaborating on a large form project. If you’re an editor on a feature, maybe it’s OK to be a little more isolated, but we’re trying to make a full season of television that is cohesive and you don’t feel the differences between editors from episode to episode, so I think that hive mind mentality is invaluable and definitely cemented by working in person.

ZEMPEL: It was really valuable, especially for episode five because I had to leave early to go onto my next show, so my assistant, Jen, finished the episode. Credit to Molly, our showrunner. She had the assistants in the room with us every day when we were working with her.

She was giving us notes. The assistants were involved, so by the time Jen took over, she knew the episode as well as I did. She had heard everything Molly had said about the episode, so it just made that transition so much smoother.

If we had been working remotely, it would’ve been tough. I don’t know if Molly would’ve been as open to Jen taking over the episode, but because she knew her so well and I was able to tell her which scenes Jen had already cut and build that trust, it was amazing.

Laura Zempel, ACE

HAIGHT: It was totally seamless because all of our assistants were really part of the process every step of the way.

What percentage do you think of your work is in the timeline and how much of it is “in the room?” The difference between actively editing and discussing the edit?

HAIGHT: A lot. You spend a lot of time talking and we really spent a lot of time talking on this show, especially because it’s such a balancing act. We’re very intentionally misleading you in the first couple episodes as to who the “villain” might be.

That changes over the course of the show, sso we were constantly talking about where each character was for each moment of the series. Just in terms of the show itself, you do a lot of talking. Then the politics involved too.

Obviously the negotiating:  which notes we’re gonna do, or pushing back with the studio on some things. That constant push and pull means you do a lot of talking.

ZEMPEL: Especially early on it was so much talking. Those early screenings that Cate and I did. We were really trying to figure out the music of the show  - whether we were going to do needle drops or lean into score and what the score would sound like.

I think all of us had early versions with needle drops in our episodes. As those started to fade away, we would discuss, “They took the needle drop out of 101, so maybe that music in 102 might end up being score and that might affect 103.

So there were a lot of those conversations of making sure the episodes felt cohesive for  the world of the show, the rules of the show, how we’re using music, that type of thing.

We were all really involved in those conversations, which honestly makes the cutting a lot easier rather than being in your own pod and recutting a needle drop only to find out they don’t like it.

Isaac Hagy, ACE

HAGY: Part of the joy for me of working in person is not only talking about the episode, but just talking about film and television and art and books and like really getting each other jazzed up creatively and fostering a creative environment where we’re all doing our best work because we’re excited to be working as a team and creatively motivated.

Like you said, those lunches, even though we’re maybe not talking about the episodes, they’re a big part of what we’re doing creatively.

HAIGHT: Absolutely.

Tone is an interesting thing to talk about with this series because at times it’s broadly comedic and then it’s also a whodunit and other times where it’s very dramatic. Let’s talk about trying to balance that and what you do to transition between those tones.

HAIGHT: It was tricky and we were constantly adjusting and keeping it in mind. We were also fully aware that we were switching between tones that there was really funny stuff, sometimes even broad comedy, then very dramatic, dark stuff as well.

But I think we all embraced those swings and our directors were really thoughtful and intentional about it. I don’t know if there was one specific thing we did in terms of thinking about transitioning between them, but it just came together pretty organically and I really love the tone and I love that it’s taking big swings. It’s been a little controversial on the internet. TV can get away with tonal swings a little bit more than featurers can.

A movie has to find its lane and people expect it to. Whereas there’s stuff that’s really funny on Breaking Bad, for example, but it’s definitely a drama. You’re just allowed to take bigger swings and we really went for it.

Avid timeline screenshot for the pilot episode

Did that tone evolve? Did you find that you went one way and had to go back another way?

HAIGHT: There were things that had come out of 101 and 102 that went back and vice versa. Things that we thought were going to be in there for the long run that came out.

Especially in the pilot, we did a whole pass with just the intention of focusing on the sister relationship and adding every detail we could.

There’s a dissolve towards the end - right after Simone and Michaela are on the cliff with Devon and they give her the check and throw her out basically. Then we dissolved from this closeup of Simone to a closeup of Devon in the car with Jose.

That dissolve had been in at some point, then came out. We decided to really try and link the sisters.

It went back in and I think it has a huge impact on really focusing us in on the two of them specifically, then of course how Michaela is circling them both and how she’s impacting that relationship.

Can you talk about anything else that came out then went back in and what the creative decision was to do that?

HAIGHT: I don’t know that there was one huge thing that came out and that went back, but little things like that dissolve and there’s a closeup when Devon is still in Buffalo and she goes home and finds the edible arrangement on the stoop.

There’s a shot when she opens the door of a photograph of Simone and Devon when they were young with their mom, and that was out for a while. Little things like that, but a lot of them peppered throughout, so that it added up to a lot.

Were you under any time constraints on the episodes?

HAIGHT: Within reason. They didn’t want episodes that were well over an hour, but that wasn’t really a problem for us. My first cut of the pilot was maybe 10, 12 minutes longer than the final cut.

Mostly it was just tightening and trims, line lifts and things as opposed to giant pieces that came out of the pilot at least. There was a dream sequence that came out, but otherwise I think all the scenes are there.

HAGY: The dream sequence was originally in my episode. Did that end up in the final?

HAIGHT: It starts the episode.

HAGY: I feel like I should have known that.

HAIGHT: This is one of the fun things about a “binge release” is that you can move things from different episodes around, which when you’re on a weekly release schedule doesn’t ever really happen. It’s a different way of doing it, which is fun when you can look at the big picture.

People I’ve talked to that have done these binge releases always talk about the value of saying, “You know what? There’s something in episode five that we should really go back and seed in with a reaction shot in episode one or two on this line because it’ll help pay it off later.” Tell me about the difference between cutting TV that has commercial breaks and TV that does not have commercial breaks.

HAIGHT: I’ve definitely done more of the no-ad break TV. It’s a little different in that an episode feels much more like cutting a movie. I feel like the job is the same.

If it’s a comedy, you have to have your “blow” at the end of each act or a sting if it’s a drama, but I don’t necessarily approach it all that differently.

Zempel’s cutting room for Sirens

HAGY: I don’t really approach it differently either. On Atlanta we had commercial breaks. I think we might’ve gotten rid of them by the fourth season ‘cause it became more of a Hulu show. I like commercial breaks because sometimes they really bail you out.

Sometimes you need to make a jump in temporal time or sometimes you need to make an emotional jump, and there are times when I’ve cut a movie where I think, “We should just cut the black here, fade to black, fade back up, then the audience will know that something happened in the absence.

There’s so many times that act breaks and commercial breaks have bailed me out in television. Then there’s other times where we’re right in the meat of a run of scenes and the network is telling us that we have to put a commercial break because it’s over 15 minutes, or it’s over seven or eight minutes. It’s definitely a double edged sword.

HAIGHT: I would rather build them in personally and have control over it than have them randomly thrown in at a later point. I’ve definitely watched shows that didn’t have them on streaming and then I’ve wanted to turn over the coffee table because they put an act break in the middle of an emotional scene.

Screening an episode, Cate Haight “in the chair”

Let’s discuss scenes that you had creative challenges with or that you’re very proud of.

HAGY: I think the biggest challenge in the show was moderating the large swings in tone that the show had.

I’m thinking in 103 there is a scene about halfway through - it’s a very surreal scene, takes place in a bathroom – and you don’t really know if it’s a dream sequence or some mystical, supernatural element where Kiki (played by Julianne Moore) more or less “sirens” Devon, bringing her into this bathroom and is rehashing her childhood trauma with her in a way that is manipulating her to Kiki’s end.

The scene is surreal and emotional and I actually think it was a really lovely scene. I was very proud of it. Then the very next scene hard cuts out into a steeply comedic scene in a car where these three women - The Fates - who were very broadly comedic, sing along to WAP by Cardi B.

It’s just the biggest left turn! That kind of brash juxtaposition of the two tones was something we were always both fighting with in a way where we were trying to make it all feel organic, but also embracing the two different sides of it, because that conflict between the tones is what I think makes the show interesting and stand out.

Those two scenes went really smoothly through assembly, really smoothly through directors cut, through our showrunners cut with Molly, then once we got to Netflix there was definitely a little bit of back and forth where they were asking, “What show are we making here?”

These characters - The Fates - are just too broad.” So it became a real discussion where we had to say, “These tonal shifts are what we have in mind.

These disparate elements are both important aspect of the show.” So we were fighting for the original vision of the show as we got in the later stages.

Is it too “on the nose” to say that editors love puzzles? Or that editing is like solving a puzzle?

Did you have to make a creative decision about whether to soften that transition with a prelap or something or enhance it so that the cut was as hard as it could be?

HAGY: For those scenes it was very clear it needed to be a hard cut. But a hard cut wasn’t enough. It was very sonically driven.

We designed it in a way with our brilliant composer, Michael Abels - who’s just an infinite talent - where this beautiful, lush song slowly dies out at the end of the first scene, then there’s a bit of a vacuum there, then sound effects come in with a kind of whoosh and just drops us right into the next scene with a hard hit on a downbeat on the song.

So it’s all the sound design, the score, the needle drop working in tandem to create that handoff in a way that feels intentional. I think you can get away with those tonal shifts if they feel intentional, and if there is meaning behind them.

HAIGHT: And those scenes have a very visually directed transition with the nose touch. Kiki reaches out and touches Devon’s nose, and then on the B side in the car, someone’s hand pulls back from her nose.

ZEMPEL: Right, exactly.

HAIGHT: It’s very visually directed and designed as a transition, so it was a hundred percent intentional to have it be that broad and crazy and weird.

Cate and Laura, what about you? A specific scene that was creatively challenging or rewarding?

HAIGHT: There are a couple giant group scenes in 104 at the beginning: there’s the proposal sequence that goes sideways where there are many characters and many moving parts in one room, which was really fun to cut and took me a long time, a couple days.

It’s a meaty scene. It’s probably seven minutes or something. It’s a really long sequence that had a ton of coverage, so that took a long time and I’m really proud of how it turned out.

The cut that’s in the episode is pretty much identical to my editors cut - tightened up with a few line-lifts and things - but in terms of the cutting pattern, it’s pretty much what I did.

It was really fun with these incredible actors to figure out the right comedic timing for delivery and all those different things that go into a scene that size. So that was really fun and meaty.

Then the dinner table scene in the same episode there are 10 people sitting at that table. Every editor knows that when you’re cutting a giant dinner sequence, it can be a lot to keep all your characters alive and to keep everything moving and to keep it dynamic visually with everybody just sitting there, so that was really fun, too.

That scene ended up getting quite a bit shorter. There was a big chunk of maybe 30 or 45 seconds of the beginning of the scene just got lifted out.

As it stands now, it’s also pretty meaty, and it was really fun to just have a lot of coverage, a lot of choices from great actors, which is always really fun.

That was the case across the board on this show where we were not fighting with performance very often. Nine times out of 10 it was like, “All of these takes are great, so which one do I like the best?”

When you’ve got actors like Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon, you don’t have to worry about making a performance work, so it can be a luxury and really fun for an editor. Like any pilot, we kept going back to act one and reshaping it.

ZEMPEL: Cate, I thought you were gonna talk about the crosscut of the sisters in the pilot, which is my favorite thing that you did in the pilot.

When Devon’s arriving to the island and Simone is getting dressed, those were separate scenes and Cate did an intercut of them, so you feel like the two sisters’ worlds are about to collide.

It was a really great addition to the pilot. It really helped us walk in on these sisters and their relationship.

For me, the one that stands out is actually in the finale, which Jen, my assistant, co-edited with me. She was in the room for basically everything and she’s my first audience.

I show her everything that I cut and the intercutting with Peter going into Simone’s room after she’s been fired and he’s thinking about her and she’s running on the beach.

The way those two scenes were intercut went through a lot of different versions. Lila Neugebauer, our director, did an amazing job directing both of them.

She added something that wasn’t scripted, which is Simone running, then she stops and she takes a pause and she starts walking.

So we built the sequence around that and that’s when she shifts and she has this epiphany that she’s going to “siren” Peter. She kind of comes into her own, and decides to take charge.

So that sequence went through a lot of different changes and Peter initially started having a panic attack in the room, so he was breathing really heavy and we intercut their breathing.

I did the first pass of that scene, then as we got further and further along into the episode the scene sort of changed and we wanted Peter to be a little more reflective and not as active in his breathing and panic attack - more somber and missing Simone and reflecting on her.

It’s the same thing I was saying about the pilot that Cate did. You feel them starting to collide.

The way Jen re-edited Peter’s performance and still kept that essence that Lila was directing towards, I think is really successful. It happens midway through the episode, but it’s one of the climaxes of the finale, so it had to work.

There was a lot of pressure on that sequence and I think Jen did such a great job of addressing everyone’s notes and still staying authentic to the intention, so I’m really proud of that sequence because it was such a great collaboration and I think it turned out really well.

HAIGHT: It really did. And the sound team did so much too with the breathing, the way that sounds. I hadn’t heard the final mix until I watched all the episodes with my husband and that sequence really sings with all of those elements combined.

ZEMPEL: It was a puzzle. It wasn’t intuitive. Sometimes you get a scene and you look at the footage and you think, “Okay. I know exactly what to do with this.” But that one required a lot of work.

And those were meant to be intercut, correct?

ZEMPEL: Correct. It was scripted that way.

Talk to me about using breaths and breathing as a way to help intercut something.

ZEMPEL: I think of breaths as basically dialogue. It’s rhythm. You tap into your actor’s breathing as you’re editing.

They’re almost like an instrument and the breaths are notes. That sequence has no dialogue, so it was sound, music and the breathing.

It was something that we found. I don’t think it was scripted: “their breaths collide.” That was something that we found while we were cutting.

I’m also remembering that Simone running was shot MOS, so all of her breathing was stolen and added from other parts of the episode.

With this show specifically - it’s called “Sirens,” right? So we have vocals in our score. We really had very intentional sound design with breathing, with women’s voices.

It was all something that we all talked about: keeping this sort of magical seduction a part of the show and women’s voices, breath, all that type of thing were the tools that we used a lot.

Cate, with your intercutting in the pilot episode, how did that evolve? Did you originally cut the scenes as scripted - as separate - then found that it was better to intercut them?

HAIGHT: Yes. The first cuts were definitely as their own standalone things. I think there was actually a scene with Michaela at the aviary in between the two.

Devon leaves the ferry, walks to the house, then it was Michaela at the aviary, then Simone getting ready, checking on the staff, then going to the gala barn, then suddenly her sister is there. We knocked out the Michaela scene at the aviary, then built this cross cut between the sisters.

It was part of this whole process of trying to sculpt the pilot in a way where we were really focusing in on the two of them and their relationship and their dynamic and that there were these two very different forces that were going to collide, and that as a viewer, you suddenly realized we’re building to their first big fight that’s in front of the house.

I can’t honestly remember exactly whose idea it was first to try and crosscut the two, but it happened at some point - working with Molly and Nikki.

Nicole Cassel was a producing director, so she stayed involved through the whole process. She was at our mixes. She was in every visual effects review. She was very involved, so it was a real collaboration between her, Molly, our showrunner and creator.

Everyone on this show was a genius. We were incredibly lucky to work with such brilliant and kind people.

So the two of them and me, just came up with this idea. I think it does exactly what we hoped it would do, building to that crescendo.

Isaac, you mentioned that you had a template when you came in. Can you talk about anything that you saw that you felt, “Okay, I need to incorporate that.” or “I see where we’re going.” How did coming in at that stage help you with what you had to do?

HAGY: Anyone who’s worked in television knows that so much of the foundation of a show is laid in the pilot episode. And not only the pilot episode, but the pilot block: what’s being shot initially and the decisions that are made as the footage is coming in.

As an editor, you’re in dailies, you’re a little bit on an island where you’re making these decisions on your own or with your other editorial team.

Decisions about how you address performance - like an actress or an actor may give you a range of performance, and do you lean more into the broad performance, the more reserved performance how you shape a character that way, how you shape the pacing, the rhythm and also particularly temp music.

That all changes as the process goes on, and eventually it’ll be replaced by a composer, but so much of the early groundwork of the tone is done in the choices of temp music during the assembly phase.

So when I came in I believe you guys had completed episodes at that point – assemblies - though they hadn’t been run through the directors, but it was essentially a cheat sheet for me to look at and see, “This is the tone that these two other very talented editors have distilled from the footage that they’ve received.”

So I was able to go into the bins of music that had already been pulled. I was able to look at how they had cut a performance. It really created a shorthand that made it - not easy - but easier for me in assembling my episode.

Let’s talk a little bit more about music.

HAIGHT: While we did have some temp from other scores, our composer Michael Abels had written some demos when he was first discussing the job with with Molly and Nikki. His demos were so brilliant and pretty full in terms of the themes and definitely at least the musical ideas. We used his demos a lot as we were cutting our first assemblies.

To have that is a real luxury: to know that the music that you’re working with is going to be in the final product - some version of it - to help figure out your tone.

Our music is a big part of the tone of the show and big part of the language of the show, so we had his themes and his music in right off the bat. Not everywhere.

There was some temp as well. When you have a composer’s work to work with so early in the game, it can really help shape the tone of the show. For this show specifically, the tone was such a conversation. It was something we were constantly working on.

That music helped us so much and all of his themes that he gave us are all in the show. He would then take what we cut in and rewrite it to shape it to the specific scenes.

The theme that’s there when Devon gets off that boat on the dock was in there in my first cut and it basically never changed, so working with Michael’s music was a real luxury to have it so early, and he’s such a brilliant composer who understood the show so well that it really helped elevate everything right off the bat.

HAGY: The value of that process of getting music from the composer early on goes both ways because Michael gave us an hour plus of music, and it was the music that Cate and Laura - and to an extent, me - found and distilled from that large batch of music that helped inform the later pieces that he would continue to write.

So it wasn’t just a one way street where we were taking everything we were given. We would say, “We like this. We like parts of this.

We like parts of this, but not this. How can we combine them?” So it was a real collaboration that evolved throughout the process.

One thing that we ended up doing later on that I really loved was that we would have weekly or bi-weekly music review sessions, and Michael would actually come into the office and we’d go through the episodes - all new tracks that he had and all revisions - and watch them as a team.

All the editors, all the assistants, the showrunners, Molly, her husband, Colin, and also the director, Nikki.

We would have a discussion in the room with Michael about what we thought was working, what we thought wasn’t, and it really was a great collaboration that laid the groundwork for the entire episode. To be fair, 90% of the time we just said, “Michael, you’re a genius. This is amazing.”

ZEMPEL: We had a music editor in office with us, Ellen Segal. She came on the week of our editor’s cuts. She really helped because she knew Michael and she knew what Michael’s demo sounded like and was able to suggest some other temp scores that we could use that were in the world.

That was incredibly helpful. Sometimes we gave her scenes if we were really stuck on something or loved a piece from Michael, but it wasn’t long enough or we needed it to change, but wanted to use the themes that he had given us, she was able to help us out with that in the room in real time before we sent it to Molly and Nikki, or before it went to Netflix, to just help it feel more polished.

Talk to me about spotting those cues. How much was determined by you, and how much was determined by the composer in those spotting sessions?

HAIGHT: I would say pretty much the spotting was what we did in our first cut. There might have been a few places where extra things got added or pulled back a little bit, but 90% was placed where we determined in our first assemblies.

Laura, Isaac, tell me if you disagree, but my two episodes, that was pretty much the case in 104 because the whole thing takes place in the house in one night and moving around from the different rooms inside the house.

I said to Michael, “I’ve spotted music in these places, but any other ideas that you have, please throw them at us. Give us ideas.”

So in that episode, he did a lot of trying things in different places. A few of which stuck. Maybe a scene was better dry or had more impact and emotion dry. We often just wanted to let the performances do their thing and not step on them.

I loved a conversation I had with Paul Hirsch years ago. He was talking about being a fairly new editor. He said, “I remember talking to Bernard Herman, the composer, and there was a scene where a woman was gonna stab a guy with a knife, and I said, ‘That’s where the music goes in, right?’ And he says, ‘No.’

Then something else would happen, and Paul said, ‘That’s where the music starts?” And Bernard Herman said, ‘Nope.’ It wasn’t until the very end of the scene that the music came in. Talk to me about that choice of what the most emotionally relevant point is for placing a music cue.

HAIGHT: For me, it’s always just driven by instinct. I don’t have rules about where music goes at all. Ultimately, it’s just: does it crave it?

Where does it feel natural for it to come in without drawing too much attention to itself? Especially under a dramatic scene where you’re really underscoring a moment.

You don’t want the audience to think, “Whoa, listen to the music here!” that a lot of times. If I watch a movie, I won’t be able to tell you what it really sounded like, and to me that feels like it’s doing its job.

If on your first listen, you’re not really super conscious of it - oftentimes in action sequences or whatever, the music is bigger and more upfront - but for me, I always just go by instinct and try to hold back. Less is more is my general feeling with score.

Can you think of a specific example of your instinct that said “that’s where the music starts?”

HAIGHT: The end of the pilot is scored pretty heavily, but we actually went back and forth a lot about where the cue should start and how it should build to this bird crashing through the window - his sort of Hitchcockian kind of horror moment that we created there at the end.

Should it start with Michaela still in the bed?

Or once she’s up and walking towards the window? We ended up delaying the start a little bit and it did move around. We ended up delaying it more because there was some tension in the silence.

Just being with her in this creepy silence as this banging sound is hitting the window and she doesn’t know what it is, and the window starts to crack and then the music starts to come in. But to be honest, the music worked starting in both places, then it just became a matter of taste of what do we prefer?

HAGY: I never want to place music ahead of an emotion. I never want the audience to hear music before the emotion that it’s underlying has landed because I feel like when it’s ahead of the audience, it’s not allowing them to experience it for themselves, therefore the audience reaction is gonna be a little muted and a little less organic.

So if there is music that is underscoring a scene, I will let the turning point of that scene happen before the music starts to creep in. Oftentimes there really is no hard and fast rule.

ZEMPEL: The one I can come up with is in 102 when Simone is in bed with Michaela. We call it “the pillow talk scene” where they’re on their side. It’s a really interesting scene because Michaela has just learned that Simone has this sister.

She can tell Simone is hiding something, and we as the audience know that Simone is hiding her relationship with Ethan. Michaela doesn’t know about it yet. And Michaela keeps pushing.

That scene is in two parts. There’s the first part where Simone is talking about her sister and why she never told Michaela about her, then Michaela has the halfway point where she switches and she’s says, “It’s just so odd that you chose not to mention her to me.”

That’s where we creep in the music to underscore what Michaela is doing and to give the scene a little more tension. That’s where the scene changes and that’s why the music comes in there. You can see also in the cut we go back to the two shot because it’s a beat change.

It goes from their bonding and Simone’s being honest to now Michaela’s pushing a little too hard and Simone is withholding. We’re unsure of Michaela’s motivation in 102. I really like that scene. I like how it’s broken up.

When you bring music into a long scene, it can feel like a breath of fresh air. It can underscore that something has turned and we’re focusing on something else, so it can just give a long scene a little bit of shape.

We have a two shot and we have both of them on their sides. I think the angles change in that scene too. When we bring in the music, we go to the vertical and that’s when the music comes in because that’s when this scene switches.

It gets a little more eerie. It gets a little more surreal, and that’s the tone that we’re playing with as well: when do those things happen and make it feel really intentional?

So that’s a good example. The picture changes. The shot construction changes a little bit and the music comes in. So it’s all working in tandem. There’s a way you could just cut that scene dry and it would be okay, but it wouldn’t be as interesting.

You pointed out the themes of the show and it’s “Sirens.”  Did a director say, “Here’s some things we want to consider.” Or did you just read the script and saw that was the point and went with that?

HAIGHT: I think it was a bit of both. Obviously it was on the page. I loved the pilot script the first time I read it. Right away I was eager to be part of the show and I knew it was definitely a story about these three women.

Obviously, talking more with Molly, this idea that Sirens were this mythical creature that was invented to excuse why men crashed into the cliffs: that there’s some woman to blame for their mistakes and failings was something that we were trying to keep in mind all along.

Ultimately it’s a story about power and women but ultimately, do they have any power in the end? All these different ideas we were talking about a lot every day during our screening, but it was also there on the page, too.

ZEMPEL: It was on the page. I think also those early demos that we got from Michael were obviously something that we knew Molly liked and had responded to, and they had voices in it.

So it confirmed that we were on the right track with our instincts, hearing that music. So we really leaned into it, and that proved to be right. That was, Molly’s intention as well.

I’m always interested to hear how creative notes and ideas given to another artist help you with a later creative choice, right? If you’re told, “Here’s what I want you to do in scene A” then when you go to cut scene B you’ve already got that creative idea of scene A to help you know that that’s how the director wants you to shape it

HAIGHT: A hundred percent.

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ZEMPEL: Molly’s husband, who’s also a producer on the show mentioned that the show is based on the Margaret Atwood poem “Siren Song.” If you read the poem, it’s a nice companion to the show because it’s all about this cry for help, and the women are birds and they’re stuck - trapped on this island.

So knowing that type of thing, like the final shot of Simone, as we pull back, she’s on the island. It can be read multiple ways. Is she trapped on this island? Is she the new caged bird under Peter’s rule? Or is she free?

I think knowing that about the poem and where their intention was with “it’s a cry for help” that helped inform some of the early things.

For example, when Michaela has the line, “Another lost soul washed up on our island.” Knowing that’s an important part of all of these women’s story, how can we lean into that, not cut that out?

That’s actually a rich texture of the show: these injured women that men want to help until they no longer need help and then they’re discarded.

There are a lot of really rich themes. It seems like people are picking up on a lot of the intentions that Molly had, so I think that means we did our jobs pretty well.

Did you all read that poem before you started editing?

ZEMPEL: No. I wish I had, I read it later. I read it as soon as Colin mentioned it while I was cutting the finale.

Thank you so much for joining me on Art of the Cut. It was so nice talking to all of you.

HAIGHT: Thank you for having us. This was really fun.

ZEMPEL: Thank you so much.

HAGY: Thank you, Steve.