The Penguin Lessons

Today on Art of the Cut we speak with Robin Peters about the film The Penguin Lesons. Robin was nominated for a BFE Cut Above Award for Best Edited Comedy Series for This Time with Alan Partridge. He’s also edited the film Benjamin and the TV series One Day. He was an additional editor on The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Robin, it’s a pleasure with talk to you. Let’s start with how you approach a scene.

I get an assistant to make a sequence called All Rushes, then I watch it completely - watch every frame - and as I’m watching it I put markers or Add Edits in the bits that I like.

I think that partly it’s from starting out in documentaries, then in comedy. It’s finding the bits of gold on that first watch.

You’ll never get that first watch back again, so it’s finding those moments that really resonate with you and making sure you mark those and making sure you can always go back to those later on months and months later.

You need to give everything a good audition. I mark up those takes, then I’ll find the bits that I really. The kind of gold of that scene - what I feel are the absolute amazing moments that I want to build to. I’ll put those in first then I’ll build around those.

In a comedy, it’s some tiny eye movement or gesture or way of saying something. Those moments usually only happen once, so it’s building towards those moments. Then after you’ve got the first cut, you can take a step back. You can then think, “Okay, there’s too much of that.

There’s too much levity, or there’s too much of some particular detail,” and I’ll pull it back. But at least you’ve got that initial run of, “I know how I felt the first time.”

Do you edit from that All Rushes sequence directly into a new sequence?

No. I’ll keep the sequence. I’ll make a copy. Call it Selects and use that to put the Add Edits in, then work from that.

Then I’ll make another copy and that will be my first assembly. I’ll pull from that sequence, but it’ll always keep the All Rushes as a reference to see what I initially thought.

Walter Murch and other editors do something similar where they have a notebook or they make some notation when they watch something for the first time, so they can always feel what it is they felt on that first viewing.

It’s a way of me doing that really in a quick and digital way that I could always go back to. But it means that  - for example - months later, the director is says, “Is there another moment? Is there another section or moment that is better than that?”

You can always go back and quickly find those moments that you could suggest to the director.

Instead of watching the full three hours it’s a useful way of going back to those moments that actors sometimes only do once, which is especially valuable in comedy. In drama, actors - ‘cause they’re fantastic - can hit those moments again and again.

With comedy, they’ll either do it once or they’ll give you something different. They might give you five variations and one of those hits the tone and the comedic beat perfectly, so you want to use that.

Talk to me about tone. You alluded to it in your answer about “a little too much of this or a little too much of that.” When you’re trying to build the overall movie or even just a scene you need to get from scenes or moments that are dramatic and contemplative to funnier, comedic moments. How do you balance that?

Especially in a movie like The Penguin Lessons - where tone is absolutely central to it - It’s a case of sometimes killing your babies. Getting rid of those really great moments that you loved in that initial pass that I was talking about is needed sometimes because those can actually make it less dramatic and less funny.

If you have a moment that was really laugh out loud funny when you’re watching through the rushes, it doesn’t always translate to the assembly. In fact, it can actually make it worse.

It’s a process that I’ve learned over the years - that those little moments that sometimes you think “That’s fantastic! I’ve got to use that!” Then when it’s in there, it can unbalance everything else because it can give it a spike of comedy where everything else has got a slightly lower, different tone.

It’s often a case of just removing those bits, which can actually make the other things funnier and more dramatic. If you sometimes leave those in, it’s almost like a waveform graph.

If you put something in which is too high, too big, it can destabilize the whole graph so that the audience doesn’t know the tone you are going for.

That’s the really hard thing to do sometimes: let go of those moments and think, “It’s a really great moment, but I don’t think it’s right for this movie.

I don’t think it’s right for this piece because of the tone we’re going for.” That’s really what you wanna do. You wanna strip out those moments and make sure that everything is earned.

Everything comes from character, obviously, and everything is a moment that is truthful and is not extraneous to the story or the character.

Are those truthful moments something that change as you see them in context? In other words: you think a moment is truthful when you cut the scene originally, but then as you’re able to see the entire movie it’s no longer either truthful or no longer correct in the arc of the character?

I think you’re right. As you’re assembling, you’re feeling your way through what the movie is, and the tone of the movie because you can get a certain amount from the script, but everyone’s feeling a way through: the actors are and the director as well, and they’re all coming to a certain point.

When it’s all together, those moments become more obvious and that’s why it’s good to have some time after the initial period of shooting - probably good for the director too - to have a bit of time away and have some time to go through everything and think, “In terms of presenting it to the director, these are the moments that I thought were great at the time, but now I can see there’s too much of that, or there’s too little of this moment.

There’s too much of that moment and that moment I thought was great is now not so great because it’s either too much or it’s a repeat, or it just doesn’t feel truthful.” It’s definitely really useful to have that second pass before the director sees it.

Can you think of a specific example in the movie where you needed to change that in context?

There was a scene near the start of the shooting process: a confrontation scene near the end of the movie where Tom’s confronting the headmaster about Penguin. There were loads of great moments. The actors tried out loads of different options, which at the time felt really great, but when you put it all together, you could feel it should be towards the end of the movie and it’s time to get more serious.

It’s time to put away those things and just ground it because this is definitely a more emotional scene. It’s great to have those options. When you put it into context, we knew we needed to strip it back, because we’re getting towards the end of the movie and towards the more emotionally resonant part of the movie.

I think of comedy as - depends on the specific comedy, of course - but I think of it as a two-shot medium where you need to see somebody and the person they’re reacting to. How do you balance that and how do you choose shot size especially in a comedy scene.

Traditionally that was always the case - that comedy plays best in the wide. I think that’s definitely true of more physical comedy.

I think that’s not so true anymore. Sometimes it’s better to see the exact look in someone’s eye or what their expression is, so I don’t think it’s so much the shot size.

Sometimes not cutting is good because even if it’s a close shot, it’s about the audience believing in it and keeping on that shot. It just makes it more believable especially if the actor’s got great comic timing.

‘cause you then you can just leave it. If you don’t need to cut, then obviously as a rule of editing, don’t cut. If they’re doing it well and you can see everything in that shot it doesn’t matter so much about the shot size, but it can help just holding back from cutting or at least making it feel believable that you haven’t interfered too much.

I think that’s often best thing to do with comedy is just feel like you haven’t interfered too much. There’s a scene where Steve opens the door to his friend Tapio and Tapio says, “Have you got a penguin there?”

And he says, “no.” “Are you sure?” “no.” “Are you sure?” And Steve finally relents, “Okay. Yes.” That’s a moment of there’s no way of keeping that in the same shot. So it’s about the rhythm of that. It’s one of those rhythm jokes.

Once we found that rhythm in that particular instance, we just left it. If they were both in the same shot doing that, I would’ve left it. But obviously it’s in a doorway, so that wasn’t possible.

You want to see both sides. So that’s a good example of rhythm.

It’s more to do with the emotion, but I tried to find places where the penguin and the actor were in the same physical space.

Obviously it’s easy to cut to a single of the penguin and have a reaction shot, but you want the times when the actors were with the penguin in the same physical shot or the shot was panning from the penguin to the actor.

It just made it feel much more grounded. Sometimes you got really good moments from that as well.

There’s a moment where Steve Coogan’s introducing the penguin to the class and he says, “If you work really hard, then you’ll get to feed the penguin. Is that all right with you?”

And the class nods and he says, “Is that all right with you?” and the penguin nods and it’s in camera and it’s real and there’s only one take of that, but that was gold ‘cause you can’t replicate that. Everyone knows that penguin’s real. It’s not CGI.

It’s a handheld shot as well. I suppose you could have with some VFX tried to put in a different take into that shot, but it was pretty obvious. It was on the day and there were nice moments like that, that you could use.

That was always really gratifying when you found a moment like that to use that was in camera.

Everybody says never work with kids or animals.

Yeah, and this film does both. It works with a lot of first time actors in terms of the children. That did present a lot of editing challenges, but there were some really good parts to that as well.

For example, when Peter, the director, brought the penguin out the first time, he actually kept the penguin away from the children, so they hadn’t seen it at all until the scene where Tom, played by Steve Coogan, actually reveals the penguin to the class.

That’s the first time the children had actually seen the penguin. Obviously Peter had it covered with quite a few cameras and those reactions were just incredibly genuine.

They were actually really pleased to see the penguin, so we used a lot of those reactions ‘cause the second and third take just wasn’t the same as that sort of magic - it’s just really innocent sort of expressions of delight when they actually see the penguin.

Can you think of some of the difficult scenes in dealing with penguin behavior, and what did you do?

One problematic thing with penguins generally is that they poo a lot so often a take was interrupted by the penguin pooing.

Sometimes we VFX’d that out, but one time Steve Coogan – who obviously is very good at improvising, though mostly in this movie he did not improvise – but there was one moment where he’s feeding the penguin.

The penguin does a poo while he’s saying, “You want this fish?” and he says, “Oh, guess not.” That’s still in the movie ‘cause it was just such a great piece of timing, so there’s lots of that really. You have to cut around it.

Or where the penguin first meets Maria and Sophia. When it comes in the room, there’s a beautiful moment where it comes in and flaps its wings.

That was lovely. Once you buy that the penguins are in the room and you’ve seen them in the same physical space, then you can cut around more like a normal scene. The penguin sounds help. You can really give the penguin a personality.

On of the trickes was  how much personality to give the penguin because there could be a Disney version of this film that’s more cute. The penguin would be able to understand English and react and do all sorts of things, but that wasn’t this movie.

This movie was about the penguin unlocking something inside the character and the penguin just listening. So we didn’t play any tricks. Maybe there was one moment where Steve’s talking on the phone to the zookeeper and he says, “If you don’t take the penguin, I’m gonna kill it.”

And the penguin looks around. That’s a nice moment. We took a liberty there, but besides that, we’re not pretending that the penguin is a little human in the penguin suit. It’s not Colin Farrell in the penguin suit. It’s a real penguin.

The penguin was actually very good at hitting its mark, so there weren’t too many problems.

The director wanted to do something a bit difficult because if you say to someone, “Okay, I’m gonna do a film about  a penguin and it’s going to have the backdrop of 1976 Argentina with fascism and people getting kidnapped and tortured,” you can write the review yourself, can’t you? That’s not gonna work.

So I think the challenge motivated them. It’s a little indie film and I hope it does get an audience. It seems to be getting an audience in America. It hasn’t opened in the UK.

Working with children, working with animals, and getting the tone right were the huge challenges for everyone involved really. That was what made it so fun to work on.

Were there any structural changes from the way that it was scripted because you found that you needed to break up a specific tone?

There was a whole subplot where one of the children’s fathers was kidnapped and that also had some comedic beats - completely separate to the kidnapping plot, I should stress. It had some comedic beats of giving the penguin a bath.

And at that moment, there was a combination of a little bit too much going on. ‘cause there was already Sophia that had been kidnapped, so you wanted to concentrate on that storyline and you wanted to be inside Tom’s emotional space.

That thread got pared back massively. We stripped out most of that because at that moment when you going through - going into the third act - it just felt you had momentum and you wanted to be with Tom and be in Tom’s journey.

I think once you learn a bit more about Tom’s backstory then about the events that are happening in real time, once you’re on that journey, it’s case that I think with a lot of dramas that have a little bit comedy and it’s towards the end, I think you need to go more with the emotion of the characters and you can’t be undercutting things, especially when there’s such a fantastic performance from Steve that you don’t wanna be undercutting that with the penguin.

So stripping back some of that allowed the audience basically to turn gently from the comedy aspects or the lighter aspects to the emotional journey that Tom was going on. That was definitely the challenge of the middle section of the film.

Obviously the movie is based on a true story, so lots of elements were from the book and from the reality.

And one of them was trying to give the penguin a bath and trying to look after the penguin and the penguin eating and things like that, which are very interesting in the process of it.

And one of ’em was giving a penguin an ice bath.

It was to do with his character and it was a moment of levity and didn’t sit very well tonally with where the character was going at that moment. We needed it  because the penguin escapes, that motivates another part of the story.

So we found another part of the story where Tom walks out the door and we just cut in and inserted the door opening a little bit, then used some shots of the penguin that we had left over from that scene, so the penguin could escape.

So we got around that. That was a moment where you’re just following the emotion really, ‘cause once you got into the plot of Tom’s guilt which really motivates third act, you wanna stay there. So it was working towards that really.

I’m sure you’ve talked to a lot of editors that tell you that at a certain point, that the film leads you. That was when the film started leading us.

When you get to a certain part of editing the film, it starts to tell you, “This is what you want to be doing. This is where you wanna be going,” and you just have to listen to the film.

Talk to us about your collaboration with the director. How did he like to work? How did you work once you had an editors cut? Did he participate before the editors cut?

No, he left me to do the editors cut. This is the first time I’ve worked with Peter Cattaneo, who’s done many films. It was fantastic to work with him. He left me to do the editors cut. I don’t mind which way directors want to work.

Sometimes directors like to leave you alone for a bit and come back and check in, but sometimes they’re with you. Actually Peter is great company, as you can imagine. He’s got a lot of great stories, so it was a pleasure being with him.

So once we did the editor cut, it was just sitting together and thrashing out. It’s a comparatively lower budget film, independent film.

It wasn’t layers and layers of notes, which is fine in different contexts but this was me and Peter, then the producers, then you do get into the studio notes, but it wasn’t a big studio picture, so it was quite an intimate editing process, which is nice.

Did you have any intercutting in the film that was not scripted, or maybe it was scripted to intercut, but you needed to change the locations of the intercutting from the way it was scripted

Towards the one hour mark of the film that there was quite a few scenes, which were all well crafted script-wise, but it was a case of trying to thread them all together ‘cause there’s different strands and you want to thread them all together.

That was probably about coming off Tom’s close expressions and using music to get you into the next scene, prelaps and things like that to create a kind of emotional thread to lead you to the ending.

Peter was very clear that he didn’t want to be too close to the Argentinian characters in terms of the emotion.

There’s quite a climactic emotional ending and we didn’t want to in any way cheapen that by being too close.

He shot it with many different angles. We sometimes kept back from that. We saw it from Tom’s perspective and in a way, trying to be a bit respectful to the real events that happened in, in Argentina.

Again, that’s a tonal thing about not wanting to make it too melodramatic, or too big emotionally because you want to make it true to the characters whilst also honoring the real events.

You mentioned that this is based on a book and which is based on a true story. Did you read the book before you started editing?

Yeah, I did. I read the book which is a great book, actually. Same name. It’s called The Penguin Lessons, by Tom Mitchell. He was a school teacher who went out in the 1970s to a boarding school to teach in an English boarding school in Argentina where it’s like a mini-England. It’s a bit of England where everything else outside it is different, but once you’re in the school gates, it’s basically England. It’s a fascinating book actually, and I really recommend it.

It’s different to the film, but the emotion and the story of finding the penguin is all the same: finding it on the beach and rescuing it from the oil slick, then the different problems you have to overcome in terms of how to look after it and also how different people he met were enchanted by the penguin and unlocked them emotionally.

The penguin is a really good listener. So all those things are are the same. Then there’s a whole different layer, which Jeff Pope, the screenwriter brought to it. They thought, “It’s 1976. It’s Argentina. We have to address that.

We can’t NOT address that.” I think that was really brilliant what they did, combining the two, which is very resonant to things that are happening in today’s world.

The themes which they added into this film are really interesting: how much do you fight against history? How much difference can one person make? Whether to step up and try and make a difference or whether to sit back and watch things happen? Obviously those themes are always resonant, but seem particularly resonant in 2025, but they couldn’t have known that when they were writing the script.

Is there a danger to reading the book?

Yeah, I think there is a danger to reading the book, especially if it’s a faithful adaptation of the book, because you get wedded to how things were.

I think this was different enough. I think if it’s a more faithful adaptation, then I think maybe stay away from the book unless the director says, “Read this bit, or read that, or read the full book.”

But in this instance it was so different. It didn’t really affect things because they took it in a different direction.

Oftentimes when I’m talking to editors about why they made choices, we’re talking about very obvious things like performance shot size, but you mentioned something like theme. When you’re watching a scene and you know what the themes are of the movie, how do those themes affect your editorial choices?

That’s a really good point actually, because this movie especially has such strong themes about redemption and guilt, about changing from being a cynical person to a more hopeful person, about aging.

I think things like music, when you are using music, that’s a really useful way to explore theme. It’s easy to find temp score which is solely dramatic or solely comic, but to find score that weaves those elements in is trickier.

Thankfully we had a really great composer, Federico Jusid, who did a fantastic job of weaving those things together. Obviously we didn’t have that when we were starting out, but using a little bit of temp.

I think just being mindful when you’re putting things together, sometimes killing babies, not using moments that feel wildly outta the scope of the film. I think, it’s okay to be serious in a film that can be light - to explore that.

I think what massively helped is Steve Coogan’s performance, which is really genuinely fantastic. He’s got a complete mastery of comic timing.

He’s also a great dramatic actor so he can switch those gears so easily within the same take.

You ca just stay on him and let him change it into drama. There’s a bit where they’re having a lunch about an hour into the movie, and it’s a wonderful take where he just completely goes from laughter into his backstory and what has made him so cynical and he just weaves that in so beautifully.

When I saw that take, I knew that was the one. We have to use that take! It’s just brilliant. Peter felt the same. So that’s the take that’s in the movie.

Just holding on his face is incredible, so that helps really anchor the film and it was an absolute pleasure to edit that.

He’ll give you five takes - five variations - but you never feel like he doesn’t know where he’s going. He knows exactly where his character is. He’s just giving you some options, but they’re all within the plus or minus five range of “this is my character.”

His performance is really remarkable. I just don’t think there’s many actors that can do that: the blending of the comedy and the pathos and the drama.

I think you have to have probably been on the journey that Steve’s been on in his life of starting off in standup comedy, writing, performing, and then dramatic acting to get where he can do all those different things. That really helped with the theme.

The music helped. Keeping an eye on the rhythm and letting things breathe at moments, and also using sound when Sophia’s kidnapped.

Dropping the sound out, going inside Tom’s head, keeping it all framed within his decisions and within his motivations. I think that really helps, so all those elements really contributed.

One of the other complicated or nuanced ideas of trying to sculpt a scene is around the intention of the scene. So you might have a scene where. The object of the scene is to get the penguin bathed, but the intention of the scene is to reveal something about his character or some something deeper. How do those intentions mold a scene for you? Subtext would be another one if you want to talk about subtext instead of intention.

There’s a really good example of that in The Penguin Lessons. Tom takes the penguin to the zoo in order to let them look after the penguin.

That’s the intention. When he goes there, they show him around and they tell him that the penguin has to go in quarantine, so he sees the sort of cells that the penguin has to go in for this quarantine period of six weeks.

On the surface, that scene is about just putting a penguin in a zoo, but it’s so much more than that because it’s about him realizing that the penguin has become a bit more a part of his life.

Also there’s the visual representation of the cells and thinking about the penguin’s gonna be put in these cells. It’s a small thing, but rescuing the penguin is his first step in his redemption as a character. He later says to Maria, “They didn’t have any space.”

So he is lying. We know he is lying, but it’s that first glimmer of his character on the path to saving himself and someone else as well. So that’s a really nice scene and obviously understanding the subtext or the motivation behind the scene.

We did a lot of sound design making that zoo just seem the most horrific zoo possible to put the penguin in.

And it takes the audience on a journey as well, because they know he’s lying and they know why he’s lying, and it leaves the audience a little bit to work out in their head, which is nice for a film to do that.

So as you are trying to sculpt that scene with I’m gonna have to leave this penguin in this jail cell, how does the intention of the scene affect your choices? For example: you need to go to a reaction shot of Steve realizing this thing, or this is where I need to show the shot of the jail cell. How does the intention actually make you place shots in a timeline?

Basically it’s about just keeping it more on Steve, and not so much on anyone else.

Letting his eyes drift towards the bars and then letting him explore the space and following that, really following his eyes, choosing the shot of the cells and the other penguins that look the most terrible.

Then I think we go from a medium shot to cells to a close-up of Steven. He did some lovely reactions and lovely performances.

He’s playing it very lightly, but you can really feel the performance in the edit. You don’t wanna hammer it home. It’s about a lightness of touch.

We don’t even use any music at that point or anything too directional, but just sound design and letting it be simple.

Letting the audience work it out and the audience step forward a little bit and decide themselves what’s going on, which is kinda what you wanna do at a certain point in the film, don’t you?

Once you’ve set everything up, you want the audience to step in and work things out themself - feel like they’re part of it ‘cause it’s an interactive experience.

You don’t wanna just say “this is what this scene is.” Initially, you can. Initially, when you’re setting characters up and the world up in the first 10 minutes, you are saying, “This is the world.”

Then hopefully, at a certain point, the audience takes over and makes those connections themselves. I think restraint and not hammering those moments too much is important.

Absolutely. You explained how difficult it was to temp because you can find funny stuff and dramatic stuff, but how do you find the thing with the right tone and the right transitions inside the scene. What did you temp with?

Peter suggested a good soundtrack. There’s a film called in In Good Company. A Paul Weitz film from 2004. It had a nice blend of lightness and darkness to it that worked for a lot of sections. So we used a lot of that. I used some Rachel Portman soundtracks, which are always fantastic.

She’s done, Never Let Me Go, Emma, Chocolat, Legend of Bagger Vance. She does a very nice blend of light and dark in a lot of her films so some of the montages that were very sweet used some of her music, but by the time it got to composer all that was stripped off and we let him have creative control. I always feel sorry for composers when they hear any of the temp.

He did a fantastic job - Federico Jusid, with the score. It was just in the initial stages of the offline trying to make those moments work with score.

Cutting in Avid?

We cut in Avid and the assistant for most of it was actually in Madrid ‘cause it was a sort of Spanish/English co-production.

So they filmed in Spain for Argentina and the Canary Islands for Uruguay, so a lot of the crew was Spanish and the assistant Carlos was Spanish.

It worked quite well. These days it’s pretty easy to throw things over the internet.

What about when you don’t use music? Talk to me about a scene that maybe you might have thought: “Dramatic scene. There should be melodramatic music, but no, we’re gonna play it completely dry.”

The Penguin Lessons had its premiere at TIFF last year and since that point we stripped some of the music off for that exact reason. There’s a lot of fantastic music, but some moments you just want to let ’em breathe.

For example, the moment where someone’s kidnapped now has no music on it, or the lunchtime moment where we reveal a backstory about Tom now has no music.

It was a case of stripping things back and let ’em play without being too directional. It’s just a process, isn’t it?

You add the music and it seems fantastic, but when you see it with an audience, you can work out where you can strip things back.

Were there any scenes that we haven’t talked about that were either very challenging or that you’re very proud of?

I think the ending was an interesting challenge.

It’s always the ending, isn’t it?

It’s always the ending. Yeah. I think the ending was quite challenging because a lot of things come together at one moment so the question is who should you be on and how much weight to give different parts of it, then carrying that feeling through to the credits.

When we go to the credits we have some of the real footage of the penguin. And also some of the real footage of the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina in the 1970s, which is the other storyline. So all those elements coming together. That was a balancing act.

We tried lots of different ways of doing it. We ended up looking at it through Tom’s point of view experience and that sort of catharsis that Tom has then carrying that out into the real footage. I think works really well.

You just have to go through the process of trying out many different things before you get to the point of liking how that feels. I’m proud of the whole film.

I think it’s a lovely sweet film. It was a pleasure to work on it, but the ending was one of those moments where we kept going back to, to try to get it to work better. It works well now.

Obviously endings are just hugely important. The note you end on in the film almost colors your experience in the entire film, doesn’t it?

Because you’re almost seeing the entire film through that note, that last note of the film.

So getting that note - especially with the other things I talked about with the theme and the light and the dark and the themes, fascism and kidnapping - all those type of things, how you play that was really important.

Hopefully when you finish the film, you look back and it feels correct.

Editor Robin Peters on the red carpet for The Penguin Lessons

Editors always talk about themselves as storytellers, and obviously you’re telling a story when you’re putting a film together, but what are some of those ways that people might not think of when they’re watching a movie?

The first film I did was called Benjamin (2018). It was a small film by
Simon Amstell, which I’m really proud of. I remember being at an industry drinks thing with people who were marketing the film.

They said to me, “What did you do on the film?” I said, “I’m the editor.” They said, “Oh! Have you seen the film?” I said, “Yes. I’ve seen the film about a thousand times. I could literally enact it for you.”

On any film, there are thousands and thousands of decisions. There are so many decisions you have to make in terms of which frame to cut on which performance.

If you had monkeys and typewriter, it would take them a long time to come up with that exact combination of shots that you’ve come up with for that film.

So that’s one input you have being the first audience and selecting those takes, and the director has to rely on the editor to have gone through everything because unless you’ve got unlimited time, a director isn’t gonna be able to look at every frame.

Obviously they were on set, but they’re not gonna be able to look at every frame. So there’s a reliance on the editor to be on the same wavelength and understand what the film is and be a collaborator in terms of the story telling.

You get the initial pass and you can be an honest broker in the room and be someone who wasn’t there and wasn’t experiencing the hardship.

You don’t have any burden except for what is the best take. I think that’s the real value that you can bring to it.

That you can help tell the story without any baggage of having been there or having seen how it’s the heartache and trouble it took to get that on the screen.

Objectivity.

Objectivity, exactly. You’re the first person who writes it. Here’s the closeup and here’s the wide shot. You can do so much with pacing and so much with takes, frame sizes, music, sound effects. There’s so much at your disposal.

You can be the first person to pitch that to the director and say, “I think this would be a great way.” If they don’t like that you can come up with different ways.

Often you come up with better ways because the director says, “I really wanted this” then it’s that problem-solving that you bring to it, that often makes a better film.

The difference between when you start out editing and when you’ve done it for a while is that when you start out editing, you’re think, “Oh, crumbs! I got this to work and now you’re asking me to do this thing differently!”

But when you’ve done it for a while, you instead think, “That sounds pretty fun actually! Let’s do it. Let’s just change it all and let’s do another version.” It’s a constant process of pitching to people, “Hey, why don’t we tell the story this way?”

Or “We could do that, or we could do this!” Come to them with different ideas, and that’s what makes it a really fun job.

Robin, thank you so much for talking to us about The Penguin Lessons. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

Cheers. It’s been a pleasure.