Thunderbolts*

Today on Art of the Cut, ACE Eddie-nominee Angela Catanzaro, ACE, and ACE Eddie-winner Harry Yoon, ACE, discuss editing the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thunderbolts*.

Angela’s been on Art of the Cut before for Prey, The Protege, and Five Feet Apart. She also edited The Foreigner.

Harry’s been on Art of the Cut in the past for The Fire Inside, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Minari, The Best of Enemies, Detroit, and for the TV series Beef. 

So the MCU fans in general, but everybody seems to love this movie.

YOON: Go Thunderbolts Go!

CATANZARO: Yeah, it’s been a wild ride. It’s pretty gratifying. Anytime you pour your heart and soul into something, there’s no guarantee that it will be well received, so it’s awfully nice to be able to celebrate this movie with the fans.

YOON: We love the movie, but there were a lot of nervous conversations with Jake and with Angela: “This is a weird movie. It’s a weird movie, right? We love it, but it’s a weird movie. Are people gonna like it?” I think the best thing is that they’re liking it specifically for its differences.

Exactly.

YOON: Which is trauma and mental health issues, and loneliness. It’s not quite what you expect, but that’s the reason why I think fans are embracing it.

CATANZARO: That’s been so gratifying, connecting with people on a different level, but still giving them the things that they come to a Marvel movie for. It’s an all encompassing movie. You get all the fun action, but then some really deep emotional issues we’re dealing with.

My only note on the film is that my daughter was on a soccer team when she was a little girl, and we let them pick their team name. They chose The Sparkly Dolphins, so I think instead of Thunderbolts, if it had been the Sparkly Dolphins movie it would’ve added something.

YOON: I think that’s a good pitch.

CATANZARO: That definitely would’ve been fun to market.

If you can get that in front of Kevin, my pitch would be The Sparkly Dolphins movie.

YOON: Well, Steve, we’ve renamed the movie once.

CATANZARO: Fun fact: our lead VFX editor, Steve Bobertz, produced a photo that his mom delivered to him towards the end of post-production of his PeeWee soccer team… and they were the Thunderbolts. The picture looked uncannily like the one Yelena picks up in the movie.

Every picture of a kids soccer team looks like that picture, which is what’s so great about it! I want to talk about the tonal shifts in the movie, balancing tones within the movie, and what evolution you went through in trying to get that done?

Thunderbolts post team photo

YOON: So much credit to the writers who not only had a great comic sensibility, but a great dramatic sensibility. That’s Eric Pearson and Joanna Callo. We also had help from Sonny Lee, who was the showrunner of Beef.

That balance between absurdist humor, but not being afraid to tackle really dramatic stuff begins with them. But also  I think the execution by our actors who are incredibly funny, but also have some real dramatic chops and can really bring it.

Particularly Florence Pugh and her scenes with David Harbor. And Louis Pullman brings this kind of depth to the Bob character. Just seeing that come to life as we were editing…We really understood that we had to honor those tonal shifts.

The true north was always Jake. He was so specific about the tone he wanted: not too broad in terms of the humor or not too melodramatic in terms of the drama. He was constantly gauging what true north was because he had spent so much time developing the script with the writers.

But also we were basically in pre-production twice because of the strike, so he’d had so much time to live with these characters to keep revisiting the script, to make sure that he was prepared.

Angela and I, we had this experience in the cutting room of discovering nuances that even we weren’t aware of. In the script discovering the backstory that Jake was carrying with him to decide, “No.

This character can’t be this broad or this sad at this moment and here’s why.” There was so much backstory that he was sharing with us.

Normally, Angela and I go into a project and we feel we have a fullness of understanding of all the nuances, but there was always more depth that Jake was revealing to us as we were working.

Editors Angela Catanzaro, ACE, and Harry Yoon, ACE

CATANZARO: Yes. He was always unwrapping more details for us. There was always this focus on keeping things very feeling very real, very relatable, very organic, so there were definitely a lot of jokes on the cutting room floor.

They wouldn’t have felt appropriate in this film. They would’ve gotten a laugh, but it wouldn’t have been appropriate or earned in the way that we wanted to earn the laughs. We really worked hard to make sure that we had very grounded characters.

This is not only just in the writing of the characters, but every step of the process. Jake was focused on keeping this real. Even in the cinematography and the way objects and characters interact with the lens and not making it feel sensational.

He was very focused on keeping the camera in a place where you could actually shoot it even in some of the shots that were fully CG.

Where could we have been to achieve this shot even though we didn’t actually shoot this? By the way, there wasn’t a lot of the film that wasn’t in camera.

They did a ton of stunts and things that I wouldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams they would do.

Like Florence Pugh stepping off the top of the world’s second tallest building!

CATANZARO: Oh my gosh!

YOON: Yeah! She actually stepped off. That’s what’s so crazy about it.

I have a really good example of what Angela’s talking about. There’s this one shot that’s all CG of an O.X.E. jet as it’s flying towards the vault. It sort establishes a little scene between Valentina and her assistant.

That shot went through so many rounds. It started with these super dynamic, spectacular moves of the jets zooming by. They were really dynamic and really kinetic, but Jake kept saying, “There’s no physical way an actual camera crew could have shot that.”

So he was constantly pushing to to ask, “What shot could we actually get of a jet flying at this speed? What would the float between the camera jet and the actual jet feel like? Could it maintain the speed?

It wouldn’t do a whip pan, ‘cause that wouldn’t be possible.” That was his guiding light to say, “How do we make it feel like we actually photographed everything?” That tonal groundedness… that human scale perspective is something that really comes through in this film.

Avid timeline Reel 1 (the first 20 minutes) of Thunderbolts, © MARVEL 2025

CATANZARO: Yes. It’s very much part of the fabric of the entire film.

YOON: Another example of something that Angela did was  early in the very beginning of the gala when the congressman is talking to Valentina’s character and citing “Isn’t it convenient that we didn’t find any evidence?

It’s almost like you cleaned it up at the last minute.” There was actually a really great joke that interrupted that discussion between Valentina and her assistant. It was one of the funniest little bits that started off the gala.

Kevin pointed out that taking out that joke allows us to take Valentina’s peril a little more seriously. We’re trying to say, if we show that it’s funny right now, we undercut the trouble and we need her to be in trouble to be the engine that propels all of her actions later.

So it was those subtle little lifts even of some of the darlings that we had that we had to constantly adjust to get that tone.

CATANZARO: Yeah. We did that a lot. We have all these little things that we briefly mourn the loss of, but in the grand scheme of things, making these little lifts trims helps.

People just don’t understand that concept that, when they see deleted scenes, that some of the funniest jokes are edited out. To them it makes no sense, but you’re trying to serve the greater story or maintaining tone or pace.

YOON: Time and time again as we were nearing the finish line there were decisions  where we felt we were at a good point, but after you make a little lift, it feels clearer.

You could say three good things, but then it’s muddled, but if you take away two, that one thing feels like it has a bright white spotlight on it.

In a Marvel film where elegant exposition is the only way that you can accomplish the film not dragging - especially at the beginning of the film ‘cause there’s so much exposition to be done. Who is this person? What are their powers? What is their background?

Mix Stage

One of the most gratifying pieces of feedback we’ve gotten from people who haven’t been to a Marvel movie in a long time, or haven’t caught up with all the TV shows is  they say, “We were able to follow along even though we hadn’t seen Black Widow or Falcon in the Winter Soldier.

That’s a testament to that careful balance of the writing and then the production, and then ultimately an editorial choice about exposition – maintaining that pace we were constantly looking for.

How did you two collaborate? How did you pick who did which scenes? Then once the scenes were cut in dailies did you swap them back and forth?

CATANZARO: We did. We were cutting on set, which was a first for me and that was a very big adjustment for us. Initially when we were splitting things up, we had an idea that it would be nice if one of us could start on set, be there for four or five days, depending on the shooting schedule.

So if a sequence was being shot over three days then one of us would cover that, and then maybe the other would take over.

We obviously had to juggle things around because the schedule is changing constantly, so we had to be very flexible and be able to move at a moment’s notice. So that’s how we started splitting things up.

And if one of us was on first unit - for example – on the vault fight or the lab fight, then when it came time for second unit to pick up material for that sequence, then the person who had been on set for main unit would also go to second unit to make sure that all those holes were filled with shots that would work perfectly. So we were on set every day, all day.

We didn’t have a lot of time in the cutting room. It was absolute madness. I have so much respect for folks in production. I don’t know how they do it. It was fun. There’s a family obviously that you form with the people on set.

That’s how we started initially, then when we got back to editorial we tried to make a plan for how we would get into the director’s cut.

Harry and I initially thought that it made sense to split the film in two because he had ended up cutting a lot of material for the first half of the movie and a lot of what I had been on set for was part of the back half the movie, but Jake weighed in and we reorganized things by splitting it up by alternating reels.

YOON: My original pitch was similar to what Nat Sanders and I ended up doing for Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, where I had the back half of the film and he had the front half, but because of how Jake wanted to work when we came back from set - which was a very intensive director’s cut where – cut-for-cut - he wanted to double check that we had gotten the performance that he remembered or shot-structure-wise that we were executing on what he originally planned.

That’s not surprising to us because one of the reasons that we were on set was because - for him - shot structure and pre-planning the cut in his head and determining what coverage he’s gonna get was something that Jake had done a tremendous amount of preparation for, particularly in our action sequences.

He’s definitely not one of those directors that does a kind of hose-down of coverage - even in traditional dialogue scenes. So he’s constantly trying to figure out how do we make this visually interesting and how do we make it elegant in the cut.

So it was a very intensive director’s cut. One of the most intensive I think that both Angela and I have experienced. I think it gave us a very strong sense of Jake’s specificity of vision and how clear he had a plan for the film from the very beginning.

1st Assistant Editor Irene Chun with the “small rig” on set

Because we’re talking about onset editing, I just wanna give a shout out of gratitude to our amazing firsts in Atlanta - Irene Chun, who I worked with on Shang Chi - and Scott Jacobs.

After we moved back to L.A., Leslie Webb took over for Scott, but assistants don’t normally have to not only set up a cutting room and set up a mobile rig. Assistants don’t usually have to buy gloves so that they can wrap cable because we have to constantly be moving.

Even when we’re on a stage, we thought, “We’ll have a nice little quiet corner and that’s where we’ll be.”

No! When they turn the camera around everybody has to move! It’s this chaotic but beautiful dance of all these carts moving from one side of the stage to the other or being in a tent in the rain on a night shoot because there’s no room for us inside the apartment where they’re shooting.

It was such a lesson in learning new things and having to be mobile, having to be physical, having to be flexible in a way that most of us don’t have to do that. I realized how much editors are in some ways kind of ‘hot house flowers’ because we’re so used to our cup of tea in our quiet room.

CATANZARO: It’s reliable. It’s predictable. You can turn the light off. Close the shades. It’s amazing. No lightning to deal with.

I switched from camera to editing. Why? Because it’s air conditioned and you get lunch! I’ve been on set a couple of times - edited on set. So how were they delivering material to you from the camera?

CATANZARO: We were connected to Jesse Olivares, the Key Video Assist Engineer.

YOON: The reason our first assistants had to constantly be moving cable was we were connected via ethernet to his hard drive, and as soon as he pressed stop after Jake yelled, “Cut” we grabbed that file, copied it over to our own external hard drive and AMA-linked it in our project and had to have it cut in because literally the time we had was the time between Jake saying, “Cut” and was walking over to our system from Video Village, which was maybe 20 seconds, 30 seconds.

He’d come up to us and say, “Okay, show me.” Then the First AD would yell, “Waiting on editorial!” So the whole set knew that we were the holdup basically.

CATANZARO: So, not stressful at all! Not stressful at all!

YOON: No, not at all.

CATANZARO: Everybody stopped down on this enormous Marvel movie waiting for you. When we started I wondered how much time is he really gonna spend with us? He’s busy! He’s directing this movie.

We’re just putting stuff together here on the side and we’ll be a valuable reference when he wants us. But he visited us a LOT. Much more than I had imagined, but I’m glad because that made us feel it was worthwhile being there because we were a resource that was definitely used.

Did you have an assistant station AND an editing station?

YOON: No, it was one station. There’s no way that we could have had two carts. We used to have a bigger cart with a double monitor set up that was like a traditional Avid desk.

Pretty soon we realized that in some spaces that was too big, so we had  much more of a one unit cart set up with a laptop and  a big monitor up above, and a bunch of cable on the back with handles so that we could move it - big wheels.

We were very proud by the end because people weren’t waiting for us to get set up anymore. We were part of that dance. We knew the Grip Electric to talk to get our power. We were no longer the new kids on the block. We had been hazed. We had been “jumped in” to production.

Irene working on the “small rig” on set

CATANZARO: Yeah, that felt good. I learned a lot of new jargon and it was fantastic to be part of that process.

YOON: I think it was great for Jake on the set because we were a little bit of a refuge. As he walked over he could think things over, but he could also check with us to make sure we have it. I think that was nice to be able to reassure him in real time.

Because on most films, they call at the end of the day and you can let them know that they got everything you need, but to be able to do that in real time so that he could say, “Okay, moving on to the next setup.”

CATANZARO: Yes. We could see it.

YOON: It was pressure, but it was also great to start establishing that credibility and that trust and to be able to give him that reassurance because my gosh, the kind of pressure that a director is under on a film of this scale with a crew this large and a budget this large, it’s crushing, so I think any place where he can find refuge and reassurance is a really good place.

As much as the cut reassured him, I think it was great for him to have a place where he could feel that bit by bit there were little victories for him through the day.

CATANZARO: There were moments or days where he would bring specific actors over to take a look at a scene. The things that they were being asked to do as actors - some days there were some weird things they had to do.

And I think being able to show them proof-of-concept: “Here’s how it’s coming together. This is what it looks  in the cut.” That was probably a really valuable thing for him to be able to show the actors, “Hey, look! It’s working. It looks great.”

YOON: Angela, you had a really good example with Julia and the void flashback.

CATANZARO: The actors do this head turn to get us into the void. Walker does it. Val does it into her void flashback. It’s a cut on the head turn.

So we go from one location into the void space. I don’t think the actors fully understood what that transition could look like or what it was meant to be, and to be able to show them that cut on the set was really nice.

I remember showing Julia Louis Dreyfus the transition into the void space, and she was blown away. So that was great to be able to do that. Normally, she wouldn’t have seen it until a screening much, much, much later in the process.

So there’s so much trust that you get from your cast when you can show them immediately, “Hey, all these crazy things we’re doing? It’s working. So hang in there.”

YOON: It was great for the stunt people to see physically how their body movements were translating on set or rhythmically what piece of the movements that we were gonna use, how this punch or this kick looked in the context of the cut.

It was great for the hair and makeup people to ask, “Are you gonna use that angle? ‘cause I was a little worried about the stray hair in that angle.

Oh, it’s so great that you’re not using it!” Or for a costumer say, “In that take the strap was loose, but it looks like you’re using a different take.”

It was so great for everybody on set. They were so happy we were there. The only people that it wasn’t great for was us in some ways because  we helped everybody do their jobs in a way, but it really compromised our ability to do our job.

CATANZARO: Yeah. We had no downtime. We were always, needing to be doing something or showing something or bringing something in, or linking media.

Notes

I’ve been on set before too, and you lose a lot of time compared to what you do in a normal dailies edit.

YOON: So much of that is digesting the footage, watching it, organizing it. There’s a dialogue you’re having with the footage and with the shot structure and with the intent of the scene. We didn’t have the downtime to be able to do that.

Early on in the process we had a conversation with Jake, telling him, “We’re a little concerned, because the time that we thought we would have downtime - which was when second unit was shooting - now you’re asking us to be with second unit, so we are not having time to do the best editor’s cut possible.

Jake reassured us. He said, “If that’s the compromise, then I’m happy to make that compromise because you guys don’t know it yet, but the director’s cut is gonna be very intensive. I’m gonna be reexamining everything anyway.

But to have you here so that we can all have assurance that we’re getting it is a good trade off for us to make.”

CATANZARO: And talk about “cutting from your gut” through your first reaction to the footage! I always maintain that is the most important.

And that’s really all you’ve got to go with on set. You don’t have time to. A/B: “This take or this take?”

You see something and that’s what’s going in the cut. That’s what we’re shipping at the end of the day back to editorial so they can overcut it the next day because we were just cutting with these AMA-linked video tap files.

So we relied on our instincts to get that first cut out the door.

Avid timeline, reel 6. © MARVEL 2025

You mentioned how in-depth the director’s cut was and that you were each working on different reels. How did he work with you? Did he just jump back and forth? There was always just one person working with the director on whatever reel he wanted to work on? Did you ever get in the same room, the three of you at the same time?

YOON: In that part of the process, it was pretty rare other than when we would screen a part of the cut. It was very rare for us to be in the room at the same time because it was such an intensive process for him.

He was going back and forth, but not in the same day, for example, days with one, one editor days with another editor.

So it was a very unusual process for us because we’re used to the imperative thing being, “Okay, let’s get to a cut so that we can screen it so that we can make adjustments. But I think for Jake it was so clear to him what he wanted from moment to moment, and he wanted to the time to really build that.

I see the editor’s cut as much more of a layout of everything that you have on the canvas. But the director’s cut is whatever process the director needs to go through to say everything that they intend to say or lay out all of their intentions.

Then the audience encounters that and you discover the gaps between what they meant to say and what the audience is actually hearing.

But for Jake, that intention was so specific - really specific moment to moment - that we needed to do that deep dive and those really intensive sessions. Literally at the end of every day he’d ask, “Okay, how many minutes have we done?”

CATANZARO: Yes. He was very focused on the math.

Jake and Florence at picture wrap

YOON: Did we accomplish the number of minutes of screen time that we need? He had broken down how many minutes we needed to accomplish by week eight.

He had backtracked on the math based upon what he thought the TRT was gonna be and so that was our measure of success or failure for that day. It was really intense.

CATANZARO: Some days we had really great days. We get through three minutes! Then others days it was “Oh, we got through 38 seconds today… but 38 great seconds!”

Harry and I would’ve been happy to be in each other’s rooms and part of that process, but I think it was important early on for Jake to have as few voices as possible while he is putting together what he envisioned.

Then it did become more collaborative after that. But he was very clear on what he wanted to see the first time around. Then it was open to changes and playing around with things. And of course we did a lot of that - some structural changes - then within scenes a lot, as you do.

YOON: It was a good reminder for both of us of  how important it is that whatever we have to do to adjust to whatever is gonna allow the director to flourish - In spite of  how it might hit our egos or insecurities or our fears - ‘cause there were times where he was working intensively in Angela’s room and I didn’t have enough to do for that day, and some part of me was thinking, “I feel I’m being underutilized.

I feel less useful. I feel less in control of the process,” and I just needed to just keep reminding myself that if this is the best way for Jake to do his best work, then we have to adjust to that.

Post crew in the elevator

CATANZARO: Yes.

YOON: Whatever we have to do emotionally or mentally to make that adjustment, that’s what we’re gonna do.

Our being versatile and being able to suppress our own egos a little bit through that process established credibility with him and I think it made our cutting rooms and our team a safe space because we understood how to create that environment ultimately for him to do his best work.

I was going to ask about whether one of you was doing his notes while the other was working with him, but it sounds like he wasn’t giving you notes to do by yourself. It was, “Let’s do this right now, together. I want to choose this exact moment and let’s perfect it.”

CATANZARO: Harry had a pull-up bar in his office doing pull-ups. Early on we had a group plank session where we would actually hold a plank. I think we got up to two minutes or something. So we had activities, exercise and whatnot to keep us busy.

YOON: It was funny ‘cause there was a song that originally played in the limo when Alexei turns on the music and the disco ball goes on. There was this really great song and we just played that and we could determine how well we were planking by how far into that song that we got.

Crew bowling in Atlanta

CATANZARO: There was obviously plenty to do. We had score coming in from the composer throughout the project, and there was a lot of it, so there were things to listen to and I was listening to other score and we were always working with visual effects and sound effects.

We got pretty deep into our own sound work with the help of our incredible assistants. There was stuff to keep us busy. We just weren’t under the gun all the time in those initial weeks of director’s cut.

You mentioned your assistants. What kind of work do you do to try to get them prepared or to advance them in their careers?

CATANZARO: Harry and I are both mentors, so we enjoy helping our assistants get in the swing of things.

How specifically, Angela?

CATANZARO: I always try when I’m asking for something to say, “Hey, we need to do this or this. Here’s why.” Because a lot of times I feel - especially when you’re tight on time - you can give an instruction, but I think it is also important to explain  “Why are we doing this?

What does it do for the story? What’s the overall takeaway? Why is this important for us in this moment?” So really explaining that. Our assistants weren’t able to be in the room with us all of the time, but anytime they were able to be involved, we obviously involved them and asked for feedback.

Having that open dialogue about the cut is really important to get them thinking. A lot of times the assistant job becomes very technical.

When you start cutting, it’s a whole different world, so to get them thinking more like an editor and not just about the things that they’re doing as an assistant.

Editorial Wrap Dinner

YOON: That’s a great point. I’m constantly screening with them, whether it’s their work or my work. So if I’ve asked them to do a sound pass, we come into my room and we scan it together and then we discuss. It’s so great to have assistants that are engaged in that way.

We already talked about our firsts - Irene Chun and Leslie Webb - but shout out to our incredible seconds - Jayda Cardoza and Abby Boyle. Woo hoo. It really was a dream team because we had assistants that just got it as far as the kind of commitment.

Going the extra mile. They had wonderful taste and they had incredible technical skills too. So great with music, great with dialogue cleanup, great with temp visual effects.

A lot of our assistants knew not just, how to do a temp VFX in the AVID, but also in compositing programs too. And we needed all hands on deck ‘cause we’re, as you might imagine, there’s so much that’s visual effects heavy.

But not just what you would imagine. I think there was, again, the level of specificity that Jake was going for is that we’re doing constantly roading, split comps, little pan outs here and there. And our assistants would turn those things around so quickly, but I think it’s that screening process where they come in.

And just having them in the room and just hearing them talk about a particular choice or a or B choices as far as an execution of a note was so critical. And I think a really good learning opportunity for them.

And it was wonderful to see that team, that really large team gel. They got so close. Yeah, it was a little bit too much for Jake sometimes who was trying to concentrate. ‘cause  they were so delighted in one another’s company that we had to constantly be saying, “Guys, keep it down. Keep it down, ‘cause they were so having fun with one another.”

CATANZARO: And we had a great editorial Slack channel. We shared jokes and memes and things, but also just  I need an emergency temp comp who’s available, and any one of four, six people would respond. It was just.

Everybody was always happy to jump in whenever someone needed something right away. It was really an incredible group.

YOON: Before we go on I definitely want to shout out to our incredible VFX editors as well.  Angela already mentioned, Steve Bobertz, but Francisco Ramirez, Corbin Mehl, and Matt Tassone. Some of the temp comps that they did look like the vendor had finished the shot!

It was such a luxury, because I think you can always get execution, but you don’t always get taste. I would ask Francisco, for example, for a temp comp that was blood on the face or something like that, and he would say, “I know this blood can’t be too noticeable in the wide, so here’s where I put it.”

They were always thinking about the cut beyond the shot or about the storytelling that the comp needed to do. It’s so amazing to have everybody on the team be a filmmaker.

CATANZARO: And anticipating needs! A hundred percent!

Post Crew at screening , (Mikey Chun, Jayda Cardoza, Abby Boyle, Jolie McCauley, Irene Chun)

You mentioned cleanup of dialogue. How much beyond just making sure it’s trimmed and faded at each end, are you talking about? Are you talking about putting an Izotope effect? What kind of cleanup were they doing?

YOON: We had assistants that were masters at Izotope. Not just to clean up background noise, to isolate dialogue, but also  we are experimenting with voice effects. What does “Dark Bob” sound like? What does the voice of The Void sound like?

So as we were going through and before we turned it over to our sound designers we wanted to give Jake a range of choices.

And a lot of what the assistants came up with for those temp effects were the template that the sound designers used for those kinds of voice processing.

CATANZARO: It was fun to be on the mix stage and for Jake to say, “But what did we have in the Avid?” And that was him asking for an effect that Jayda had worked out for The Void in the sky over New York.

I always like to talk about intercutting. One of the things that I was thinking about was intercutting Yelena starting The Vault assignment, where she’s outside looking at somebody going through the door intercut with Valentina.

YOON: Valentina’s at the warehouse that’s being emptied.

Was it scripted as intercut?

YOON: It was scripted. It was tricky ‘cause we were constantly adjusting the timing and we were adjusting the wording of her introduction.

We needed space for that first shot of the vault to feel impactful, but we also couldn’t slow down too long because we needed to get through a lot of Yelena walking and seeing Ghost and all those little beats as well as storytelling that needed to happen.

Emphasizing, “Okay, if you want to make a shift in the way that you work, I’m very open to it and tonally what needed to happen, which is slightly sarcastic, slightly rye, slightly ironic, which is one of the things that Julia does so masterfully so that you understood that it might be slightly disingenuous what she’s saying.

That was such an iterative process to balance all of those things so that it feels like the beginning of Yelena’s journey. It has that kind of excitement, but we’re also doing all of that storytelling. One of the things that Jake really prioritized for the visuals is that it’s not just cool shots.

Although his favorite shot of the whole movie is the one where the elevator door reveals Yelena’s face and she looks like such a badass.

When we shot that, the whole crew went, “Oooooh!” It was awesome. He also wanted to lay out the game board basically to say these are the steps that the ‘bolts - when they’re trying to escape this – this is the game board that they need to traverse backwards.

So he wanted to establish that as well because the geography of the vault is a little unusual because it goes down and it goes through these little gates basically.

So there was a lot to do there. That was definitely one of the sequences that we kept revisiting time and time again.

I was also thinking about staying ahead of the audience on that because when they all start to encounter each other, it becomes - not completely clear, but you start to wonder whether this is a setup, right? You don’t wanna let the audience get ahead of that, but you also want the audience to participate in that, right?

YOON: Absolutely. That vault sequence is one of the first things we shot and one of the first things where Jake was really talking about how important it was for us to have editorial there, because it’s those slight moments of “what the hell is happening?”

Or those lines of dialogue: “You’re not my target! You are!” “I’m yours!” or “You’re mine!” Those little clues that give you a sense of not just great action, but something is going on here that’s unusual.

It was those intersecting lines of movement as well as eye-lines that needed to be perfect so that you understood who was going after whom in that, and that it was this kind of dance of targets, basically.

Kudos to Heidi Moneymaker, our stunt supervisor for putting together that sequence and then not only training the actors, but training the stunt people to make sure that looked as dynamic and as physical as possible ‘cause I think that really sets the tone for the kind of action you’re gonna see.

It’s  great punching, kicking, and shooting basically. And it was a really wonderful sequence to establish that.

CATANZARO: I do think in that sequence in particular that is maybe one of the first, - if not the first - that we saw storyboards for. Harry, I think you had mentioned, maybe wanting to insert another little character moment or a look from Yelena so that we can keep tracking her throughout this.

It’s very easy - especially on set when there’s so many moving parts and so much action that you have to cover in such short amount of time - for those things to get lost.

So I think it was another reason that it was really important for us to be there, to just be mindful of how these pieces are coming together so that they don’t just connect from a continuity standpoint, but so that we’re also being very mindful of tracking the characters and how they’re feeling throughout this entire scene. 

YOON: It was a very unique experience to be able to mention how we might need a line here and then to see it happen on set ‘cause  normally there’s such a delay between our ideas and when they can be executed. Often it’s a delay of months, but to see it happen in real time was really exciting.

CATANZARO: I know a lot of movies talk about having extensive previs and that you could nearly have the movie edited before you even go to camera. We did not have that.

We did have storyboards, but a lot of it, we were just putting it together on the day. And obviously Jake had the plan in his head, but we didn’t have a previs roadmap.

You seem to have loved this idea of being on set so much. Do you think that will work for other films? Is it budget? Is it time? Is it the director’s vision? What keeps you from suggesting this for your next movie?

CATANZARO: There are times when I do feel it it’s incredibly helpful. Specifically for these action sequences.

I guess it’s easier for us to be on set and doing our work on those days because it takes a longer time to set up these shots and the piece of material that you’re putting into the cut is generally pretty short, so it’s pretty easy to show whether a shot is working or this isn’t working.

What I don’t think it is necessarily all that helpful is if you have a day when there’s a lengthy dialogue scene or the takes are gonna be really long and there are a lot of resets. It’s very difficult to make choices just because you haven’t had a chance to absorb all of the material.

You barely get the take copied over and the resets marked, before they’re onto the next take or the take after that, so you’re always playing a little bit of catch up when you’re cutting a dialogue scene on set.

But I think for things where the continuity is critical, especially if it’s a big action sequence that’s going to be shot over multiple days, or you’ve got two days of the sequence at the beginning of the schedule, and then you’re returning to it to finish up two weeks later after everybody’s forgotten where they were and what they were doing: those are the days where I think it is absolutely critical for an editor to be there and be participating.

YOON: It’s also a budget consideration. They had to house us. They had to house our first assistants. Transportation. All the extra equipment that we needed, because  we not only had our Avids in our offices, but we had these mobile rigs that we had put together.

So there’s a learning curve too. It definitely felt like we got better at it, and now I think it might be a little bit physically easier because we know what to expect and we know how to set things up. I think for editors or for teams that haven’t done that, there’s definitely a learning curve.

Let’s talk about the overall pacing of the movie: the revelation of when story beats happen, how long to stay in each scene or sequence, how did that evolve as you were editing?

YOON: Even from an editor’s cut standpoint this movie was remarkably “to time.” Normally your first cut is  maybe 30 minutes to 45 minutes - sometimes an hour - past what your target TRT is ultimately gonna be. How are we gonna get through all that material?

For us it was a question of a few minutes difference. We might’ve added additional photography material, but then we were able to shave down what was there so that the TRT kind of hovered five minutes over and under from where we started, which is really remarkable for a film in this genre.

CATANZARO: We were always around two hours.

YOON: So much of that back and forth had to do with clarity. And again, that tension between exposition and pace, especially at the beginning of the movie: the load of exposition that you have to have of who are these people?

What are their backgrounds? What are their powers? What’s at stake for them? When you have an ensemble movie like this, it becomes even more complicated.

And when you have villains that are not traditional villains. Valentina is amoral in some ways, but she’s not traditionally evil in the way that a different villain who  kills a bunch of people are evil.

She does kill people or intend to kill people, but  she’s a slightly more nuanced villain as is ultimately Bob the way he turns and trying to establish the reasons for his turn and the timing for his turn.

So much of our pacing decisions had to do with how do we make sure that the audience is following along the arcs and the justifications for all the decisions and the emotional points that all of these characters go through.

There was a lot of negotiation. A lot of trying, “What if we take this out? Are we taking out basically fat? Are we taking out muscle and bone at that point?”

And a lot of our discussions were around that and I think that’s where Marvel’s process - and particularly Kevin and Lou coming into the cutting room - really shines because they’ve been down this road many times and they’re really great at being patient with us ‘cause I think they have the surgical edits that they want us to make, but they’re also saying “Why don’t you try this?” Or “Why don’t you try that?”

Then it’s that sort of  back and forth that ultimately gets us to a place where we’ve hopefully achieved that balance.

Also, our testing process is incredibly rigorous. The audience is constantly telling you through their notes or through their comments, or even just being in the room with them, what pacing issues that you have.

CATANZARO: That really helped us hone in on where we needed to focus our attention in terms of tightening things up. A lot of that work was done in the early scenes in the vault and the gala, just to keep things moving.

Those scenes - obviously there is some exposition there, they’re very important. They’re not big set pieces. There’s not a lot happening.

So we wanted to be able to move through that as quickly as possible without sacrificing anything that might be important to know about any of the characters. So that was happening very slowly for some people.

But then we got feedback from multiple screenings that people felt the end was happening too quickly for them.

The resolution was coming too soon, so we were able to - through additional photography - beef that up and hopefully what we settled with is satisfying in terms of pace.

I think in our last few screenings it seemed we had solved whatever issues we had pace-wise.

YOON: I have a specific example of how that sort of really careful exposition evolved, particularly for the Bob character because you not only have to establish him as lovable Bob when we first meet him, but he has to be someone who then turns into Sentury, which has very different emotional characteristics and personality.

So to track that and to justify those shifts for the audience, we realized we had to be  surgically specific with how he was described.

Early on we were using multiple terms - or terms that didn’t really focus in on one particular aspect of his problems- but what we started to do was harmonize those terms consistantly around the idea of instability.

“You don’t know what you’re gonna get. He’s unstable.” What that started to do was explain to the audience: “Of course these shifts are gonna happen. It’s because he’s unstable.”

When we were able to do that, then the audience started to accept these big leaps that the character went through.

That’s when I realized how important wording is. How important  consistency of wording is. Particularly when you’re trying to justify where a character goes.

Which one of you cut the “Who’s this old Santa” scene?

CATANZARO: This is a case - and this happened a lot - where we inherited one another’s cuts. I think I did the first cut on the set. Being on set for that scene was pretty incredible.

I’m a fan of the MCU, so even though it was a set - the penthouse was a set - it is the introduction of the interior of such an iconic location that has existed in MCU and been so important to the MCU for many years, so that was very cool.

It was nice to see them all together. I feel like there are some very iconic team shots in there. Specifically that Old Santa line: Harry, how many takes do you think we had? Oh my God, so many and we changed them throughout.

So I was on set for the initial assembly of that scene, and then it ended up in reel five which became Harry’s. So after that first pass it really was Harry.

BACK ROW - Mikey Chun (Post PA), Jayda Cardoza (2nd Asst), Margaret Huntington (Post Coord), Francisco Ramirez (VFX Editor), Adam Cole (Post Super), Alex Levy (Music Editor), Kristie Lee (VFX Coord.), Megan Schneider (Marvel Post Coord.), 

MIDDLE ROW - Steve Bobertz (VFX Editor), Veronica Diaz (VFX Prod Manager), Jordan Streeter (VFX PA), 

FRONT ROW - Leslie Webb (1st Asst), Abby Boyle (2nd Asst), Harry Yoon, Irene Chun, Angela Catanzaro

YOON: The shot structure of that scene is two things: It’s a physical thing of the Thunderbolt net closing around her.

You have to establish that they’re slightly moving forward, that they’re surrounding her, so every so often you have to cut to wides or you have to cut to, wider shots to show that they’re taking positions around her, then near the end of that scene eventually they’ve closed that net bit by bit. It’s also a dance of eyelines.

Valentina’s talking to a lot of different people and people are looking to each other, so we are constantly looking for what is the most efficient eyeline shift that tells you that?

Valentina’s looking at Walker, and then here is Bucky and Walker looks to Bucky then we pick up Bucky.

Those were the rhythmic shifts that we were doing to show everybody’s looking at each other and everybody’s relative position. But there was so much material because Jake really wanted to show relative positions, and for Jake,  eyeline is supremely important - really important - because I think he shoots like an editor.

That was basically what we were focused on: to make sure that closed in an efficient way and everybody said what they needed to say. In some ways it’s a great example of how they’re finally working as a team. They’re ready to be a team together.

Of course after this first battle they realize, “Oh shoot! We might not be enough.” But I think this is definitely a place where you start to feel, “They’ve got this situation in hand.” Until they don’t.

David Harbor is just so great when he is doing improv so there are SO many different takes on his reactions or different reads of his line. It was really hilarious, so I think picking the right one was definitely a lot of fun and a challenge.

CATANZARO: And Val’s reaction - the timing of that and just trying to dial in her reaction for the comedy: her “What?” Or if she doesn’t say anything. I think we tried a lot of different things there.

YOON: That beat in particular gave me so much respect for editors who specialize in comedy because it is such a game of frames. Not to say that all editing ultimately is, but it hinges so much in a way. You either get the laugh or you don’t.

If you can get those frames right - and kudos to the folks who do comedy on a regular basis - it is hard.

CATANZARO: In that scene also there were so many choices right after Sentry is introduced. Val talking about his hair. There was an additional bit about the hair that’s not in the movie: talking about the color scheme, the blue and the gold.

There was a lot of material in that scene and unfortunately a lot of it is on the cutting room floor, but hopefully the end result is successful. 

Thank you both for joining me on Art of the Cut. It’s so nice to get so much wisdom about editing from both of you.

YOON: Thank you, Steve. It was awesome.

CATANZARO: Thank you so much Steve. Great talking to you.