In a recent podcast by The Streaming Show, we heard Bollywood’s A-List editors talking about their role and challenges they have to face. We heard exclusive takes on actors and their shortcomings that surfaced during a film’s editing. Nitin Baid who has worked with filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar and Antara Lahiri who worked on series like Modern Love: Mumbai and Delhi crime shared their opinions candidly.
In recent years, we see more and more of the Astral Universe mega budget films, blockbusters that showcase unbelievable action or even a simple drama movie highly dependent on editing. We are ready to believe that the great performance is entirely the product of an actor, in those moments we need to remind ourselves that it is the wonder of editors that is making us sense a cinematic spectacle.
The editors revealed that good actors like Ranveer and Alia make an editor’s work easy but even with bad actors the vision in the post production could help save the scenes by using alternate cuts. More often than not it is the director who is able to take out the best shot from their actors. Shoojit Sircar for one, don’t we all adore a different side of Varun Dhawan’s acting skills that he unleashed in October!
The technological advances in filmmaking and the editor’s underappreciated role is able to deliver even a terrible performance in a palatable way. Keep that in mind the next time you go to watch a movie and you’ll be amazed.
