Case Study: Lisa Gunning

Lisa Gunning began her career as a film editor in the late 1990s, after studying English at University College London. She worked on commercials at The Whitehouse, a post production company based in London. In 1998 a chance meeting with director Anthony Minghella while working on a Comic Relief short sparked a long-running collaboration.

Gunning then cut Minghella's Guinness commercial Mustang, worked on his Samuel Beckett adaptation Play and headed out to the States to cut promos for The Talented Mr Ripley. She also worked on two shorts - Starched and Spin - with director Cath Le Couteur. A few years later Minghella offered Gunning her first feature, editing Breaking And Entering. She's currently working with director John Madden and executive producer Quentin Tarantino on witness protection thriller Killshot...

First interest in editing...

"I was pretty young. I was literally banging my head against the television as a little kid trying to get inside it, so that was a bit of a sign. I was always fascinated with films and stories, basically. I did an English degree at University College, London and I loved talking about stories. After that I went into advertising, which I hated. I left there to go and work on a film set. I also love music - it's my favourite thing. So I thought, what can I do to combine stories and music and the visual arts? I'm a bit of a control freak too so I thought it would be perfect to be in control of all those elements and move people with it. I was really lucky. I happened to get an opportunity early on to work in a cutting room and that was it."

"I started totally at the bottom. I just ran around Soho with tapes and stuff. I stalked this guy who was cutting Jonathan Glazer's commercials. I found out who he was and basically followed him around until he gave me a job. Fortunately he wasn't alarmed - he actually thought it was quite funny."

First job in editing...

"My first commercial work, I guess, was when a friend of mine got me this job cutting an Air Emirates commercial down in Australia. I couldn't believe my luck. I didn't know what I was doing... I still don't know what I'm doing but back then I really didn't know what I was doing! But I've done loads of things: a lot of my friends are artists so I did lots of art installations, pop videos. One of the first things I did was a trailer for a porn film my friend was making. It was pretty hardcore!

"There was a time I did adverts for Domestos, Tampax, any of that. One of the first things I did was a job for Comic Relief - all the other editors turned it down because they were all doing Nike and Levi's and other swanky commercials. We didn't know who the director was - and then in walks Anthony Minghella. I got on really well with him and he was just brilliant. I cut this beautiful film about dropping Third World debt and we just got on like a house on fire. He asked me to go to San Francisco to help with the promos for The Talented Mr Ripley. I met my hero Walter Murch, who was cutting the film and who's Anthony's usual feature editor. So I was there cutting rushes next to his room, which was really scary! Then Anthony got me to work on this Samuel Beckett film [Play] he was doing for Channel 4. It was completely experimental and I had a license to do absolutely anything, which was great."

Transition from shorts...

"It was terrifying! It was literally a complete shock to me. I'd never even assisted on a feature film. I'm not a techie at all - the technical side of things is very low on my list of personal priorities - so I hadn't really paid much attention to what you're supposed to do. So I had to do lots of research and work out the workflows and things like that. I took my assistant with me who'd also never done a feature film, so both of us were completely green about the whole thing. But because of that we were completely paranoid that we'd make a mistake so we literally tested everything, planned everything - we were so on it! And somehow we managed to muddle through the technical side of it." "The bigger side of it is just dealing with that magnitude of material and thinking about stories over that period of time. It's just a different discipline. Strangely, my English degree really helped. For some reason everything I'd learnt at college became useful, for once in my life. Studying English literature is all about analysing things and breaking them down into their components. It's really similar because editing a film is all about structure too. So it seemed quite familiar to me to be dealing with things on such an epic scale and it was actually way more enjoyable and enriching and meaningful than anything I'd done before. Things like developing characters over time is fascinating, especially with someone like Anthony. His writing is so complicated and subtle. Working on a feature is much more satisfying - much more work, sadly, but way more satisfying."

Favourite aspect of editing...

"The thing I enjoy the most is when I feel like I've exhausted every single way I can think of for cutting a scene together. If I can press play and watch a scene and think that I've done everyone justice, it's great. There's so many people involved in the filmmaking process: from someone who bought a handbag for an actress, someone who's constructed the set or the focus puller or whoever.

"If you can do everyone justice by showing the right frames to move the audience... it's like a magic trick. You take the raw material and make something that people can melt into. It's magic, it's amazing. The irony is that when it's done properly no one even notices that it's happened. I'm quite hippy-ish about it, I think it's quite cosmic!"

Least favourite aspect of editing...

"When I see that something is being blanded out by consensus. I've seen it happen in advertising and I've seen it happen in movies too. You know, you get a lot of people with a lot of opinions and I am so up for anything that makes a film better. Any kind of opinion or input is brilliant - you need that. But when I see things getting watered down... it's frustrating for me to be part of a situation where the film's being watered down by marketing or something like that. I'd rather try and find solutions that keep the integrity of the film and satisfy the marketing perspective. The other thing is that it's very tiring - but I can't really say that's something I don't like. It's a challenge and, you know, nothing good in this world comes easily."

What makes a good editor?

"I'd say it really helps if you love music. Music has its own narrative, its own stops and starts and ebbs and flows. There's something very musical about editing for me. Dialogue has its own music. You know when you like a song it feels right to you in some way? That's how I know a sequence is working - it's that kind of structural thing. An open mind is very important, being open to every suggestion no matter how ridiculous it may sound. I've been proved wrong so many times. Someone has said something and I've said, 'That's a ****ing stupid idea,' but when I've gone and done it it's been brilliant!Jude Law and Juliette Binoche in Breaking And Entering"To avoid humiliation on a large scale I'd suggest being very, very open! Being able to laugh at everything also helps. No one's going to die but things do get quite serious and intense. Keeping everything in perspective is quite a good thing. And just being sensitive. People are very fragile when they're being creative and you have to empathise and look after them."

Disagreements with directors...

"I have disagreements with directors all the time! Totally! There's no point in me being there if I don't challenge the director. I try not to give them too hard a time but it's a process where the joy of it is a team effort. If you can't challenge a director or work with a sense of friction, it's not going to help anyone. If everyone's got their antennae out and can say what they think, then you're much more likely to get a good result than if the director's in a bubble thinking he's right all the time. Luckily the people I've been working with... they want, they need to have opinions thrown at them. Otherwise, I might as well just be pushing buttons and not thinking. I love it, it's chemistry."

Advice for budding editors

"What's great now is that there's all this YouTube stuff. There's much more opportunity these days to be able to get your hands on some film or shoot some film yourself and just cut it. I can only go on what I did, which was see someone I admired and tried and work with them. Have a look at some commercials you like, find out who did them and go and stalk them until they give you a job! Or, if you're not that lucky or you don't live in London or whatever, try and get your hands on some film and cut it together and see what you can do because it's amazing and magical. Try and get a job as an assistant or work as a runner and just work your way up. It's the only way to do it. It's a wonderful job to do, I'd recommend it to anyone. Anyone who's a bit of a nerd like me!"

Jamie Russell | Published 04 Apr 07