Making the cut with the editor of The Dark Knight, Inception, Dunkirk and 1917 – WTOP

From superhero action in "The Dark Knight" to science-fiction dreams in "Inception," Oscar-winning editor Lee Smith breaks down his career cutting for Christopher Nolan and Sam Mendes.

WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with Oscar-winning editor Lee Smith

Hes spliced together images for the biggest movies of our time, from superhero action in The Dark Knight to science-fiction dreams in Inception to gritty warfare in Dunkirk.

Now, just in time for 1917 to hit digital on Tuesday, WTOP caught up withOscar-winning editor Lee Smith to break down his career cutting for Christopher Nolan and Sam Mendes.

You get a little less anonymous around award season, but for the majority of the time, you can be quite happily anonymous, Smith told WTOP. Although, I do get the person walk up to me now and say, Wow, I follow all your movies! Im always shocked.

Born in Sydney, Australia in 1960, Smith grew up watching the great Hollywood epics.

I remember my parents taking me to cinemas to see films like Bridge on the River Kwai Battle of Britain and Lawrence of Arabia,' Smith said. I [also] really loved 2001.

That means he witnessed Anne Coates cut from match to sunrise in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Ray Lovejoys cut from bone to satellite in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

I think were the sum of everything thats happened before, Smith said. Theyre all embedded deep in my subconscious. I have a pretty good memory for films. I can see something 20 years ago like I saw it yesterday. So I could be an idiot savant.

His passion was fueled by his father, an optical effects supervisor in the film industry.

I had another in-road although he was in the commercial world not features, Smith said. My main job was making tea and sweeping around the place, but thats the way to learn. You start at the bottom.

He worked his way up not as an editor but as a sound designer for Holly Hunter in Jane Campions The Piano (1993) and Jim Carrey in Peter Weirs The Truman Show (1998).

I concentrated on sound for the first part of my career, then I did a transitional thing where I was working quite a lot with Peter Weirs films as like a junior editor. Then I would be the sound supervisor or sound designer on his films, then eventually I became his editor.

He said his sound editing background is very informative to his job of film editing.

Sound is an incredible way to control peoples emotions and pace and rhythm, Smith said. Its amazing what you can do subtly and subliminally. I have an enormous sound library in my picture-editing [software] Avid that I draw on continuously as Im cutting.

After his work with Weir, he formed a long collaboration with Nolan on the trilogy of Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

This allowed him to edit the Oscar-winning performance of Heath Ledger, whom Smith got to know reasonably well after editing his early Australian film Two Hands (1999).

I saw him several times during the shoot of The Dark Knight on the set and it was always hugely amusing, Smith said.Right from the first day of shooting, I was just completely in awe of how far hed come from doing a low-budget film in Australia to standing there with his back to camera holding onto that mask as he commands the screen.

Hell never forget watching the dailies come in of Ledgers performance.

I was sitting in a small trailer on location with Chris Nolan, the cinematographer and everybody else and were just all sitting there going, Oh, man, this guys amazing, just the way he walks, the way he talks. He brought everything to that role.

Sadly, Ledger died during post-production, meaning Smith watched footage of a ghost.

It was terribly sad, Smith said. We were about 10 or 12 weeks past the end of the shoot. Its of course incredibly sad when anyone passes away, but he was such a brilliant actor and he brought so much to that role. Itwas a great loss that hes no longer with us.

After The Dark Knight, Smith reunited with Nolan on the sci-fi masterpiece Inception (2010), cutting together the dreams within dreams without confusing the audience.

That is the challenge, Smith said. Chris does makevery complicated films and I think my job in the whole process is to try to keep it as understandable as you can, because theres nothing worse than a film where the audience gets lost to the point of being disappointed.

The secret that we were always trying to do with Chris films, Inception, Interstellar, and The Prestige, was being faithful to Chriss original idea but never getting into a point where youd be sitting there as an audience member feeling that youve been left out.

Test screenings proved vital tosee if audiences grasp the intricacies.

Those movies are very finely tuned, Smith said. Some people get them to great minute detail. Other people misunderstand them completely, but they still love them.

Perhaps the biggest challenge wasDunkirk (2017), as Smith had to edit three intercutting timelines: a week on land, a day at sea and an hour in the air during World War II.

There was an enormous amount of cross cutting, Smith said. We did do a lot of jigging around with the aerial stuff. We had to move that around, add and subtract where it came in, so the audience wasnt completely perplexed.

For his efforts, Smith won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing, receiving the award on stage from his former Interstellar colleague Matthew McConaughey.

Most recently, he worked on Mendes World War I epic 1917 (2019), which was edited to appear as if one continuous shot when really it was several long takes stitched together.

Sam and I agreed wed never divulge how many cuts there actually are, Smith said. We didnt know 100 percent that this was going to work, [so] some of those joins were very hair raising. Theres a lot of monkey business in that movie. Thats all I can tell you!

WTOP's Jason Fraley chats with editor Lee Smith (Full Interview)

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Making the cut with the editor of The Dark Knight, Inception, Dunkirk and 1917 - WTOP

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