[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Was it always your plan to be an editor in addition to writing and directing?
R.J. Hanna, Filmmaker: When I started out I did everything on as everyone kind of does when you’re making short films. When I went to USC, even though everyone really was still very early on in their careers in grad school, I just saw right away there were people who were so zeroed in on cinematography, so much more knowledgeable about it. For me, I wasn’t as interested I guess maybe in the set life aspect. I was always about storytelling. I just gravitate more toward editing.
They encourage everyone there to do something that’s more practical, something that you could just do as a job and be hired, whether it’s editing or cinematography or sound or something like that. Also, people pursue their writing, directing all that kind of stuff.
I enjoy editing. It’s certainly not the hardest part of the process per se. I think being on set and getting through those days is hard but it is where you make where you have to make the movie a movie and it’s no longer anything else, it’s not footage, it’s not a script, it’s now we’re making into a movie and we’re putting music on it whether it’s the final music or not, we’re figuring out how it all fits and works.
I just enjoy the process. A really great editor on this movie, Evan Schrodek and I, definitely value and encourage having an editor other than myself to give me perspective and let me see the footage for what it is instead of how I perceive it based on our time on set, just to have more ideas about things.
I did some editing on the movie but very much it’s like working as a team and bouncing things off each other and thinking about how do we tell the story the best way now that we’re here with this footage? It’s definitely a very rewarding part of the process for me.
Film Courage: Did you do the rough cut and then he came in?
R.J.: So it’s more and I did the same thing on my next movie too and even in my first movie a little bit where generally he does the full rough cut (everything like that) and is basically for most of the movie it’s a traditional working situation where he’s editing and I’m giving notes. Sometimes literally a note would take 30 minutes and let’s see if you can make the ending more emotional, not even something I’m specifically saying about characters, let’s just focus on that yourself and then I’ll look at…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Maybe it was growing up in Arkansas as a Canadian, or the summers in rural Ireland with his grandparents, but Daniel has always been drawn to out-of-place characters, strange environments, and the unique rhythms of how people talk. He just completed post on his horror film “Succubus,” starring Ron Perlman and Rosanna Arquette, to be released in 2024. Crossing over 500 screens in the U.S. and beginning its run in the U.K. is his feature “Hard Miles,” starring Golden Globe-winner Matthew Modine and Oscar-Nominee Sean Astin, which has won multiple awards and screened at prestigious festivals including Chicago International, Heartland Film Festival, and Cinequest. Prior to that, Daniel directed the true-story feature “Miss Virginia,” starring three-time Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba, Oscar-Nominee Aunjanue Ellis, and Vanessa Williams. The film was listed as a New York Times and USA Today Must-See Fall Movie, won the Audience Award at The Naples Film Festival, and received a limited theatrical release, cable premiere on BET, and streaming deal with Netflix. As a writer, Daniel is a winner of The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, as well as the Slamdance, ScriptPipeline, and Screencraft writing awards. He also explores storytelling as an editor, with ten features under his belt, including horror film “What Lies Below,” starring Mena Suvari, which hit #1 on Netflix, and “Supercell” starring Alec Baldwin, Anne Heche, and Skeet Ulrich, which hit #1 on Hulu. Daniel hopes to continue telling cinematic, character-driven stories long past the time any sane person would have retired. He lives on the east-side of L.A. with his excessively-vocal cat “Dottie.”
MORE INFO ON HARD MILES MOVIE:
https://linktr.ee/hardmiles_movie
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