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Roach began his career as an apprentice editor on Clint Eastwood’s “Absolute Power” and ultimately edited 16 films for Eastwood either as an assistant editor or editor before joining forces with Sheridan on “Wind River”.\u00a0 Along the way, he was the cutter for Denis Villeneuve, Robert Lorenz and Alison Eastwood.\u00a0 Roach’s work on Eastwood’s “Changeling” garnered him a BAFTA nomination while his work on “American Sniper” earned him an Academy Award nomination.\u00a0 While Roach has spent decades honing his editing skills in film, Ahlgren has been mastering the craft in television with extensive series work in a variety of genres.\u00a0 Be he editor or assistant editor, Ahlgren has worked on everything from “Reno 911!” to “Key & Peele” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” to dramas like “Guidance” and “The Messengers”.\u00a0 It was with Taylor Sheridan’s “Wind River” when Gary Roach and Evan Ahlgren joined forces when Ahlgren was brought in as an assistant editor.\u00a0 Understanding both the dramatic beats and the visual tonal bandwidth of Sheridan’s work, compounded with their respective experiences in film and television, Roach and Ahlgren make the perfect team for YELLOWSTONE.<\/p>\n Starring Oscar and Emmy award winner Kevin Costner, YELLOWSTONE boasts an exemplary ensemble cast in this modern western that retains the mores and touchstones of the Old West which are such a recognizable part of the tapestry that is America.\u00a0 Costner, as John Dutton is a sixth-generation homesteader and patriarch of a powerful, complicated family of ranchers. The Dutton ranch is the largest contiguous ranch in the United States but suffers from the conflicts arising from its borders \u2013 an Indian reservation, America\u2019s first national park, and an expanding local town complete with land grabbers and corrupt politicians.\u00a0 In addition to Costner, other principal cast members adding to the fabric of YELLOWSTONE are Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, Cole Hauser, Kelsey Asbille, Brecken Merrill, Jefferson White, Danny Huston, and most notably, Gil Birmingham.<\/p>\n Working with Sheridan, Roach and Ahlgren have had to find an editorial balance between the beauty and vastness of the land and the Dutton ranch with the intimacy – and estrangement- of the members of the Dutton family, and the often contentious dynamics between John Dutton, developers, politicians, and Native Americans.\u00a0 With so many moving parts, just on the surface, editing is a large part of making YELLOWSTONE “work”.\u00a0 But then we get into the layers of storytelling, the metaphor of certain close-ups, mid-shots, wide shots and camera angles, the body language of characters, the timber and cadence of voices.\u00a0 GARY ROACH and EVAN AHLGREN master it all seamlessly.<\/p>\n I spoke with GARY ROACH and EVAN AHLGREN about YELLOWSTONE.\u00a0 Some of the only principal department heads to stay on for seasons one and two, this bodes well for continuity of editing and that all-important tone of the show.\u00a0 Skilled at their craft, both are animated and engaging, and clearly not only love what they do, but love working on YELLOWSTONE.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I’m so happy to be talking to both of you. It’s not often I get to talk to editors, especially ones who have the depth and breadth of experience that you have and that you bring to YELLOWSTONE. Both of you have done amazing works over the years and now to see what you’re doing with YELLOWSTONE.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 Editing is always such a big part of making a series work, especially, a series as vast as YELLOWSTONE with all the ground it covers. You guys are jockeying between the beauty and the vastness of Montana, the intimacy yet estrangement of a family.\u00a0 You’re working with closeups, mid shots.\u00a0 You’ve got the claustrophobia of political walls closing in.\u00a0 You capture all of this with your editing.\u00a0 So, what is the secret to this?\u00a0 But perhaps the bigger question is how do you\u00a0not want to just have every frame as a widescreen of the gorgeous, gorgeous landscape of Montana?<\/strong><\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I think that every film or every show starts with the writing.\u00a0 And it also goes to Ben [Richardson].\u00a0 It goes to how it’s shot. I believe that we were very fortunate in the fact that Taylor’s vision was to capture the beauty of Yellowstone or Montana and this area. And he did that.\u00a0 In cinematography, when you talk about Ben Richardson and what he was able to capture, and all of it was footage that they were able to give us, just made our job fun. And it was just a matter of taking the beauty that was shot and putting it together and putting that puzzle and part of the story and being able to use all that was absolutely fantastic.<\/p>\n I’m glad you mentioned Ben Richardson.\u00a0 Ben and I go back to “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”\u00a0 He is amazing.\u00a0 \u00a0And you do have great footage to work with, to begin with, and he was part of Taylor’s\u00a0 “Wind River” team.\u00a0 But, this is also not your first time at the rodeo with Taylor [Sheridan] because you both worked on “Wind River with him.\u00a0 \u00a0I was gobsmacked by the editing and the cinematography there with the white on white, seeing Jeremy [Renner] out, just out in the snow. Stunning, stunning, stunning visual story-telling.\u00a0 So, now to see you re-team with Taylor, and while we’re out of the snow, in its place we have the beautiful palettes and the intimacy of this family story.\u00a0 Totally different and equally as fabulous.\u00a0 So, I’m curious what the key is for you in this editing process of YELLOWSTONE because it is episodic. It’s not just one standalone film that goes out, and you don’t visit again.\u00a0 You’ve got two seasons now under your belts.\u00a0 \u00a0So, I’m curious as to your approach and how you put together each one of these episodes into a cohesive story and follows the master storyline.<\/strong><\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Do you want to elaborate on that, Evan?<\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Oh, sure. With season one, we approached the full entire season as a feature. So, we treated it as one long movie,\u00a0 a 10-hour movie and they cross-boarded every episode while they were shooting.\u00a0 So, Gary and I would just divvy out the scene and build from there.\u00a0 We just treated the first season as one 10-hour movie and that kind of helped us wrap our head around it.\u00a0 And sometimes we’d get so much beautiful footage, it’d be hard to choose what to use; which isn’t a bad problem.\u00a0 It’s a great problem!<\/p>\n You get into the family dynamics here. We’ve got the Duttons, then we’ve got Gil Birmingham’s character, Thoams Rainwater. We have the political situation, and you’re also finding this great synergistic balance in your tone because you guys are the ones creating the tone.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m curious about putting those puzzle pieces together as we break it down into the episodes.<\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I feel like a lot of the environment that they shot helps with the tone.\u00a0 It’s almost a character on its own, so that helps the story right there.\u00a0 And a lot of the stories are deep, like within the characters.\u00a0 There’s a lot of infinite moments, even from the villain’s point of view.\u00a0 They have a lot of emotions playing from both sides, from the political side, and the rancher’s perspective when it comes to Yellowstone.\u00a0 So, there’s sympathetic aspects with everybody which kind of draws the audience in.\u00a0 You’ll see the light and the dark in everybody.<\/p>\n I have to say that one of the characters that you really excel at editing footage of which, again, goes back to Ben’s lensing of it, is Danny Huston’s Dan Jenkins.\u00a0\u00a0 You really showcase the good and bad sides of Danny’s character.\u00a0 It really impresses me and I’m curious, because this is such an ensemble piece with so many human moving parts, do you develop an affinity towards one character or the other in the editing process or for a<\/strong>\u00a0particular story arc that you may have to reign yourself back from giving a little extra special touch to in the editing process?<\/strong><\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Yeah, I believe we do.<\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 All the actors are top-notch and all their performances are on point.\u00a0 They make it easy to cut them that way.\u00a0 They cut together so naturally and a lot of their facial expressions gives so much emotion through the screen without words sometimes.\u00a0 But, yeah, you definitely get attached to some characters, cutting them.\u00a0 I love cutting particular characters. I’m sure Gary does, too.\u00a0 I’ll grab scenes with particular actors sometimes or their characters.<\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Evan usually takes the scenes where the acting is the best. [laughing]\u00a0 I’m joking.\u00a0 \u00a0And, it makes our lives so much easier and fun to have actors like Danny Huston and Gil Birmingham, Luke Grimes and Kelly Reilly. Oh my God!\u00a0 Kelly is so fantastic and her performances are so real.\u00a0\u00a0I remember, in fact, this is the episode that we’re submitting in episode five.\u00a0 \u00a0The scene between Jamie and Beth is so, so powerful;\u00a0 Wes Bentley, and Kelly is so emotional and so real and they both pulled that off.\u00a0 That’s one of my favorite scenes in that episode.\u00a0 But, when you’re working with actors like that, that can give those types of performances, it’s nothing but fun to put that together and tell that story.<\/p>\n I’ll\u00a0see anything that Wes does and I really love the way that you’ve edited the pieces of Wes so far through season one.\u00a0 I can’t wait to see what you do with him in season two!<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Oh, it just gets better!<\/p>\n I’ve got to ask you guys, who likes editing the horses the most?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Horses aren’t very good actors. They just do whatever they want. They don’t realize that we like continuity and we really don’t like mismatches. But yet, some days they have their heads up and then down. And they don’t really understand. [laughing]<\/p>\n Darn those horses!\u00a0 \u00a0Once you’re in the editing process, how long would you say it takes you to get to your final edit?\u00a0 You’ve got your rough cut.\u00a0 Taylor comes in, gives you notes.\u00a0 You’ve got producers giving you notes.\u00a0 How long does it take for you to edit one episode of YELLOWSTONE, the editor’s cut<\/strong><\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0You know what, that’s an extremely tough question to answer.\u00a0 \u00a0I’ll give you an idea.\u00a0 In season one you have all of the cross-boarding.\u00a0 In\u00a0most cases, not YELLOWSTONE’s, that’s usually two weeks.\u00a0 On YELLOWSTONE,\u00a0 I feel like it was a little bit longer than that.\u00a0 I think that Taylor probably has a lot more to say and is very passionate about what he wants.\u00a0 So, we spend a couple weeks with Taylor.\u00a0 The network always gets a chance to see it when he’s done and they will give notes.\u00a0 Which will then make Taylor think of more things that he wants to do.\u00a0 So, I think the process of YELLOWSTONE, especially in season one, was longer than most. I would say it was three weeks or a month.\u00a0 Evan, do you agree with that?<\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Yeah. I 100% agree.<\/p>\n Do you like the luxury of having more time because as you mentioned, it gives everybody a chance to come up with more notes and more notes and more notes?\u00a0 Or do you prefer it where you get in, you get out?\u00a0 Editor’s cut is done, director’s cut comes back with a couple notes and you get it done and you move on.\u00a0 Is it a luxury or is it more of a hindrance the more time you have to finish up the process?<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I look it like a blessing and a curse at the same time because sometimes you can overthink things and it can change something that was great. But in this instance, I feel like it worked out very well for the show.<\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Yeah. I think that we were able to dial into the story and tell the story that much better and find and eliminate the moments that were unnecessary.\u00a0 I feel like I have to agree with Evan. At this stage, it was a good thing.<\/p>\n How much footage ends up “on the cutting room floor” with YELLOWSTONE?<\/strong><\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 You know, quite a bit.\u00a0 In season one, luckily, I think the original time they wanted was 42 minutes.\u00a0 That went up when episodes started being an hour and six minutes.\u00a0 They upped that time to 46 almost 47 minutes. 46 minutes 55 seconds.\u00a0 But I would say most episodes, first editor’s cut was at least an hour or some cases, an hour and 10 minutes, an hour and 15.\u00a0 So we did have to lose quite a bit to accommodate television.<\/p>\n And I bet that was a painstaking cutting process.<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Oh yeah.\u00a0 There’s a lot of good content that you fall in love with but you have to let go of.<\/p>\n What editing system do you guys use?<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The Avid.<\/p>\n What is it about the Avid that you personally as editors like?<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I wouldn’t ever want to work on any other system.\u00a0 I like the speed of Avid.\u00a0 I like being able to have effect.\u00a0 It’s literally, not every effect has to be rendered in order to play it. Some do, but not all of them. And even if you have to render them, it’s very quick. It just continues to get better and better for me.<\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0It’s just a solid program.<\/p>\n Does it make a difference to you whether you’re cutting television or film?\u00a0 Evan, I know you’ve got a deeper breadth with television editing.\u00a0 Gary, you’ve really got the film, the cinematic,editing down.\u00a0 So I’m curious if the Avid makes a difference for the particular mediums?<\/strong><\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0No. I find them very similar in the way I work. And luckily for me, most of the television shows that I have done, especially YELLOWSTONE, it’s more like a feature film to me than television. So, I really just look at them as the same.<\/p>\n And what about you, Evan?<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Yeah, the same. It kind of just goes to how your editing style is, not really what platform or system you’re using. I like my TV shows to feel like movies as well. So that’s what I love so much about YELLOWSTONE.<\/p>\n That’s one of the first things with episode one that made me fall in love with the show. It’s very cinematic and the editing is not traditional “television editing.”\u00a0 And it’s because of you guys that we get this great cinematic experience with YELLOWSTONE.<\/strong><\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/u>Thank you so much!<\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/u>Thank you!<\/p>\n Anything special that I can look for in season two of YELLOWSTONE?\u00a0 Editing wise?<\/strong><\/p>\n EA:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/u>Oh my God! Yeah. It’s full of real surprises!<\/p>\n GR:\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0There’s new characters in season two that bring a whole new element to this show. But, beware!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n by debbie elias, exclusive interview 04\/03\/2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Evan-Ahlgren-1-768x1024.jpg\")
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