Molly Bloom’s future looked extremely bright. A shot at Olympic skiing glory leading to entry into a leading law school. But an accident during qualifying trials for the U. S. ski team knocked her out of the running for the Salt Lake City games. (Bloom notes in her own memoir that it was her decision to retire and change the course of her life, rather than the minor accident.) She moved to Los Angeles and ended up running high stakes, private poker games with her boss at the time. These games included A-list celebrities, hedge fund managers, and eventually, members of the Russian mob. Bloom quickly earned the nickname as the “poker princess”. This all came crashing down when Bloom was busted by the FBI and sentenced for her role in the gambling ring.
Bloom’s memoir came to the attention of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Moneyball, Steve Jobs), who not only made this his next film script, but also his debut as a film director. Sorkin stayed close to the facts that Bloom described in her own memoir and consulted her during the writing of the screenplay. The biggest departure is that Bloom named some celebrities at these games, who had previously been revealed in released court documents. Sorkin opted to fictionalize them, explaining that he would rather focus the story on Bloom’s experiences and not on Hollywood gossip. Jessica Chastain (The Zookeeper’s Wife, A Most Violent Year, Zero Dark Thirty) stars as Molly Bloom.
Although three editors are credited for Molly’s Game, the back story is that a staggered schedule had to be worked out. The post production of Steve Jobs connected feature film editor Elliot Graham (Milk, 21, Superman Returns) with that film’s writer and director – Sorkin and Danny Boyle (T2 Trainspotting, 127 Hours, Slumdog Millionaire). Graham was tapped to cut Molly’s Game later into the process, replacing its original editor. He brought Josh Schaeffer (The Last Man on Earth, Detroiters, You’re the Worst) on as associate editor to join him. Graham started the recut with Schaeffer, but a prior schedule commitment to work on Trust for Boyle, saw him exiting the film early. (Trust is the BBC’s adaptation of the Getty kidnapping story.) Graham was able to bring the film about 50% of the way through post. Alan Baumgarten (Trumbo, American Hustle, Gangster Squad) picked up for Graham and edited with Schaeffer to the finish, thus earning all three an editing credit.
Working with a writer on his directorial debut
It can always be a challenge when a writer is close to the editing process. Scenes that may be near and dear to the writer are often cut, leading to tension. I asked the three about this situation. Graham says, “Aaron has always been on set with his other films and worked very closely with the director. So, he understands the process, having learned from some of the best directors in the business. I had a great time with Aaron on Steve Jobs. He’s an incredibly lovely and generous collaborator who brings out the best in his team.”
Baumgarten expands, “Working with Aaron was fun, because he appreciates being challenged. He’s open to seeing what an editor brings to the film. Aaron wrote a tight script that didn’t need to be re-arranged. Only about 20 minutes came out. We cut one small scene, but it was mostly trimming here and there. You want to be careful not to ruin the rhythm of his writing.”
Graham continues, “Aaron also found his own visual vocabulary. A lot of the story is told in time jumps, from present day to the past in flashbacks. Aaron always is looking for rapid fire, overlapping dialogue. It’s part of his uniqueness and it’s a joy to cut. What was new for Aaron was using voice over to drive things.”
Another new challenge was the use of stock footage. About 150 stock shots were used for cutaways and mini-montages throughout the film. Most of these were never originally scripted. Graham says, “Stock footage was something I chose to start injecting into the film with Aaron’s collaboration when I came on. We felt it was useful to have visual references for some of the voice overs – to connect visuals with words, which helps to land Aaron’s linguistic ideas for viewers. This began with the opening ski sequence – the first thing I cut when I came on board.”
The editors would pull down shots from a variety of internet sources and then the actual footage had to be found and cleared. The editors ultimately partnered with STALKR to find and clear all of the stock shots that were used. Visual effects were handled by Mr. X in Toronto. Originally, only 90 shots were budgeted (for example, snow falling in the ski sequences), but in the end, there were almost 600 visual effects shots in the final film.
Musicality of the performance
Baumgarten explains the musicality of Sorkin’s style. He says, “Aaron knew the film he wanted and had that in his head. Part of his writing process is to read his dialogue out loud and listen for the cadence of the performance. As you go through takes, the film is always moving in the right direction. As a writer/director, he doesn’t need variations or ad libs in an actor’s performance from one take to another, because he knows what the intention of the line is. As editors, we didn’t need to experiment with different calibrations of the performance. The experimentation came in with how we wove in the voice-over and played with the general rhythm.”
Graham adds, “Daniel Pemberton is the composer I worked with on Steve Jobs. I brought on Carl Kaller, a great music editor, when I came on. I knew that the music and dialogue had to dance a beautiful rhythm together for the film to be its best. With a compressed schedule to finish the film, we needed someone like Carl to help choreograph that dance.”
Baumgarten continues, “Daniel was involved early and provided us with temp tracks, which was a great gift. We didn’t have to use scores from other composers as temp music. Carl was just down the hall, so it was easy to weave Daniel’s temp elements in and around the dialogue and voice-over during the editing stage. There is interplay between the voice-over and the music, and the VO is like another musical element.”
Avid for the post
The post operation followed a standard feature film set-up. Avid Media Composer for the editing work stations, tied to Avid ISIS shared storage. The film was shot digitally using ARRI Alexas.
Production covered 48 days ending in February [2017]. It took 10 weeks to get to a director’s cut and then editing on Molly’s Game continued for about six months, which included visual effects, final sound mix and color correction. Schaeffer explains, “The dialogue scenes were scripted using [Avid] ScriptSync. Aaron was familiar with ScriptSync from The Newsroom, and it was a great help for us on this film. It’s the best way to have everything readily available and it allows us to be extremely thorough. If Aaron wanted to change a single word in a take, we were always able to find all of the alternates and make the change quite easily.”
Schaeffer continues, “Aaron methodically worked in a reel-by-reel order. We would divide up sequences between us at breaks that made sense. But when it came time to review the cut on a sequence, we would all review together. A lot people think that you have three editors on a film because the project is so difficult. The truth is that it lets you be more creative. Productions shoot so much footage these days, that it’s great to be able to experiment. Having multiple editors on a film enables you to take the time to be creative. We were all glad that Aaron set up an environment, which made that possible.”
Originally written for Digital Video magazine / Creative Planet Network
©2018 Oliver Peters
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