The robot apocalypse story of TheMitchells vs. the Machines is just as much about emotion as it is about comedy. Greg Levitan worked hard in the edit to make sure both of these themes worked together and balanced each other out.

There are also parts of the movie where the editing was inspired by the fast-paced rhythm of YouTube that he had to balance with more traditional styles. He says he was most challenged by a sequence at the end of the film, which was produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). With the world s

aved, Katie – the teen protagonist – says goodbye to her family as she heads for college, and she presents her dad with a small wooden moose, symbolic of their relationship. “This scene is the emotional core of the movie, so we had to get it just right to make sure the emotionality landed with the audience,” Levitan says. He adds, “I must have retimed this scene hundreds of times to make sure that each character’s smile lasted for just the right duration, long enough to hit you in the heart, but not too long to avoid feeling cheesy. And the music had to hit perfectly, playing-in slowly and blossoming to give the audience that explosion of bittersweet joy that was in the script. Our director, Mike Rianda, made sure that every department from animation to music mixing matched my exact timing. Hearing people sniffle in the screening room was the most satisfying moment I had on this movie – it’s when I knew we nailed it.”

Gregory Perler, ACE, reunited with writer/director Garth Jennings for the sequel to 2016 musical comedy Sing produced by Illumination and distributed by Universal Pictures. “The process was the same,” Perler explains. “I started (in May 2017) by editing storyboards, temp dial and music. Editing animated features has been likened to a workshop process for a theatrical production and I think that’s accurate: Script it, stage it, try it out, revise it, repeat … all while feeding the production pipeline so that sequences can be turned over to animation and the whole enterprise can stay on schedule.

“The most challenging thing to edit was a collection of scenes that started at the end of Act II – Buster (a Koala and theater owner, voiced by Matthew McConaughey) and the cast’s lowest moment – and went a bit into Act III, when the curtain goes up for their final show. As written, it was a collection of scenes originally totaling 15 minutes. We got it down to 10 minutes and Garth was so excited by the newfound momentum he encouraged me to continue to lose another five, which I did. We lost all the time and none of the story.”

DreamWorks Animation’s Spirit Untamed, directed by Elaine Bogan, is both a spin-off and a reboot of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and based on its Netflix animated spin-off television series Spirit Riding Free. “Spirit’s tight schedule and modest budget required us to cobble storyboards together as quickly as possible, often using thumbnail drawings and rudimentary Avid effects to tell the story,” says editor R. Orlando Duenas. “There wasn’t much time for refining, so visually the movie was quite rough until locked scenes were turned over to our layout department [camera].

We took great care in making sure we had the right timing for acting and action beats and thankfully everyone involved was okay with that. It took a lot of imagination and faith to get to the final product The scene during which teen heroine Lucky first sees an angry and frightened horse (Spirit) fighting the wranglers in the corral, up to where she finally gains the trust of the wild horse, proved a tough one to crack. “There were a lot of moving parts, and not a lot of dialogue, so the storytelling had to be painstakingly crafted. In this section, and throughout the movie, we paid great attention to the sound elements, using them to tell stories that we didn’t have the budget to show visually. At one point you hear the commotion of the Wranglers battling Spirit for nearly two minutes before they actually appear on camera.”

Erika Dapkewicz, ACE, approached editing Netflix musical Vivo the same way she approaches writing and reading music. “Creating movements in the dynamics and feel of the movie overall,” she explains. “Especially considering Vivo was conceived as a more traditional form of musical with contemporary flares. I often looked at my timeline as a piece of sheet music as I constructed each scene.”

The story, written by director Kirk DeMicco and Quiara Alegria Hudes (In the Heights) follows a kinkajou named Vivo, voiced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also wrote original songs for the movie. The story begins with Vivo and his owner Andrés playing music in Cuba, but soon Vivo must deliver a song from his owner to a famous singer in Miami. Along the way, he teams up with an independent teen named Gabi. Dapkewicz says she was attracted to Vivo not only for the story’s cultural diversity, but also for the chance to work alongside Miranda and composer Alex Lacamoire (who collaborated on Hamilton).

“The character of Gabi was very near and dear to my heart. Being that I am transgender, the thematic to Gabi’s ‘My Own Drum’ characterization was something I related to and helped shape from her early conception.” The opening musical number “One Of a Kind” was storyboarded and edited more times than others in the movie, relates Dapkewicz. “The flashback in the song featuring Vivo and Andrés was conceived late in the game. We initially had various prologues to establish Vivo’s introduction to Cuba. But we decided to try and work this into the song itself. And even though it appears there are few picture edits in the opening number, I had to create numerous hidden edits throughout in order for production to be able to physically finish the scene.”

Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans is the finale of the Tales of Arcadia franchise created by Guillermo del Toro, which includes the television series Trollhunters, 3Below and Wizards. It was produced by DreamWorks Animation for Netflix. John Laus was lead editor on the former show and was invited by del Toro to transfer duties to the feature. “That I learned a great deal from being in the edit bay with Guillermo is a gross understatement,” Laus says. “He taught me the importance of two invaluable editing concepts: pacing and rhythm. Those two key things Guillermo focuses on in the edit room and he’ll let you know right away if they’re not landing right.”

The feature is directed by Johane Matte, Francisco Ruiz Velasco, and Andrew Schmidt. Laus worked with associate editor Jay Fox and a crew of assistants to get the first pass of the animatic done on a very tight schedule. “To do this, I told Jay to think of himself as my co-editor. We are cutting this massive task together so there’s no room for egos. Period. It worked incredibly well.”

The first 10 minutes of Rise of the Titans features a big action sequence and was among the most challenging. “This is where I pushed the pacing,” Laus relates. “I literally gave little or no breath to any of the fights or action. I wanted it to feel like you couldn’t catch your breath until the train finally crashes to a stop. This was a little unnerving for me since I had to balance the tight cutting and pacing of the action, yet still allow the audience to get their bearings on what’s going on.”