After premiering at the Venice Film Festival in September to overwhelmingly positive reviews, Oscar®-winning actress Regina King’s first outing as a feature film director – One Night in Miami – was snapped up by Amazon Prime Video. The film had a limited theatrical release over Christmas before arriving on the streaming platform.

Based on a 2013 play by Kemp Powers, the film offers a fictionalized account of the night of Feb. 25, 1964 when Nation of Islam spokesperson Malcolm X (played by Kingsley BenAdir), NFL football legend Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and influential musician and record producer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) gathered together in a Miami hotel room with boxing legend Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) to celebrate his surprise victory over Sonny Liston, and his conversion to Islam as he took on the name Muhammad Ali.

Tariq Anwar, whose work on The King’s Speech (2010) and American Beauty (1999) earned him both Oscar and Eddie nominations, explains that he hadn’t worked with King before, and only first met her when he interviewed for the editor’s chair after his agent sent him a script. He explains that from the outset, King expressed her desire to have a diverse crew. During the interviews they talked about technical details like how the film would differ from the play, how she wanted to shoot and her thoughts on transitions between shots and scenes, but they never really discussed the film’s profound political significance in light of current events.

They didn’t need to. “I mean, we didn’t discuss any of that but it was instrumental in Regina making this film in the first place,” Anwar says. The film focuses on Malcom X’s efforts to convince Brown, Cooke and Clay to accept the responsibility that comes with their fame and harness it to support the civil rights movement. “It’s strange in a way, because throughout it, I felt that Malcolm X was actually talking to her [Regina King] as much as the others, as she used her fame to make the film,” Anwar adds. Principal photography was shot in New Orleans in January and February of 2020. Anwar was on hand to start cutting and assembling as the dailies came in.

“Because of the tight schedule and logistics, Regina wasn’t able to come to the cutting room that often, so I would post scenes on Frame.io for comment and discussion,” he explains. “We spoke frequently on the phone. She was able to see the cut footage as soon as possible. And that helped in informing what additional material we might need for pickups, so we could schedule it while they still have the sets. In instances like that, it’s useful for me to be working closely behind shooting, kind of minimizing production costs.

“I was able to show her my assemblies during that period and she would comment on them and I’d do some revised edits, and then she would comment on that. So, by the end of the shoot, it wasn’t just an editor’s cut, it was my cut but incorporating her notes – almost half way to director’s cut.”

The editor and his assistant, Naomi Filoramo, then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico where King was scheduled to star in a Western. When COVID-19 struck, the Western was put on hold, and King was forced to quarantine for two weeks when a crew member got sick. At that point, Anwar returned to Santa Monica to work from home. His assistant stayed in Santa Fe to be near King and help coordinate the process. From that point, work continued remotely with music, sound and VFX departments posting their contributions online, followed by Zoom calls to discuss anything that needed to be discussed. “All this was done working in isolation, apart from the final mix and musical recording, which happened a couple of months later,” Anwar says.

“Because the bulk of the editing had been done in New Orleans and Santa Fe, there wasn’t so much of a need for me to sit with the director in the same room. I think COVID probably impinged most for me in the preparation of the sound mix. For instance, I wasn’t able to attend ADR or foley pre-mixes, which I always do. There is quite a lot of detail in my Avid tracks, particularly as regards things like the positioning and level of voices, the balance between close and far crowds, music and crowd reactions, clapping, punches and all the rest of it.

“It was difficult to relinquish control of that, and then being reacquainted with the tracks, having them passed through so many different hands.” The editor points out that he had two types of drama to deal with in the film – the film’s opening fight scene and the subsequent party at the hotel. “Perhaps there was more subtlety required in the dialogue scenes where the timing is more exposed. The action sequences are more liberating. Maybe you have a greater latitude to play with pictures, but both of them are challenging and rewarding in different ways.”

The film opens with a dramatic reenactment of Clay’s famous title fight with Sonny Liston – scenes that were carefully choreographed to match the televised broadcast as the brash young pugilist grandstanded, taunted and tormented the reigning heavyweight champion until finally a battered and exhausted Liston threw in the towel and surrendered in the seventh round.

Anwar explains that cinematographer Tami Reiker provided more than enough coverage of the fight to work with. “I had the archival footage of the real fight for reference and also boxing consultant Larnell Stovall to keep me from getting carried away. I mean, there’s always the temptation to throw a few more punches than you need just for fun,” he says.

The dialogue-driven hotel scenes, which make up the bulk of the movie, had very different requirements in the editing suite. The original cut was about two hours, but the final cut worked out to about 1:15. At that point, “most of our discussion centered on structure scene length.” For example, one thing that emerged in the editing room was that a scene where Malcom leaves the hotel room to get his camera from the car and make a call was far too long, at least compared to what happens in the room while he’s gone.

Anwar explains that from the outset, the director was hesitant to use temp tracks during assembly, which is something he likes to do. “She was concerned that, in her experience, music was overused and over manipulative and sometimes becomes a distraction. And, I think initially, she couldn’t see where music could be used within this dialogue-based film without it becoming a nuisance.”

However, the editor was able to work in some subtle temp scores in the assembly. “When she could see the benefit of using it, I think she was very much on board with it.” King, he says, was one of the “least micro-managing” of the directors he’s encountered. “She was very open to discussion very open to ideas and to an alternative point of view. It madefor a really comfortable environment in which to work where you didn’t feel you could be shot down for putting forward an idea,” he says. “And she was that way with music. While she was reluctant at first, she was very open to it at the end.”

Of Filoramo, who came recommended by King, Anwar says she was “fantastic, particularly when we had the problem with working remotely. I really had to be re-educated because there’s a lot of passing of material back and forth. Of course, that’s not normally what I have to do. We leave all that kind of work to the assistant, but of course I had to do it with this film. She was my backup and she was very accomplished as an editor.” Anwar hopes that people realize how little things have changed since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “The film resonates now particularly because of what’s happened over the past year … It’s been 50 years and here we are again, and possibly worse. Trump has exposed how deep rooted racism is in America.”