When editor Ken Eluto, ACE, initially joined the crew of the HBO series Succession, it was unlikely he anticipated its Emmy-winning success. He edited 12 episodes of the show across its first three seasons, with his most recent, the finale of Season 3, “All the Bells Say,” winning an ACE Eddie Award earlier this year.

Created by showrunner Jesse Armstrong in 2018, Succession follows the aging CEO of fictional media conglomerate Waystar Royco, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), and his dysfunctional family. “I follow the rhythm of the overall series,” says Eluto of the uninhibited tenor of the series, featuring a horde of outlandish
characters, confrontational scenarios and colorful dialogue. “When I started with Season 1, and I came on to do Episodes 2 and 3, I was very conscious of the style of the pilot. It’s a fun show to work on. There is a lot of footage and, since the pilot was done on film, we are still shooting on film, so we don’t get the dailies till two days later.”

Given the largely handheld camerawork that helps define Succession, a stylistic choice made by Armstrong, Eluto found cutting his episodes more challenging, but also more rewarding, in terms of the outcome. “The camera setups and the movement are different from take to take,” Eluto reveals. “You just have to get really familiar with all the dailies.  Occasionally, they’ll [shoot] a scene that’s pretty static, and that’s very problematic for the show – we try to work around it. As you’re putting it together, you’ll go back and look for a take that’s moving or pushing in at a certain time. I always find it’s better if they pin [the camera] to somebody after the line. It’s a give and take, but there’s a lot of coverage, so it usually always works out.”

Additionally, Eluto often faced an embarrassment of riches in coverage of the actors in the show’s various takes of a scene. “The whole cast is amazing,” says Eluto of the ensemble, including Cox, Sarah Snook, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin and Matthew Macfadyen. “They’re all unique in their own way and play off each other really well. Each character has their own unique personality and style that they bring to the show.”

In the 65-minute Season 3 finale, shot in Italy, Eluto contended with multiple storylines featuring different assembled groups of characters and a panoply of agendas amongst the ensemble. “The storylines all fit together really well as scripted. They’re all telling the same story about the family,” Eluto explains, adding that the challenge was the length of the script. “My first cut of the episode was about 90 minutes. It was obviously a process of refining and deciding what to cut for pacing, and getting closer to [the final running] time. We didn’t lift any scenes, any storylines, but we mostly just tightened certain dialogues, or cut certain parts of scenes.

There are situations like that where you miss something [that’s been cut out]. No one else would miss it [because] they haven’t seen it.” Though the dialogue in Succession was often delivered in rapid-fire sequences, very little improvisation took place among the actors on set. “At least 90 percent of it is scripted,” Eluto reveals.

“Jesse Armstrong or another writer may be on set and, as they’re shooting, change some dialogue, or try to do an alternate. I personally try to cut a bunch of different versions when I’m cutting a scene. Also, my tendency is to do the first cut of a scene, put it aside, and look at it with fresh eyes and see how it looks a few days later.”

As in other series, for Succession, an episode’s director works with an editor for four days, delivering their cuts to Armstrong. One executive producer, Mark Mylod, directed 12 episodes of the series’ 29 total episodes over its first three seasons. “He weighs in throughout – some other executive producers are writers … so they they’ll send in notes as well,”  Eluto says. “Jesse’s the final arbiter of those notes. Then, it goes to HBO, and they give their notes. It’s back and forth. [HBO] definitely trusts the writers, producers and the creative talent.”

A key scene from “All the Bells Say” features three of Logan’s children – Kendell (Strong) delivering a gripping confessional to Shiv (Snook) and Roman (Culkin) – who chose to mollify him to a degree: a sensitive and subdued tonal shift for the series. “This was nine pages of dialogue and was mostly shot with three cameras,” Eluto relates. “I remember starting to watch the first takes – some were 11 minutes long. I watched those takes and looked at the script notes and screened them all. I worked off one take using some other setups as well. We kept making it better, tightening parts of it, cutting some lines here and there, and making it shorter. The first five takes, they were trying to figure out the blocking and sometimes [Strong] would be standing or sitting on something. It was that last fifth take where he plops himself down in the dirt. Three kids come together; it was a great scene to work on.”

In another pivotal scene near the end of the episode, this trio confronts Logan. He phones his ex-wife, who is on speakerphone, and reveals that they changed the terms of their divorce, allowing Logan to sell Waystar Royco – and in turn, revealing the devastating impact on their children, who have lost their control in the company. “I ended up hardly ever cutting to the phone because it was really best to see what was happening to them – the reactions and responses of [the children] as she was talking. After I cut that scene, the bones of it all, it played really well, but it definitely needed refining as it went along: some tightening and some line lifts to make it shorter and better paced, through everyone’s notes.”

Eluto exudes pride in the episode. “To me, this was the best, though they all have their great moments,” he says of his overall work on the show. “Season finales in Succession are always great because they always have an unexpected twist. I was lucky to edit two different finales, one for the first season, and the one for Season 3. In this episode, the writing was great, the story was great, the acting was great and it was beautifully shot in Italy. So, what’s not to like? I really enjoy working on Succession – it’s a very collaborative environment, and they definitely appreciate the contribution of editors on the show.”