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00:00I had a video call with the director, but he was in the car on the way back from
00:08Rareke, Martin Tilden, and his signal was cutting in and out and he was trying to show me
00:15concept art or drawings or something while he was in the back of the car, like on his foot. It was
00:21so funny, but we got on really well, we just really hit it off. We kept getting cut off and
00:27then calling each other back and this kind of crazy, messy interview, but we really connected
00:35creatively and yeah, he could see my passion for the project as well, so yeah, it led to that.
00:43We do not know why we are here.
01:02We do not know who built the silo.
01:05We do not know why everything outside the silo is as it is.
01:25We do not know when it will be safe to go outside.
01:28We only know that day is not this day.
01:42I actually started making documentaries. I was a documentary director and what I loved about that
01:48was how you do kind of build the story in the edit. Your subject matter is your story,
01:55but there's no script, but I came to realize a lot of people were approaching me, asking me to edit
02:02their films and I couldn't because I was editing my own documentaries at the time and I was really,
02:08I felt like I was really missing out. I was like, oh, I don't want to be making my own film. I want
02:14to be working with this person and this person and I'm missing out on all these amazing collaborations
02:19editing for them and with them. So I realized that maybe my true love was editing. So I came
02:27to London and studied at National Film and Television School, did a master's there to
02:33really hone my craft and also as a way in because I didn't know anyone in London. I only knew people
02:40up in Scotland in the industry. My first job coming out of my master's was an independent
02:47feature film called In Our Name with Brian Welsh and it's, yeah, that was such a massive learning curve
02:58because, you know, I just, two years at doing this master's, you think you're learning so much and
03:03then when you're actually in it, doing it for real on this much larger scale, it's quite scary,
03:11but I think it was a great way in. People seeing that plus a recommendation from a director I'd
03:17worked with at film school got me a job on Black Mirror. So, and that was the very early days of
03:26Black Mirror. I interviewed for season one and I didn't get, which is fair enough because I was
03:33so green and I'm so inexperienced, but a year later they interviewed me again because they did like me
03:40but they interviewed me again for season two, so I got to edit, yeah, season two, episode two of Black
03:47Mirror back in the day and that just was a catalyst for so many things then in my career.
03:55So with Silo, it was actually just my agent forwarded the script on to me and said, oh they,
04:02you know, come in for an availability check for you, do you want to have a look at this?
04:06I read it, I absolutely loved it. It was episode one that I read and I didn't know who was casting
04:15it at all. I just really liked the script and I do remember at the beginning as well they said to me,
04:22oh we really want you to work on it, we're not sure which episodes yet and I said no, I really,
04:28really want to be the lead editor on this because I loved it so much and I loved episode one so much
04:35but also I think as for a big sci-fi show, it's not that common for a female lead editor to get,
04:43well, I don't know why, I mean, it is a male-dominated industry so and I'm, you know, I'm
04:50not saying it's unheard of and it doesn't happen but there's definitely less female lead editors
04:56get these big sci-fi shows so I was really pushed for that and I was really happy that I got it.
05:02That is the moment we regain our freedom.
05:33The great thing about the silo is history has been erased in a way so they don't carry the
05:46same prejudices that our world has so this sexism and racism and it's got a reflection
05:56of these prejudices that we have in our society but they're not the same ones
06:00and that's quite interesting I think but one thing I would say about Juliet, she has the attitude
06:08of a woman making it in a male-dominated industry so although she's maybe not grown up with that
06:16prejudice, she does have these walls up, she's very combative in a way sometimes, I guess because
06:26she's had her struggles growing up. There are different struggles from sexism in the workplace
06:33but she still got these barriers up with people and it's hard for her to trust people and she,
06:41I think she always feels like she has to be on the front but when she shows emotion and when
06:47she lets people in, it's so amazing for the audience to see and that's what's great about
06:54us as the audience is we get to be with her when she's on her own, when she is
06:58having these breakdowns, when she isn't hiding herself. The challenge with the opening episode
07:06of a brand new series, for those who haven't read the books obviously, is yeah there's a lot to learn
07:15about this world but you don't want the teaching of that to get in the way of the audience just
07:22enjoying the journey and emotionally connecting with characters. It was a balance definitely and
07:29it's something that we played with a lot in the first episode. How early do we even reveal that
07:35they're underground for example? In the end we decided to reveal that very early because we
07:41thought you know what once you know that everything that comes after is so much richer and everything
07:48you're seeing and experiencing, once you already know well oh that's a new episode, it's actually more
07:54interesting so I think we felt like that wasn't a piece of information we needed to hold back for
07:59dramatic purposes because it actually added to the drama knowing it very early on. There's lots of
08:06other things, the mystery, what's that screen or is it a window? What are all these
08:14different floors about? What are these guys with backpacks going up and down? All these little things
08:20they just add to that tapestry and that texture but you're learning all the time and we are
08:25direct feeding little bits in all the time and even if you don't notice you're building a sense
08:32of what that world is about and what the laws are and the rules are without even realizing sometimes.
08:44You want some coffee?
08:57What are you doing? I want to see her. No, Sheriff. I should have done it three years ago
09:05but I couldn't listen. Hey, stop. Come on out of there.
09:11What is it? Let's talk about this. I made up my mind or I wouldn't be in here. I'm sorry, Sam.
09:21Are you gonna say this to me after all we've been through? I'm gonna wait till Sandy gets out.
09:26I want you to say it. Please, Sheriff, don't say it. Deputy Morris. Please, Sheriff. I want to go out.
09:41While you get things rolling, I think I'm gonna lie down.
10:01Because I edited episodes 1, 2 and 10 of the series, it just so happened to be that all my
10:08episodes were the ones with the going out sequences in them. So there's three going out
10:13sequences in season one and they end up being in my episode which is interesting because at first
10:18I was like not another one because they're really hard to edit because you've got the world within
10:27the silo, in the cafeteria, other people watching, you've got the actual ceremony, the going out,
10:34give them getting ready and what happens when they go into the vault. You've also got what's
10:40going on in their helmet cam when they get, or what they see through their visor when they go up
10:47and it's such a balance and it's difficult. It's a difficult balance and it was all,
10:54those were the sequences that I was continually working on throughout the process
10:59to get, okay, when do we go back with the person outside or in the vault? When do we come back to
11:06the people watching the big screen, the different reactions? But I've tried to do each one of them
11:13a little bit differently. So although the ceremony they go through, the ritual is the same, we just
11:23try to show it in a slightly different way each time and what I love about Juliet's one is when
11:30then goes by her head and she has this little reaction and we didn't have that in the
11:36other ones earlier and it's like, oh nice, something new. It's really satisfying
11:43and it's great and I love when she comes up. These scenes where everyone's in the cafeteria
11:49and they're watching the person going out, those people in the cafeteria were watching that on the
11:56screen. We made that, we filmed that beforehand, that visual effects works on it all and they had
12:03it ready so it could be played live in the room and shot as if it was happening which I think was
12:09really great. It really added to it and the reactions from the people in the cafeteria
12:16and those essays was just really authentic because of that. One thing I really enjoyed
12:21working on this, which I always love anyway because I did come from music when I was younger,
12:28I loved working with the composer. Very early on in the edit we started using temp tracks
12:36and we were hoping that he was going to end up writing the score so we used some things he'd
12:42done before. We were also chatting to him a little bit early on but some of those we were
12:50working with voices and things in the edit already, thinking about this ghostly aspect of the silo
12:57and really building that into the edit along with the temp sound design. We were talking to the sound
13:03designers early on as well, what do these different floors sound like because that stuff kind of needs
13:10to be brought into the edit early. It doesn't need to be pinned down, it can change
13:16but it's so important for the rhythm of the edit, the feel, to have those elements
13:26starting to come in and that's a challenge in a way but it's also something
13:32I relish. I love that side of it. There's a scene where Juliet falls down the trash chute.
13:38It's such a simple scene, she's just in this tiny little chute and all that actually happens,
13:44well it's a big thing that happens but they drop the air conditioning unit down but the distance
13:49between her and that unit and what would actually happen in reality it would just fall straight down
13:54it would hit her probably but that's not very dramatic so the idea was it would bounce off
14:00the walls and she will have time to fall and just make it but so myself and the visual effects
14:09supervisor sat in the edit and we thought okay well wait how can we extend this shot how can we
14:15extend this moment even more than what they've managed to get on the set which is obviously
14:20no they don't have such a long and trash chute to do that with so we ended up we had a shot that
14:28looked down on top of Juliet and we thought okay what if we actually start that one looking up
14:33and they do a full build of the air conditioning unit and it comes down and then we can move down
14:40to this so there's so much scope as well so blue screen can be quite intimidating at first because
14:46it's so vast and the possibilities are infinite it feels like but once you start talking to the team
14:55and talking about okay what could this be and where could this go and how long should we hold
14:59this shot for it's actually really exciting and really freeing and and and you're just adding this
15:05whole other dimension to my job basically as an editor I love working with the actors performances
15:14I love getting into the nitty-gritty of the emotion of a scene but I also love those moments where
15:22it's action and you're you know getting to try things out and experiment and the world is your
15:28oyster basically I think referring back to the way I started editing and the things that inspired me
15:35in the beginning I love evoking an emotion in an audience and I just think it's such an amazing
15:45feeling when you leave a cinema of the screening that one of your films obviously it's different
15:52for Jimmy but we do have previews with audiences in cinemas with shows as well like Silo so when
16:00you leave and you see people crying or they're laughing and it's so bad because I think oh I did
16:07that to them and I shouldn't be so excited about that but it's such a power trip but it's just an
16:14amazing feeling as well because it means that you've done your job properly and all those hours
16:20that you spent painstakingly making sure that the emotion was hitting and that all these story beats
16:26were hitting and it pays off and that's what's great and I think even on the if something's
16:33streaming I like to check Twitter and see if anyone's talking about it and you do get to see
16:39that it's different from obviously seeing something with an audience but yeah you can
16:45get instant reactions now as well which is great I really like that.