Maryann Brandon: Editing with emotion

Film editor Maryann Brandon says the hardest part of any project is finding a starting point. “Where do I start in this scene? Do I want to start in close and pull out? Do I want to start wide and establish? Where am I coming from? What’s the incoming scene?” she says. “And that sets the tone for the next couple of shots I add. In my mind I think – how am I going to tell this story? What is going to be the most effective way?”

Her own story features a lot of determination and focus, and a touch of serendipity.

“I loved movies from ever since I can remember,” says Brandon. “I used to go to movies on the weekend and when I came home from school, I’d watch the Million Dollar Movie [showcase] on Channel 9 in New York. But I’d no idea it was even a business. No-one in my family did that.”

The talented editor is now known across that same business for blockbuster action features and TV, such as Mission Impossible III and Passengers, and the long-running Alias TV series, her first project with director J.J. Abrams. Brandon has since edited a clutch of Abrams’ films collaboratively with Mary Jo Markey, including Super 8, the revamped Star Trek franchise and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which received an Academy Award nomination for editing.

It was around that sci-fi spectacular that her IBC2018 Big Screen presentation was based. “I wanted to give people a little bit of an insight into the human part of all of it,” she says. “You still have to use…