EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

OUR INTERVIEW WITH Sean

Nick Lange

Hey guys. Welcome back to the show. Today we have with us Sean Albertson, an editor in Hollywood, who’s cut many very popular action films, dramas, and TV shows. Today, he’s gonna talk with us about his experience working with Sylvester Stallone, working with a number of prominent directors and how he got his start in the industry. So Sean, I’d love to ask you, how did you get your start in the industry?

Sean Albertson

So my start in the industry. so my father was a film editor. The story I was told later, the part of the story I know, is that I went home one day and I guess I was in 11th grade, in high school and told my parents, I was not going to take the SATs and decided not to go to college just yet. I was gonna pursue a career in music and, or the restaurant industry. Both were careers that my father had been in before he became a film editor. And then the story I was told years later was that my mother said to my father, you better bring him to work and show him what real life is like, because that kid needs to go to college. So it’s essentially how I got my start. I graduated high school. I grew up in New York. My father brought me into Manhattan and had me spend four weeks just seeing what he does, and seeing how they do it, and sort of looking into the idea of filmmaking as a job, really just the job at that point.

Nick Lange

So you learned watching him work. Was he giving you parts to play in that? Did you ever get to organize footage?

Sean Albertson

Well ultimately, yes. Ultimately what happened was he put me with an old assistant of his who was now editing some lower budget things. Mostly TV and movies. My dad was sort of the king of TV M.O.W editors in New York at that time. This was in the mid eighties. So he stuck me with an old assistant and I interned for an entire low budget movie. And there is where I got to learn sort of the ins and outs of the editing room. I had not, at that point, learned anything about editing itself from a creative standpoint – it was all about the technicalities of running the editing room, what I need to do as an assistant editor to provide for my editor. It was all very, very technical. It still is, but it was even more so back then because it was all very hands on actual film, right? So like, you know, that’s in 1986. Everything was still being edited on 35 millimeter, 16 millimeter with the big clunky pieces of equipment that they would use.

Nick Lange

Cool. What led to that first job where you were the lead editor, after this time working as an assistant?

Sean Albertson

Yeah. So, I spent sort of years. I got my first apprentice film editor job and got into the union and worked my way through the assistant world. I still hadn’t really studied film editing at that point. Really didn’t really understand it. It was all the technical aspects of being an assistant editor. And my passions at the time were music and food, cooking. So both of those passions I had gotten from my dad, who, as I said, had been a musician and a chef before I was born. And somebody contacted me, who apparently had gone to my high school, who had graduated a couple years after me. He was a film student at NYU. Somebody had said to him, Sean Albertson is a film editor. I was not. I was an assistant film editor, but he called me and said, “I’m doing my senior thesis. I need an editor. Would you edit my senior thesis for no money?” And so I said, “Sure”. And then I went to my dad and I was like, “How do I do that?” So that experience finally asking my father for sort of guidance in like, how would I do the job that you actually do? Not the job that I’ve been learning, which is, how to log and draw grease pencils on film. And through that process, he showed me all of the creativity that I love about music and about cooking. They were sort of transmuted into the art and craft of filmmaking. In fact, I’ve had directors come over for dinner at my house that I’ve worked with. A couple of them have said to me, “You know, watching you cook is very much like watching you edit my movie.” So I really credit my father with helping me find those creative connections, right? “Try a little of this” that’s not working, you know, “This is kind of sour.” That’s not what I’m looking for. What do I do next to figure out how to provide for my audience what I’m trying to provide for them? I do that when I cook and clearly do that as a film editor.

Nick Lange

That’s awesome.

Sean Albertson

It’s fun. There is no one way to become an editor or really anything that we do in this industry, and I love that. It feels like a very unique story as they all are. I love that, you know, my dad was able to provide that for me.

Nick Lange

So you were helping film students with their thesis films, but you yourself had not gone to film school. Is that right?

Sean Albertson

That is correct. I went right outta high school, started just sort of hanging around, and then did an internship, and then sort of worked my way up through the apprentice assistant editor thing. Becoming an editor, a lot of people sort of worked their way up through the assistant ranks and then editors let them start to cut things. That isn’t really my story. I worked with a great old editor named Sam Ostein who was a mentor in some ways, more in like how to get your rate as high as you can get it. 

Nick Lange

That’s important. 

Sean Albertson

Yeah. He was a great editor, but it wasn’t like a creative partnership. I like to have that with my assistants. I always let everybody edit and I let them bring me things, and show me and I note, and do all these things. I didn’t really have that, also because my dad was not editing anymore at that point. So I just started looking around and trying to get my hands on anything I could edit. At one point I was an assistant editor on a big movie that I got fired from cause I was kind of a shitty assistant editor. I was in Los Angeles, still living in New York, and I decided you know what – and I had sort of followed a girl out to Los Angeles as well – I said, I’m just gonna move here. This is where everything’s happening. I wanna be an editor. I don’t wanna be an assistant anymore. I’m not a very good assistant. So, I moved everything across the country and I just started cold calling and mailing, at the time, not even emailing. Cold calling and mailing all the post production people I could think of, people I had worked with as an assistant, people who were heads of post production. The kind of short version of it is I got a guy on the phone. He was the head of post production for Spelling Entertainment TV at the time. He was like, “All right, I’ve got this really low budget, super ambitious little TV show. There’s no money. Why don’t you edit it?” And that was kind of the start.

Nick Lange

Cool So to pause the story for a moment and dig into, what was the role of the assistant editor then? And how has that changed for today’s films and TV shows? 

Sean Albertson

Sure. The role of the assistant editor then was very, and not that it’s not this way anymore, but it’s very different. It was a very clerical and physical job. So we would get roles and roles of 35 millimeter picture and sound. So our days during the shoot were filled with putting these rolls of film through a hot machine that would put code numbers on it, running that film through a synchronizer, and logging in a log book – handwritten log book – all of those numbers that we put on, the latent edge numbers, which are tiny and backward and upside down as you’re rolling me through and you have to learn to read those, putting all that in a log book, syncing the picture to the sound. The logging is what numbers indicate what scene and take number this is. So then we take all that information, take the sound and picture, which we have sunk together, break those down into small roles of “scene one, take one” with a little handwritten piece of paper on top of it so the editor knows what this role of film is sitting on his table. So that’s sort of the main job while they’re shooting a movie and then again, just prepping that stuff so the editor has what the editor needs. Then another big part of the process of the job, which is I think how mentoring really happened back then, was one assistant would often stand right over the shoulder of the editor. Because the editor – once you cut open those roles of film, you had to hang the other pieces that you’re not using in this film bin, with that little piece of paper and so all these numbers. And so the editor would often just sit, look at the line script, which tells you what was shot and what the take number is. And the editor would say, “Okay, I’m looking for this code number on this take” and the assistant editor would stand there, siphoning through and then hold the editor piece of film.

Nick Lange

So manual. Wow. That’s amazing.

Sean Albertson

It’s super manual. It was physical. I remember there was one point when I was an apprentice film editor and there was a guy like installing telephones in our room. He was there all day long. At the end of the day, he was like, “So you just turn that wheel all day? That’s your job?” I was  literally cranking a film reel all day long.

Nick Lange

That’s wild. Would your arm tire? Would you get exhausted or cramp?

Sean Albertson

Yeah, shoulders. Like I had really good shoulders back then.

Nick Lange

I’m sure you did. Working out all day. Wow.

Sean Albertson

Yeah. So that’s how assistance used to learn how to edit. They would literally stand over the shoulder of their editor, watching every cut they’re making. So I think that was a great training ground. 

Nick Lange

And would you ever make suggestions or ask questions to lead someone?

Sean Albertson

You know, my assistant career, wasn’t quite what I was just describing. Ultimately, it was my first job as a first assistant editor on a big movie, I ended up getting fired from for a number of reasons. So I usually wasn’t. I was like the second assistant or the apprentice and I was usually the guy in the back room with the hot machine, putting numbers on it. You know what I mean? So, I wasn’t really the guy standing over the shoulder. 

Nick Lange

What did you get fired for on that feature?

Sean Albertson

I’ll make a long story short. So I was a second assistant editor for Sam Ostein who had edited all of Mike Nichols movies up to that point. They were splitting up. I don’t know who it was that made decision. They were not working together anymore. 

Nick Lange

So this was their last film. 

Sean Albertson

I was on their last film together. Mike Nichols goes to direct his next movie, which is, The Bird Cage, and is hiring Artie Schmidt as his editor. Artie Schmidt is a great, fantastic, old editor. I think he’s retired. I’m not gonna say he passed away. Possible. Because Mike had been working with Sam for 40 years and wanted a little bit of comfort in the editing room, so he asked me if I would come on, and I said to Mike I would love to, but I really wanna be editing. If I could be like some kind of editor on the movie, I would love to do that. So Mike flies me out to LA to have lunch with Artie Schmidt. We have a great lunch. He says, “I’d be happy to have you on the show.” Ultimately, the short story is I thought I was being hired as a second editor or a co-editor.

He thought he was hiring me as his first assistant editor. Because that never came up in the conversation during our lunch, when we finally had that conversation about a month and a half into the job, he said, “No, I’m not, I don’t need another editor. I’m not hiring another editor.

Do you want the job as my first assistant?” I said, yes. Then two weeks later he just said, “You know what? It’s just not working out. 

Nick Lange

I see. I see. Yeah. So, how has that role of the AE evolved today? What is your team? How do they support you?

Sean Albertson

Well, I mean, for me, I am – maybe more than other editors, I don’t know – but I am probably more interested in having the best creative support from my team – rather than the technical stuff. So for instance – not more interested, but cause they’ve gotta set me up the way I need to be set up to do my job, right? That’s super important. But what comes first and foremost for me when hiring a crew, particularly a first and a second assistant editor, is, are you good with sound editing? Do you know semi basic temp, visual effects? Can you do some color correction in the AVID? Can you edit? I love having my team do edits there. There are times at which I’m going through material, I’m trying to put a sequence together and in that moment my brain cannot get it right. I cannot wrap my head around creatively what I’m looking for, what the footage is telling me, what the director wants, and I’ll have to let it go. Sometimes, I will literally pass that along to an assistant and say, “Put something together. 

Let’s see how that goes.” I think for writers for me, editing is very difficult to do from scratch. Putting it together for the first time, assembling a scene is kind of the most arduous. Probably my least favorite part of the process. It’s the most internally combative for me because constantly questioning, “Is this the right move? Am I doing this correctly?” Then it’s always much easier to re-edit something or to rewrite something once it’s already put together. So the role of assistants has obviously changes. It’s less physically taxing in that you’re not carrying around reels of film and running ’em through machines and having to log. A lot of that metadata that I was telling you that I used to write in this log book, is usually already added. It’s coming from camera, going to the facility that’s creating your dailies for you and AVID or whatever program you’re using and there’s tons of metadata already built in. Usually it’s already sunk as well, picture and sound. So the assistant’s job, at that point, is to lay out that footage the way the editor can best take it in. Like me, for instance, the way I have my editing bins, I’ve got it in frame mode and I like to have it laid out in a certain way with wide shots first, and then everything on that side of the line, and then everything on this side of the line. I’m sure all editors have things set up differently. So it’s to really set that stuff up the way the editor wants, it’s dealing with all kinds of requests coming in from other departments, and really importantly to me is what we do, I believe, is all about presentation. I want the work that the director is doing to have its best shot at being presented, which means that the work I’m doing as an editor, putting these scenes together, I want that to have its best shot being presented. So I want a pretty extensive sound and temp music job done before we show it to anybody. I heavily rely on my crew to help me with that stuff. And also editing – creatively, I’m asking for people’s opinions. I wanna know, do you think this works? If it doesn’t, why don’t you think it works? Again, often, if I think something’s working and an assistant comes to me and says, “I think it would be better if you tried this” I’ll just say, “Yeah, go ahead. Go for it. Show me.” 

Nick Lange

Cool. What’s the typical career path of someone who starts as a second assistant? How do they get to you? How do you find them? And then are they typically working their way up to be a lead editor on features?

Sean Albertson

Well, I think usually, I find that assistant editors are sort of trying to work their way up.

When I first got into this business in the eighties, nobody was really looking to become an editor. Not many people really knew what editing was.

Nick Lange

Oh, interesting.

Sean Albertson

Yeah. People sort of happened into it. Like my dad happened into editing. I find that there were a lot of musicians that sort of, somehow, ended up in like control of music control room person, and then they somehow got into film sound and then somebody kind of was like, oh, they put these things together. There wasn’t, at that time. As far as I knew, there was no film school editing classes. You’re learning how to be a filmmaker and sure, they show you the machinery and how to cut your things together. Yeah, I’d say most assistant editors ultimately are looking to become editors. Like I said before, there’s no one path. I mean, the, the absolute path, I think, to succeeding, to becoming an editor and succeeding as an editor is just to do the best. Just kick ass. Just do the best job you can do whatever task you’re being given. You know, my current first assistant editor on the movie I just finished was my editorial PA six, seven years ago. So I had this movie come up, I was looking to crew in New York. It was a very difficult time to crew because everybody was extremely busy and this guy who had been my PA, who was a great PA I mean talk about, whatever your task is, do it well, be thoughtful about it, details matter.

That’s what I believe. That’s how I do my job. That’s how I ask the people who work for me to do their jobs. And that’s how he did his job as a PA getting coffee, getting lunch, checking in, making sure we were okay, anything else we need. That kind of thing. So he stayed in contact with me over the years and when I was looking for a first and second assistant editor in New York, he contacted me and saw on some posting that I was looking, and we talked about him being the second assistant on this movie. So I kept interviewing potential first assistant editors, and everybody was super busy. Then I talked to a couple of people who were qualified, but I just wasn’t feeling it. So I said to this guy, “How about you’re the first assistant editor and we’ll hire somebody else as the second assistant and whatever you lack and experience, like just kick ass and be willing to learn?” and he was like, “Great”. And it worked out great. So my best advice is always do your best. Life is life, and we all have shitty days and bad things happen around us. I like to enjoy being at work. Again, I have bad days, and fight in the family or somebody gets sick or whatever it is, but we have a lot of fun on my cruise. So just have as positive an attitude as you can have and at least pretend you wanna be there. For me, that’s how you get on my radar. For me, it’s good attitude. If I don’t know something, I’m gonna do my best to figure it out. I don’t want to hear “no” or “I don’t know” too many times. I’m okay with “I don’t know”, I just don’t want “I don’t know” period. I want “I don’t know. Let me look into that and get back to you in a little while.” 

Nick Lange

How important is their reel or their samples for that? Getting that second assistant job? 

Sean Albertson

Well firstly, I don’t know any assistants who have an assistant editing reel.

Nick Lange

Let’s say they’ve been cutting their own commercials or their own music videos or things like that. Does that make a difference? 

Sean Albertson

Sure. I actually haven’t experienced that yet. Cause anytime I interview my assistants, I certainly tell them I’m really looking for somebody who can do all the technical stuff, but who’s also interested in the creative, and can be helpful in the creative. I think it would be super cool if an assistant said to me, “Hey, check out my reel, check out my website. Here’s the stuff I’ve been doing.” I think that would be great. I could look at something and be like, “Wow, the sound work on that is great.” Yeah. 

Nick Lange

So what’s the best way for them to learn that technical stuff that you’re looking for? So again, just for context, this is for people that really wanna work in films. They wanna work with an editor like you, they wanna get on your team, become your go-to second assistant. How do they get that technical skill?

Sean Albertson

Definitely.  I think a great path, like I was just talking about with Justin is, is trying to get in as an editorial, PA editorial production assistant, post production assistant. Then when you are there and you’re doing a great job, say to the assistant editors, the second assistant, the first assistant and the editor, “I’m here to learn. I’m gonna do a great job for you. What can I do for you to take some load off what you’re doing? That’s a great way. Obviously, YouTube videos on learning the systems that we use, like AVID. I tend to edit with AVID media composer. I would recommend learning Premiere and DaVinci. Maybe even Final Cut Pro even though nobody really seems to use that anymore. But I would say for television and features, first and foremost, AVID media composer. There’s plenty of free video guides out there to help people learn that stuff. Then again, really importantly is to get into a situation where you’re connected to the actual process, because learning how those softwares work is one thing, but learning how the editing room system works is completely different. You can be a technical whiz at AVID media composer, it definitely does not mean you have the skills to be my assistant editor. There are ways that we do things. There are ways that things are organized, and templates made, and line scripts and all kinds of things that go into it. So I think knowing how to use the softwares is super important, obviously. So if we have a PA, if we’re interviewing for production assistant, and the production assistant says, “I know AVID. I know Premiere. I know DaVinci. Whatever you guys need me to do there.” That’s a real plus for me, and that also tells me that person wants to be there. 

Nick Lange

How do they find that PA job? I mean, this sounds like a very rudimentary question, but where, where do they look? 

Sean Albertson

I don’t know. It’s rough figuring out where to go to get these jobs. Well, one of the first things I would say now you go to things like Facebook, has all kinds of groups. This assistant I was just telling you about, he’s a member of all these “I need an assistant editor” Facebook group.

Everyone looking for anything that you can imagine, you’re gonna find in at least a Facebook group, if not other places. What I recommend to anybody who comes to talk to me and asks me, how do I do this is, find the people to reach out to. Probably start on Facebook, get the names, find people like me. The truth is my email address and probably phone number is on IMDb.

I get emails all the time of like, “Hey, I’m trying to break in.” and I always answer, ultimately, and I always do what I can to help because it’s a tough business to break into until you know everybody. So it’s like find people like me, find people like my assistant editors and say, “I’m super interested. How do I do this? Can I intern for you?” I always recommend, particularly for people coming in at the beginning, hopefully your overhead is pretty low at that point in your life. Be willing to intern, be willing to say, “I’ll come in, I’ll kick ass. I’ll do whatever work you want me to do if you will show me some stuff.” And that does two things: one is it’s PR, you get to prove to these people that you’re a worthy worker that they would be like, “Oh, maybe we should hire this person as a PA.” Then two, you’re getting to learn all the things you need to learn. I have another guy who started as an intern for me on a movie, who by the end of that movie was a union assistant editor. He was an unpaid intern on day one and a union assistant editor at the end, because he showed up. He was the first one there last one out every day as an intern. 

Nick Lange

I love that. Will you tell me about how the union works for editors? And I’d love to hear about ACE, how you become elected to ACE and what it means for you?

Sean Albertson

Sure. So the union – the motion picture editors guild. For me, what’s sort of spectacular about it is it’s collective bargaining, right? So it protects the workers – obviously it’s a union, it protects the workers and it bargains for decent wages and things like health insurance and retirement plans, and things like that. So what’s huge, particularly for a guy like me, I’ve got a fam. I have five kids. It’s a lot of health insurance. So it pays for itself. Obviously, you generally need to be on the union roster to be able to get union work. Getting in is kind of a strange animal. I don’t know exactly how it works. Obviously, anybody who’s interested in getting into the union should call the IA local 700 or the Motion Picture Editors Guild and find out. In fact, you can probably go on their website and it’ll tell you what you need to do to get in. There’s a few ways to get in. There are ways of getting grandfathered in. This intern I was telling you about who was a union assistant by the time we were done. We hadn’t realized it but we had started that movie as a non-union show. The editing crew didn’t know this at the time, and before they finished shooting, we found out and the union found out. And of course we got turned into a union show. Well, he was already on the show as a paid PA at the time, we called him an apprentice. So since he was already being paid as an apprentice film editor, they had to allow him in because the show was going union. So that’s one way to get in. Other ways are you have to have a certain amount of hours worked on non-union projects in the category that you’re trying to get in as and then you pay a chunk of money, probably like three grand. They give you a t-shirt, and you’re now paying dues and are eligible for health insurance, as long as you work enough hours to get there. ACE is an interesting one for me. Because I just have not been as involved in ACE as I had wanted to be when I joined. So getting elected to ACE. That’s funny. I elected myself. So what I did was – cause I used to go to the ACE Eddie awards, right? The editing awards when I could get a ticket or when I would get invited by a production company that I work with and I just loved, loved the comradery. It just was sort of the first time in my life, the first time I went to one of those award shows, I was like, wow. There’s like hundreds of other people who do what I do and they’re talking about it. I was never a part of an editor community. I didn’t have friends that were editors. My best friend as an editor, but I wasn’t part of that community. And so I’d go to these things and be like, wow, what an amazing – it’s like support group for editors. 

Nick Lange

It’s great. It’s such an isolating career. You’re alone in the dark.

Sean Albertson

Right? Yeah. So I was so sort of turned on by it and how kind of cool it was that we all do things things, we do things kind of differently, but with the same goals. It was just so much fun. So I decided I want to be a part of this. So I looked into it and started looking at all the things that they do, and they’re really about connecting in the editing world and connecting outsiders to the editing world and letting the world know what we do as an art and a craft. I got so excited and I’m like, all right. So I elected myself. I called them and said, what do I need to do to get in? I happened to have been working down the hall from the woman who basically runs ACE. She said, you need two letters of recommendation from ACE editors. Then there’s this process. So somehow, I managed to get two letters of recommendation and started this process and it’s not grueling, but you have to put together, at least back then, I had to put together a resume that was super specific. Like every episode of every show, the dates of work, the air dates, all this information that I never had to put together before. So I had a 10 page resume, ultimately, that I had to send in. The board of members had to agree that that was enough to interview me. Then I did an interview process with them. They asked me a bunch of questions and what would I be interested in doing. I love teaching about editing. I love learning about editing. So I was like, yeah, I wanna be a part of all these panels that you have and the voting registry, to vote for editors. I started by doing a few panels and voting on some panels, and then life and work took over and suddenly I’m like, I can’t. And I travel a bunch for work. Suddenly I’m wondering, how do editors actually find the time to be a part of ACE. There’s some guys there, women and men in ACE, who do amazing stuff. There’s and old buddy of mine named Glen Garland, who every month, he has a new interview with the editors of the hottest new project. There’s so much cool stuff and I’m not really doing any of it, but I’m certainly proud to be associated with such a club.

Nick Lange

That’s great. Does it lead to work sometimes or does that networking lead to new collaboration?

Sean Albertson

Maybe, I mean, that’s always hard to say too. I think every connection you make in this business ultimately, potentially, leads to work. For me, I think the connections in ACE probably lead to more creative friendships. 

People who can share the same, like, “I’m experiencing this problem on this movie.” “Oh yeah. I totally experienced that before,” and this is the kind of thing. So I love watching the panels that ACE puts on because I love learning about other editors processes. Sometimes I’m like, oh my God, how could they do it that way? That’s ridiculous. And sometimes I’m like, whoa, that’s exactly what I was looking for. And for sure if you’re new in your career and just coming up, and they have programs for assistant editors and up and coming editors, I think it’s a great way to meet people that may turn into work opportunities.

Nick Lange

That’s great. Will you tell me what led to your first meeting with Sylvester Stallone and what it felt like sitting with this American film icon, when apparently you guys really hit it off?

Sean Albertson

Oh, Sly. Let’s see. So, okay. In 2003, my now ex-wife was a post production executive at Universal and a great editor, who’s also one of my mentors named Don Zimmerman, was editing a crappy movie called The Cat in the Hat. He and his two twin sons, Dean and Dan, were his first assistant editors. Both have gone on to become amazingly talented editors who work on incredible projects. Not to toot other people’s horns, but Dean just finished the fourth season of a Stranger Things, which was amazing. So Don, at the time, had been editing on a program called LightWorks or HeavyWorks for many years. And just the way the industry was going and technology, and this was gonna be a big visual effects movie, he was switching over to AVID media composer. I had been editing on AVID media composer on really small TV MOWs. I had been at USA Network for a while on the Universal lot. So Don was looking for – I don’t even, I still don’t know what the job was that I did. It was sort of an assistant editor, but it was somebody really who could teach the crew AVID media composer. So I’d been editing on AVID media composer for years. My wife, who was the post production executive on that movie asked me, “Would you be interested? It would be a great way to get in with a great editorial team and on a big movie.” And I was like, absolutely. And I did. So I had a great working relationship with Don and the boys, Dean and Dan, and they’re all great friends today.

And a few years later, Sly decided he was gonna make this last episode of Rocky and called Don, who had been his editor for years throughout the eighties and said, I want you to edit this movie. And Don was not available. And Sly being Sly said, well, what the hell are we gonna do? And he said, “You should meet this kid, Sean. He knows what he’s doing. This is it.” So he met me. I remember that first meeting, it was crazy cause I was like editing this shortlived TV show. And I read the script for Rocky Balboa, and I didn’t think the script was very good. Didn’t have a lot going on. So I went in and as I do, when a director asked me, did you read the script?

What do you think? I told him what my issues were with the script. 

Nick Lange

What were they? Do you remember? 

Sean Albertson

God, it was so long ago. I remember thinking not much happened. So in reading the script, I remember feeling like Rocky’s got a pretty good life. Like, yeah, Adrian’s dead. It’s kind of sad, but he owns a restaurant. I realize now, after years of working with Sly, this is the way he writes. He doesn’t put a whole lot on the paper. He just puts “interior restaurant – night” and then the dialogue. And that’s it. He’s not talking about looks people are giving, what they may be feeling in the moment, like this kind of things that you tend to read in other scripts where you’re like, this is what’s happening for this character so you know how they’ll be emoting. And so what I read was, Rocky’s got a pretty good life. He owns a restaurant, he got a decent life. Maybe he’s got some problems with his kid. And then all of a sudden, outta nowhere, he just goes, “I think I’m gonna start fighting again.” And I’m like, so I don’t really get, you know, 

Nick Lange

So to Sylvester, he’s writing, directing, he’s gonna be acting. He doesn’t need to write that because he knows what’s happening, but you’re not getting it reading that script. That’s funny. 

Sean Albertson

Right. And that’s what he said to me. I said, look, I feel like there’s no real inciting incident. Like, I don’t understand what’s driving this guy to change. And Sly just looked at me and he goes, “It’s all in here.” I was like, all right, that’s awesome. And it was. The truth is, it really was. That’s how he does what he does. It’s how he writes and directs. I’ve now seen it on multiple projects. He’s also not the kind of guy that – he doesn’t work from paper. He writes the script, that’s an idea. And then he goes out and he figures it out in every moment out there.

Nick Lange

In an interview, you said that he oftentimes will give you notes, like throughout the day you’re getting notes. Then you made the mistake once of staying late and making those revisions, only to have him come in the next morning, he’d reworked it all in his mind that night and had a whole new vision. What’s that like?

Sean Albertson

So that was a great lesson I learned early on. So, I’m trying to impress not only a new director, but Sylvester Stallone. In some ways, that original Rocky movie, was maybe the most inspiring movie to me as a filmmaker. I was a kid in the eighties, it was all Sylvester Stallone. And so trying to impress this guy, give me a bunch of notes. And then he just gets up at six-thirty, seven o’clock at night and he is like, all right, I’ll see you tomorrow. And so I assume I’m supposed to stay all night making this work. What I realized quickly is he would forget 90% of what he said to me and not only would he go home and conceive a whole new thing – I mean, his brain is constantly moving. He would conceive a whole new thing. He would assume that he either told me about it, or that somehow I should have known. Then he’d come in and I’d go “All right, so let’s look at the stuff that we talked about yesterday” and I’d hit play and he’d go, “Hang on a second. Hang on a second. What about that thing that we talked about?” and I’m like, we didn’t talk about that. Like come on, man. Another sort of version of Sly that I love to tell, it was on the the Rambo four. John Rambo actually. There was this scene in the rain and he’s having a conversation with a girl and she convinces him to go on this mission, and it was a great scene. The first time I put it together was just a beautiful scene. We watched it the first time, had a couple of tweaks. Then it just went on and we’d keep going through the film and we keep watching the scene and he wouldn’t say anything. About four months into this process, we’re watching the movie yet again, and we get to this scene and he goes, “Sean, Sean, Sean, stop, stop.” I stop. And he says, “When are you gonna show me this scene the way I intended it when I shot it?” and I was like, really? what? How could you –? 

Nick Lange

Oh you wanna see that cut? Sure.

Sean Albertson

I’m like, okay, so you don’t like it? Like when did that happen? He’s quite a character, that guy. And we did some some really cool work together and we had some funny times and I have a lot of funny stories about him.

Nick Lange

You talked about a fight sequence. I think they shot in Las Vegas with nine cameras rolling. And then he said, “Can you have a cut for me to look at the next day?” And you had to race back to Burbank, what was that like?

Sean Albertson

Gosh, where do you get all this information? 

Nick Lange

You have some interviews up there. 

Sean Albertson

Yeah, so it was the first thing. I think it’s the very first thing he shot on that movie, was all those however many days of fight stuff. I’m in Vegas and I don’t have an editing room in Vegas, and he literally says to me – they’ve got like four days worth of the shooting done – and he says, “Can you get this together tomorrow? And I’m like, uh, uh, uh, I guess? I’m not gonna say no to the guy. It was my first task given to me by Sylvester Stallone. 

Nick Lange

You have to deliver.

Sean Albertson

So, yeah, I ran back to LA and put the entire fucking last act in the movie together in the day.

Nick Lange

Did you sleep at all?

Sean Albertson

No. I put it together round by round. First, I put together round one, fight only, sent that off to my assistants to start putting sound effects to. And then when I get round one back with sound, after I got through the rest of the fight, I would start going through the material of the – I look at fights and sports competitions in movies as like concentric circles. So there’s the actual fight. And then you have to start figuring out, what does each hit mean and who does it mean something to –

Nick Lange

Wow. Cool. That’s interesting.

Sean Albertson

So then I start thinking about whose face should I be cutting to? Rocky just got slammed in the face. What’s the reaction from his opponent, what’s his reaction, and what’s more important in that moment? So I start thinking about those reactions, and then I start thinking about the reactions just outside of the ring by his trainers. And then of course, his love interest on the way outside, and his son and things like that. 

Nick Lange

It reminds me of something else I read you said about in a fight, each sequence reach action has its own story arc, which seems like what you just described.

Sean Albertson

Sure. Yeah. I think it’s that absolutely, positively. And it’s why I do a lot of, sort of fix it jobs. Like I’ll get called in, people who have a movie and it’s not quite working. Like, what’s not working, particularly in action films and sports based competition films. It is usually lacking what I just described. You might have super cool battle footage or fight footage or football footage. But if you’re not telling the audience through editing what each beat in that action sequence means, and who does that mean something to, then it just becomes a collage of fast cuts and hits and whatever.

Nick Lange

How challenging is it working with a director who’s also the star of the film, who also wrote it? And what was that experience of – I imagine in a lot of ways, you have to take on more of a director’s cap yourself as you’re sitting there with Sylvester Stallone, figuring out what the story is.

Sean Albertson

Sure, in some ways. The thing about a guy like Stallone is his process is combative, right? He’s internally combative and he yells at himself and literally will be sitting, editing, and he’ll look at the screen and go, “Come on, Sly, what the fuck are you doing?” You know, like, he’ll hate his performance, and that comes out externally too. And so what I found in working with him is what he desires, even in the moments where he’s like, “Shut up, man, you don’t know what you’re talking about” is he desires that combative, creative nature. He doesn’t want a yes man. So I definitely, in my experiences with him, had to take on that role very specifically to his own performance and his own look. There’s a lot of vanity, I think, involved when you’re a star of that level, a star of that level aging now and trying to revitalize a career. So I got with him when his career had been in the toilet for many years. And now he’s trying to first of all, put an elegant end to the Rocky franchise – which he felt he had not done in Rocky five, which I agree with, and to maybe revitalize his own his own career. So there’s a lot of vanity there. He’s looking at himself on screen saying, “God, I’m so old. There’s wrinkles.” and “I don’t want to be on this angle” and “I sucked here.” So a lot of my arguments with him, particularly on that movie were, “That’s exactly who you’re supposed to be in this movie. That is who Rocky is like, that’s the movie you wrote.” So we’d have a lot of arguments about that kind of stuff, and again, because his process is combative, we would argue. And because of what I was telling you earlier about how he’ll, oftentimes, just forget what was rolling around in here yesterday and coming with a new idea, I was able to bring back things that I knew were best for the movie, sometimes by just telling him it was his idea. 

Nick Lange

That’s funny. It’s smart. I think you were maybe talking about Expendables when you said that he has a style of, in the edit, stripping away everything. And especially in a movie like that, I think 17 big movie stars in it, where you have so many different storylines you could focus on, what is that process like? So he strips it away and then rebuild, or figure out where to build from there? How does that work?  

Sean Albertson

It’s a very interesting process and something that I found very, frustrating at first until I realized what was happening. The first time I experienced it was on Rocky Balboa. Bert Young, who plays Paulie in the movie, had done some interview somewhere and had said something like one sentence that Sly was pissed about. He thought it was derogatory toward himself. So suddenly, he came up with this idea that nobody likes Paulie. Nobody cares about the character Paulie, we’re taking Paulie out of the movie, and my reaction to that is like, it was yet another morning where he came in and was like, all right, we’re doing – and I’m like, whoa, what? Having been a fan of Rocky my entire life, of course, that is so untrue and I knew it was untrue. But what I found out was that, there’s a lot of brilliance that comes out of those frustrating moments. So what I found out then, and became part of how I worked with him from there on out was, always let him do it. I’d like to take Expendables 3 out of the mix, only because I don’t feel like me and my co-editor Paul Harb were ever able to get him back to where we were able to get him back to on Balboa and John Rambo. Because what our process was on those two movies, Balboa and John Rambo, is he tore it apart, took everything out, took everything out.

No cut more than two seconds in the fight. I mean, it was, it was horrible. And then we go through it together. The three of us would sit in the room, getting to lock picture, and we would just argue and we would say, “Dude, this is horrible. Nobody’s gonna understand what’s happening here or why here.” And he’d be like, “Well, what the hell should we do then?”

And then we’d, you know, show him and he’d be like, all right, that’s fine. And slowly but surely, we would get the movie and the dialogue and the fights back to a place that we felt was not just confusing, but then would uphold the integrity of what we were talking about earlier and that each action moment is either telling a story, starting a story, or ending a story.

So on both of those movies, we were able to, through this process of the three of us banging it out in a room for a couple of weeks, able to get back to that place. Expendables 3 was a different scenario in which there were a lot of chefs in that kitchen. The last two weeks of locking picture was me in a room with Sly and like five executives. Paul and I had been separated in sequences and rooms. I would try to do that process with him, and he would turn to his producers who just wanted him to stop editing, and they would be like, “It’s perfect. It’s perfect. You’re right.” And so I kind of look at Expendables 3 as maybe the worst edited movie I walked away from. 

Nick Lange

That must have been hard. So much character development to squeeze in there. 

Sean Albertson

Yeah. It really, it was a huge, huge movie, and I think that there’s a much better movie there than what we ended up with, which is frustrating for me. But in the end, it’s an Expendables movie and it’s fun as hell. It’s an incredible cast, and people just enjoy it; they enjoy it or they don’t. 

Nick Lange

How do you exert, or I should say protect your vision of a film and sort of maintain as much control as you can, without stepping on a director’s toes? 

Sean Albertson

Yeah, it’s a real balance. I hear stories from directors about some editors who are great at it. Some editors who are just horrible, some editors just won’t do what a director is asking. And they keep getting work, and God bless ’em, like if they can have all that control and be the director, I guess. But for me, you know, I feel like my job is, as we discussed earlier, do the very best you can with what’s in front of you. I do not believe that my first cut of a scene is the best cut of the scene. It’s the best cut of the scene that I could come up with in that moment and give myself enough time to edit the rest of the movie. I’ve got blinders on when I’m putting it together. It’s hard to see the big picture. Like, I don’t really know the context of this scene until it’s all together as one big giant movie. So the way I see my job in that regard that you just asked is like, my job is to do my best to give the director what they’re asking for, to give the footage the best shake it can get.

The footage is gonna tell me things that the director hasn’t seen or figured, and I’m gonna do my best to make it work the best I can in that moment. And then when a director or producer gives me a note I disagree with, I am arguing that note as I’m making that change, trying to do the best I can to make that work. Then the best thing happens often, which is, “I don’t think this is gonna work and here’s why I’ll tell you…oh wait. Okay. That’s kind of cool, but what if we do this?”

So I have to be really careful not to let my ego – because if a director looks at something I did and they’re like, yeah, that doesn’t work at all. My ego says, oh, this person thinks I’m shit and I can’t do this job, and maybe that person is right. Maybe I’ve been pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes for 30 years. The truth is it’s not my movie, I’m not the director. So my job is to do my best, always give my strong creative opinions, and I will argue my point to the point where the director says, “No, no, no, let’s, let’s do it my way.” And I’ll drop it and do it their way. And then I’ll bring it up a day later, two days later, a week later, a month later, sometimes when I bring it up, I say, “You know what? I so disagreed with this, but you were right.” And sometimes like one of my last movies, I was just sitting with my director. We were talking about this. There’s that one thing that these directors decided it’s going in the movie and I’m like, it should not be in this movie, and of course they win. And so, you know, there’s always that one thing.

Nick Lange

Was this American Underdog? What was that? Tell me about working on that one. 

Sean Albertson

Such a great experience. I love these guys. So John and Andy Irwin are really faith-based filmmakers out of Franklin, Tennessee. They make really good movies. I’m like a atheist New York Jew, and they’re like Southern faith-based Jesus filmmakers. Two brothers, Andy and John Irwin. They’re self-made filmmakers. They self-taught. They’ve made their own movies. They’ve done so well with their faith-based movies, and having watched a bunch of them, I can see why.  There’s a lot of faith-based movies out there that don’t have to be good, right? That audience tends to show up just because it’s faith-based, because Jesus is predominantly featured in the movie. These guys make really good movies that happen to be faith-based films, what I really appreciate about those movies, particularly sports-based competition movies is those are my favorite movies. Movies about perseverance, faith in whatever; faith in self, faith in God, faith in something larger than yourself. They called me in to work on that movie. They also knew they had a movie that was a bit bigger than just their faith-based audience, which I absolutely agreed with. So, I went down this road with them. It was a crazy road. They were like a 65 million-dollar budget movie when they first called me. They were about to go into production, COVID hit, they shut everything down. Lionsgate said, you’re now a 25 million budget movie if you wanna make this movie. And they went back out to all their people and they were like, “Okay, we have a lot less money to pay you now.” When I meet people, as I get older, it becomes more and more important to me to work with people I just enjoy being with. These guys are amazing, they become good friends and so I was like, all right, I’m in, because I love the people, I thought, I didn’t know them very well, but I loved the story and I wanted to be a part of making that story. So we did it, went to Tennessee, worked with these guys. Andy had been editing all of his own movies up to that point. We’ve since talked a lot, we’ve become good friends, and he told me that he felt a little intimidated about editing with me because he wants to control his vision and he’s used to doing all the editing himself. And he had first said to me, “I’m just gonna let you edit. I’m gonna try to step back.” And then slowly, he wanted to get into the editing process, which he did. It was just a great, fantastic creative collaboration between the two of us. 

Nick Lange

Would you guys send cuts back and forth or would you sit in the same edit bay? How’s that collaboration work?

Sean Albertson

So we would do both. Ultimately, he was most concerned with like “Here, these are the things in my head about the opening of the movie, and then the last act, all the football, the big, big, super bowl, football stuff.” So he just sort of dove into that stuff. I obviously had put the whole movie together before he started touching anything, and then he just sort of took a chunk and would work on it for a while and sometimes call me into his room and say, “Here’s what I’m working on. What do you think?” And I’d say, “I love this idea.” “I hate that.” We would just have this very open, collaborative conversation. And then he would hand it over to me.

He’d be like, “Okay, here’s what I want. Now do your thing and make it great.” It was really nice because we talked about it, and we were both able to let go of ego in it, and he took my stuff and tore it up and redid it, and then I would take his stuff and do what I thought it needed to be more effective than what it was. Usually, we were both super happy with the outcome. 

Nick Lange

That’s cool. That sounds fun. 

Sean Albertson

Yeah. It is neat. 

Nick Lange

Shifting gears to your work in TV, how would you compare the experience for you as an editor of working on TV versus films and what are the things that you like about each? 

Sean Albertson

I would say like, if I had to choose what I like better, I would absolutely say movies. I always prefer working on movies for two reasons. One is the pay rate is much better for editors like me in movie. Much better. In TV, there’s usually a cap on rates for editors and TV, and it’s quite a bit lower than in movies. So that’s one thing, but also the thing I love about TV is it really sharpens my skills. It’s fast. It is fast paced. Like they shoot a 43 minute episode in eight days. You have two days to have an editor’s cut done. You get four days for a director’s cut, if you’re lucky, and then the showrunner will come in and do like four days, five days of, of notes. And then you’re like locking picture, and while you’re prepping for post production sound and visual effects and all that other stuff, you’re getting dailies on your next episode.

Nick Lange

Wow. Which you have to start working on already. You have to start assembling those.

Sean Albertson

Yeah. You’re always behind. Also, I will say this,  I’m also talking about network TV shows ‘cause okay. I’m trying to think of like streaming stuff that I’ve worked. I think, from what I can tell, I’ve only done one, I guess two now, like streaming. I did one episode of Lovecraft Country for HBO, but they were already going for like a year and a half. They had shot everything. They called me, it was a fix-it job. There was one episode the showrunner was not happy with. I came in, I cut it from scratch, cause that was way more like working on a movie. It was great.

Nick Lange

So the timelines are more like features for the streamers, maybe. Okay. What is something nice that someone has done for you in your career that’s helped you get where you are today? 

Sean Albertson

Let’s see. I was talking about this earlier, that first job I got editing that was very low budget, very ambitious. It was a mock talk show for the E Network, I think. I had no credits, no editing credits whatsoever, and I had cold-called this head of post production at a big TV company. He had known my dad many years earlier and he heard my last name, and he said, “Are you in relation to Eric?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m his son.” And he was like, “All right, get in here. Let’s have a talk.” He was just like, “I’ll do whatever I can to help.” And he just pushed me onto this show.

I guess that’s probably the nicest thing, because that was the beginning of my editing career. There was no reason for anybody to give me a job as an editor at that point. Like I said, I didn’t come up through the assistant editor ranks as an editor. Many do a lot. I end up bringing all of my assistants, ultimately, end up, co-editing with me, and then they go off on their own. That wasn’t my story, and this guy just pushed me on these people, these poor people. I mean, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. Yeah. That was a great thing.

Nick Lange

How is the role of the editor changing? So for editors who are maybe earlier in their careers, what can they do right now to prepare for the future?

Sean Albertson

I would say the role of the editor has already changed, right? I’m thinking about when I started in the eighties and the role of the editor was somewhat that of creative philosophisers. Like I was saying earlier right now, if I get a note I disagree with, I’m doing the note as I’m arguing the note, because it doesn’t take me very long to do it, and I can easily undo it or do a new version of it, and all that happens so quickly. Back then, a director would say, “I want do this,” and the editor would say, “Here’s why I don’t think that’s gonna work”. Because if I do that, I’m gonna have to send you away for a day, and then you’re gonna come back and look at it, and then we’re gonna have changes and I’m gonna send you away again. So I think, certainly, that’s the biggest way the job of the editor has changed. How it will change, that remains to be seen. I couldn’t tell you. I think for me, we will find out. I don’t see anything currently in technology that would have the role of the editor change enormously like it has in the last 40 years. 

Nick Lange

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And finally, what are you working on now? What can we look forward to?

Sean Albertson

A Netflix movie called The Curse of Bridge Hollow. Just a fun sort of kids, horror, comedy Halloween movie, which will be dropping sometime in October. Then, I’m helping some producer friends out another football movie which is called The Senior. 

Nick Lange

Awesome. Well, I can’t wait. Sean, this was great. Thank you so much for all this wisdom. Great stories.