Editor's note: the following interview is edited for length and clarity.
No Film School: Can you share your journey as an editor and how it has led you to projects like this?
Michael Mahaffie: I started working in LA on documentaries immediately after leaving San Francisco State University’s Cinema Department in 2010 as an assistant editor. The first film I worked on was Superheroes (dir. Michael Barnett). I worked under editors Derek Boonstra and Doug Blush, who saw that I was interested in editing and gave me scenes to cut on the side of my AE duties. I still remember the first scene I cut that I showed to our director, Michael Barnett, and it made him cry. Our little team’s film got into the Slamdance Film Festival in 2011, and our little film was picked up by HBO shortly after.
From there, I continued working with Barnett and Boonstra, who are more than mentors to me but lifelong friends, on two more films, moving up from AE to Editor. These films played at Sundance and other festivals around the country, while also being picked up by Netflix and Showtime.
After editing Barnett’s Emmy Nominated The Mars Generation, Barnett and I started working on Hulu’s Emmy, and Peabody nominated film Changing The Game. During this edit, we brought in Amanda Griffin, who has become my favorite editor to collaborate with. She and I just get each other and sharpen each other's skills, and we have become close friends over the years. While I was growing as an editor, the rise in popularity of documentaries went hand in hand with streaming services beginning to dominate the industry.
In 2019, I wanted to branch out into documentary series work, but the only issue was that I had only worked on features. I was turned down for many jobs because I was told I only cut features and I didn’t have series experience. I'll be honest; it was discouraging, but I never let a "no" get me down.
In early 2020, an editor friend suggested a producer named Peter Scalletar for a series he was developing for Showtime. We met, and he took a chance on me to lead the editing for a documentary series about the rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine called Supervillain (dir. Karam Gill). The week we started the edit was the week the lockdowns began, but Peter, Karam, and I really bonded through that, and I still consult with Karam to this day on other music films he directs. After finishing that project, Amanda Griffin wanted me to come to work with her for director Chris Smith on two documentary series (Bad Vegan & Hollywood Con Queen), and I could not pass up working with a friend again.
When we finished those projects, Peter Scalletar called and asked me to come lead the edit on “Starting 5” for Netflix. I say all this because I have always tried to treat this industry as a community first. I always try to give more than I take. I truly distaste the word “networking” because I don’t know how to do that. I only know how to build relationships and community.
NFS: What initially drew you to work on Starting 5, and what aspects of the project excited you the most?
Mahaffie: The first thing that drew me to working on Starting 5 was working with Peter Scalletar again. Peter and I became really close editing Supervillain during the Covid lockdowns. We had wanted to collaborate again, but the timing was not in our favor.
Fortunately, the timing worked out for this, but I was unsure if I was the right fit for the project. I told Peter that I did not follow basketball and that of the five players, I only knew of LeBron James. He said that's why he needed me. He was focused on telling a human story first about these men as men. That’s what sold me to come aboard.
In the West, we have a lot of toxic portrayals of masculinity on the screen, big and small, which are meant to be idolized. Being a man is nuanced, and I truly believe showing positive, wholesome imagery of strong masculine men who are not afraid to cry is powerful and important for audiences to see.
NFS: What were some of the challenges you faced while editing the series, and how did you overcome them?
Mahaffie: There were two big challenges: a fast turnaround and an isolated edit team all over North America. Our edit and assistant team had folks in New York, LA, Atlanta, Connecticut, Canada, San Francisco and other places. To create a synergy of creativity is hard when everyone is isolated in their edits at home. Besides technology like Slack and Zoom to keep us connected, the thing we tried to do was move people around to all episodes so that we were all familiar with all the stories being told.
We also did this so that our styles would begin to sync across all 10 episodes. We all began to vibe off each other as we handed scenes back and forth. Derek Doneen and Andrew Lombardi helped me refine how we cut these games into something new and special. Hannelore Gomes reminded me to lean into the weirdness and humor that these men gave us.
The style and creativity of what all the editors and AEs gave to the show was something I tried to distill in doing the final edits of every episode with our Showrunner, Peter Scalletar, which took over two months and was the second challenge. We had a hard delivery date that was immovable, and we had two extra episodes added because Jayson Tatum got his banner. Peter and I worked together from early in the morning to late at night all summer long in my garage/office, sometimes seven days a week. While it was hard work, working with a friend like Peter felt like being at summer camp. We kept a strict routine and ate lunch every day at the deli down the street from my house, Bub and Grandma’s. My order was a Pick-A-City with an iced herbal tea. It was the right amount of calories to keep me from being hangry while also not making me sleepy.
Honestly, those two months of intense editing were a highlight of my year. Our assistants, led by James Drew Hamilton, also really stepped up in this time to allow Peter and me to really focus on our daily tasks so that we could keep moving the ball down the court (wink wink).
Michael Mahaffie
NFS: How did you and the director decide to shift the narrative focus from just basketball outcomes to the personal journeys of the players?
Mahaffie: Before I even started, Peter told me this was a human story first. Our directors Trishtan Williams, Sami Khan, and Susan Ansman, shot our players that way. The footage and interviews I got were focused in that way. Our team had a daily meeting, and this idea was our mantra: We were telling a human story first. By getting to know these men through their personal journeys, you can see these games in a new light. We already know the outcome of the season, so the winners/losers of the game are not the story. The why and how is the story, and for sports and non-sports fans, that is a fresh new layer to see.
NFS: You mentioned memorable moments, like Jimmy Butler's family scene and Jason Tatum's struggle. How did you choose which personal stories to highlight?
Mahaffie: In documentaries, I find the stories start to reveal themselves as the director builds that relationship with their subject. I have seen this in every single film or show I have cut. It is only through that relationship that we really get on the inside. This is especially hard with athletes or celebrities who might be media-trained and guarded about what they are comfortable sharing. Trishtan Williams built that relationship with Anthony Edwards and his family to the point where we were able to be a fly on the wall during the birth of their daughter.
Susan Ansman nurtured her relationship with LeBron and Savannah James to open up about Bronny James’ cardiac arrest in an emotional way that they had not been public about. The one that stuck with me most was what Sami Khan got with Jimmy Butler. Last season, Jimmy took a leave of absence, and no one knew why. I remember seeing people online just tearing Jimmy down for missing games, calling him selfish. The thing was that they didn't know what was going on in his life. Sami Khan knew.
He built this relationship with Jimmy, and because of this relationship, Jimmy shared his grief with our team in the most touching way. When I first cut that scene, I cut it until it made me cry, and I showed it to one of our assistants, Vanna Negron, and she just replied on Slack with “I need to go call my dad.”
NFS: What do you hope viewers take away from Starting 5, both in terms of basketball and the human experience?
Mahaffie: I hope that sports fans take away a new insight into these men they see, critique, and judge on their screen. I have seen many people on Twitter say they hated Domantas Sabonis or Jayson Tatum but had a newfound respect for them as men and players. For non-sports fans, I hope they find an illuminating story of five men whose lives changed drastically over a year who just happen to also play basketball while learning as much about the sport as I did this last year.
NFS: Has working on Starting 5 influenced your approach to future projects? If so, how?
Mahaffie: This was the biggest project and largest team of editors and AE’s that I have led before, and I learned a lot from it. Those lessons will be taken with me to the next project. The biggest lesson was that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. There is a time and a place to go really hard in the edit, but never so hard that you lose sight of what’s important in life. I never let the project become so consuming that I missed Thursday's music night at the local bar, Solarc, in my neighborhood. I made time to see the total solar eclipse with my wife and friends in Arkansas.
I always made time to run my monthly pop-up restaurant for charity called “Lt. Dan Dan Noodles.” These things help in creativity because you have to get away from the edit screen and experience life. I learned this from our five players, too, who struggled with being away from family while on the road or during playoffs. They got recharged off the court by playing dominoes with friends, eating out, and spending time with their kids. It’s a lesson I think all editors can be reminded to do, because I see too many burnt-out editors who think it is a badge of honor when it’s not.
We all need to touch the grass.
Michael MahaffieTom Baumann
NFS: Are there any themes or narratives you’re particularly interested in exploring in your upcoming work?
Mahaffie: I am really happy with how we portrayed masculinity in Starting 5 and want to continue exploring those kinds of stories, from showing these men’s bodies at the peak of athletic form to being gentle fathers. My wife and her girlfriends said the show could be called “Athletic Shirtless Men Being Gentle Fathers.”
That might sound funny, but men, especially young men, are in crisis, and I see it every day as someone who is terminally online. It breaks my heart to see, and I truly believe the best way to combat toxic masculinity is with good versions of masculinity. Masculinity that lifts up their spouse as LeBron does with Savannah isn’t afraid to wear makeup for media day like Jimmy Butler or isn’t afraid to tell the Netflix audience that he is a mama’s boy like Jayson Tatum all while working really hard to achieve goals big and small.
NFS: How do you see the role of documentary storytelling evolving in the world of sports?
Mahaffie: Sports have a built-in story. There are winners and losers. There is a beginning, middle and end. The thing that documentary storytelling allows us to see is the game from a new angle. In Starting 5, we have a game where Jayson Tatum is playing on Christmas, and his mother and son are supposed to fly in from Boston to see him play against LeBron and the Lakers. Their flight gets canceled, and it really bums Tatum out.
This melancholy is visible in his play. He did not play well at all in the first half of the game. His mother and son work some Christmas magic, get on a different plane and make it to the second half of the game. I believe that Jayson scores 12 points in a quarter, and they end up winning the game and spending Christmas together. When you see the stats, they are just numbers, but when you see the story, you understand these men are humans first and athletes second.
An interesting thing is happening in this digital age of filmmaking. On one hand, the transition from film to digital has made filming, editing, and distributing so much simpler than it once was. On the other hand, the competition is fierce between filmmakers to gain viewers to add to their audience. And we've all heard that knowing someone is at times more important than having a good film. Well, the Weinstein Company has partnered with Film.com and NextMovie to bring you their Master Storytelling Contest, in which one winner will have the opportunity to have their pitch or film treatment read by one of the company’s Development Executives. Read on for the details.
Michael Mahaffie
Michael MahaffieTom Baumann 
