'Deadpool & Wolverine' Picture Editor Teaches Us How to Support a Director

If you’ve been wondering how the Merc with a Mouth and an adamantium-clawed mutant can share the screen with such great comedic timing and dynamic, fast-moving action, Shane Reid is one to thank.

Reid was the picture editor on the new Marvel blockbuster, Deadpool & Wolverine. The film finds Deadpool searching various timelines for a cooperative version of the grumpy Wolverine to help anchor his world and prevent it from being put through the TVA's metaphysical shredder. The whole thing is jam-packed with wild action sequences and snappy dialogue, but it slows down occasionally for emotional reflection, all while developing the complex relationship between these two heroes.

So how do you balance all of that as an editor?

We spoke with Reid via email about his background, editing for emotion and character building, and how an editor should best support a director.

Let's cut to the chase and learn how Reid stitches together this superhero story.

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No Film School: How does your background in music videos help in editing feature films?

Shane Reid: Editing music videos consists of the music doing the work and the film supporting it. In film, it’s typically opposite. But when you’re dealing with a film like Deadpool & Wolverine that is so pop-influenced and nostalgic—oftentimes there seems to be almost music video-like components to the film where the film can support the music.

A perfect example is the opening bone fight. It wasn’t always set to "Bye Bye Bye," but when we found the track, the film began to shapeshift to what the song was asking from it. I think having a music video background helps find that balance between the two worlds.

NFS: Can you walk us through your typical editing process? How do you approach a new project?

Reid: I typically try and really understand the spirit of the film through reading the script and conversations with the director, what the filmmaker’s overall goals are with it. Then I observe and assemble while shooting and try to stay objective, and present the filmmakers with new fresh ideas that can only be created in an editing room by finally seeing images spliced together.

Behind the scenes of Deadpool & WolverineShane Reid

NFS: How did you use editing to develop the relationship between Deadpool and Wolverine here?

Reid: I’d say that’s more in the writing than in the editing, but the way we can help it is just by using that restraint in our cuts to create tension, and then when we explode, the editing becomes more violent and visceral.

For example, cutting the scene of Wolverine verbally tearing Deadpool down when he finds out he’s been lying to him. The choices were much more around the awkward space between the two. That space just leaves the audience wondering what’s going to happen next. Holding on Hugh’s performance or on the long silent pause before Deadpool replies, “I’m going to fight you now,” creates this really great dramatic tension, and then once they let it out with a few punches, it’s like the balloon exploded and now the audience gets to have fun.

When it comes to the final showdown with Deadpool and Wolverine trying to stop Cassandra, editing was majorly used to get inside the minds of our characters so that we could draw out more stakes and desires while the characters accept their death.

It was important that both characters went on that journey, and it wasn’t in the footage of them in the power room, so we worked really hard to craft something editorially that created more emotional depth.

Back to working with music, this kind of sequence is really a product of all of its components. The music lends an emotional depth that the words and images can support and provide extra layers to.

Then it’s really about myself, Dean, Shawn, and Ryan crafting with our hearts where we feel like a sequence like that needs to go to reach the peak of its emotional opportunity.

Hugh Jackman behind the scenes of Deadpool & WolverineShane Reid

NFS: What are some of the challenges you face when balancing action sequences with storytelling in Deadpool & Wolverine?

Reid: The search for Wolverine montage is a great example of this. It’s undeniably fun and has some clever action, but the question was, how do we keep propelling the story forward so we can justify its existence in the film, therefore in Deadpool’s world?

We originally built it out in a cutting format: greet, greet, greet, mocking dialogue after mocking dialogue, fight, fight, fight, escape, escape, escape.

But it dawned on us after a while that it looked like Deadpool was assembling an army of Wolverines for something, and it wasn’t clear that he was looking for his anchor being, only to be met by Wolverine variants who all shared a mutual hatred for him.

So Shawn and Ryan wrote some dialogue coming from Deadpool when he first meets Apocalyptic Wolvie in the alley where he says, “Ooooh, you have anchor being written all over you,” and then Wolverine begins to attack him.

This set up the rules. Deadpool is trying to find an anchor being, Wolverine wants him dead. That learning freed us up to then allow the rest of the vignettes to play out to audience delight instead of them trying to make sense of what we were trying to say.

NFS: How did you collaborate with Shawn Levy and other members of the production team to ensure your edit aligns with the vision of the film?

Redi: Shawn is equally a very smart filmmaker who knows exactly what he wants and a student of film who loves to be surprised by new ideas.

I found early on that it was best to start somewhere that Shawn felt like he could see his directorial intention represented in the assembly, and when we were there, I could then present new or alt ideas or takes on a sequence. His judgement is so refined that he could feel if there were an improvement or if the ordinal idea was stronger.

Ryan [Reynolds] is passion personified. He has deeply strong convictions but surrounds himself with people that he admires, and he listens and is more than happy to take a scene to a different place if it’s better. As both an actor/writer and producer, he has an incredible ability to listen to the film and what it wants in all stages, from the inception of a scene, to altering what’s happening within a scene in real-time, to allowing the edit to take him to new and surprising territory.

Just like Shawn, he too has such refined taste that he’ll know where the right way to go with a scene is ultimately.

Behind the scenes of Deadpool & WolverineShane Reid

NFS: What lessons have you learned from editing Deadpool & Wolverine that you believe can be applied to other projects?

Reid: The editing Dean and I did, and the demands of Shawn and Ryan, moved at such a fast pace that we were able to try so many ideas and really discover what each scene wanted and needed.

Moving forward, I would just bring that kind of speed to the edit and know that the film only benefits from the volume of ideas to finally land on what works best. No stone unturned!

NFS: What advice would you give to aspiring film editors?

Reid: It is such a layered job. Not only are you required to have a vision as a supportive filmmaker, but you also need to run many teams and be on top of the technology to deliver the film along its paces. Dean Zimmerman is a master of this!

That’s already enough, but add to it the politics and the personality that makes you someone that people want to spend time with in a room for a year. The wrong energy can clash, and if there isn’t an alignment, I don’t know how you continue to have success in the edit.

Editing is about being objective to the filmmaking, about supplying the director with ideas to create the best flow visually and audibly, and to create, almost out of thin air, tissue that you discover the film needs to merge together concepts that can swim on their own outside of the intention.

My strong advice is to really have a strong sense of yourself, who you are. Be that authentic person in the room because you’ll inevitably present options that do not work, or deeply fail, or perhaps contradict the director, and you’ll have to navigate murky territories. If you’re an authentic person that is connected with the director you’re working with, then those ideas and contradictions are coming from someone who the director understands ultimately wants the success of the film the same way that they do.

It humanizes the experience, so that if you have a wrong idea you’re seen as a fallible human being who is more or less trying. Then, when you have a brilliant idea, you’re recognized for the same quality, a fellow human being and collaborator putting in that extra effort to create the best film possible… and really, that’s all everyone making a film wants, a collective of collaborators, friends and visionaries with passion and humility. It’s what AI cannot replicate.