“It really begins with the footage,” editor Varun Viswanath says.
While that’s the norm for any editor, Viswanath, who’s nominated for an Emmy alongside fellow editor Patrick Tuck for FX’s “Reservation Dogs,” has a secret weapon within the cutting room: co-creators and showrunners Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi.
Not only do they do long takes, but they do also resets. “We get to listen to what they’re saying to the actors, and it’s an additional tool to get into their heads and understand their preferences,” Viswanath says. Viswanath and Tuck joined forces to collaborate on cutting the series finale, “Dig.”
Within the episode, the town comes together to honor medicine man Fixico (Richard Ray Whitman) after his death. While the theme of community anchors all the series, it is essential to this episode. The central characters all reach different resolutions: Elora (Devery Jacobs) is heading off to a brand new adventure in college; Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) learns about independence as his mother takes a job in town and he creates his path — perhaps with Jackie (Elva Guerra); and Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), having apprenticed under Fixico, has turned her attention to helping others on the reservation. As for Cheese (Lane Factor), his recent glasses give him a sharper view on life.
For the finale, Harjo wanted the episode to be concerning the kids and the community, and one of the best place to point out that will be at a funeral. “One in every of the happiest times in our community is once you go to mourn someone’s death,” he says. “I believe individuals are more honest when faced with death, in order that they’ll tell each other they love one another more, and their guards are down.”
As an enormous fan of cinema, Harjo admits that every episode contained references to other movies, including “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Dazed and Confused.” Harjo considered Robert Altman when writing and filming this episode and the way the filmmaker used his ensemble casts. Particularly, he checked out how Altman would use slow zooms, switching between a background and a foreground character and having them talk over one another.
When it got here to editing, Tuck and Harjo desired to capture the essence of community and that feeling of being there. “There have been long sweeping shots intercut with moments of [the central characters] in the longer term and seeing their life is just starting,” says Tuck.
“They’ve come home, they’ve matured and so they’ve come full circle.” One other powerful scene involved Willie Jack visiting her Aunt Hokti (Lily Gladstone) in prison. Willie Jack tells Hokti that Fixico has died, but admits she didn’t get to spend much time with him. With that information, Hokti uses a number of candy to elucidate the ability of community to her young niece.
Viswanath had also cut the prison sequence in Season 2. “I made a decision to not attempt to get radical and shoot it in another way,” says Harjo. “I wanted it to feel familiar to Season 2. But what was really great about that’s it’s this very quiet moment before the chaos of the remainder of the episode.” That jail scene was a prologue before the audience got to see the community in motion, says Harjo. “What higher method to express the importance of community than through a personality that must be taken away from the community and kept other than it? That holds this weight that it wouldn’t have if she wasn’t in jail.”
Viswanath found the scene poignant to chop and admits he didn’t have much footage to work with. “That scene for me is an ideal microcosm of the Native community that Sterlin and his crew represent,” he says.
The importance of the scene reflects the ability of handing down multi-generational secrets and the way the community can still be fostered even in a restricted environment. That segues into Willie Jack “ensuring that the machine of community is working the best way it’s meant to be,” says Harjo.
Bear has to say one other goodbye, this time to his spiritual guide, William “Spirit” Knifeman, played by Dallas Goldtooth. “You need to be loved, and also you need to love,” Spirit says, reminding Bear
that the community offers him that love.
Viswanath, who cut their first encounter within the pilot, felt Bear went through the most important emotional growth and that the goodbye was a full-circle moment. He had a goal in capturing that farewell scene: “To see how rather more nuanced he’s with the little expressions on his face, and the way rather more measured they’re,” the editors says of WoonA-Tai’s performance.
The ultimate shot within the episode features the group of individuals together, sharing their love. Within the edit bay, Tuck debated intercutting other coverage for certain lines, but ultimately settled on the sweeping shot of the foursome.
“We had to essentially fight the instinct to chop to separate coverage, deciding as an alternative to let the audience — and the Rez Dogs themselves — feel present within the moment, surrounded by the people and community they love. It’s such a fantastic style to point out how these characters have matured and grown across three seasons, and an ideal method to end the series,” says Tuck. “It encompasses every part you must feel in that moment.”
The scenes leading as much as that ending centered on heavily emotional moments of farewell and loss, but as Viswanath points out, it at all times leads to 1 theme: “You’ll be able to return to your community, share a meal and be uplifted.”
