Lessons in Editing A Salacious Basketball Story

Another huge part of bringing the virality to the show came with the scrolls. We were able to hit the highest speed of the scrolls in the cold open of the pilot, and then, we slowed them down once we came to the top of our story arc so we could build once more to when the tape comes out. We wanted to feel that difference in the speed of how the internet and social media moves versus how our regular lives do.

NFS: You have mentioned that you had more influence in setting the tone and style of Clipped than in your previous projects. Could you elaborate on how you approached this creative freedom and what specific elements you focused on to shape the series’ unique tone?

Benaim: Gina and I had many conversations about how this was a show about a viral event taking place on social media, and the idea came to us that the internet should be a character and the action in that world should be happening in parallel to our story. With that in mind, I brought a few rough options to show Gina what the internet could look like, and one of them was of sliding stories from left to right, similar to how Tinder works. Gina liked the idea, but she insisted that the internet really moved vertically. That was our “a-ha!” moment, and once we knew the “infinite scroll” already existed at the time of the scandal, we were off!

FX was excited to see our mockups of the scrolls in the cold open of the pilot, and they agreed that we should move forward with this idea. We quickly started having conversations with the team at Barnstorm VFX who really helped us bring the scrolls to life.

Another area I had a lot of creative freedom in, was in how to translate the scrolls into our flashback episode (episode 4). We tried so many variations of the scrolls, from creating a custom MySpace page for V, to creating moments from viral videos like the “Numa Numa” guy, to even mocking up Shelly’s emails. There were a slew of ideas, but none of them quite fit for our show.

One night, I was speaking to my husband about wanting to look for examples of scenes where they are able to play with time in an unusual way. He brought up the style in Requiem for a Dream, edited by Jay Rabinowitz, and that was the lightbulb moment into what became the “rewinds” in the top of each of the acts in Episode 4. I think I mocked up one or two versions for Gina the next morning and she immediately got excited about the potential.

Together, alongside our amazing team (Anne Madariaga, Leo Kessler, Dan Scott, Genesis Henriquez, Justin Epifanio, and Jon Martin, especially!), we thought through what moments in history we could use to rewind us into each storyline. It was a huge undertaking to find the correct pieces, that were historically accurate, and that we could clear, to piece together those rewinds. I am so grateful for how our team jumped on to help us take the rewinds and the scrolls and make them as impactful as they became, and I am truly proud of the result.

Susana Benaim in the edit bay. Flynn Mitchell

NFS: How did your collaboration with showrunner Gina Welch help in balancing the show’s tough subject matter with the eccentricities of the one percent?

Benaim: The scripts, just like the original story, were wild and eccentric, so I had the fortune of having a great base to tell this story from. Gina is a dream collaborator. I feel so lucky that I got to work with her in person and play around with the edit the way we did. My favorite part of the job is collaboration and creative problem solving, and Gina was always open to ideas on how to tell the best story possible.

Many of the hard to swallow micro and macro aggressions you see in the show were already written into the script, so we had to find the balance with some levity in scenes where we thought it was appropriate. Gina asked me to really make the weirdness shine, so I had to hunt for performances and looks from our cast that made me laugh or made me uncomfortable. For example, there is a moment in the white party in the pilot where Andy comes up to Doc and they awkwardly stand there in silence for a good 20 or so seconds. Gina thought it was hilarious and it ended up in the final version of the pilot.

NFS: Clipped deals with several complex themes. What were some of the biggest editing challenges you faced in portraying these intricate narratives effectively?

Benaim: Because the show has an ensemble cast, one of our biggest challenges was to be able to connect emotionally with each one and tell the many sides of the story while threading the careful needle of humor throughout. Thankfully, we had heavyweight actors Ed O’Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Cleopatra Coleman, and Jacki Weaver as our leads because they brought so much depth to their characters and brought out their eccentricities in their performances as well. I had so much great footage to work with and I had the ability to turn the notches up or down to create the most enthralling scenes I could.

When you’re telling a story about systemic racism, there are so many avenues to take in terms of the perspective we choose to tell it from. What was tricky with Clipped, is that we were actually able to discuss race from a few different perspectives and make them true to each character. The tape is the start of the viral event, but what makes information spread, is all the different takes on the same issue. You’d have people on all sides commenting on social media back then. In the show, it parallels this ongoing discussion with so many of the characters. A great example is in Episode 3, when the whole team is deciding whether or not to play. You have different perspectives on what was the right thing to do in the midst of this chaos, and you might find as a viewer that you land on a specific side and you empathize with a specific argument. The players got a lot of backlash for deciding to play back then, but when you see the context of what they were up against and listen to this conversation, you may find that that decision must have been incredibly difficult for the team.

NFS:Clipped is based on the popular ESPN 30 for 30 podcast “The Sterling Affairs.” How did you approach the adaptation of the podcast into a visual medium?