Tag: The Fan

ROMMEL, PATRICIA

Patricia Rommel

Born 1956

Patricia Rommel has earned over sixty-five editing credits since she began her career in 1982. She was an early collaborator of director Uwe Janson (Verfolgte Wege, Herz in der Hand) before editing Caroline Link’s Beyond Silence. Rommel and Link have become frequent collaborators and have worked together on Nowhere in Africa, Annaluise & Anton, and A Year Ago in Winter. Rommel has also edited several films for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others, The Tourist, Never Look Away), and Angelina Jolie (In the Land of Blood and Honey, By the Sea and First They Killed My Father). Rommel’s editing has earned numerous honors and awards. She received Lola nominations for The Lives of Others and A Year Ago in Winter, won German Film Critics Association awards for The Lives of Others and Hendrik Hölzemann’s Off Beat, and earned two German Camera nominations (winning for Off Beat) as well as two Film Plus nominations (winning again for Off Beat).

“Editing is quite similar to writing. A writer has his thoughts and his words. As an editor I work with the shots, the sound, the music and my thoughts. I string takes together, play around with the space of time or displace the intended order of the shots and the meaning will be completely different. There are endless possibilities of how a story can be told. When things become challenging my ambition is fueled because, all the more so, I have to use my creativity and think out of the box.”
—“Filmmaker Interview: Editor Patricia Rommel Speaks to Fashion Designer Paula Immich” by Paula Immich. The full text can be found in the Appendix.

 

SIMPSON, CLAIRE

Claire Simpson

No birth date available.

Simpson was first mentored by Dede Allen as an assistant editor on Reds. She edited three films for Oliver Stone (Platoon, Wall Street, Salvador) and won an Oscar, an ACE, and a BAFTA for Platoon. Simpson also won a BAFTA for Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener. She has worked with Steven Daldry (The Reader), Kimberly Peirce (Stop-Loss), Thomas Vinterberg (Far From the Madding Crowd), and numerous other directors. Recently, as the editor of Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, Simpson had to recut the entire film to replace Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer.

“Cutting rooms are only dark and gloomy places if you make them so. Hard work, educated taste, sharp instincts and a flare for the absurd have been essential to my career as an editor as well as important ingredients for my life. And never underestimate the value of good luck. I know many extraordinarily talented people who have not been lucky enough to win an Academy Award. Don’t get me wrong, it was remarkably validating to win. But what really counts is to face every working day with the guts to be honest both with your director and with the material you’re working with. If you can’t do that, don’t take the job.”
— “The Closest Thing to Alchemy,” interview by Jennifer M. Wood. The full text can be found in the Appendix.