By Iain Blair

Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Zhao and Best Lead Actress for winner Jessie Buckley. That’s after six Golden Globe nominations and two wins — Best Motion Picture – Drama and another Best Actress win for Buckley, along with directing and screenplay nods for Zhao. Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name and adapted for the screen by Zhao and O’Farrell, the film tells the story of Agnes (Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and the events surrounding the tragic death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet — a loss that would ultimately inspire the creation of the Bard’s masterpiece, Hamlet.

We spoke with filmmaker Zhao, the Oscar-winning director of Nomadland, about her love of editing and post. She co-edited the film with Affonso Gonçalves, ACE (May December, Don’t Worry Darling), who also joined the conversation.

Tell us about the visual approach and working with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Łukasz Żal.
Chloé Zhao: I was very inspired by The Zone of Interest. When I saw that film, I knew that was the direction I wanted to go in with Hamnet. So I met with Łukasz Żal, who shot The Zone of Interest, Cold War and Ida — all of them incredible films. The biggest visual change I wanted to make was that in my previous films, the camera was more insatiable, meaning that it was literally the searcher. It moved around from horizon to horizon. This time I wanted to see how much we could contain the entirety of the human experience within one frame and on one stage in one room so that we have nowhere else to go but to the end of the world — to go below. That was exciting. We shot for 46 days with the ARRI Alexa 35, mainly on location in Wales but also in England, in Lydney Forest in Gloucestershire. Then we shot interiors like Will’s home and The Henley House on soundstages at Elstree Studios just outside London, and we kept the lighting very simple and naturalistic.

Where did you do all the post? And tell us about the workflow and storage setup.
Affonso Gonçalves: Everything was posted in London. During production, first assistant editor Traci Duran and second assistant editor Rachel Bramley were located at Elstree to be near the shoot and Chloé. Harbor UK provided our DNxSQ dailies using a LUT created with DP Łukasz Żal. After production, our editorial team moved to the Gravity House post facility in Soho, and we all worked locally on a shared Nexis storage.

We turned over early cuts to sound designer Johnnie Burn and his sound team toward the beginning of our assembly, highlighting the importance of the collaboration between the sound and the edit early on. Our composer, Max Richter, also received early edits to ensure joint progression between music and all other elements. Our visual effects vendor was One of Us UK, and the editorial team often attended reviews at their London location.

The final DI was completed at Harbor, with colorist Damien Vandercruyssen working alongside Chloé and Łukasz. Because of scheduling changes, we technically finished both sound and picture deliverables in Los Angeles after wrapping up the majority of final post in the UK. The film was mastered in all traditional outputs, as well as Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

Chloé, I know you love the post process, especially editing. What makes it special for you?
Zhao: Filmmaking is not good for anybody’s mental health, especially for a writer/director’s mental health, because you’re writing something without knowing what it’s ultimately going to be. It’s not like painting, composing music or writing a novel. A film is always just a blueprint. For me, it’s about having a vision and being present — and the edit room is where the control is strongest. Usually it’s semi-strong in writing, and on-set it’s just total chaos because anything can happen, so going back into the edit, you start to feel you’re back in control. For me it’s the most exciting time because that’s when it’s giving meaning and order to the chaos. For someone who doesn’t have a lot of control over the rest of a project, it’s nice to be able to come to work every day in post.

I feel editing is like “chop wood, carry water,” because you see the result at the end of the day. It’s a bit like folding laundry. I know it sounds weird to compare it to that, but there’s comfort in seeing the results and thinking, “This could be it.” Of course, there are layers — feedback, music, sound, VFX — and inevitably things change. Each time they do, I feel the discomfort, then I have to let go and embrace the new version. For me, being in the edit is the safest place.

How did it work with Affonso? Did you start working together during the shoot?|
Zhao: I don’t ever edit during the shoot; I started the edit after I took a couple weeks off. Then I always do the first pass. It doesn’t matter how rough it is because my films are quite personal, and I’m a very different person at the end of the film than I was at the beginning. There is a process that I go through psychologically, so it’s really important for me to then go back to the footage. It’s almost therapeutic because I’m putting some order to the footage and giving some meaning to the immensely chaotic emotions that affected me, and also my collaborators, during the shoot, and I start seeing a lot of those things that were happening on-set that I did not predict. Once I can sort through all of that and get it onto a timeline, it makes me feel better before I start collaborating with Affonso. I need to know what’s important to me in all the footage we shot.

Affonso, once you came onboard, what was the process and what were the main editing challenges?
Gonçalves: I don’t know if there were challenges in the usual sense. The big thing was how we collaborated. Chloé and I talked about how the process was going to go, and she said, “I don’t want you to just watch footage. I prefer that you watch a cut and respond to something that exists rather than the abstraction of a lot of footage.” So it was a great experience just to come in and watch it.

Chloé was already in London when I got there. We had a long conversation, and then she came to the editing room and we began working together. It was a unique way to keep the film’s storyline the way it was. It was a process that included a lot of the physical act of editing, but it was also a highly mental process, where we also talked a lot and knew we had the same mindset. Before I made any actual cut, there was a conversation about it. If there were any tricky scenes that were challenging because we wanted to achieve something specific, then we kept going, and we had a great working relationship.

What was the most difficult scene to cut?
Gonçalves: The play was the most challenging, basically because of its length. We knew what we wanted and what we had, and there was a lot of footage. There were key moments of that play that you’re watching and involved in, so we needed that coverage, but most of it we cut, and then we used Agnes’ reaction to it. So there was the action in the play, and then there was a reaction from Agnes to this and that, and there’s the progression to her story. She’s confused, then she’s angry, and then she gets completely taken over when she sees what’s happening onstage. And so there’s that kind of seduction and then the process of finally understanding “Oh, this is what he was doing.” There were so many layers of Jessie’s performance. For me and Chloé to get that whole sequence right, we went back to Jessie’s performance again and again, and there was a lot of back and forth.

What was your favorite scene to cut?
Zhao: Because I’m not very good at cutting dialogue scenes with multiple people, where there’s a lot of coverage, my favorite scenes to cut are montages. I love the montages. That’s where I feel very comfortable.

Gonçalves: My favorite scene was when Will goes to the forest and finds Agnes there and offers her the glove, and then he tells a story of Orpheus and Eurydice. I love that scene and everything that it encompasses. That was a highlight for me.

Zhao: Me too because music was a big part of the editing puzzle, and I’d never seen the scene with the music. I remember the day when we received that cue and then seeing the edit with the music for the first time… it was so powerful. In post, the music and score portion is when I’m completely lost, and I needed Affonso there. Sometimes I wasn’t even there for the sessions, but he was, and he’s really good at that stuff. Maybe it’s because you’re Brazilian! (Laughs.) In post, when there’s a lot going on at the same time, I’m completely focused on the edit. I trusted him to help deal with all the sound and music.

The sound design plays a huge role in the film. Did you guys use a lot of temp sound while you were editing?
Gonçalves: No, we used sound created by Johnnie Burn, who’s probably one of the best, if not the best, sound designers out there today. He was working with us from the get-go. Even before Chloé did her pass, Johnnie had already come up with sounds we could incorporate. As the edit progressed, if Chloé and I needed sound elements to add to a specific scene, we could just go to Johnnie, show him the cut and tell him what we were thinking about for it. Then he’d go off and work on the sound and then send it to us. It was such an organic creative process working with Johnnie.

What about the visual effects? Did you use some temps or wait until you got the finished VFX?
Zhao: I used temp visual effects. The big one was all the VFX for the Globe Theatre scenes. We were only missing a couple of balcony floors and the overhead sky, so we just kept editing it without the VFX. But it did affect our editing once the VFX came in because The Globe with open sky overhead looks and feels different as a shot. And the theater audience looks very different when you don’t have the sky because then you don’t have depth, so the shot has a different weight and different energy. So once the VFX came in, we had to re-edit and see how many of those audience and background shots we wanted to cut.

Did you do any test screenings, and if so, did it affect the edit?
Zhao: I’m a big fan of test screenings, but I don’t go to them because psychologically I can’t handle it. Affonso goes for me.

Gonçalves: It was funny because Chloé told me, “I am not going to go, and don’t tell me how it went.” But then you studied those cards very precisely, so you know exactly how it went, right?

Zhao: Yeah, I read all the test cards very, very carefully. This is a good example of how our editing process goes. Out of 600 cards, there was one card where the person said, “It’s a beautiful film, but I didn’t quite understand why there was a play at the end.” I could not stop thinking or talking about that card throughout the whole edit. Then right at the end, while we were finishing the final mix, there was a dialogue sound issue in the attic scene, when Will and Agnes are together after he gets back from London, so we went back to the edit to find better sound bites. Then right there we discovered some missing lines that helped make sense of why there was a play – lines we’d cut out for length. So you never know. I was ridiculing that person who wrote that one card, but because it stuck with me, it helped solve a problem.

Tell us about the DI and working with colorist Damien Vandercruyssen.
Zhao: I am a very visual person and very sensitive to color, so in that department, I am quite OCD about everything and didn’t need Affonso there. Damien was great because he really had the sensitivity for what we captured on-set. Łukasz is all about getting it in the moment, and Damien was very good at enhancing that footage but also pushing the look a little bit more. But there was never a creative clash.

There was a big conversation about whether we should put a film grain on it, which was a really interesting revelation for both me and Łukasz – the idea that creating the look of a period film doesn’t mean that it needs to be grainy; that’s just our own nostalgia about film technology. Back then, the air was so clean compared to today, and people’s eyesight was probably better, as they weren’t on computers and phones all day. So we felt that Dolby Vision was probably the most accurate for the texture. Every leaf was crystal clear, and other than dealing with camera noise, we did not touch or put anything between the audience and the characters.

Chloé, what made you choose this project?
Zhao: Love, death and metamorphosis. My vision was to go into making this film knowing what I wanted to do half of the time and not knowing the other half of the time. Seeing what comes through from the mystery and what is present in the final film, I’m very happy with the way it turned out.

Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.