How Half-Blood Prince Was Edited | Harry Potter: The Official Film Podcast | Ep. 11 Clip

[00:00:00]I very luckily had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with the editor of the film, Mark Day. So, let's see what he had to say.

[00:00:09]Mark Day, welcome to Harry Potter, the official film podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

[00:00:14]>> Thank you very much for inviting me.

[00:00:15]>> Half Blood Prince is such a brilliant film and it is doing so much all at once. So, when you first looked at the material, what did you feel was like the real spine of the film?

[00:00:26]>> Well, actually obviously it's all about snakes. Snape, isn't it? And um but also I love Slugghorn. I love Horus Slugghorn. I think he's he's such a great character and Jim Bent played him so well. And in fact, when they first meet him, you know, when um Harry and Dumbledore go and meet him and and they walk into the room >> and he's that kind of armchair, which I I I love it. I actually I watched it the other day again and it really made me laugh. It's just so funny >> and it really balances the comedy, the tragedy, the drama. It does get incredibly dark. So, how did you find the balance between all of those tonal shifts in the edit?

[00:01:06]>> Well, that's interesting because we, you know, obviously David Yates and I, [clears throat] we've worked together for 25 years, and then he was offered Order of the Phoenix, which was unbelievable and incredible. And it was a real huge learning curve. And then by the second one, Half Blood Prince, you know, we got got into our groove a bit.

[00:01:26]You know, David is such a wonderful director and great with actors and he gives me such great material >> and then I start putting it together obviously when he's shooting and then by the end of the shoot I've got the whole film together and then we work together very closely and that's where we find the rhythm of each scene you know and what we need to take out and what we need to expand or change and that's where we find the darkness and the light together. M I think what I especially love is that you do give these like teenage moments time to breathe in the Half Blood Prince and we see all of the actors like really getting to like stretch their comedy chops like especially like Rert Grin and um like Jesse Cave with Lavender and Ron >> and it's just it's so it's so lovely. So how much of that comedy is is sort of found or sharpened in the edit?

[00:02:20]quite a lot of it. I mean, obviously Ron Weasley, you know, Grouper is such a he's a kind of natural comedian.

[00:02:26]>> He's so good and so natural. I had no problem with him at all. Lavender was fantastic. I'd never seen her before, but she was so good. And also, I'll tell you the other lovely scene I liked was the um the dinner scene and you get that kind of com, you know, eyeing up Hermione, which is hilarious. You know, a lovely scene just so beautifully directed by David. you know, he gives me all this wonderful footage which I can then just play with. As you watch the film over and over again at first because when I first put a scene together, you know, it feels really good to me and I'm happy to show David and then down the line, 3 4 months down the line, you look at it again, you think, "Oh my god, it's taking so long to say what we want to hear." So then you start tightening things up, losing lines or whatever, or parachuting into a scene halfway through or leaving it, you know, before the end or whatever. You know, you only learn that by watching the film over and over and over again a million times. You know, it really you could there's no shortcut to a fine cut.

[00:03:26]That's what I've always said. There really isn't. You have to watch it over and over again to see what you can take out and people will still understand what's going on with the plot.

[00:03:35]>> In the Half Blood Prince, the cave sequence is one of the film's sort of biggest set pieces, but it's also incredibly intimate because it is just it's Harry and Dumbledore, just those two. It's a real two-hander. So, can you remember like what you were thinking about the pacing of that sequence and also how to bring in the horror elements as well?

[00:03:54]>> I definitely can remember that because that was very timeconuming yet again.

[00:03:58]How because they shot so you know David shot so much and Steven Warford and the second unit director shot a lot as well.

[00:04:04]So I was getting tons and tons of footage. So eventually after many many weeks we you know we started jump cutting Harry going to get the liquid.

[00:04:13]So that's what you do. You end up doing that, but you can't do that straight away. It's not I mean maybe some people could, but we couldn't work out a way of doing it until we'd kind of watched it over and over again >> and we worked out where it's just taking too long. So what should we do? We'll jump it. We'll jump cut Harry going and Dumbledore saying, you know, no, no, no more kind of thing. And then you got that beautiful quiet moment, >> you know, but when Harry what after he's given him the whole all he's drunk it all >> and then Harry puts Alumis on and then he goes down to the edge to get water when Dumbledore is asking for water and you get that incredibly brilliant shock, you know, when >> the jump scare.

[00:04:56]>> Yeah, exactly. So interesting you're talking about the jump cuts because as Harry is sort of backing away from the infery, he's like walking backwards up the quartz kind of dumm and those are all that's also kind of jump cuts as well which I Yeah. Yeah. So jump it to give you that kind of you know he's in turmoil by jump cutting you get that Harry's turmoil.

[00:05:20]It's really it's great.

[00:05:21]>> Yes. It really shows like the sort of inner disturbance of him.

[00:05:25]>> Exactly. I've seen some really lovely footage of Dan Radcliffe coming into your editing suite and >> sort of like being really interested in learning all about it. So, how involved did the actors get or how interested were they in what you were doing considering, you know, that's so kind of far removed from what they're having to do?

[00:05:41]>> So, Dan was great. He was really interested in editing and just wanted to find out what what I got up to really. M it's funny the edit edit because we're not on set most of the time you know we're not editors don't aren't they're they're in their cutting room in the womblike security of the cutting room [laughter] >> and you know so they don't really know what editors do actually a lot of people don't understand what editors do they don't they they just think you just cut the boards off >> and it just falls together >> but it doesn't it's such a long process to and and you you know it's so infinite you're looking at all these performances, the choosing the takes you want to use, where you want to go on various lines, you know, so it's a very in it's an intriguing process and I absolutely love it obviously and I've been doing it for quite a quite a few years now.

[00:06:32]>> And between you and David Yates, you must have been the very last people to work on the very last minutes of the very last film. So, what was that experience like sort of having to say goodbye to this after so many years and literally having your your fingerprints were the last ones on it?

[00:06:49]>> We'd worked on it for 5 years. Someone like David Haymon had been on it for 10 year or 11 whatever it was 12 years, you know, a long long time. So, it was incredibly emotional. It was a wonderful time and I I actually, you know, I can't tell you how wonderful it was to work on Harry Potter and and be part of it because it it is it's worldrenowned.

[00:07:10]It's like the Beatles, you know, it's Beatles, Harry Potter, Coca-Cola, you know what I mean? It's like it's just worldrenowned and people love it and quite rightly because they are such good films. I'm looking forward to, you know, the TV series. It will be really interesting to see what they do with it.

[00:07:26]>> Mark, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. It's been so lovely to hear your stories.

[00:07:30]>> Oh, thank you.