“Keep being as brilliant as you can, and hopefully somebody will notice.” – HSE Post Show with Joe Walker

Although “Dune: Part Two” is currently shooting in Budapest, editor Joe Walker managed to squeeze a talk show appearance into his schedule.

After 2 years, The Hungarian Society of Film and Video Editors’ (HSE) “Post Show” has returned last week, with none other than Joe Walker — permanent creative partner of directors Steve McQueen and Denis Villeneuve, who was awarded with an Academy Award for his work on “Dune” back in March. While he and his team are actively working on the sequel of Villeneuve’s 2021 blockbuster at ORIGO Studios, he got off work to talk about the beginning of his career, his methods and his experiences among the biggest filmmakers of our time.

We gathered 10 interesting facts about Joe Walker from last week’s “Post Show”:

1 – Although he spends most of his days overwhelmed by dailies from Arrakis and sees Budapest only from the designated smoking balcony of ORIGO Studios, he really enjoys working in Hungary (for the third time). I’m addition to his American assistants, he works with three Hungarian professionals, whom he always looks forward to return to.

2 – In the early days of his career, he spent a long time deciding between music and film. He started experimenting with filmstrips when he was 7 years old and received his degree in music in 1984. Beginning in 1988, he spent a few years working as a sound editor, but slowly turned towards film editing.

3 – The first series he worked on was BBC’s “Out of the Blue”. While working on a smaller project later, the producer offered him a gig on the TV series called “Jonathan Creek”, which turned out to be a surprisingly big moment in his career. His advice for those who are trying to make their way in the cutting room is to “keep being as brilliant as you can, and hopefully somebody will notice.”

4 – After years of working on TV series, he tried getting in on movie production, which he finally did on Tabloid (2001) – a film that was never released in cinemas..

5 – He shares a special connection with director Steve McQueen, as they grew up in the same part of London, went to the same pubs and to the same library. McQueen’s “Hunger” was the first film where he could truly express himself in his craft.

6 – When working with Denis Villeneuve, the first thing he usually sees is a storyboard, even before the script. He likes to wait until Denis is ready with everything and then provide a somewhat broad feedback on it. “As an editor, you are landing on a planet, and if you come in too fast, you crash. And you’ll crash up against people you’ll be working with for a year or longer”, explained Walker. He also tries to read the script often and learn it, just like an actor.

7 – His first assembly usually depends on the director, but Villeneuve likes him to be bold and try to think outside the script. He told the audience that in the scene from “Dune” where Paul – overdosed on spice – hears Gurney’s footsteps behind him, there is a big jump cut of Gurney’s hand landing on Paul’s shoulder. That moment wasn’t actually in the script but made it into the final cut. Villeneuve never even mentioned it, he just simply liked it, and so did composer Hans Zimmer apparently, who used a storm of drums to emphasize the scene.

8 – During the pandemic, he spent a lot of time working on the soundtrack of “Dune” with Hans Zimmer. Once during a Zoom call, Zimmer was playing the piano and Walker told him “just tell me what’s going in your mind, what are you actually looking for?” The composer said that he’s “looking for a musical idea, with the efficiency of the word “F*ck”.

9 – To get the most out of his sequences, he prefers to edit without music as long as he can. He finds it “dangerous to succumb to the momentum” of the music and let emotions overcome you; after a certain point, it’s hard to tell if the sequence is actually masterful, or if it’s only the music that is exceptional.

10 – During the filming of “Dune” (2021), he and Denis spent a lot of time developing the inner world of Paul Atreides and his prescience. As they were getting immersed in the material, Villeneuve suggested that Walker do a “whiskey-cut”: essentially to take a 16-year-old Lagavulin and get to the bottom of both the scene and the bottle overnight.

+1 – One of the final scenes of the film, where Paul kills the Fremen called Jamis, happened on one of these occasions.

Cover credit: IndieWire