Kirk Baxter is a 45 year old Australian film editor, as mentioned above he has been increasingly collaborating with director David Fincher through editing a number of his films, and has frequently edited alongside film editor Angus Wall, however he now seems to be branching out on his own, such as through solo editing the 2014 film Gone Girl.
The Start of Baxter's Career
When researching Baxter's career path, I was able to find out valuable information on how he broke into the industry, his areas of work, and how he made the connections with David Fincher that would lead to him becoming his go-to editor.
His first job in the industry was at Ross Wood Productions in Sydney, where in an interview he stated: "I did a little bit of everyone’s job, everything from being a basic runner to helping the camera department, filming casting sessions and editing montages for the cinematographers." [5]
"Like the military, where everyone has to serve their time and earn their stripes before they get there. With editing it was immediate, I was able to create something everyday instead of just lifting or delivering things. By the time I was eighteen I knew exactly what I wanted to do." [5]
Baxter later began editing television commercials in Australia, before getting editing work in England: "I was in London for six years and then British directors would fly me into New York or Los Angeles, where they were doing American commercials and I got a taste for it." [5]
Within the interview, the article also states that Baxter co-founded a commercial editing firm called Final Cut, but in 2004 joined Angus Wall's company in LA called 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'. He states that:
“Angus knew I always wanted to work on movies, he’d already been working with Fincher for about ten years. On Zodiac, he asked if I wanted to come on board. I’m glad he needed a hand!” [5]
- Since then, Baxter has worked with Wall and Fincher on a number of films and has been expanding his workload. Finding this research on the career path that Baxter followed was very interesting to me, to learn the ways to break into the industry and improve your skill set, the connections that can be made to break into the specific area of choice, and where these connections and opportunities can lead.
His first job in the industry was at Ross Wood Productions in Sydney, where in an interview he stated: "I did a little bit of everyone’s job, everything from being a basic runner to helping the camera department, filming casting sessions and editing montages for the cinematographers." [5]
"Like the military, where everyone has to serve their time and earn their stripes before they get there. With editing it was immediate, I was able to create something everyday instead of just lifting or delivering things. By the time I was eighteen I knew exactly what I wanted to do." [5]
- I find this incredibly inspiring as an aspiring professional film editor, to learn that an award-winning editor began at a young age, acting as a runner that was able to complete a lot of editing and production based tasks so early in his career path.
Baxter later began editing television commercials in Australia, before getting editing work in England: "I was in London for six years and then British directors would fly me into New York or Los Angeles, where they were doing American commercials and I got a taste for it." [5]
- Since then, Baxter has worked with Wall and Fincher on a number of films and has been expanding his workload. Finding this research on the career path that Baxter followed was very interesting to me, to learn the ways to break into the industry and improve your skill set, the connections that can be made to break into the specific area of choice, and where these connections and opportunities can lead.
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| Angus Wall (left) and Kirk Baxter (right) |
Editor Credits
Since his film editing career properly began in 2007 as an additional editor of Fincher's Zodiac, Baxter has racked up an impressive list of extremely popular drama and thriller films, along with two episodes of the acclaimed series House of Cards. Below is the list of his editor credits:
- 2014 - Gone Girl (editor)
- 2013 - House of Cards (TV Series) (2 episodes) (editor)
- - Chapter 2 (2013)
- - Chapter 1 (2013)
- 2011 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (editor)
- 2010 - The Social Network (editor)
- 2008 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (editor)
- 2007 - Zodiac (additional editor) [1]
Awards
Between 2008 and 2014, Baxter won two Oscars (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network), a BAFTA Film Award, an EDA Award, an Eddie, an ACCA, a Critics Choice Award, a Hollywood Film Award, a HPA Award, and an ICS Award (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) for his editing work on these films. Along with 49 award nominations during this time [2]. For an editor that had been working on Hollywood films for only seven years at the time, that is an incredible accomplishment, and I feel that with enough talent, dedication and collaboration, an editor can achieve an incredible amount in even a portion of their career.
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| Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall with their Oscars for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo |
Skills & Experiences
When searching for first-hand information on Baxter's experiences of film editing and the approaches he's used, I found an extremely large amount of information from articles and interviews on his time working as the only film editor on Fincher's Gone Girl.
Firstly, when discussing approaching a narrative that explores a number of storylines and the overall length of the film, Baxter said the following: "The editorial trick was creating a language for three different storylines that was easy to follow and compelling — while getting out of the first act as quickly as possible for this 149-minute thrill ride." [3]
- I found this inspiring, as similar to Gone Girl, Double Exposure's biggest twists in the story are later in the film, and although our film is a short film, I found it important to focus on cutting down time in the earlier acts, to get the core of the film.
Similarly, he discusses his collaborations with the director, working together to further cut down the film: "It was an absolute joy to edit because David had all of the moving parts, but we were constantly going for months, ‘How can we make it faster, what can we trim?' ... It helped our quest to reduce time for the sake of the overall flow of the movie, but I think it also made it a better film." [3]
- I think that from all of my research into editing for this project, I've found it to be common practice in editing to trim down a film to allow it to flow and improve, as well as making sure that the run time doesn't overrun.
In another article where he touched on the length of the film, he states that: "We got it to the length that best served the picture, and to make it any shorter is just chasing arbitrary numbers, rather than delivering the best film." [4]
- This was helpful to me in remembering that the film doesn't need to be cut down to the shortest possible time, every reason for cutting needs to only be in the best interest of the film's quality and narrative strength.
Baxter later discusses working on the assembly of Gone Girl: "It’s not just the volume of takes, it’s finding the road map of how to tell a scene, and where to be, how to move through it and how much we want to present to the audience. It’s mostly the mathematics I have to work out first. Once I have that in place I get to the nuance of what are the best pieces of performance." [4]
- I found this information on his experience of creating an assembly cut to be very helpful in my own work. I felt as if when organising all of the takes and connecting clips and narratives followed by selecting the best performances from the actors, that I was working in a very professional way that an industry standard editor would.
In more technical aspects of his work, I found out that: "Gone Girl marks the first major Hollywood feature cut on Premiere Pro CC, which is a big boost for Adobe. The decision was made because of the tight integration between Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC, which allowed multiple editors and VFX artists to work on the same project." [3]
- I think that this is quite groundbreaking in editing, as Avid is so typically used to edit big-budget Hollywood films. So for a film as big as this to have been edited using Adobe Software is a huge change. It was also very interesting to learn that such a high quality and high standard of film was edited on the same software that I would be editing on.
Baxter also talks about his experiences in working with different editing software: "I went from Avid to Final Cut to Premiere, and I find all of them take about a day or two to get used to so that your fingers do the work without your brain having to think about what your fingers are doing. And for the editor, that’s the main goal - just focus on doing." [4]
- I've found that at my level - a dramatically earlier one than Baxter - learning and working with different post-production software can take a long time to work with. However his words above are inspiring, as it shows that with time and skill development that new and complicated methods and software can easily be explained and explored.
Lastly, he talks about the difference that shooting in 6K made: "David was able to overshoot the image - that part was really handy. Because I can move a shot around to change headroom or affect the camera move on it, means that we’re choosing all things based on performance, not based on camerawork. To me that’s the best element of it." [4]
- I found this to be one of the most relative parts of my research to my own work. As although Double Exposure was shot in a format close to 4K rather than 6K, I too had the ability to manipulate framing sizes to adjust headroom and camera movements. Allowing me to also choose takes based on the best quality of shot and performance.
Firstly, when discussing approaching a narrative that explores a number of storylines and the overall length of the film, Baxter said the following: "The editorial trick was creating a language for three different storylines that was easy to follow and compelling — while getting out of the first act as quickly as possible for this 149-minute thrill ride." [3]
- I found this inspiring, as similar to Gone Girl, Double Exposure's biggest twists in the story are later in the film, and although our film is a short film, I found it important to focus on cutting down time in the earlier acts, to get the core of the film.
Similarly, he discusses his collaborations with the director, working together to further cut down the film: "It was an absolute joy to edit because David had all of the moving parts, but we were constantly going for months, ‘How can we make it faster, what can we trim?' ... It helped our quest to reduce time for the sake of the overall flow of the movie, but I think it also made it a better film." [3]
- I think that from all of my research into editing for this project, I've found it to be common practice in editing to trim down a film to allow it to flow and improve, as well as making sure that the run time doesn't overrun.
In another article where he touched on the length of the film, he states that: "We got it to the length that best served the picture, and to make it any shorter is just chasing arbitrary numbers, rather than delivering the best film." [4]
- This was helpful to me in remembering that the film doesn't need to be cut down to the shortest possible time, every reason for cutting needs to only be in the best interest of the film's quality and narrative strength.
Baxter later discusses working on the assembly of Gone Girl: "It’s not just the volume of takes, it’s finding the road map of how to tell a scene, and where to be, how to move through it and how much we want to present to the audience. It’s mostly the mathematics I have to work out first. Once I have that in place I get to the nuance of what are the best pieces of performance." [4]
- I found this information on his experience of creating an assembly cut to be very helpful in my own work. I felt as if when organising all of the takes and connecting clips and narratives followed by selecting the best performances from the actors, that I was working in a very professional way that an industry standard editor would.
In more technical aspects of his work, I found out that: "Gone Girl marks the first major Hollywood feature cut on Premiere Pro CC, which is a big boost for Adobe. The decision was made because of the tight integration between Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC, which allowed multiple editors and VFX artists to work on the same project." [3]
- I think that this is quite groundbreaking in editing, as Avid is so typically used to edit big-budget Hollywood films. So for a film as big as this to have been edited using Adobe Software is a huge change. It was also very interesting to learn that such a high quality and high standard of film was edited on the same software that I would be editing on.
Baxter also talks about his experiences in working with different editing software: "I went from Avid to Final Cut to Premiere, and I find all of them take about a day or two to get used to so that your fingers do the work without your brain having to think about what your fingers are doing. And for the editor, that’s the main goal - just focus on doing." [4]
- I've found that at my level - a dramatically earlier one than Baxter - learning and working with different post-production software can take a long time to work with. However his words above are inspiring, as it shows that with time and skill development that new and complicated methods and software can easily be explained and explored.
Lastly, he talks about the difference that shooting in 6K made: "David was able to overshoot the image - that part was really handy. Because I can move a shot around to change headroom or affect the camera move on it, means that we’re choosing all things based on performance, not based on camerawork. To me that’s the best element of it." [4]
- I found this to be one of the most relative parts of my research to my own work. As although Double Exposure was shot in a format close to 4K rather than 6K, I too had the ability to manipulate framing sizes to adjust headroom and camera movements. Allowing me to also choose takes based on the best quality of shot and performance.
Editing Example
Another useful area of my research into Kirk Baxter and his work was to review the editing techniques of a clip from one of his credited films. Allowing me to draw inspiration from this for my own work in editing.
Gone Girl
This scene is a great example of cutting an uncomfortable dialogue sequence. Using L & J cut to keep the dialogue between the characters consistently flowing, matching shot sizes to get a sense of their distance from each other, and especially the use of cutting to closer frame sizes as the conversation becomes more confrontational and intense. I found that this technique was very useful in considering the ways to cut together the confrontational dialogue scenes of Double Exposure.
Why I Chose Kirk Baxter & Influences
I chose to research Kirk Baxter for many reasons; his editing work on numerous thriller films that allow me to draw inspiration for the thriller film that I'm editing, his collaborations with a successful film director, the encouraging beginnings of his career, his talent put to practice through inspiring editing techniques in a number of films, my familiarity and high interest in the films that he's worked on, and how he has achieved so much in such a short amount of time.By researching and learning about Kirk Baxter, I was able to gain knowledge in a large amount of areas, including the ways that an editor can break into the industry, the awards that can be won for my future work, professional editing practices, and editing techniques and style inspiration for my own work on Double Exposure and future projects.
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