Editing for Character, Working With Paul Greengrass, and Watching Movies from the Third Row
Original Article By Bryant Frazer

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The big-budget thriller is enjoying something of a renaissance lately — lots of people are excited by blockbuster action pictures like Transformers and Live Free or Die Hard, but the arrival of a newer, grittier James Bond last year in Casino Royale was a development that was greeted with critical and public acclaim alike. And while the trilogy of Jason Bourne movies that began with 2002’s The Bourne Identity (and which arguably influenced the new direction of the Bond franchise) has been popular from square one, the series outdid itself with the release last month of The Bourne Ultimatum. A huge portion of the credit for that is borne on the shoulders of director Paul Greengrass, whose penchant for documentary-style camerawork gives his films a nerve-racking tension, but it’s film editor Christopher Rouse who has to keep up with the imagery, finding the narrative links that will hold all the footage together.

Rouse is no stranger to action cinema — he worked on The Bourne Supremacy in 2002, and followed that up with demanding co-editing gigs on The Italian Job, with director F. Gary Gray, and Paycheck, with director John Woo, in 2003. But he really hit it off with Paul Greengrass, with whom he has cut two Bourne films as well as United 93 — the latter scored him an Oscar nomination (with Clare Douglas and Richard Pearson). F&V caught up with him by telephone as he was preparing to leave Los Angeles for London, where he would prep for work on his next project with Greengrass. Watch a video clip, below, to get a feel for the Greengrass/Rouse approach to action.

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Read the entire interview on StudioDaily.com website

     

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