“Dallas Buyers Club” Screening and Q&A with Film Editor Martin Pensa
On Friday, April 18, The Los Angeles Film School hosted a special screening of one of Award-Season’s biggest winners:The Dallas Buyers Club.
Following the screening, Martin Pensa, a LAFS alumnus who received an Academy Award nomination for Outstanding Editing for his work on the film, stopped by for a Q&A.
Martin Pensa, who graduated from LAFS in 2002, spoke to the audience about the process of getting involved in the making of The Dallas Buyers Club, which won a total of 51 awards this year.
“I had worked with Jean-Marc Vallée before, first on Café de Flore which he wrote and directed, and I edited.” After that first collaboration, Jean-Marc Vallée approached Pensa, who is based in Canada, to work on Dallas Buyers Club.
“I would have done it for free,” Pensa says, “the script was just that good, and he [Jean-Marc Valée] is just that good.”
But Dallas Buyers Club‘s eventual road to The Oscars wasn’t a smooth one.
“They were working with a very small budget,” Pensa says, “To the point that there was no stage lighting at all. They used all-natural light, and just let the camera keep rolling.”
These challenges ended up aiding the film, though, creating a documentary-like feel that grounded the otherwise very emotionally-intense subject matter.
“Every shot was so natural looking. I had to work through a lot of footage, which can be hard for an editor, but the performances and the way everything was shot made it a pleasure.”
Pensa says that director Valée was very involved in the editing process, and since the two had experience working together before, it aided the process.
“We would work from our respective basements, we would swap scenes. I would edit pages 1-15, for example, and then he would edit the next 15. Then we’d switch. Every scene got a lot of attention, which was important to us.”
Pensa, the first Los Angeles Film School alumni to be nominated for an Oscar, attended the school in its infancy but says that even then, he knew it was the right place for him.
“This school was really great to me. I learned a lot here, especially about being able to wear a lot of hats which is important in this business. I’m very proud of the [LAFS] team, and how far they’re continuing to go.”
