Editing Almost Ruined ‘Reservation Dogs’

A lot of times the storytelling aspect of a show can get so much attention that the technical aspect gets lost in the shuffle. The bar is so high regarding the fundamentals of filmmaking that audiences expect it without question. Story, meanwhile, is a lot trickier to nail down. People are so focused on the characters and the plot that they take simple things like editing for granted. But these details are the foundation from which the story is built. Without them, the story is obscured, so it’s extremely important to get them right. However, in a recent emotional episode of Reservation Dogs, the editing struggled to do just that.

In the penultimate episode of Reservation Dogs, Elora (Devery Jacobs) goes in search of the father (Ethan Hawke) she never knew who abandoned her as a baby. Elora initially had no interest in getting to know her father,  but he felt immense regret to leaving her and wanted to salvage a relationship. This process first begins at a diner, where Elora is very standoffish to her father while her dad tries to slowly get her to open up. It’s an extremely emotional and pivotal scene … and the editing of it is terrible.

As the two of them talk back and forth, the actors’ position from one camera angle to the next never matches up. Characters would be in the process of fixing papers and placing them on the table in one shot, but the next shot would go right back to the character still messing with the papers. Also, their hands never matched up as they would take drinks and eat their food. This was all done to make sure that the dialogue was correct, but the actors’ bodies had major inconsistencies between angles. It might have been the fault of the editor, the actors, or even the director for not noticing. But the point is that even though the episode had a very emotional story, the editing could have very easily taken the audience out of the moment.

Reservation Dogs is now streaming on Hulu.