PH: Penelope’s journey blends fantasy with the stark realities of survival in the wilderness. How did you approach balancing these contrasting tones in your editing process?
Celia Beasley: The series brings us deeply into Penelope’s experience. As a viewer, we are with her all the time—watching her, or seeing what she is seeing, like a mouse on her shoulder. At times we actually go inside of her head to live her experience without any separation—almost like an alternate consciousness, where thoughts are nonverbal, atemporal and asynchronous. Some of these moments were shot with a particular treatment, and some were not, so it was an exciting challenge to figure out how to transition the viewer from being alongside Penelope to truly stepping inside her head and living her experience with her. And then at times she is startled back into the brutal reality of her situation, so the edit had to reflect that as well. For example, in the pilot episode, Penelope wanders into a supermarket somewhat aimlessly, before becoming suddenly drawn to the camping gear. I used time remapping, sound design and score to bring us into her dream-like state as she starts forming a plan. Then I used a smash cut and the jarring ‘beep’ of the scanner at the register to wrench us back to reality. That is a moment where the edit is making itself visible, winking from behind the curtain. I’ve gotten to watch that scene a few times with an audience and it gets a laugh every time!
PH: You used Adobe Premiere Productions and Camera to Cloud to bring Penelope’s adventurous story to life. Could you walk us through how this tool helped streamline your workflow and enhance the storytelling?
Celia Beasley: I am based in Seattle, and Premiere was essential in allowing me to collaborate with my LA-based assistant editors, Kenzie Woodrow and David Robbins. PENELOPE was shot all at once, like a feature film, so Kenzie and David were organizing the incoming footage and creating assemblies with the new footage while I was editing. Productions allowed us to seamlessly share work and update assets as they came in. We used Camera to Cloud on set to minimize the footprint of the shoot in the environment, by giving each on-set department head a tablet so they could monitor the shoot in near real-time from basecamp rather than crowding around video village, thus keeping the shoot's impact on the wilderness as small as possible.
PH: The series showcases intimate character moments while simultaneously emphasizing the vastness of the Pacific Northwest. How did you ensure the grandeur of the environment didn’t overshadow these personal emotions?
Celia Beasley: The PNW wilderness is majestic and grandiose, but Penelope’s experience of it is very intimate. She really has to pay attention to the tiniest details when she is foraging for berries or gathering fern roots, otherwise she could end up dead! We need some of those gorgeous sweeping landscape shots to remind us she is in a very remote place, but the cinematography was very intentional in mimicking Penelope’s perspective by inviting us to look at nature the way she is seeing it. Cinematographer Nate Miller and his team treated nature like a character, creating a window and letting the ‘action’ unfold on screen, like a caterpillar crawling up a stalk of grass, or a leaf spinning in the sunshine, suspended by a spider web.
PH: Penelope’s self-discovery is central to the series. Were there specific scenes or sequences where you felt the editing played a crucial role in conveying her emotional growth?
Celia Beasley: The scene of Penelope on the train is a crucial one - it is the first time she is truly reflecting on her actions and their consequences, and consciously committing to her journey. True to our indie roots, it was shot on an actual working train with just a couple handheld cameras operated by our DP Nate Miller and B camera June Zandona. The changing light and landscape would have made it impossible to cut the scene linearly, and we embraced the beautiful ethereal nature of the footage and built the scene to be atemporal and asynchronous, hearing Penelope’s voice both out loud and as words in her head. The real world was further tied with Penelope’s emotional state with Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’s melancholy score, with Julia Piker’s ethereal vocals echoing the train’s horn. The entire show is seen through Penelope’s eyes, so throughout the show we intentionally blurred the lines between ‘reality’ and her perception.
PH: Given the tension between Penelope’s youthful idealism and the harsh realities of survival, how did you build suspense and maintain a sense of unpredictability throughout the series?
The show is all about pacing, and the pace of PENELOPE is unlike anything on tv. Mark and Mel really wanted the show to feel as close to real time as possible, so we could really sit with Penelope in her experience - exploring, discovering, struggling, feeling the frustration of learning new things - without actually playing everything out. In the tent-building scene, I used jump cuts to move us through time while still keeping us firmly anchored in her frustration with the never-ending struggle to put that tent together. Then she hears a CRACK and suddenly we are jerked into real time, forced to sit with her in that excruciating silence as her heart hammers away and fear rushes in. I used that alternating pacing a lot throughout the series to mimic Penelope’s focus, whether it was fully concentrated on a task in front of her, or confronted with brutal reality, or marveling at the beauty around her.
PH: In crafting Penelope’s world, how did you collaborate with the director and cinematographer to ensure the visuals and editing style aligned with the show’s adventurous yet introspective tone?
Celia Beasley: I’ve known Mel Eslyn and Nate Miller for over 15 years. Many projects I’ve edited over the years have been shot by Nate, or produced by Mel, or both! That deep familiarity really served us in PENELOPE as a kind of shorthand. The first time Mel told me about the show, I was immediately able to imagine it in my head because I know her sensibility so well. Nate is an outstanding cinematographer because he instinctively knows what’s essential in a scene, AND he makes beautiful shots. But beauty is not always the priority - sometimes shots that are too glorious can actually distract from the story. Nate’s cinematography is beautiful but it doesn’t compete with the performance. He creates a window, and then disappears, and that’s what allows us to fully engage with the story because we have been immersed in a world.
PH: What were some of the most challenging scenes to edit, and how did you approach resolving those challenges while staying true to the series' unique blend of fantasy and realism?
Celia Beasley: Editing the scenes with Cinder the bear was a unique challenge! It was a real team effort. Production had the cameras roll continuously on Cinder to gather as much as possible. Then my AEs combed through the footage and flagged everything - Cinder turning her head, Cinder looking up, Cinder doing something cute - and then I pulled out all my tricks from my reality tv days to craft the reactions we wanted. Megan is an incredible actor and I got to see a wonderful example of her flexibility during the fishing scene. In the script, the bear cub is timid and easily frightened, and Penelope is constantly reassuring it. But in real life, Cinder was anything but - she was sassy, unafraid and entitled! I watched in the raw footage as Megan adjusted her performance to play off her fellow ‘actor’, even spontaneously changing lines to match Cinder’s ‘performance’. She really sold it!
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