Behind the Cut: Nurse.Fighter.Boy (Editor Jim Blokland)

Nurse.Fighter.Boy is the feature-length directorial debut film from award-winning director Charles Officer. It was co-written by himself and producer, Ingrid Veninger, and produced in conjunction with the Canadian Film Centre. The film is a touching story about a mother (the nurse), her son (the boy), and the mysterious man who enters their lives (the fighter). It takes place at the end of summer, when Jude and her son Ciel plan a week of birthday celebrations. During this time, Silence, an over-the-hill prize-fighter, finds his way into Jude’s care. This first meeting triggers events that inextricably change all of their lives.  More than anything, this film celebrates life and love, and it is brimming with brilliant moments of humanity.

In the fall of last year, I got a call from a stranger named Jim Blokland. It turned out Blokland was editing his first feature film and needed some assistant editing help. Jim originally came to editing through his background as a filmmaker – having learned to edit while working on one of his own short films. Since then he has worked as an editor in many different capacities and productions. I was more than happy to work with him, and the project turned out to be the 2008 Toronto Film Festival accepted Nurse.Fighter.Boy.

Adam Azimov: Could you start by telling me about the film… just a general overview?
Jim Blokland:  The film Nurse.Fighter.Boy is about three main characters.  They’re archetypal characters… a healer, a warrior, and a child – the nurse, the fighter, and the boy.  It’s more of a thematic piece than a hard plot driven piece, and it’s a project that Charles (the director) worked on for several years.

AA: So I was curious about how you ended up editing the film, seeing as it’s your first feature.
JB:  I worked with Ingrid (Veninger, co-writer, producer) and Charles before.  I worked with Ingrid for many years in a bunch of different capacities and most recently I cut a compilation of short films that she produced called Hotel Vladivostok, which was six shorts made by six different filmmakers.  That was a pretty intense process working with Ingrid, and to a lesser extent Charles.  Once they came around to doing Nurse.Fighter.Boy together, they were interested in me mostly from my work on Vladivostok.  So we sat down and chatted about the process and how we might work together.   They really championed me at the film centre because this was my first feature and I was totally off the radar for the CFC (Canadian Film Centre) folks.

AA: This being your first feature, I was hoping you could walk us through the editing process during production.
JB:  I was asked to go on the shoot to wrangle all the data that was coming of the camera because they were shooting with the Panasonic HVX200 onto the P2 cards.  So almost as an insurance policy, the filmmakers said ‘we want you to be the one who takes the footage off the card before we erase anything’.  So, for that reason, I did a little editing during production but not a great deal.

AA: Once that was done, what was your editing process?
JB:  I did the first assembly on my own.  I gave Charles, Ingrid, and my mentor David Wharnsby (editor) blocks of scenes as I cut them.  I just slowly sort of chipped away and got an assembly out of that.  They wanted to see what I would come up with on my own.  The film was shot with a lot of coverage, which allowed for a lot of flexibility in editing.  It was a question of how the fabric of each scene, and how the film as a whole was going to be put together.  The first assembly was a 108 minutes out of 54 hours of footage.  I basically just tried to give them the script and I tried not to cut out anything even if there were things I thought we could lose.  After that, Charles and I sat down and started working on the rough-cut stage.  Our first rough cut was 94 minutes and then we did a fine cut phase that was kind of the same process but a little bit more intense.  We rented a space so that we could be together more, and did that for six weeks.  Then we did picture lock phase where we tried something that’s kind of unusual.  I gave Charles a copy of all the footage and he basically just played with the stuff.  So what ended up happening is, he’d play around with scenes and then bring them to me.  The cool thing was that instead of just bringing in the scene and saying, ‘this is it, just cut it in this way’…  he’d say, ‘let’s watch it and tell me what you think’.  So we’d screen it together and then I’d respond to it.  I’d often see something that he’d done that I never would have done, or that I had discounted along the way for one reason or another.  Then what would happen is I’d edit a hybrid of what he did and what I had originally liked in my cut.  It was great!  It was an amazing collaboration.

AA: You mentioned how this film is more thematically driven.  I’m wondering how you tried to embody that in the editing of the film, and how you balanced story and style?
JB:  I say thematically, but I think what we were going for was emotion.  The emotion was the through-line in the film.  I think that one of Charles’ strengths is finding the core emotion of things.  This film’s plot is basic and fairly linear – there are no major twists… there are developments.  So, I think on this film he wanted to be simple and kind of clean so that the technique wouldn’t overshadow the emotion or the story.  He always thought of the characters as archetypal characters…that was his approach to it.  I want to serve those characters and not do anything that gets in the way of that.  So we tried to really make sure that if there was anything that was flashier editorially or even camera wise, that we used them very judiciously.  It was never technique for techniques sake.  That was the general approach.  Sure the film has some flourishes, as it should.  There are some scenes that I find have a certain moment that seems to be nicely captured.  In all the screenings that we’ve done, there’s a love scene with Silence and Jude – the fighter and the nurse.  It’s a montage type piece that has layered images which was kind of a trademark of Charles’ early stuff.  But it’s fairly simple and really sparingly layered.  There’s not a lot going on but it’s how the images land and how they’re juxtaposed to make the overall frame.  There’s something about it that just sucks you into it.

Talking about this just reminded me of another scene that I really love.  It’s the scene where Jude and Silence first meet, when she patches up his head in the hospital.  There’s hardly any dialogue in that scene at all.  She comes in and he’s got his yes closed.  Then she looks at him kind of funny, like ‘what’s this guy doing here with his eyes closed’.  And then he opens his eyes and he sees her.  She starts to patch him up and it’s just this beautiful work between the two actors.  Clark is dynamite in that scene, just the way he steals glances at her while she works.  It’s a really key scene that happens ten minutes in and it launches them for the rest of the film.  The thing that I like about it is that it communicates a great deal with almost no dialogue and really no sound.  Part of the intent of that scene is to push the audience a bit and also to tell them that this is a really important scene… that’s why we’re staying here for a while.  We’re not rushing it in any way… we’re not running away from the scene.  There’s a lot going on and you’re really forced to watch what the actors are doing.  It’s one of my favourite scenes

AA: I’m curious if there were specific films influences you were looking at while making this Nurse.Fighter.Boy?
JB:  We did have one film in mind during the editing of Nurse.Fighter.Boy, and that was Half Nelson.  That has sort of a documentary feel.  It’s very quiet and it’s also kind of perceptual – in his head a lot.  The filmmakers carried that so beautifully in that movie that we were inspired by it.  Nurse.Fighter.Boy is all shot handheld.  Part of that was to get it away from feeling too clean…  Charles was also influenced a lot by the film Killer of Sheep.  On top of that, he and I are really big Wong Kar Wai fans, particularly In The Mood For Love.  I’m totally sappy and romantic, I mean I’m quite cynical too, but I still really resonate with romance.  I think Charles is also a true romantic, and he’s not afraid to express that in his work.  I think that makes him unique as a filmmaker because it’s tough to wear your heart on your sleeve…

AA:  Now that you’ve done your first feature, where do you go from here?
JB:  Well, my goal is to get another feature, or a television show.  In terms of game plan… because the feature hasn’t been released yet, I can’t go around showing it to everybody, so I’ve cut a little seven minute reel of scenes that I’m using as a demo.  I’m basically looking around for filmmakers that are making stuff that I really like.  I’m just trying to meet and greet.  It’s sort of an interesting position because I’m unknown, but on the other hand I have this cache value, because people are like, ‘who is this guy’?  I think all it takes is a couple of films and then it just ripples from there…  that’s my hope at least.

Nurse.Fighter.Boy premieres at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Screenings on September 8th and 10th.