Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you are here. On today's show, folk legend Joni Mitchell is still going strong, recently performing in LA for FireAid. She performed her hit song Both Sides Now from the album of the same name. That concept album came out 25 years ago. We're going to talk to NPR music critic Ann Powers, author of Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, for our latest installment of Silver Liner Notes. We'll get into the science of fermentation with the co-founder of Noma's Fermentation Lab. That's the plan. Let's get this started with the Oscar-nominated film Conclave.

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Alison Stewart: It is time for the next installment of our series, The Big Picture. That's when we speak to Oscar-nominated people who worked behind the camera to make excellent movies in 2024. Today, we're talking about Conclave. The Sistine Chapel might not seem like an unlikely place for a thriller, but the film makes the election of the next pope as exciting as any spy narrative. Conclave is nominated for the Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards and stars Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini, who are both up for Oscars in acting categories. Also nominated is the film's editor, Nick Emerson, who helped keep the audiences on their toes. You can stream Conclave now on Peacock. I'm joined now by Nick Emerson. Hey, Nick.

Nick Emerson: Hey, how are you? Good to be here.

Alison Stewart: Glad to have you. From your background, you worked in TV news for many years before transitioning into filmmaking. How did that transition come about?

Nick Emerson: It was a long process, actually. I actually started in television news and then ultimately moved from television news into documentary film. There was little stepping stones that finally got me to feature films. Yes, documentary film. I spend a long time doing documentary film, which is an amazing place and field to learn how to tell a story and draw a story out of some material. I did that for a long time. I was always interested in trying to get into films. I was doing lots of short films and one of them did quite well. I was very fortunate that the directors who made that short film ended up being offered a feature film and they somehow managed to persuade the producers to let me edit it and that was the start of it.

Alison Stewart: Is there anything the same about editing news footage versus editing film?

Nick Emerson: Oh, yes. The rhythms are different and the way you might cut the picture is different. From a narrative point of view, it's similar. Obviously, in news or documentary, there's maybe a shorter arc in terms of the story, but they still have a beginning, middle, and an end, which is true of feature films. It's similar, but the form is different. The narrative side of things is-- I learned so much from making documentary films in terms of narrative storytelling and drama, actually, because you still apply-- When you're making a documentary film, it's still got to have dramatic peaks and troughs and so forth. That's something that I took with me into feature film editing.

Alison Stewart: Nick, what was the first film you remember really noticing the editing?

Nick Emerson: I remember when I was 14 years old, I remember seeing Taxi Driver for the first time. Goodness knows why my parents were letting me see Taxi Driver at 14. I remember watching it and being aware that somebody was in control of the picture, whether that was a director or an editor. It was the first time that I understood there was a job behind it. I can actually pinpoint the specific shot. It was a slow-motion shot of Robert De Niro's hand moving across a desk when he was explaining something to Cybill Shepherd in office. I just remember it was like a lightning bolt. It was so unexpected. Therefore, I noticed it and was like, "Wow, that was--" I thought it was so beautiful. From then, I just started to watch films from that point of view.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Nick Emerson, the editor of the film Conclave. He is nominated for an Oscar for Best Editing. What was your first thought when you first read the script for Conclave?

Nick Emerson: My first thought was, "I really want to do this." I remember thinking, "Oh, my goodness." It was just such a page-turner. It was so thrilling. There was two aspects to it. I remember thinking, "Oh, I just love getting to see behind the curtain of this process of seeing this very old and very sacred ritual," getting a peek behind the door, I suppose, and seeing it. Then also, it reminded me, when I read it, of films that I greatly admire, such as All the President's Men and Alan Pakula films like The Parallax View. It had that sort of flavor of conspiracy thriller. I was very excited by that, about the challenges of that from an editorial point of view. When I spoke to Edward, when we had a meeting about the film, we shared that love of those films. It was a great starting point for our collaboration.

Alison Stewart: Should let people know Edward Berger is the director. Now, you edited in London, but you did visit the set. What did you get from visiting the set?

Nick Emerson: It's really about just being able to spend time with the director when you visit set. They're very busy on the shooting days, but I was able to spend time together on the weekends, looking at the film together. I'd never worked with him before. It's always editing and directing the relationship between two people. It's a long relationship. You spend a lot of time together. It was a lot about being able to develop that relationship and start to understand what his desires for the film were. It was great. We just were in Rome for some weekends just so I could show him some pieces that we were working on.

Although I was in London editing while he was shooting, I would send him scenes that I would cut. As soon as I would have them ready, I would send them over a secure video-sharing platform that he was able to see how the scenes were coming together at that early stage.

Alison Stewart: You said that editing Conclave was very meticulous from the beginning, but also that director Edward Berger was open and adaptable. What's an example of him being open to your suggestions?

Nick Emerson: Just let me think. Oh, yes, there was one example where-- In the beginning, there's a whole sequence where the cardinals arrive for the Conclave. Scripted in the way it was shot, they were separate sequences. There was a dialogue scene and there was scenes of the nuns preparing the rooms. Then there was scenes of the cardinals smoking on their iPads and so on and going through security. It was like that. There was a dialogue scene that we thought, "Maybe we could take that out." Then I suggested, "Let's just try and mold all this together," and not really worrying about the time and the chronological chronology of these things. We just make it into a montage of all these things coalescing together. That's one example.

He's so prepared and so interested in the detail. He loves editing and so he believes that part of editing is to explore every opportunity available because he thinks we spent all this time and money. All these amazing craftspeople and actors spend all day on set. We have to do it for them. If nothing else, it's just to make sure that we just examined everything as thoroughly as we can. He's up for everything. Films, not just in this film, any film, films, if you don't go down these alleys of trying things out, you have to do it because even if you try one way and it's not right, it might lead you another way, which is right. You have to explore.

Alison Stewart: In electing a new pope, there are so many rituals in this movie. Traditions, steps that must be followed. What ritual proved to be the most interesting to edit?

Nick Emerson: I think the ballot sequences themselves when the men are gathered. I particularly like the first one, the first ballot sequence that we put together. Edward had storyboarded these. We had a good idea of the structure, but the first voting scene we played out very deliberately, quite slowly that you see every step that that takes place. What that did was it gave us the permission and the ability when we revisit the voting sequences later on in the film, that we can be more fluid with them and change them around and change the order of shots and make them faster or even slower.

We were super aware that we wanted to make these rituals different every time. Although it's the same thing taking place, we wanted to see them in an interesting way each time we visited them. They were so much fun to edit. With those wonderful shots that he shot of all the characters and they're putting needles through paper, all that stuff is such a gift to an editor because it's all very dynamic and you can create wonderful montages with those.

Alison Stewart: All right. What was the least interesting but necessary sequence, and how did you handle it?

Nick Emerson: Oh, goodness. The least interesting. I don't know. I think everything that needed to be there is there. If it's not there, if it wasn't interesting, we did try to take it out. Edward and I used to always say to one another when we were making this that we don't waste a frame. Every frame has to be there for a reason. In the editorial process, there are obviously always challenges. I think we spent a lot of time on the first 20 minutes of the film experimenting with structure and making it longer, making it shorter because there's a lot of elements that you've got to get going. You've got to set up a world. You've got to set up a main character. You've got to set inciting incident. You've got to set up all these other characters and get all these little plotlines developing and starting. That was very satisfying to do, but we spent a lot of time playing with that to get the right combination of those scenes and sequences.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Nick Emerson, the editor of the film Conclave. He is nominated for an Oscar for Best Editing. This is really a thriller, this film. Like you said, it reminded me of All The President's Men, the machinations, the behind-the-scenes action. How did you want to pace the story so it does feel like a thriller?

Nick Emerson: We were super aware of that from the beginning, that we wanted it to have a certain pace to it because we were aware it's a lot of men talking for a couple of hours, so we really wanted to keep the pace up. We knew that would just help with the tension and keep people on the edge of their seats. There were two ways we approached it. One was Edward's approach to shooting it, which was very much in the vein of those political thrillers from the '70s you mentioned, which is being extremely rigorous with the shot composition, holding shots longer, and also not revisiting the same shot more than once and creating this very strong architecture.

His grammar approach to these helped create these really strong scenes that are so-- They're so tense because they're not cutting in a way. Then also, there's just the overall pace that we spent a lot of time adjusting and looking at. Often the way you do that is it's taking out little bits of connective tissue, as I would call them, between scenes that you just arrive from one scene straight into the next, so you're carrying the tension from the previous scene straight into the next scene without letting the air out by seeing somebody get up, leave a room and go into the next scene.

I've tricked my brain over the years in terms of watching films, is how to assess the paces because you have to watch these films so many times when you're editing them. I tend to try to watch it without looking at the cuts because you've spent so much time perfecting these cuts. If you try to look beyond that and just look and be aware of the flow of information, the flow of emotion, and the flow of story, if you can watch it from that point of view, you can see where the slack is or where there's points that you can really exploit tension. It's a whole range of processes that we go through to arrive where we did.

Alison Stewart: What films did you watch?

Nick Emerson: Actually, I rewatched All The President's Men, The Parallax View, Klute. What else did I watch? I'm a great admirer of David Fincher's films. I think he creates tension and creates suspense in a really interesting way. I think Zodiac was one I watched, and I think The Social Network. He's got a real ability with pace and especially, there's quite often a lot of dialogue in his films as well, so I was keen to see-- He approached those as well.

Alison Stewart: So much of the movie is about what's going on with Cardinal Lawrence internally, Ralph Fiennes. He says he doesn't want to be Pope, but keep that going. How did you help make his interior performance rise to the surface for viewers?

Nick Emerson: We always knew that when we wanted to tell a story, he was the anchor point.

Alison Stewart: Anchor

Nick Emerson: Yes. We wanted to keep it in his point of view so that we see everything through him. So much of it is about the way that Edward shoots Ralph as well. He's got such a strong instinct in terms of where to place the camera. He would place the camera above the back of Ralph's head and not necessarily looking at his face. Quite often in films, you get access to a character through their eyes, but this was different, you know. It creates this interesting tension between the camera and the actor. You can see audience try to peek around the corner to look into the actor's eyes because they can't see it. There's things like that and just giving access.

Then also, you've just got one of the great actors in the world. Ralph is just so truthful and so in the moment at any given time, that it's just the crisis and the situation that he's in. It's coming out of every pore. You just have to point the camera at him and look at him. It's being transmitted. I always think when I'm putting a scene together is I always think about these anchor points in the scene in terms of definitely somewhere where we need to be. I just focused in on those. It was always generally related to Ralph and Cardinal Lawrence, how he was receiving information in terms of-- because he doesn't have huge amounts of dialogue. It's often just about watching him receive the information and the situation that's going on around him. I just feel so lucky to be able to work with that performance. I've admired his work for years, so it was a great thrill.

Alison Stewart: Stanley Tucci plays Cardinal Bellini, an American who says that he doesn't want the papacy, but later, it seems he does want the papacy. Let's listen to this scene and we can talk about it on the other side. This is between Bellini and Lawrence as Bellini is arriving for the Conclave.

Cardinal Lawrence: Father Bellini. Aldo.

Cardinal Bellini: Am I the last one?

Cardinal Lawrence: Not quite. How are you?

Cardinal Bellini: Oh, well, you know, fairly dreadful. Have you seen the papers?

Cardinal Lawrence: Yes.

Cardinal Bellini: Apparently, it's already decided. It's to be me.

Cardinal Lawrence: I happen to agree with them.

Cardinal Bellini: What if I don't want it? No sane man would want the papacy.

Cardinal Lawrence: Some of our colleagues seem to want it.

Cardinal Bellini: What if I know in my heart that I am not worthy?

Cardinal Lawrence: You are more worthy than any of us.

Cardinal Bellini: I'm not.

Cardinal Lawrence: Well, then tell your supporters not to vote for you to pass the chalice.

Cardinal Bellini: Let it go to him? I could never live with myself.

Alison Stewart: Tell me about Bellini's arc through this film.

Nick Emerson: That scene in particular really highlights Stanley's actual genius because that is a scene where you're setting up an awful lot of ideas with a lot of dialogue explaining things. He just is so natural. You just understand everything that he's feeling. He starts as somebody who, I think, has a strong sense of what he thinks is right and what is wrong in the world and really wants to do something about it but is worried that he doesn't really want, you know the top job or the pressure of it. Then slowly, through the film, he basically realizes that he has to do it and he has to do it to keep his liberal agenda at the forefront but then gets sucked into the politics of it and the politicking, but eventually, through the course of the film, realizes that the ambition of it has got to him.

It was a lovely scene, actually towards the end, where he goes to Lawrence and apologizes to him for doubting him so much. It's a really poignant scene between these two brothers. It actually has one of my favorite cuts in the film, which is just at the end of that scene when they've comforted one another and bonded. Stanley's character has asked Lawrence what his papal name would be. Just at the end of the scene, we cut to this top shot in the Sistine Chapel of Lawrence with the blank ballot. Here it is. Here's the choice. Is he going to vote for himself or not? It's a wonderful moment. There seems to be so much about the film that's contained in that one moment.

Alison Stewart: In the background of all of this is the labor of the nuns who are caring for these cardinals. How did you want to make sure that these women didn't fade into the background, in fact, that they were definitely going to be present as the movie went on?

Nick Emerson: Absolutely. It was something Edward and I spoke about when we were editing the film was just about that presence and how we place it throughout the film and that it's there. It's also in terms of Isabella's character, Edward was sure to-- There's scenes that she is there in the script that he always made sure to shoot a big close-up of her so that she wasn't just somebody in charge of the nuns, who are preparing all the food and making the beds. She's there. She's got real strong presence.

I think in the film, a little bit of mystery as well. You're not quite sure how she feels about things. You get a little hint of it when she smiles in the canteen when Cardinal Benitez thanks the women for all the work that they're doing. We were just careful that it just had to be placed. Actually, what I always think about these things is I look at the scene where she does speak at the end where she reveals to the gathered cardinals about Cardinal Tremblay is I work back from that. That's the point where she speaks and is prepared to speak. You just work back from that, really, when you're looking at the overall structure and thinking--

Quite often when you go through films, you do track these things. Let's do a pass thinking about Sister Agnes and where she appears. We'd look at the timeline of the film and see where she appears. It's a calibration, really. What a wonderful performance. She's amazing.

Alison Stewart: Nick, where were you when you heard you had been nominated for an Oscar?

Nick Emerson: I was in the editing room.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Nick Emerson: I was in London in the cutting room. I'm editing Edward's next film at the minute. I was there and it was about lunchtime. I was there with my assistant editor and we watched the livestream. What an incredible afternoon that was.

Alison Stewart: What's the next film?

Nick Emerson: The next film is called The Ballad of a Small Player. It stars Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, and Tilda Swinton.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my gosh. Not too shabby a group, I'd say.

Nick Emerson: Yes, wonderful. Yes, very excited.

Alison Stewart: I've been speaking with Nick Emerson, the editor of the film Conclave. He is nominated for an Oscar for Best Editing. Thank you so much, Nick. We appreciate your time.

Nick Emerson: A real pleasure. Thanks for having me.