Thelma Schoonmaker’s Editing Style and Collaboration with Martin Scorsese

Original article: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/thelma-schoonmaker-editing-style/

Film editing is an underrated art form, and often underestimated. Editing is the backbone of filmmaking—it demands enormous effort and dedication to the craft, including developing your own unique editing style and breaking the rules. Let’s take a look at Thelma Schoonmaker, one of the most accomplished and famous film editors in Hollywood, and see what makes her one of the most renowned figures in the industry. In this article, we’ll look at Thelma Schoonmaker’s background, explore her unique editing style, and of course her decades-long collaboration with filmmaker and cinematic pioneer Martin Scorsese.

How Thelma Entered the Editing World

Schoonmaker is known for her work on Raging Bull, The Aviator, The Irishman, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, and many other films you may love. Let’s look at Schoonmaker’s life before she became the second most Oscar-nominated editor in Academy history.

Thelma was born in Algeria to American expatriate parents but spent her early years in Aruba. She didn’t move to the United States until she was fifteen, when she continued her education there. Surprisingly, editing films was not Schoonmaker’s initial passion. She studied political science and international diplomacy at Cornell University.

It was during a primitive arts graduate program at Columbia University that she quickly paved the way toward becoming an award‑winning editor.

Although Schoonmaker did not start out in film school, she soon discovered her passion. During the program, she saw a job ad in The New York Times for an assistant editor position. She applied and got the job, quickly discovered how interesting the work was, and then enrolled in film editing courses at NYU.

In the film industry, networking is key to success, and that’s exactly how it worked for Schoonmaker. During her courses at NYU, she met a young filmmaker named Martin Scorsese, who asked her to fix the editing on his first film. The two would go on to collaborate on 23 feature films (and counting).

Schoonmaker and Scorsese are known for improvisation, and Schoonmaker says she loves working that way. For example, remember the pivotal scene in The Departed when Jack Nicholson discovers Leonardo DiCaprio is an undercover cop and pulls a gun on him? That scene was completely improvised, and Leonardo’s reaction was in the moment.

I love editing improvisations because it’s like putting a puzzle together—that’s what working with improvised scenes feels like. You have to find a way to make the scene work dramatically, and I love doing that. — Thelma Schoonmaker

Collaboration with Martin Scorsese

Many successful people will say that collaboration is a key factor in success, and this is certainly true for Schoonmaker and Scorsese, who have created many award‑winning films together, including the three‑and‑a‑half‑hour epic The Irishman.

Throughout her success, Schoonmaker has remained humble, continually emphasizing the importance of collaboration, teamwork, and making sure the director’s vision is realized. Schoonmaker’s editing skills combined with Scorsese’s directing style have created one of the best filmmaking partnerships of all time.

Film editing is anything but easy. Schoonmaker and Scorsese spend enormous amounts of time crafting epic cinematic imagery in films like Raging Bull, which was ultimately named one of the best films of the 1980s. Schoonmaker won her first Oscar for editing that film.

In fact, the film was so successful, and their collaboration worked so well, that she has edited every narrative feature Scorsese has directed since.

A hallmark of Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing is her ability to work with improvisation, as seen in films like Raging Bull and The Wolf of Wall Street. Schoonmaker says that it was her work cutting documentaries that trained her to handle improvised footage in narrative films. Her partnership with Scorsese is pure collaboration. While it may be his vision, he relies on her to help him achieve it. That’s the key to the director–editor relationship: communication.

Thelma Schoonmaker’s Editing Style

If you think good editing means people don’t notice it’s happening, then Thelma Schoonmaker’s films are not like that. The secret to great craft is often breaking the conventional rules, and that’s exactly what Schoonmaker and Scorsese achieve with their filmmaking and editorial style. Thelma Schoonmaker’s film editing style and distinctive techniques are a big part of why her and Scorsese’s films are so successful.

Freeze Frame

When a single frame is held on screen and repeated, it “freezes” the action and creates a static image (similar to a photograph). In Goodfellas, Scorsese’s visual technique uses freeze frames to halt the action at crucial moments in Henry’s life. Think of when he looks down at the trunk and says, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

You can also see it when Henry burns the car. The freeze frames are used to show the audience the key moments in life that Henry remembers, helping us connect more deeply with the character.

Flash Frames

This is somewhat self‑explanatory. It involves cutting with camera flashes. In many of Scorsese’s films, Schoonmaker uses flash frames in different ways to capture different emotions. In The Aviator, flash frames are used as a disorienting effect. When Hughes walks the red carpet with Harlow, paparazzi camera flashes go off in his face, and the flash‑frame edits are shown in sequence, clearly indicating his discomfort with all the attention. The flash‑frame editing helps create a sense of disorientation, letting the audience feel what the character feels.

Slow Motion

Slow motion is an effect used in editing to make time appear to move more slowly. In Raging Bull, you can see this technique when the Ray Robinson character beats Jake to a bloody pulp. The slow motion of the heavy punches functions as a juxtaposition in this fight scene and creates a greater sense of chaos. Slow motion heightens the intensity of the action, builds tension, and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.

Ultimately, there is no universal truth in editing. There is no single correct way, because you can cut (or not cut) based on how you want the audience to feel.

Sometimes we like a certain roughness in the style of film editing that Hollywood editors don’t like. Hollywood editors tend to like a very smooth editing style where all the bumps are removed. But sometimes Marty and I like to keep those bumps because they give the film a certain toughness, a certain reality.

— Thelma Schoonmaker