Thelma Schoonmaker’s Editing Style and Collaboration with Scorsese

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

Film editing is an underrated art form, and often overlooked. Editing is the backbone of filmmaking—it requires enormous effort and dedication to the craft, including developing one’s own unique editing style and knowing when to break the rules. Let’s take a look at Thelma Schoonmaker, one of Hollywood’s most accomplished and renowned film editors, and see what makes her one of the most respected figures in the industry. In this article, we’ll look at Thelma Schoonmaker’s background, explore her distinctive editing style, and of course her decades‑long collaboration with filmmaker and cinematic innovator 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 to continue her education until she was fifteen. Surprisingly, film editing was not her initial passion. She studied political science and international diplomacy at Cornell University.

It was during a graduate program in primitive art at Columbia University that she quickly paved the way toward her future as an award‑winning editor.

Although Schoonmaker didn’t start out in film school, she soon discovered her passion. During her studies, she saw an ad in The New York Times for an assistant editor position. She applied, got the job, quickly found the work fascinating, and then enrolled in a film editing course at NYU.

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

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

I love cutting improvisation because it’s like putting a puzzle together, that’s what it feels like working with improv scenes. 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 together have created many award‑winning films, including the three‑and‑a‑half‑hour epic The Irishman.

Throughout her successful career, Schoonmaker has remained humble, emphasizing the importance of collaboration, teamwork, and ensuring that the director’s vision is realized. Schoonmaker’s editing skills combined with Scorsese’s directorial style have created one of the strongest director‑editor partnerships in film history.

Editing is anything but easy. Schoonmaker and Scorsese spend enormous amounts of time crafting epic cinematic imagery for 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 went on to cut every narrative feature Scorsese has directed since.

One 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 her work editing documentaries helped train her to handle improvised material in narrative films. Her collaboration with Scorsese is a truly mutual partnership. While it may be his vision, he relies on her to help 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 the opposite. The secret to great craftsmanship is to throw away conventional rules, and that’s exactly what Schoonmaker and Scorsese do with their filmmaking and editing style. Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing approach and unique techniques are a major reason their films are so successful.

Freeze Frames

“Freezing” the action involves repeating a single frame on screen, creating a still image (similar to a photograph). In Goodfellas, Scorsese uses freeze frames to halt the action at key moments in Henry’s life. For example, 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 see it too when Henry sets fire to the car. The freeze frames are used to give the audience insight into the pivotal moments Henry remembers from his life, helping us connect more deeply with the character.

Flash Bulb Cuts

The term is somewhat self‑explanatory. This technique uses camera flash effects as an editing device. Schoonmaker uses flash cuts in many Scorsese films in different ways to capture different emotions. In The Aviator, flash bulbs are used to create a disorienting effect. When Hughes walks the red carpet with Harlow, paparazzi camera flashes burst across his face, and the sequence of flash cuts clearly shows how uncomfortable he is with all the attention. The flash‑bulb editing builds a sense of disorientation, letting the audience feel what the character feels.

Slow Motion

Slow motion is an effect in editing that makes time appear to move more slowly. In Raging Bull, you can see this technique when Sugar Ray Robinson’s character beats Jake to a bloody pulp. The slow motion of the heavy blows in this fight sequence serves as a juxtaposition and heightens the sense of chaos. Slow motion intensifies the action, builds tension, and keeps the audience on edge.

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

Sometimes we like a certain roughness in the editing style that Hollywood editors don’t like. Hollywood editors tend to like a very smooth style with all the bumps taken out. But sometimes Marty and I like to keep those bumps, because they add a kind of toughness, a kind of reality, to the film.
— Thelma Schoonmaker