Magnolia Pictures’ Plainclothes is set in Syracuse, NY, in 1997, where an undercover police officer is dealing with both the loss of his father and a recent breakup. Lucas, played by Tom Blyth, is then assigned to lure and arrest gay men in the mall bathroom, but is surprised to discover a connection with one of his targets, Andrew, played by Russell Tovey. Directed by Carmen Emmi, the film also stars Maria Dizzia and Christian Cooke.
Ethan Palmer served as director of photography, and LA-based editor Erik Vogt-Nilsen cut the feature, which premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
“Before I worked on Plainclothes, I had met our writer/director, Carmen Emmi, a couple of times – but it was our mutual friend and editing mentor of mine, Arielle Zakowski, who recommended me for the project and put us back in touch,” Vogt-Nilsen recalls. “When I first read the script, I was incredibly moved by Lucas’ journey of self-discovery and the way it captured all the conflicting and overwhelming emotions that hit me when I was beginning to embrace my own queer identity — this frenetic explosion of anxiety, joy, freedom and shame. I saw so much of my own experience reflected in the beautiful and heartbreaking story that Carmen had crafted, and I knew I wanted to be the one to help bring it to life. After interviewing for the position, I was brought on as the editor.”
The editing process was highly collaborative, with Vogt-Nilsen working closely together with Emmi for most of the offline edit.
“I initially cut the film alone in Los Angeles, assembling an editor’s cut in about five weeks before relocating to Syracuse, where the film is set, to work side-by-side with Carmen,” Vogt-Nilsen recalls. “Our shared passion for the story built a strong foundation of trust between us, fostering a really creative and supportive environment in our editing room, where we could freely explore ideas and find a lot of joy and levity in the process, even amidst the film's serious subject matter. Given our tight timeline, we relied heavily on Adobe Premiere Pro and its productions feature to put our film together. Productions was incredibly helpful for keeping the project organized and running smoothly, and it allowed us to work on different sequences at the same time — a key factor in exploring all our creative ideas to maximize the film’s potential.”
One of the film’s biggest challenges from an editorial perspective was balancing the tight timeline, while also making thoughtful, creative decisions.
“Plainclothes was my fourth feature, but my first time building a full editor's cut from scratch without an assistant editor,” shares Vogt-Nilsen. “To manage the workload, I took a structured approach, committing to complete a pass of each scene at least three times — one for assembly, one experimentation with performance and pacing, and one for a final polish with music and SFX — before presenting the cut to Carmen. I think something that really helped me here was to adopt a ‘trust and move on’ mindset. Given the time constraints, I couldn’t afford to get bogged down by the minutiae of any one scene. I had to rely on my intuition to guide me and just focus on getting a solid foundation in place, knowing that Carmen and I would continue to build on the film together.”
Vogt-Nilsen points to a pivotal scene in the mall bathroom as a particularly tricky but rewarding one to edit.
“Because the scene had little dialogue, it was driven by its visual language, and the numerous editing possibilities made it particularly challenging to put together,” he explains. “The scene was essentially shot two different ways and with two different camera formats, so we had four unique variations of the action to work with. Using elements from all that material was a complex but rewarding puzzle, and I'm really proud of where we landed with it. I think it serves our story perfectly.”