Song Sung Blue editor Billy Fox says the project started with a phone call from Craig Brewer.
"I love working with Craig," he shares. "I’ve edited almost all of his previous features, and we collaborate really well together."
On the case of Song Sung Blue, the music drives, so when Brewer sent Fox the script, he also included a playlist of all the songs that were written into it.
"After reading the script while listening to the music simultaneously, I knew I wanted to edit this film," Fox recalls. "Our workflow was somewhat dictated by the location. During photography, Craig was shooting in New Jersey and I was creating the editor’s cut in Los Angeles. My first assistant editor, Eyal Dimant, was in New Jersey, logging the dailies and posting them to me. We used LucidLink to make the process seamless. It’s a collaborative remote workflow for all media and project management that worked well for us. It let us track and swap files back and forth as if he was down the hall, not across the country."
After shooting wrapped, the team set up editorial space at Company 3 in Manhattan, allowing Fox and Brewer to work on the director’s cut together.
"I cut the film on Adobe Premiere Pro, which I’ve used for several other movies," notes Fox. "I like the way it handles audio tracks. Because the music was so central for this project, we maintained a 5.1 Surround Sound timeline throughout the entire editorial process. We did the color and final sound mix in New York."