How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a new Netflix show from Lisa McGee, the creator of the beloved comedy series
Derry Girls. And while the show is a little more mature, it is equally hilarious, following three lifelong friends who reunite after the death of an old classmate. The wake, however, turns into a dark mystery and they embark on a thrilling adventure across Ireland, piecing together enigmatic truths amid complicated lives.
Nigel Williams previously worked on Derry Girls and came back to edit the middle block of
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, which spans eight 60-minute episodes. The show began streaming on February 12th.
Here, Williams shares how he approached block-2 scripts that shift to more day exteriors and an action-packed, road-trip comedy, as well as the tools that helped him in the edit room and his favorite sequences to cut.
Photo: Editor Nigel Williams
Nigel, how did you get involved in the project, and how did you first approach editing the show?
“I got asked to work on the first series of Derry Girls in 2017, but I was working in LA, editing
Episodes with Matt Le Blanc. After lockdown, they came back to me to see if I was available for Series 3. This is where I met Lisa and the team. I must have done an OK job, because the production company told me Lisa was writing a very ambitious mystery thriller and asked if I would be interested in editing a block. Of course, it was a no-brainer.
“Michael Lennox, director of Derry Girls, shot block 1 of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast and was also executive producer. My director for block 2 was the very talented George Kane. I hadn’t worked with him before. He’s directed so much UK comedy, but our paths had never crossed.
“My first rule is to put my director at ease, so sending him early assemblies at the end of the week was crucial to building trust and showing him that I had my head across the material. I was assembling from home, which is a blessing and a curse. I pride myself on my early cuts, adding music, sound effects and temp music to create the tone I think the script is aiming for. If I’m working from home, I find it very hard to switch off, and am often found at my edit desk at 6:30am, rather than lying in bed wondering if a certain piece of music might work!
“This approach carries through to the first time my director is in the edit suite on the first day of the fine cut. They can sit down and watch the show, which is as polished as I can get it in the time allowed. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a complex narrative that demanded a lot of brain power to make sure the story was told clearly and with pace, but still maintaining Lisa’s hilarious dialogue and jokes to make this an absorbing and funny ride for the viewer.”
Tell us about your editing setup and workflow.
“Avid Media Composer is pretty much the dominant broadcast editing system in the UK. I would get the rushes synched overnight straight from the set. I then spend time watching everything and labeling/color coding and bullet pointing in and out words of every take. I’m slightly OCD about how I label and can sometimes not do my first edit until lunchtime, but having put all the hard work in upfront, I find my assemblies come together very quickly, and in a few months’ time, when my director/producers are sitting in the suite, it’s very easy to locate takes and dialogue. As mentioned, I assembled from home, and used Louper to connect with my director, who was often filming in parts of Ireland. I’m a big fan of Louper and have previously cut a whole series remotely from home.”
Did you use any plug-ins?
“There were no additional plug-ins used for this show, although I’m just getting my head around Flawless Deep Editor, which integrates perfectly with Avid. This is a great tool for adding ADR to actors when the line wasn’t performed on-camera. It scares a lot of producers, but is a great tool for key moments that avoid ADR on the back of actors' heads. It’s ethical - needing permission from performers - and I think we’ll see it used more and more. I hadn’t learnt how to use it in time for How to Get to Heaven from Belfast."
The show includes an Irish late-night show and St. Patrick's Day parade. How did you approach blending the real-life talk show and event with fictional storylines?
“Episode 5 was such a fun episode to edit. It’s a chase from Portugal to Dublin, with Lisa’s usual twists added into the mix. We had one big, wide shot of the St. Patrick's Day parade that one of the crew had shot before the script was even approved. This was the reference for the set design that used the same street with our crew, but obviously not as the parade was happening on the day. We then planned to go back a year later to get extra footage from the actual parade, but found the scene worked so well that the big, wide from the real parade footage was enough to see the vastness of the event. There’s also a little easter egg for Derry Girls fans where the wardrobe had dressed an SA in the same uniform as the Derry Girls school girls. Blink and you’ll miss it, but it’s there. They then enter a pub where an Irish band - The Mary Wallopers - are performing as only an Irish band in an Irish pub can. I’m a big fan of the band, so this rounded off the scene perfectly.
“The Late Late Show scene, when Saoirse trips out on painkillers, was also a joy to be a part of. Irish broadcaster RTE were fully on-board and the team recreated the chat show, hosted by Patrick Kielty, using their studio output, so I had access to all the ISOs. They couldn’t have been more helpful and were thrilled with the finished scene. They supplied the finished mixer output of the show the way they would normally shoot it, whilst George Kane was up in the gallery overseeing what was about to be supplied to me. He then took our How to Get to Heaven from Belfast cameras and crew down to the studio floor to get what was required for our storytelling. Cutting from the ‘real’ Late Late Show footage to our close-ups of our actors allowed the audience to connect with Saoirse in a dramatic way that wouldn’t have been possible with their regular studio set-up.
“The slow creep into Saoirse’s face with the accentuated lighting really shows the viewer that something strange is happening. It’s an angle used sparingly, but very effectively. Our cameras also had to shoot out from behind the sofa towards the audience, which meant the camera crews/floor managers, etc., had to bring their best acting to the scene as they were all in-shot, which they did impeccably. The final pieces of the jigsaw to this scene was getting some of our characters we’ve met in previous episodes, watching the Late Late Show on their sofa’s at home, to re-iterate what an institution this show is and its importance in the viewing habits of the Irish population.”
What other sequences would you point to as highlights or challenges?
“The most challenging scene was the big reveal concerning Jason’s father (Episode 6), and the terrible secret these girls have kept for so long. It starts as a revealing, slow confrontation that explodes into a violent crescendo. I’d love to take credit for the sound design, but George came up with the idea that as the violence escalates, we introduce the analogue tape sounds, connecting the viewer with the back story. We hear the tape winding down and speeding up as the violence develops. We also used extreme close-ups of eyes that were pickups, to add more drama and pace to the scene.
“We start Episode 6 with young Greta riding her bike through the streets of Belfast to the soundtrack of Girls Aloud – ‘Sound of the Underground.’ I re-cut this scene so many times, as we changed the voiceover or lost/trimmed shots. The build in the track is quite tricky to edit. I got it exactly how I wanted it so many times, then would have to de-construct and start again. I heard that piece of music hundreds of times. I used to like it!
“With explosions, car chases, big drama and jokes, what more could an editor ask for?!”