Editor Carolina Siraqyan cut the The Mole Agent, which is a nominee in the Documentary (Feature) category at this year’s Academy Awards. Siraqyan worked closely with director Maite Alberdi to shape the film, which is a heartwarming story about an 83-year-old man who poses as a resident in a Chilean nursing home to see if he can find signs of abuse.
The documentary was shot using a Sony FS7, recording in 4K in the MXF AVC high 422 format.
“I had more than 300 hours of material,” she recalls, “so the classification process was quite long. Something very good was that as we did not have a deadline time to end the movie. We could, and we did, take a full year in the [editing]. We didn´t work every day, we had some breaks in-between, which gave our minds enough distance to return with fresh eyes.”
Siraqyan (pictured) says her experience editing The Mole Agent was something that she really enjoyed.
“Maite and I can work together beautifully. We understand each other very smoothly. Besides, the material was awesome. There were so many incredible situations that happened inside the retirement home, so I did cuts of all of them, and with magnets of each one [on[ a whiteboard, we built the structure of the film.”
Siraqyan performed the complete edit using Adobe Premiere Pro, an application she has been using for many years, but never for a project of this scale and with so much material.
“Premiere allowed me to work fluidly, which for me is such a fundamental need.”