For his work on director Joseph Kosinski’s F1 (Apple Original Films), Stephen Mirrione, ACE earned his fourth career Oscar nomination for Best Achievement in Film Editing. He won in 2001 for Traffic, and was nominated for Babel (shared with Douglas Crise) and The Revenant in 2007 and 2016, respectively.
All his Oscar-recognized work is from directors with whom Mirrione has enjoyed a collaborative relationship spanning multiple films. While Traffic was his first feature for Stephen Soderbergh, the two went on to team on such movies as Ocean’s Eleven, The Informant! and Contagion. Babel and The Revenant are part of Mirrione’s shared filmography with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, which also includes 21 Grams and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). The latter was editing by Mirrione and Crise. And F1 marks Mirrione’s third film with Kosinski. Mirrione earlier edited Spiderhead and prior to that contributed to the editing of Top Gun: Maverick (for which Eddie Hamilton garnered a Best Editing Oscar nomination).
While it’s difficult to encapsulate the nature of a working relationship, Mirrione–when asked to do so–gave a description based on observations from his and Kosinski’s spouses. Early on for F1, Kosinski and Mirrione found themselves working from their homes during the pandemic, deploying different conferencing apps including Evercast. “Joe told me one day that he was in his home office while his wife was working in another room. At some point she told Joe, ‘I hear you arguing all day long.’”
The night before, Mirrione recalled that his wife told him that all she heard was “‘laughing and laughing and laughing.’”
Both spouses have good hearing and accurate assessments, continued Mirrione who said that he and Kosinski “will beat each other up but in a really fun and funny way. We’re having fun all the way through.” Mirrione shared that he and Kosinski are “natural and open with each other. It’s a safe exchange because neither of us has to be concerned about hurting the other’s ego. We’re trusting of each other, always digging and finding the details. I’ll do outrageous things to make him laugh. He will call me out if I do a trick that I use all the time. It’s comfortable, fun and intense. Both of us are always looking to pull more out in terms or detail or some intimate moment, finding the magic that was captured in a performance, the way the light is hitting something.”
Mirrione noted that he and the director are motivated by an overwhelming desire to have people come to theaters–to enjoy the shared experience of seeing a movie in a large screen format with a bunch of other people, mostly strangers. He and Kosinski feel compelled to deliver on their end to create a cinema experience that will have audiences continuing to come to theaters for more.
As if that weren’t challenge enough, F1 upped the ante as to the daunting nature of the task. Mirrione had no relationship to Formula 1 or any automotive racing at all. And per usual, Kosinski came to him with a project marked by major challenges. For one, Kosinski very much wanted to give viewers a true Formula 1 experience. He found racing movies of the past to be too slow in terms of what it was like to be behind the wheel, not fully capturing the adrenaline rush and sheer intensity of the F1 experience. Kosinski–working with cinematographer Claudio Miranda, ASC–wanted to bring an unprecedented authenticity to that aspect of the story. The racing scenes had to be practically shot, and feel as grounded as possible. And thankfully, as in the past on such endeavors as Top Gun: Maverick, Kosinski made every effort to carve out additional time so that he and Miranda could problem solve, weigh options together and prepare accordingly.
For F1, this included tasking Sony with developing a super-compact prototype camera, nicknamed Carmen. Panavision custom manufactured compact pan-heads for Carmen. Thus Miranda’s goal of putting cameras onto cars and capturing full-speed action became a reality. Conventional heavier cameras were not an option, weighing down vehicles and making it impossible for them to reach what would normally be regarded as breakneck speeds. The need for speed sparked new technology and experimentation with different angles–as well as consulting with Mercedes about where mounts could be placed to get the desired effect. Carmen was part of a lineup for F1 which included Sony VENICE 2 digital cinema cameras, DJI Ronin 4D cameras, and Apple iPhone tech shrunken down to nimble packages. This all made it possible to lens largely on location, not having to resort to visual trickery entailing shooting of scenes with a car on a platform.
At the same time, at the heart of F1 was a human story. The film stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a hotshot driver back in the day who flamed out of Formula 1. He had since gotten behind the wheel of assorted vehicles in other driving circuits, continuing to race. Hayes is approached by a friend from the past, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), about returning to Formula 1 racing and helping out his fledging team, APX. Hayes turns him down at first but eventually comes aboard–-meeting, confronting, butting heads and finally coming together with rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) who’s arguably as much of a hotshot as Hayes was originally. We also meet the support team assembled by Bardem’s character, Cervantes–including APX chief Kaspar Molinski (portrayed by Kim Bodnia) and technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon).
Thus F1 meshes the high speed dynamic with quieter human moments that focus on the likes of Pitt, Idris, Condon, Bardem and Bodnia. Mirrione is entrusted with this balancing act–a blend of quiet and high-octane scenes, all done with a mix of tension, beauty and artistry.
Add to all that an overwhelming amount of material to choose from. Mirrione had to manage more than 5,000 hours of footage (a significant measure of which was captured by multiple cameras to create an immersive racing track experience). The volume included 2,500 hours of broadcast material from which essentially B-roll material could be culled.
Mirrione noted that what an editor often wants is “a vast amount of material to have a lot of freedom so as to not get stuck or painted into a corner.” On the flip side, he continued, “the minute you get this unlimited access to all that material, you think, ‘how can I limit my choices?’” as it can take “a lifetime” to watch everything. He added, “Obviously you’re looking for the best stuff but have to make sure it fits into the framework of how we’re trying to tell the story.”
In that vein, Mirrione shared that there were some “super sexy slo-mo shots of the cars” being put through their paces. “At first, your think, ‘oh wow, what can I do with this?’ But it quickly became apparent that this would have kind of broken this sense of realism that we were trying to create. It would make things feel too manufactured, too produced…I should resist the temptation to put something like this in, cool as it may be. Ultimately it will distance the audience from the immersion we have the ability to create.”
Helping immeasurably in attaining the desired realism was input from famed professional race car driver Lewis Hamilton, who was a producer on F1. There was a learning curve for Hamilton who wasn’t accustomed to the editing process but he got up to speed and provided a pair of fresh, expert eyes that helped bring authenticity to the racing experience on film. Mirrione said that Hamilton approached the edit as “an artist,” which was reflected in the way he would speak about what he saw. “He would talk about his feelings–not just technically why this or that has to happen but where it came from internally, his motivation for specific turns. One turn meant this, another turn meant something else. He gave me an insight and allowed me to judge what I was doing more critically. We would rip things apart, put them back together again with that information.”
Mirrione added, “It was beautiful to see him [Hamilton] working with the sound team, which was another aspect we felt it was important to get perfect.” The conventional but flawed wisdom is that racing is about “revving, revving, revving, an endless increase of speed. But that’s not how races work. There are peaks and valleys, there’s a going down in speed.” It was invaluable for the sound team to have access to Hamilton’s passion and expertise–and “the practical aspect of having him call us out if we did something that didn’t ring true.”
F1 is nominated for four Academy Awards–Best Picture as well as in the categories of film editing, sound, and visual effects.
In addition to the Oscar nomination for his editing of F1, Mirrione was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award (the seventh nomination of his career) as well as an ACE Eddie Award. This also marks his seventh Eddie Award nod. He and Crise won the Eddie in 2007 for Babel (tied that year with Thelma Schoonmaker, ACE for The Departed).
As for what’s next, at press time Mirrione was wrapping another collaboration with director Iñárritu–Digger starring Tom Cruise.
Olivier Bugge Coutté
The collaborative bond between director Joachim Trier and editor Olivier Bugge Coutté extends all the way back to film school where they met, began working together on short films and have gone on over the years to team on six features, including Sentimental Value (Neon) which is nominated for nine Oscars–Best Picture and Best International Feature (Norway), as well as spanning such categories as directing, film editing, leading actress (Renate Reinsve), supporting actor (Stellan Skarsgård), supporting actress (for both Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning) and original screenplay (Trier and Eskil Vogt). Trier, Coutté and Vogt have a close-knit working relationship which spans all those feature films over the decades such as The Worst Person in the World, Thelma, Louder Than Bombs, and Oslo, August 31st.
Sentimental Value is in part set in an old family home in Oslo that carries memories that help to define two sisters, now adults, and their strained relationship with a father who prioritized his filmmaking career over being a parent. The sisters are Nora (portrayed by Reinsve) and Agnes (Lilleaas). Nora, the older sister, grew up to be an accomplished actor, following in the cinematic/stage career footsteps of her dad, Gustav (Skarsgård). After years of absence from Nora and Agnes’ lives, Gustav unexpectedly appears at the time-worn family residence to attend the funeral wake of the daughters’ mother but his prime motive for turning up is a movie that he wants to make in order to fuel his career comeback. And he has Nora in mind to play the lead in the film. She immediately refuses the role, which ends up going to a movie starlet (Fanning). As shooting begins, psychological scars revert to open wounds and the presence of the American celeb forces Gustav, Nora and Agnes to look at themselves and their family’s fragile emotional underpinnings more closely.
The family home is a repository of past lives spanning love, loss, alienation, joy, resentment and estrangement–as such, it’s a centerpiece for the characters in Sentimental Value and lends great insight into them. For example, at one point around the middle of the film, we see what the home means to Nora and Agnes. The latter is saddened over the prospect of the house going up for sale, confiding in her sister that she dreamt of one day living there with her husband and child. By sharp contrast, Nora cannot believe that Agnes harbors such a wish–thinking that a fulfilling life would be impossible to attain within the confines of a house that was traumatic for her as a youngster. Nora can never look at the home with the nostalgic warmth that Agnes feels.
Trier earlier shared with SHOOT that the home–and that scene in particular–reflects a key dynamic in the drama of the story as Nora and Agnes “have such different experiences” though they are part of the same family. Trier lauded Reinsve’s nuanced performance–conveying that Nora on the surface level is “contemptuous” of the house but at her core has “a deep longing for a sense of home.”
The nuances of a family drama can be a challenge to truthfully realize in a film but the longstanding collaborative relationship among Trier, Coutté and writer Vogt went a long way towards helping to realize the story as Trier intended. However, Sentimental Value was decidedly different from past films that Coutté had cut for Trier. The editor observed that their prior movies had generally centered on one strong protagonist. By contrast, Sentimental Value revolved around four major protagonists. Coutté said that the biggest challenge for him was balancing these four characters–being engaged with them emotionally and psychologically, how they related to one another, while moving the film forward, giving the story a momentum. The first version Coutté edited was some three-and-a-half hours long. The final film ultimately was pared down to two hours. This was attained in part by looking at scenes intuitively. For example, there was a section of the film lasting some 26 minutes focused on Gustav attending a film festival in France. Coutté realized that sequence had to be cut by at least 10 minutes, explaining that it would have been “impossible to stay away from Nora for 26 minutes and still be engaged in her drama when she came back” into the story.
Coutté also had to reduce screentime spent with Fanning’s character, which he found difficult to do but deemed it necessary. Originally there was much more of a backstory shared as to why the starlet portrayed by Fanning wanted to work with a director she hadn’t teamed with before (Gustav). That backstory had to be sacrificed to make the overall length of the film more manageable–and to improve its pacing.
“This is the first time we have done a multi-character film this complicated with this much psychology,” related Coutté. “The experience is still settling in for me. I can’t say exactly what I’ve learned from it.” The editor feels it was akin to being in a military boot camp–except this was “a psychological boot camp” from which he “can’t yet fully see how many muscles I have.” But perhaps by the next film he will feel how that experience has developed, informed and layered him artistically.
What has helped Coutté over time was a change he made years ago. Initially he would read scripts for Trier’s films very early on, following each draft over a year-and-a-half, being consciously aware of how characters evolved, were heightened or diminished through the course of revisions and rewrites. But by the time, he hit the editing room, Coutté would find himself confused with all the iterations of the story dancing about in his head. Backstories had changed, had come to the frontburner or were eliminated entirely. So he changed his approach many moons ago, deciding to not read the script until a month or so prior to the shoot. This gave him a narrative clarity which he’s embraced and ran with. Coutté feels this has served him in good stead, and made him better equipped to do justice to the work of Trier and Vogt.
In addition to the Oscar nomination, Coutté’s work on Sentimental Value has earned him an ACE Eddie Award nomination. Outside of his collaborative world with Trier, Coutté last year garnered a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Editing (shared with Olivia Neergaard-Holm) for director Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice.
Among other accolades for Sentimental Value are the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, as well as a BAFTA Film Award earlier this week for Best Film Not in the English Language.
This is the 16th and final installment of SHOOT’s The Road To Oscar Series of feature stories this awards season. Shining a light on such disciplines as directing, cinematography, producing, editing, music, production design, costume design, casting, visual effects and animation, this series will be followed up by additional coverage, including of the 98th Oscars which will be held on Sunday, March 15, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Hollywood, Calif., televised live on ABC and streamed on Hulu.
