What a Great Editor Can Do for a First-Time Director

Toby Yates recently passed away far too young at the age of 61. His mentorship, kindness, and brilliant career as an Editor will never be forgotten.

You’re so vulnerable as a first-time feature director. You wash up on the shores of an edit bay, exhausted and slightly traumatized from production, and then the real work begins.

Over the past 2.5 years, Toby Yates was one of my closest colleagues. He was my editor for my first feature film SCRAP, which we worked on in 2021, and he was my editor for my upcoming second feature SÉANCE, which we spent five months working on in 2023.

As a new feature director, I was aware back in 2021 that I needed an experienced editor, and while we’d gotten along great during the interview process and seemed to be on the same page, I was anxious about how our working relationship would go once it was just he and I alone in a room together.

Toby had edited over two dozen features, as well as major TV series, and I was intimidated by his resume and worried about how he’d handle my bossiness, my intense personality, and my unfortunate tendency to send six pages of notes at 3am.

Once we had an assembly, I wanted to be in the edit with him every single day. Would that frustrate him? Would this turn into a battle of wills? Would he condescend? The man’s father directed BULLITT for goodness’ sake! He had a handwritten note from Alan Parker framed in his bathroom! My anxiety ran high.

To my absolute delight, working with Toby was pure ease. He was the most loyal and honest collaborator, and the kindest man I’ve ever worked with. We became fast friends and by our second week, I eagerly looked forward to driving down La Brea in morning traffic, heading to his home office where we worked. I was thrilled to discover we had the exact same taste. We never disagreed on what was good acting or bad acting. Like me, he had a background in theatre (with a childhood spent in London) and we spoke the same artistic language.

He took me seriously as a director. He took every single one of my notes. Like me, he loved hard work. He was excited by possibility. He’d comb and re-comb through the footage. Never once did he object to me wanting to try something. And he was magnanimous enough that when we’d often eventually revert to the current version, he’d never say, “I told you so.” On the rare occasion when I was right he’d say, “good idea!” It was always ‘best idea wins’ with Toby. No ego.

SCRAP was a smaller-budget film for Toby. I remember how he lifted an eyebrow when he asked who our Post-Production Supervisor was, and I pointed at myself. But he was game and quickly adapted. He did so much of his own AE work. Before I showed up, he’d written out every single scene of SCRAP on a cue card and put it on his bulletin board.

A small example of his incredible work ethic.

To fix a piece of dialogue when I confessed we couldn’t afford proper ADR, he gave me a sound recorder and let me scream, “Fuck!” over and over in his backyard. (God knows what his neighbors thought.) But he never treated SCRAP like it was in any way “less than.” He worked as hard on it as he worked on anything — he was completely dedicated to his craft, and I always felt that he was completely dedicated to me.

He knew how much I cared, how emotionally sensitive I was, and maybe more than anyone I’ve ever met, knew how important each moment of each film is. He’d talk about his father, the time he’d spent on those sets in the 70s and 80s, and I felt connected to another era of filmmaking. He was a true mentor to me.

He was stealthy, too. One moment he had Dad-who-can’t-work-the-remote-control energy but then a minute later he’d come up with a jaw-dropping fix to a scene. I will never forget when he showed me a cut of a scene from SCRAP that was half shot on one day and then the reverse-shot on another day. I was concerned, convinced it would never work. The next day he showed me a new cut he’d done and somehow, magically, the way he’d paced it and the reaction shots he’d included made it seamless. I got to bear witness to his brilliant talent, his clever fixes, and learned invaluable tricks of the trade, many of which also came with a priceless anecdote from when he learned to cut on film.

Me and my unpaid therapist.

I heard Alexander Payne say something funny at Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival this year, that production people were carnies, and that the edit was his favorite part of filmmaking, because “those people are civilized.” I told Toby this and we laughed about it. Toby truly was one of the most civilized men I’ve ever met. He had an old-school nobility, something refined and elegant about him. Yet he could be wickedly funny and was completely without snobbery (despite his Ivy League education) in a way that only the truly civilized are.

By early 2023 when I approached him about possibly working together on SÉANCE, I tried to act nonchalant but I was terrified he would turn it down. I already felt like I would never find another editor who “got me,” and couldn’t bear the thought of working with someone else.

The production of SÉANCE had been incredibly challenging and by March 2023 I had done two features in two years and was running on cortisol and americanos, so spending five months with Toby was truly restorative. Toby listened with a sympathetic ear and had a great way of reframing things. He would stand calmly at his kitchen counter making me a mug of PG Tips while I yammered on about my latest drama.

He always sympathized and then reassured me that these things were normal, and then usually told a hilarious story of some disastrous film he’d worked on in the ’90s where things had been much, much worse. Toby always had high-quality gossip but never told anyone’s secrets or betrayed anyone’s confidence. He was a true gentleman. In 2021 he became my colleague but by 2023 I joked with him that he’d become my unpaid therapist.

Working on our second feature film, SÉANCE, in spring of 2023.

Having Toby’s steadfast belief in me, sage advice, and male perspective was invaluable in overcoming that difficult time. He was a director-whisperer, and he reminded me how kind men can be to women. “You work really well with women,” I said to him once. “I know!” he smiled back, proudly but also self-deprecatingly.

But the funny thing is most of the time, it never even occurred to me that we were different genders or that he was over twenty years my senior. We were Doc Brown and Marty McFly. He was the eccentric genius with the twinkle in his eye and I was thrilled to be along for the ride. There was no better feeling when we’d work on a moment that was stubbornly refusing to come together for hours and suddenly it would begin to click and we’d make eye contact and knew we’d cracked it.

The twinkle in his eye when we were on to something big.

By the second film it was a pleasure to feel how we’d developed a shorthand. Halfway into a scene all I’d have to do is scrunch up my face and go, “ooh, should we—?” and he’d interrupt with, “yes, absolutely,” and his fingers would already be making the exact change I didn’t even need to say out loud. He continued to mentor me. I took footage home and played around with it, and he encouraged me to cut. When I showed him what I’d done, he was always full of praise, although I think it was just another example of his generosity. Toby never stopped rooting for me. I adored him.

Some of my happiest moments of the past three years were simply sitting in the uncomfortable wicker chair next to Toby, laughing together. We would laugh so hard I would put my face in my hands and my body would shake the chair. Toby could be really silly in a way that was so boyish and fun, and reminded me that I need to lighten the hell up sometimes.

The room where it all happened, complete with uncomfortable wicker chair.

I last saw him on September 28th, 2023 at LightIron in Hollywood. We watched the final cut of the film together with the 5.1 mix. He’d come to give me notes, even though I wasn’t able to pay him for his time and it wasn’t remotely near his part of town. As he always did, he showed up for me.

We walked to the parking garage and chatted briefly before I hugged him goodbye. I think I said to him, “I could never have done this without you.” I hope I did. It will always make me happy that he got to see the final cut on a big screen. And then he turned left onto Ivar in his Tesla and that was it.

I can’t wrap my head around the idea that SÉANCE will be the last film he’ll ever cut. I wish he and I had done six more films together, but I’m so grateful that I got two. I was just a blip in Toby’s long and illustrious career, but he will forever be a cornerstone of mine.

His recent passing is an immeasurable loss to our industry.

Toby’s obituary can be found here.

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