Uncovering undersea mysteries in My Octopus Teacher
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Meagan Keane April 22, 2021
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Netflix's My Octopus Teacher, a nature documentary chronicling the incredible friendship between a filmmaker and an octopus, charmed audiences across the globe. The insightful and fascinating film brought people together last year during an unprecedented and uncertain time. The film has won multiple awards this season, including the ACE Eddie Award for Best Edited Documentary (Feature) and the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. It is also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Co-director and co-editor Pippa Ehrlich takes us behind the scenes of the stunning documentary and shares her journey to making the film:
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How and where did you first learn to edit?I've been making films since my time at Rhodes University in South Africa. I specialized in documentary filmmaking. At the time, Premiere Pro was not the most popular tool in the business and many professionals were still using Final Cut or Avid, but for some reason our school chose Premiere Pro and I am so glad they did. A lot of the early edits we did were just short news pieces, but for our final project we had to deliver a 24-minute documentary - even back then it was clear that being able to integrate various creative tools across one platform was invaluable.
How do you begin a project/set up your workspace?I have been using Premiere Pro for so long that I generally just stick to the standard editing workspace set up and make sure that the Program monitor is full screen. On this project, we had a lot of hard drives to juggle which got frustrating and so at a certain point we had to package the project and relink files later. Most of the edit happened from Craig's [Foster, subject and producer] attic, so we didn't have a lot of room to work with. In my edit suite at home, I try to have almost nothing on my desk, because it gets distracting, but I do rely on post-its a lot!
Tell us about a favorite scene or moment from this project and why it stands out to you.It's hard to pin-point a specific scene. In the early part of the film I love the sequence that James Reed (my co-director) refers to as the Avatar scene . This is the part of the story where Craig is getting his purpose back and really starting to discover the sea forest again - a feeling he had felt cut off from since childhood.
If I go back to the edit though, I have to say that the scene that really stood out while I was cutting it was the sequence that covers the final phases of The Octopus Teacher's life. We were always aiming to cut 3 minutes per day, but this scene was so powerful I think I charged through about 10 minutes in an afternoon, and when I showed it to Craig and his wife Swati, they were both brought to tears. There is something so poignant about the bitter-sweet moment when Craig observes the octopus playing with the fish and then she climbs on top of him for the last time. This is followed by the heartwarming and heartbreaking story of how she completes her mission to reproduce, but gives up her life in the process. Something about this part of the story (perhaps it's obvious because the themes are so powerful and universal) just worked, and we actually used it as a kind of bench-mark when assessing the tone and feeling of other sequences that we had cut.
What were some specific post-production challenges you faced that were unique to your project? How did you go about solving them?Post-production was a huge challenge generally. For a start, we were working with a host of different camera formats, frame rates and resolution sizes. We were warned by online editors that post and QC were going to be a nightmare and that it was going to take weeks to get right and cost a fortune. Also, because of the volume of footage we had to contend with, we were operating across 4 or 5 hard drives. At first we went straight to Baselight and the colourist Kyle Stroebel and I had a couple of very intense and scary days trying to relink things and get timings right. It very quickly became clear that that wasn't going to work.
At that point we were rescued by a machine of an online editor called Dani Nel, [who spent 3-4 days re-syncing the project] and exported to Baselight. It was a stressful week, but amazing what you can do when you combine the right human skills with good creative tools.
data-src=https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/22162444/AdobeOctopus2.jpg alt= class=lazyload wp-image-2408606 data-srcset=https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/22162444/AdobeOctopus2.jpg 800w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/22162444/AdobeOctopus2-300x200.jpg 300w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/22162444/AdobeOctopus2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/22162444/AdobeOctopus2-624x416.jpg 624w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/22162444/AdobeOctopus2-50x33.jpg 50w, https://gcs.creativecow.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/22162444/AdobeOctopus2-100x67.jpg 100w data-sizes=(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px />The film was made with an organization called the Sea Change Project. What Adobe tools do you use for your work and why? Why were
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Uncovering undersea mysteries in My Octopus Teacher 
