On Sunday evening, “Aor“Director Sean Baker made the Academy Award’s history by winning four Oscars the same year for the same filmGather gold statues for best image, best director, best original script and best editing.
How did Baker do what other legendary directors, whose films have won twice as many Oscarcouldn’t? How unique is it that he wears so many hats? And is there anything to be taken from his four wins when Oscars continues to increase the premium on Author-driven filmmaking?
A director who won the best picture and Best original script is not uncommon. If Baker did not win the best original manuscript this year, another director would have: Brady Corbet (“The Brutalist”, Jesse Eisenberg (“a real pain”)The Coralie Fargeat (“Subject”)and Tim Fehlbaum (“September 5”).
A director who won Best picture Has also become common. Of the ten nominated films for best image this year, “Aor“Was one of six where the director was also among the producers who were nominated for the best picture. In the past two years, Best Director Oscar -Winner Christopher Nolan and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert Also took home Oscars as producers by the best picture winner.
Baker’s profit for Best editing of Oscar is rare, but not outstanding. Six times in the last 50 years, a director was nominated for best editing. Two won-but in both cases the director was part of a multi-editor. In 1998, director James Cameron won the best editing, together with Conrad Buff and Richard A. Harris for “Titanic”, and in 2014 director Alfonso Cuarón won the best editing with Mark Sanger for “Gravity.” Cuarón got another editing, this time with Alex Rodríguez for “Children to men in 2006, but did not win.
Large directors who make Oscar-nominated films are often very active in the editing room, but they also have well-established editorial collaborations. That is why the two editors with the most Oscar nominations (nine and eight) and victories (three), Thelma Cleaner And Michael Kahn, is part of long creative partnership with productive directors, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Shoonmaker said that she was half extended to scorsese.
Although this is part of the great editor’s acute humility about her own incredible talents, this speaks to how intertwined editing is with a director’s game plan – and how integrated and gift a director that Scorsese is in the editing room. And so while the contribution from a director like Scorsese (who was a completed editor early in his career) in the editing process is endless and difficult to delineate from Schoonmaker’s individual contributions, as far as taking an editing credit, such as Cameron and Cuarón, is extremely rare.
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Directors like Cameron and Cuarón who take editing credit may also not be the best price strategy. Editors, who choose the nominees, do not love to see directors come into their peers, no matter how well deserved it can be. At the same time, academic voters like to spread the wealth of films. If a filmmaker is already predicted to win the best director, they can look at editing as a way to reward another of their favorite movies.
The other three times one director was nominated for best editing is potentially more educational for Baker’s road. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen, during their editing Salia Roderick Jaynes, were nominated for their editing of “Fargo” and “No country for old men.” Most recently, director Chloé Zhao was the only editor nominated for “Nomadland” in 2021. Interesting enough, “No country for old men” and “Nomadland” made both Coens and Zhao best picture and best director Oscar winnings, with Coens who also won the best adapted script – a category Zhao was nominated.
Like Baker, Coens has edited his films themselves since the beginning of his career fox if it should be noted that when the brothers went solo, Joel took a new co-editor in Lucian Johnston on “The tragedy of Macbeth”, and Ethan handed over the editor’s role over Tricia Cooke at “Drive-Away Dolls.”
Baker, like Coens, comes from a total-films tradition. His cohorts include director/editors like Steven Soderbergh (who also shoots his films), Frederick Wiseman (who holds Boomic while directing the camera), and, on his smaller productions, David Lynch (who also made his own sound design). These filmmakers have practical commitment at all production levels rather than delegate and direct. With Baker, it also means casting – a director credit that is significantly rare than editor in the United States.
This overall filmmaking strategy grows out of student and indie fleet. Finding a director/editor at SXSW or Sundance is much more common than on Oscars. Many directors at school or early in their careers establish important collaborations with cinematographers but edit their own work. Board members are encouraged not to take on another service on the set, such as lighting, as their time and focus must be on directing and working with actors in particular. They can edit independently of other film response and make editorial decisions that are often an important aspect of their education and growth.
The same applies when they do their first Indians; Low budget productions cannot afford to hire a high caliber editor for a long editing. Multi-month grinding of long, lonely hours and deadlines are also incompatible with the deferred wage model that many crew members working with 20-30-day indie shoots accept.
There are plenty of directors who learn their trade and build careers editing their films. Over time, if they are so happy and talented, they attract a high caliber editor; At the same time, their managers, financiers, producers and mentors strongly encourage them to make the leap of handing over editing tasks.
New Oscar nominees Ramell Ross (“Nickel Boys,” 2025 Oscars) and Garrett Bradley (“Time”, 2022 Oscars) talked about their first view of taking on an editor While he was on the Toolkit podcast, but both said to take the leap opened their nominated work in ways they could not have imagined. This road is the most common. Soderbergh, a professionally trained editor, worked with the legendary editors Anne V. Coates and Stephen Mirrione before resuming editing tasks after becoming an Oscar-winning director.
Zhao’s nomination also offers an interesting insight into Baker’s road to Oscar-winning director/editor. Like Baker’s filmography, her first three functions used the first time artists whose characters were based on lived experience, a small and smooth crew and space for improvisation and experiments. With “Nomadland”, Zhao originally planned a first pass of editing before taking on an editor, as she did with her previous film “The Rider.”
Zhao told IndieWire In 2021, she and her producers liked her first rough cut, but worried about what may be lost in getting an editor. Zhao found authenticity in what could be considered difficult to see with non-professional actors who mainly played themselves. A professional editor’s instinct can even out over these moments by leaning on sharper performances from Frances McDormand and David Strathairn.
Zhao’s goal was not uncommon for the world cinema, but in Hollywood, every spotted edge is polished and there is a premium on using the form to facilitate the viewer’s experience. “Nomadland” was not the typical Oscar movie; At that time, Triumph 2021 was dismissed as a by -product from the first year of Covid when studios held back theater release and their most likely Oscar game.
But Indie Best Picture wins over the past nine years packs another and clearly non-Hollywood. The 1.5 million dollar-budgeted “moonlight”, the humble chaos from Daniel’s “Everything everywhere at once” and now “Anora” -Sesa movies no longer seem like Oscar-Outliers. They are a product of the new 6,045 academic voters who are younger, more versatile and more international. In this context, Baker’s triumph – and the fact that he still edits his films – is more meaningful.
That said, Baker’s road, eight features in his career, is as original as his films. Whether you think “Anora” is his best movie (I am still team “The Florida Project”), it is remarkable to see how his cinematic story has developed. It has been a conscious effort to embrace parts of comic story and to make the ride more fun while maintaining the same themes: exploration of characters that live on the margins in society (“Chuckling at the absurdity of things that should be taken seriously,” told Baker to IndieWire) and a strategy for production that encompasses and nonfiction in the same movie.
Only take the first two scenes in “Anora.” An opening leaflet sequence, inspired by the sex plusing films in Tinto Brass, is the most stylized moment in one of Baker’s movies-the slow camera that is timed to music, the color, the movement that all embodies the duality of celebrating Stripper’s lifestyle, but also how they are objects from the customer’s perspective. When the film starts, we are on the floor of the Strip Club and watching Ani (Oscar winner Mikey Madison) at her life and in a completely different movie. Baker created a scenario, with Madison Mic’d up and on a long lens, where she could improve trying to attract customers to a private dance in the back. It’s a side of one Ross Brothers movie, shot and edited as a work of non -fiction.
“Conclave” director Edward Berger caught the duality in the direction of bakers and editing as well as anyone, when He told IndieWire what impressed him about “Anora”: “The journey for a woman who performs what is expected of her to find a core of truth in raw emotions is such a wild journey of pure energy and fun. I love Sean BakerLoving looks, every part of his frame feels real and currently while the camera remains so nonchalant observant. Everything feels thrown while never randomly. In the chaos there is restraint, and it is a sign of pure cinematic mastery. “
The fact that the two scenes fit comfortably with each other in Baker’s films, as well as verbal comedy that falls into the gloomy and emotional intestinal bar in an end, is something Baker does work in his head as he writes and directs a movie before delivering it in his editing room. This applies to most major directors, except that most people lack expertise to be an editor at the top level who can deliver the best version of it.
Baker’s editing Oscar is not only a product of being the one who best understands his vision, he is also a really Good editor – rare for everyone, including a director.
