When acclaimed documentary editor Charles Olivier first stepped into the modifying bay for HBO’s Surviving Ohio State, he was met with a mountain of footage and the monumental activity of giving voice to a narrative of profound trauma.
What he uncovered have been the makings of a robust and shockingly resonant narrative that demanded to be advised.
In collaboration with Grant Heslov and George Clooney’s Smokehouse Productions, Olivier meticulously crafted a deeply shifting and unflinching testimony to the a whole lot of males who survived sexual abuse by the hands of Dr. Richard Strauss, a group physician in Ohio State College’s athletics program.
It was an honor to get to talk to him immediately about that doc and about among the different landmark sequence, like The Jinx, which he is labored on.
Let’s dive into the interview.
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NFS: Hey Charlie! Surviving Ohio State has maintained a robust presence because the #1 sequence on HBO Max since its launch. How does it really feel to work on such a well-liked title?
Charles Olivier: Hey Jason, thanks so much. Yeah, I suppose in a phrase, Surviving Ohio State’s reputation is, I’d say, bittersweet. It’s sophisticated. I’m so completely satisfied that the story of all these males is lastly getting the viewers it deserves, and that feels actually good, if not additionally a bit painful, in that their a long time of tragedy have for thus lengthy been missed, or worse. The movie isn’t a smoking gun of hidden proof, one thing that, , we all of the sudden discovered and revealed. It’s not a gotcha piece. We organized a strategy of bearing witness to tales that have been on the market, tales of abuse that so many for thus lengthy both ignored or simply straight up lampooned. Entering into the explanations for that mocking and total avoidance is an enormous a part of the movie, and I feel it very a lot strikes a necessary dialog ahead. So for me, there’s a swirl of sorrow for these survivors and for thus many younger males who’ve been abused or frankly are being abused and preserve that secret due to a Man Code tradition. Taking part with the boys on this movie to undertake that strategy of, I pray, dismantling that code is one thing for which I’m very proud.
NFS: How acquainted have been you with the documentary’s story previous to becoming a member of the undertaking? What sort of analysis went into your work each earlier than and throughout the edit?
CO: I didn’t know something concerning the story after I was first approached. I used to be, like so many, simply form of incredulous when introduced with the numbers. I imply, 1000’s of children had been abused by this one physician over a long time. And from the start, there have been rumors, and people rumors turned substantiated, and but the abuse continued for many years extra. It was past perception for me…. As I then started on the edit, I did deep dives into analysis. With the initiatives I lower, any undertaking, I at all times get very concerned with the analysis. With this one, I did so much. So, to reply the type of analysis I do, I principally do most of what you’ll do when stepping into one thing. I’ll search for movies or different docs, in fact, I’ll look into interviews, and so forth., however I’d say the vast majority of what I do is learn: books, articles, all method of paperwork. I actually immerse myself within the analysis. Often, that is in off-hours. However, to me, basically, it’s the explanation I acquired into documentary. Making documentaries, modifying documentaries, is a portal into fascinating, if generally heartbreaking, worlds I didn’t know. Making documentaries reveals the world to me in ways in which change me, and I actually search that out. This OSU doc gut-punched me personally, and so I used to be particularly pushed to find out about it, however really, with any undertaking I work on, I’ll get very concerned with analysis.
However as I write all of that, there are a bunch of caveats that ought to be splatter-painted throughout the phrases; the largest of them for me is that I’ve a job to do, and that my job in movie and TV is about creating and sustaining emotional connection. The medium of movie / TV isn’t the medium I’d say that’s most attuned to conveying uncooked information. Movie and TV are at their strongest once they’re in what I might say is resonance. “Resonance” as a phrase signifies reverberating; it’s about how we vibrate in several states. And movie elicits these vibrations. Man, I promise we’re not heading into “woowoo-dreamcatcher-teal is probably the most harmonious hue yada yada.” That is about how we as viewers reply to those tales, how we emotionally have interaction (or don’t) with details and figures, the informational base stuff of docs. One other facet of that phrase “resonance” is {an electrical} state. As an editor, you’re how one can, à la Dr. Frankenstein, produce the most important potential emotional response to inanimate numbers and figures. You’re looking for to create life and coronary heart and soul from a mass of data that has been found from analysis.
So, what’s actually essential to me by way of any analysis I do is that as I’m going alongside, I’m preserving monitor of my emotional and psychological states. So I’m at all times jotting notes about my private expertise as I do analysis. I’ll do my utmost to maintain all of that in thoughts as I’m later structuring the movie total and/or after I’m structuring explicit sequences and scenes. The way you inform a narrative, the way you construct it, determines what an total story’s viewer expertise shall be. The way it vibrates with them, the way it lingers. Most of a viewer’s life isn’t going to be them watching your film. It’s going to be how they keep in mind it. So, you wish to ensure you’re constructing one thing that may be a stay reminiscence. Construction is vital. So, sure, it’s concerning the data, and an editor does herself a favor by understanding her topic, however greater than something, it’s what he or she does with that analysis. How they ship it. And I consider he or she must be tapped into their emotions to do this correctly.
An editor, to me, has many hats to put on. One of many greater, extra ceremonial ones is that of the viewers consultant. An editor is tasked with being a primary viewer. That’s an enormous accountability. It’s why you’re within the chair (or at your cool standing desk if you happen to’re accountable about your posture… I’m not.) You’ve got to have the ability to watch your movie as a viewer would, a viewer who has no historical past along with your subject material. That is very easy to lose a grip on. For me, I preserve these jotted notes from earlier than out and about, or I’ve little strains or explicit photographs that recommend my way of thinking when confronting this or that part. And because the analysis goes on, preserving that contemporary thoughts can get increasingly difficult. Fortunately, I’ve a eager capacity to neglect nearly all the pieces: keys, assembly instances, instructions to principally in all places, library books, why I’m at Dwelling Depot, you title it. However, engaged on a movie for generally years at a time, can take a look at even probably the most absent-minded of us. So, I preserve these reminders connected to index playing cards, identical to I do little tidbits of content material or interviews, for me to maneuver round as I’m structuring, and re-structuring, and re-structuring once more, advert infinitum. Man, that’s a variety of reply to your query. At this price, we’re going to be right here for years. I’m sorry. I can do higher. You requested, “How do I analysis?” I learn. Whereas sporting teal.
NFS: How does your method to the edit change when coping with a uniquely delicate undertaking like Surviving Ohio State?
CO: Certain. Yeah, that’s an amazing query. I feel there are a number of concerns in impact right here. There are the assorted concerns of the various survivors, ensuring that their tales are advised as finest as we are able to, and what which means, and there are the concerns towards all the assorted events concerned from the college and from Congress that we maintain to account. Past ethically desirous to be simply, we’re additionally probably going through litigation threats from the various completely different athletic and administrative personnel from the Ohio State College whom we name out, and from the College itself. From about midway into the edit, ramping up and up and as much as the tip, attorneys from the manufacturing firms, 101 and Smokehouse, and attorneys from HBO would comb the edit for factual accuracy and our capacity to triply supply our assertions. I imply, it was a variety of notes in purple and a variety of Zoom calls. That’s the primary time I’ve ever been so scrutinized by so many attorneys for thus lengthy. All of them have been very nice, and all of them have been completely professional. So, they’d actually properly say “nope” to one thing you labored onerous on as a result of it intimated an excessive amount of in a single route or one other. What’s on the display screen is so totally vetted, there’s zero fats. And since that is all actively within the courts, we have to verify and cross-check ourselves that we’re not messing something up there as effectively.
And whereas all of that is happening, director Eva Orner and I stored coming again to our guys. We stored asking ourselves, “Are we telling their story the way in which they want it advised?” I imply, we’d kvetch, me particularly, about having to return and redo one thing, however after that, we’d convey it again to what was actually essential.
‘Surviving Ohio State’ Credit score: HBO
NFS: Did you depend on any explicit strategies or methods in crafting such a fancy narrative for the movie?
CO: Eva had developed such unbelievable relationships with each survivor on this film. And the interviews she performed have been unbelievable throughout the board. They have been highly effective and intense. These are large athletes who grew up as Huge 10 collegiate wrestlers, gladiators, and all that that means, and so they had been systematically betrayed by nearly everybody they trusted. And Eva gained these guys’ belief to inform tales that they hadn’t advised anybody earlier than. So, their interviews have been the highly effective basis on which all the pieces was constructed. As I used to be constructing the film, I needed to let their voices drive the movie.
Like a variety of editors, I come from a musical background, along with narrative. However music is my base, and it’s the simplest lens personally by means of which I view and craft movie or TV. So, by way of strategies, or frames, I’ll typically consider movies extra in musical composition kinds. I play completely different devices and like every kind of music: blues, R&B, pop, and so forth. However for composition, and for what you and I are speaking about by way of structuring a documentary, I’m a classical-head. This has nothing in any respect to do with the precise rating and has to do with the structural method. I’ll think about how the biggies of classical composition, just like the Viennese guys Haydn or Beethoven or the Romantics like Tchaikovsky or Dvořåk or many who’re fashionable – an enormous one I like is Shostakovich – sought to guide listeners by means of explicit emotional journeys over an extended time frame. I understand that most likely sounds pretentious, and don’t assume I’ve any deeper understanding of what’s happening with classical music than anybody, however I simply discover the hyperlink of music to movie is so aligned. Whether or not you want classical music or would simply assume go, I can’t suggest placing in a while finding out symphonies sufficient. Each music and movie are constructions in time. And each of these constructions are constructed out of feelings. Symphonies are the 45-minute to an hour-and-a-half variations (until you’re German) of these constructions.
Anyway, if you happen to hear to those symphonies, if you happen to get intimate with the construct of melodies and themes, you monitor how they’re telling their tales, how they’re unfolding that story’s colours and feelings. And people tales are very completely different and aren’t within the least damaged right into a basic 3-act construction. The factor with documentary is that whereas it might be a function or a sequence, identical to Syd Area-type fictional creations, it is extremely a lot its personal creature. The constructions, by the use of manufacturing actuality or method, dictate as a lot. Docs are assembled from what you will have entry to, who’s keen to speak, what archival, if any, is concerned, revelations captured, what you’ll want to clarify, and so forth., and so forth. And it may be – as in IS – far and wide. And it’s worthwhile to discover a automobile during which to construction that, and construction that with emotional resonance (and teal). Musical kinds I preserve discovering match the invoice one of the best.
Swap out our listener with a viewer and the sport is similar. A primary motion in a symphony is usually energetic. It may be quick, however greater than something, it’s about being arresting. And so I like to consider what I discover arresting on this explicit story, or what finest units up the emotional telling of this journey. Usually, I discover I wish to create presence and immediacy. With Surviving Ohio State, the story was, for me, people versus buildings. You realize it was about these large establishments, and their seemingly regal neoclassical buildings, however these locations are so impersonal and in the end chilly, as confronted by us. And so, I needed peak and air and an absence of, name it, soul, a extra palpable rhythm. We come into the movie with a type of hen’s eye of the architectural purity and sample of OSU. I discovered that actually arresting. It simply appeared like a visit. All of it feels so designed, and much away. A symphony’s second motion is about digging and creating depth. So, right here we’re going into the individuals. We’re anchoring in our two fundamental protagonists, Dan and Mike, however we’re additionally assembly the assorted individuals contained in the buildings. These are the components of your film which might be slower and extra lyrical. Third is lighter and sooner since you want the viewer to reengage. The fourth motion is arresting once more. You’re seeking to stick the touchdown. Now, all of those actions have their very own inside constructions, and we are able to speak about these in musical kinds too, however the important thing takeaway is that as a documentary editor, it’s good to concentrate on alternative ways of sculpting emotion in time. Music, and specifically, symphonies, are a wonderful factor to grasp.
Now, all of that stated, we’re not doing music. And so, it’s worthwhile to know your narrative chops. One of many greatest developments in my lifetime of documentary telling is the brand new documentary motion that got here out of the ‘90s with Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky or Steve James andTerry Zwigoff. Administrators and editors started freely and unapologetically making use of narrative chops to documentaries. So that you had the reliance on engines of setups and payoffs to drive a movie ahead, you will have foreshadowing, you will have a aware resolution on standpoint, proxemics, and so forth.. I exploit all those self same parts after I’m constructing scenes and sequences. I’ll typically consider narrative movies and their units after I’m constructing out a documentary.
For Surviving Ohio State, I keep in mind watching Highlight and desirous to anchor the story in comparable methods, in a single character, which is Dan, after which have him meet our different protagonist, Mike, and have their friendship be a backbone of improvement by means of the story’s telling. After all, on prime of that will come the various different survivors’ tales, however these two and their relationship drove the turns. In Highlight, the journalists and their coming to grips with what they’re studying drives the construction. On this doc, it’s the boys and their very own resistance to accepting that they have been abused due to male indoctrination, after which their not being believed by their very own caretakers, or being vilified for calling into query this college, or somebody like Jim Jordan, or anybody else that seemingly was a ”pillar of society.” There are very particular spots alongside the journey. Lastly, like in Highlight, these guys need to make the choice to show apostate from the varsity. So all of that, for me, outlined the primary two actions of the movie. The again two start with them, now on the skin of their communities, holding everybody to account.
NFS: How did you’re employed to steadiness modern interviews with archival footage within the movie?
CO: There’s at all times an fascinating dance between modern footage, on this case, sit-down interviews, largely, and archival. Archival on this movie, as in different movies I’ve carried out, is both a method of illustrating what’s being mentioned within the modern interview, or the archival itself begins to construct an concept that may then pull in voices from the current to corroborate or reply to it. So within the first case, modern interviews are guiding us by means of their remembrances, and people remembrances are being skilled by the viewers with archival footage, so it’s very 1:1. However then a seed of a theme shall be planted and that theme is advised by archival, till modern voices start coming in to touch upon it.
For this final one, I’m considering of after we get into views of male athletes and the sense that they will’t be victims. That story will get advised largely in archival, however then somebody just like the journalist Jon Wertheim will are available in and take up the reins to information it straight again to our OSU guys. Or when Jim Jordan later is denying, denying, denying, that archival of stories footage actually tells a lot of that story. Since he’s such a identified determine as a distinguished congressman, there’s no scarcity of stories protection of him. Due to that, it might be formed by itself with different journalists of the period to form these sections, with our interviewees then coming in to remark and reply.
NFS: What was your collaboration like with govt producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov?
CO: The best way that I normally have labored with producers, particularly form of well-known producers, is that there are a variety of conferences at the start. It may well all really feel type of Flashdance. You stroll into an echo-y room, announce your self, and do your dance. Right this moment, that panel of faces watching you is extra throughout a sequence of Zooms, however you continue to initially must audition and pitch your tackle the footage you’ve seen or your method to the thought you’ve examine in a means that lands with them. And actually, you’re seeing if you happen to all resonate collectively. Should you’re even the appropriate individual for the movie that they wish to inform. And then you definitely usually try this Flashdance panel once more. And once more, 101 Studios with David Glasser and Eliot Goldberg, together with Smokehouse, George Clooney’s and Grant Heslov’s manufacturing group, and their producer Rebecca Arzoian, have been additionally very concerned all through these preliminary conferences and discussions. And naturally, the director, Eva Orner. All of us talked so much about what we every thought we had, and the place it might go. Then, if they convey you on, it’s like everybody leaves the room. All of it will get quiet because the editor and director work alone for some time. As soon as cuts begin going out, then of us like Grant and George, and the others would ship notes. It was all very clear. I acquired the impression that what at all times resonated most for Grant was story. “Is that this monitoring?” “Is that paying of?” And for George, it was about emotional arcing. “Is that this second peak sufficient?” “May that be delivered by somebody kind of assertively?” That type of factor. Presence and immediacy have been the main focus.
‘Surviving Ohio State’ Credit score: HBO
NFS: You’re maybe most well-known to your work on the enduring HBO documentary The Jinx. How did your inventive method to that undertaking put together you for a movie like Surviving Ohio State?
CO: Yeah, these are very completely different initiatives. I suppose from a inventive method, for starters, you’re two a lot in another way sized canvases. The Jinx is a sequence, so the construction is episodic and can play throughout many extra actions than a single function like SOS. Whenever you’re laying out a sequence, particularly one thing with as many shifting components as The Jinx, sections are shifting across the present so much. Or perhaps shifting larger distances in time is a greater means of claiming it. And also you’ve acquired to needless to say a viewer goes to see the sequence over a timeframe of weeks, so shifting a piece from episode 6 to episode 2 is shifting it a month. So, yeah, there’s that and what which means for context and all the remaining. With a function, you’re speaking minutes. Possibly it may be as a lot as an hour in an enormous change, however , it’s nonetheless all basically one sitting. You’ve acquired far more of a unity of time and tone in a function.
The opposite large distinction is that on The Jinx, there was a group of a number of editors, and we collaborated, gave a variety of suggestions. With Surviving Ohio State that was a solo edit, so, whereas I used to be in fact working with Eva and we have been sharing cuts, these cuts going out have been extra official cuts on which to obtain notes, slightly than “Are you able to check out this part when you will have a sec and inform me if it’s sucky or not?” That’s a unique working atmosphere. One’s not higher than the opposite. There are pluses and minuses to each. It’s fantastic to share and have a group, particularly for the hermit who’s an editor. And on the flip facet, for me, it’s additionally actually rewarding to enter a movie as a solo editor and map out the course and march and scale unaccompanied. I do assume the solo one most likely comes with extra highs and lows emotionally, simply that I’ll (typically) get misplaced and assume I can’t determine one thing out, after which will lastly get it to work (or so I inform myself). And that solitary puzzle facet is absolutely trippy. I prefer it in the long run, but it surely positively requires staring out into the center distance so much, as my brother would say. You are taking some walks to clear your head and reframe much more.
By way of tone, each are darkish to make certain, but additionally have comedic parts. What I’m speaking about is human comedy. An absurdist facet. The Jinx has many extra notes of comedy than SOS indubitably, however nonetheless, there’s comedy in each. I feel one in every of my qualities, or say my voice, is that I typically search to weave within the comedy, the absurdity surrounding a narrative. Durst is a killer, and his associates know he’s a killer, and when confronted with the truth that yeah, they form of suspected their buddy Bobby was killing of us, they’d say he was additionally charming: “You realize, he at all times had a zinger throughout a cocktail party, and he gave me that automobile…” “However, um, that killing factor didn’t weigh on you generally?” “…the killing factor?” “Bobby’s?” “Certain, yeah, that most likely wasn’t nice…what was the query once more?”
With Surviving Ohio State, the comedy for me was this faculty’s straight-up defiance of going through the fact that their physician was systematically abusing and destroying these boys. These faculty officers simply shuffled previous the crime scene time and again and over. Or worse, they’d actively promote this predator, or give him awards, in order to fake that all the pieces was okay. And that went on and on. So, as really mind-bendingly horrific because it was, the “transfer alongside, nothing to see right here” take of those coaches and clowns was a circus of terror. And I seemed to construct round that.
Once more, I’d say music is an efficient lens by which to speak about this concept of tragedy and comedy. There are particular composers who I feel can stroll that razor-thin line between tragedy and comedy, and so they can actually assist form a narrative’s telling. John Kusiak, who truly scored a few of The Jinx, and Cornel Wilczek, who scored Ohio State, can create scores that transfer out and in of all these completely different colours. Once I’m working, I’ll additionally use scratch cues from composers who I feel are nice on this enviornment too: Mychael Danna, to me, is a face chiseled into the Mount Rushmore of tone variations. For tragicomedy, he’s unbelievable. For each The Jinx and Surviving Ohio State, I might use scratch cues from Danna’s The Ice Storm. Take heed to it, you simply get this nearly operatic unfolding towards a fatalistic, horrific finish, however carried out with a grasp’s mild, nearly playful contact. It’s like an ideal rating to me.
BUT, within the large comparability, the 2, whereas ostensibly being crime sort docs, aren’t the identical. With The Jinx, you’re monitoring Robert Durst, who’s actively sitting, unbelievably, for an interview. And also you’re additionally shifting outdoors to the lens of Andrew, Marc, and Zac as they decipher what precisely is happening, and, in fact, what they uncover and report. The ability of that sequence is available in issues stated and proof found. There’s some “lightning in a bottle” that occurs, truly, a number of instances. With Season 2, that’s not as on show, and it’s far more a construct across the village of complicity that surrounded Durst and let him get away along with his crimes, however nonetheless you’re driving the revelations of his associates’ data, and even the complicity of the girl he killed. So, that’s all very speedy. With Surviving Ohio State, there’s not that smoking gun. It’s a weaving of a tapestry. Dr. Richard Strauss, the person who abused these males for all these years, has been lifeless for a while, so there was by no means going to be a relationship with him aside from as remembered. Sure, for positive, when directors are deposed and say heinously callous shit that’s speedy in its influence to your intestine, however you already type of knew they have been dangerous information and wildly heartless stepping into.
‘Surviving Ohio State’Credit score: HBO
NFS: Is there anything you want to share about Surviving Ohio State and its highly effective unveiling of the varsity’s sexual abuse scandal?
CO: I imply, I ought to simply congratulate anybody who has learn this interview this far. Past simply being chatty, I really like speaking about these items. So, mazel tov to you marathoners. By way of Surviving Ohio State, the very last thing to share is my private take, not with the constructing of the film as an editor or any formal facet of its telling, however with the story itself and the braveness of those guys to climate this horrible, terrible journey to convey this tragedy to mild. As a person, I grew up very a lot within the heart of a Man Code. I went to an all-boys faculty in Texas, performed soccer, and so forth., and so forth. All this concurrently these on this movie have been at Ohio State as wrestlers. I’m steeped in that “Be a Man” indoctrination. And I’m steeped in its subsequent hateful disgrace. There have been so many instances as I labored on this movie that I might simply lean again and damage. These guys carried the crimes of this physician, however greater than that, the crimes of betrayal by their coaches and faculty directors, individuals they seemed to as parental figures all of their lives. And it practically broke them… however what I take from this film is that these guys helped one another to search out the braveness, the true sense of power, to step into the highlight and inform their tales.
There’s this Japanese artwork type during which damaged gadgets, plates and cups and such, are put again along with lacquer and gold. The locations the place the items have been damaged, and all the assorted cracks, aren’t hidden; they’re put into reduction with gold. It’s this artwork and philosophical type that doesn’t attempt to cover the injury, however as a substitute finds a stunningly and ferociously stunning new life. We’re all of us, women and men, so typically advised explicitly or implicitly, to cover our damage, to “be powerful.” Athletes are on a type of X1000 degree with that. This film and these males shatter that for me. I’m a Dad to 2 little boys. When the time is correct, I’m going to point out them this film, not due to me in any means, however due to these guys, and what they found power and bravado and love to actually and really imply. I’m so very happy with the survivors on this movie and so grateful to have been allowed to take part of their story.
