Daredevil is a popular and influential character in the Marvel Universe. Created in the 1960s, he was a trailblazer regarding his disability as a blind superhero. The character has had a few adaptations, but none as indelible as the Netflix series with Charlie Cox. The new series Daredevil: Born Again is a revival and continuation of that series, created by Dario Scardapane and Matt Corman & Chris Ord streaming on Disney+. Scardapane is the showrunner, and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are the lead directors. The producers brought on four-time Emmy Award-winning editor Stephanie Filo to edit key episodes in the current series: episodes 4 and 5 and the pivotal penultimate episode 8. Filo recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
Let’s talk Daredevil… You cut episodes four, five, and eight. What was it like getting involved?
It’s been exciting. A few years ago, a friend and mentor of mine introduced me to the Marvel Post team. We all stayed in touch over the years, looking for our schedules to line up on a project, and the scheduling worked out on this particular show. I’m so glad it did. I’m a huge fan of the Netflix series, so the prospect of working on this was so exciting.
Daredevil is more of a grounded superhero story based in New York. Talk a bit about those elements.
At the heart of everything, we wanted the city of New York to feel almost like its own character. It was really cool that our directors, Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, suggested we bring in documentary filmmakers (Sean Dunne and Cass Marie Greener) to film The BB Report sections. They also filmed a lot of grittier New York footage. It was interesting to be able to incorporate that and figure out how that could fit into the season.
Did you look at any of the comic books? I know some of them were referenced for some of the episodes.
When I was younger, I had read some of the comics, yes. There were some fun moments from the comics that were also incorporated into this series – for example, in episode eight, Bullseye uses his tooth to kill somebody, which is directly from the comics. So, seeing how they tried to incorporate those elements throughout the series was fun. I think all of us are mega fans of the character and the show.
One of the main differences between this and the Netflix one is the new showrunner for this series. Talk a little bit about working with him.
This new show had a couple of iterations. We started with different showrunners and a different direction to the series, but about halfway through, we changed direction to try to match more closely to the Netflix series. That’s where Dario came in; he’s such a talented writer and storyteller. Because of his involvement in the original Punisher series, he knew where these characters should go and how to tie the storylines together. Working on episode eight, in particular, felt like he had really brought so many of our storylines full circle. It’s one of my favorite episodes I’ve ever cut for TV.
I’ve had this conversation with many creatives. The penultimate episode is usually more impactful than the finale.
It definitely teases up what’s to come and leaves a lot of mystery. Bullseye is one of my favorite characters, too, so it’s just great seeing him again and bringing him back to life after we haven’t seen him for several episodes. I have a dance background, so it was nice to work on the gala sequence from that episode and figure out ways to make it pop.
Music is so important to editing. Talk a little bit about working with the score and cues…
The Newton Brothers are just amazing composers in general, and they were able to bring a unique sense to episode eight. Bullseye, for example, has a building string cue—it’s a really interesting theme song. They were able to create a fun feeling.
We also went back and forth on music in the gala sequence. It started surreal, evolved into jazz, and then we looked at wedding band-type music and eventually landed where we are now, which is a bit of a mixture of everything. My assistant editor, Lyric Ramsey, suggested the cue at the end. She just said, “Hey, have you tried Storm Cloud Rising?” We just laid it in there, and it felt like the perfect ending queue for that sequence. It was definitely a collaborative journey to get there.
Which episode or scene was most challenging?
Episode four was the most challenging. I had so many different versions of it, so many re-cuts of it over the entire course of the series to try to make it fit in with the other episodes. It was a day-in-the-life episode that poses its own challenges unless you get it just right; you follow Matt to court, then follow Fisk on his day-to-day mayoral duties. Ultimately, we wanted to tie the episode to the overall story arc of the series…In order to do this, once we overhauled the direction of the series, we shot additional photography to connect some storylines, such as the Anti-Vigilante Task Force. We moved scenes from other episodes and repurposed them to help guide the new story arc – for example, the Matt and Frank scene in Punisher’s lair used to be a part of episode 6, and it was repurposed to now talk about the shell casing found where White Tiger was shot. We added a little tease of the Muse character, who originally wasn’t in the episode. So, episode 4 was definitely a journey to find just the right balance, and I’m proud of where we landed.
What was your workflow like? Did you get footage from multiple episodes at once?
They block-shot the season, so a director would do two episodes and another director the next two. We were editing as the dailies were coming in, and we edited episodes four and five at the same time. So four is the day in the life, and five is the bank heist… It gets a little confusing because you’re trying to focus on the story of both and make sure both feel polished. It was a tight schedule, but it was also interesting doing back-to-back episodes. And then, for the end of the season, Benson and Morehead shot episodes eight and episode nine; it was me and one other editor, Melissa Lawson Chung; we split those and just talked through the story while working on it.
Any particular favorite scenes?
The gala is my favorite of the season. There’s just so much happening in it and so many crazy storylines coming together. Characters are in the same room that hadn’t been in the same room, and Matt and Fisk are finally facing to face with each other. That’s definitely one of my favorites. I loved the process and the collaboration with everyone who got it there.
How long did it take to piece the intercut sequence at the beginning of episode eight together?
When we started, it was two separate scenes. It used to play as Matt and Heather spat in the kitchen, and then we saw Fisk and Vanessa. To draw the parallels between the two couples, they’re both on tilt at this point in the season. We just tried intercutting it, and it worked well. It kind of just evolved from there. I would say, like a few weeks ago, it went through a few iterations before it ended up where it is, and of course, the music. It was a sequence with so many different things happening that it was a fun process to get it to land where it does now.
This new series has been well received; talk about the experience in hindsight…
You always hope that something will do well. I’m really glad that the fans received it as we hoped. As a fan, I was so excited as we locked and delivered these episodes. It’s just exciting to see that other people like it. There’s a moment (Fisk finger guns) in episode eight that I was like, “If this doesn’t become a meme, I’m gonna be sad,” and it did become a meme. I was like, “I’ve done it!”
Daredevil: Born Again is available to stream on Disney+.
