Sunny is a buddy comedy between woman and machine, a gangster story, and a murder mystery with paranoia and conspiracy around every corner. It’s also wickedly funny, sometimes painfully tragic. These pieces all come together exceptionally well in the series, which was created by Katie Robbins.
Editor Amelia Allwarden balances the embarrassment of riches on Sunny with complete control. There’s a lot happening above and below the surface, and in episode two, four, and eight, Allwarden completes rich, full episodes of storytelling. She previously edited episodes of Pen15 and Westworld. Recently, the editor spoke with Immersive about cutting Sunny.
[Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length]
I was happy to read that Tokyo Drifter was an influence for you. How so?
Well, just the iconic Japanese cinema really influenced our whole process. I think that not being afraid to let things linger and taking big swings, being a bit more dramatic with things like the whip pan and sound effects.
Obviously, we have a very obvious homage to the film with whistling the theme song, what happens in the film. So, it was all an amalgamation of pulling from inspiration like that.
The Conversation was an influence too, right?
The Conversation is something we talked about all the time, because the score is so incredible. I tried to template it sometimes when I was trying to find the perfect tone.
You have scenes where you show a mundane human moment, then a high stakes situation in Sunny. How’d you want the tones to contrast and flow together?
It is a very delicate balance. We had many iterations of many different scenes because of that, which is really fun because there are many ways to cut a scene. But when you have a series like Sunny that has so many different tones blended, there are even more ways to cut scenes. It’s like, okay, well let me make this version where this is pure horror or maybe make this version where it’s super quirky and super lighthearted.
A scene that is not lighthearted is the bathhouse scene in episode four. Excellent tension. How’d you want to continuously turn up the heat in that sequence?
I loved editing that sequence. It was super fun because it’s mostly in Japanese. I get to play with the really fun performances of the Yakuza. I love being in this world of underground politics within the Yakuza. I’m also in this absurd situation with Suzie (Rashida Jones) and Mixxy (Annie the clumsy) where they’ve run into the sauna.
It’s getting hotter and hotter. They only have a cold can from the convenience store, and they’re using it on the back of their neck to kind of cool down. Every time we cut back to them, they have one less piece of clothing on. It’s fun because it’s playing the comedy of it a little bit, but also trying to balance the stakes.
I really wanted to make Tetsu (Shin Shimizu) a fun villain in that sequence. He’s really fun, but he turns scary when he starts beating Botan in the bath. When he actually starts to beat him and it becomes viscerally violent, which we haven’t really seen in the show to that point, other than the very, very cold open of the pilot, I wanted it to be almost a similar experience to the experience that Suzie is having. Her experience is like, oh shit, no, this is real. There are real stakes. It’s violent. You’re in over your head.
I think that turn was something me and Lucy Tcherniak, the director of the episode, talked about a lot. She storyboarded the sequence and we talked about it before filming. I was wanting to lead into the violence and the dramatic sound design in the moment to really, really shift a turn because when Suzie walks out, they have to walk over this really mangled, bloody body. It’s very gruesome and dark.
In general, when you’re cutting tension, do you have a general philosophy? Are there certain cuts that you just think, well, this can really unnerve an audience?
Definitely depends on what I’m cutting. In that sequence in particular, I was using little speed ramps. There are little tricks to editing what violent action where you remove a frame here or there to make the hit seem a little more brutal. It’s really, really subtle things that make a big difference.
My biggest note that I always give my assistant editors in action sequences, when they’re sound designing it for me, is “more beefy,” and that’s the word I use all the time. My assistant editors will attest to it. They’re like, oh, she wants more beef again. And by that, I just mean I want layers of heft to it.
I think that helps make it really brutal in that sequence, as well. We’re using multiple angles and shots sizes on Botan’s face hitting the door from the inside of the sauna. And the plan was to just pick one and use it, but I wanted to use all of them. I wanted to do some jump cuts in there to make it really disgusting and brutal.
And again, remove the frames, do some speed ramps, make it as visceral and violent as possible. Those were the little tricks I was using in that, but it does depend on what type of sequence I’m editing for other projects, how I might intensify the action and the violence.
Say when Suzie is speaking with her mother-in-law, Noriko (Judy Ongg), at the funeral, and she’s trying to get information, which methods of yours did you use to create dramatic tension?
The main thing I always go to when I’m editing a conversation with two people is that I am paying attention to how their eyes are connecting or not connecting. The biggest thing in editing that I work with is following the person’s eyes. Cutting back and forth between them talking, if their eyes are looking down when you cut back to them when they were looking up before, it definitely creates more disconnection. Conversely, the same can be said about if they’re looking at each other. Also, if Noriko and Suzie are arguing, overlapping their dialogue and creating intentional moments of silence between them as well.
In that scene, Noriko is telling the story. They’re arguing, but then they’re throwing barbs at each other. It’s about the rhythm of being like, bam, bam, bam, and then something goes too far. There’s some silence between them or a disconnection with the eyes. Again, it’s a case by case basis, but that’s my method where I’m working on sequences where I’m trying to create distance between two characters.
Letting eyes influence your choices, how’d that approach work with Sunny and Suzie? Especially for comedic timing.
That’s a great question. Sunny was a filmed practically, her face was filmed practically. Joanna Sotomura, who plays Sunny, she had a head rig on and would be just offset. There was a microphone in Sunny’s head, so Rashida could hear Joanna’s voice. When Joanna was emoting in the helmet live on set, we can see Sunny’s face and those emotions that are being translated, her eyes, her eyebrows, her mouth. And so, that made it really nice for we’re capture those things on camera.
Similarly, I tried to treat Sunny as a human actor in the same way and make her irises move within her eyes based on how Joanna was performing. I would do the same thing, just treat her as a normal actor, a human character in our show, and have her eyes look down in moments where I wanted to disconnect her.
It did create a unique challenge. Sometimes the robot doesn’t do what you want it to do. As with any technology, things aren’t always going to be perfect. If there was something we needed to make perfect, we would manipulate it in post. Maybe move the irises where we wanted to move them. That made it really nice, because Sunny’s facial design is really simple. It makes for kind of simple fixes for moving the eyes around if we need to.
Rashida Jones is great in the show. When editing her performance, what qualities were you responding to and wanting to preserve or empathize?
Suzie as a character is really closed off. I think Rashida was the perfect person to play her because she’s got really great comedic timing, dry, dark humor to deflect people. We were intentional about understanding that she’s a closed off character that wants to keep people away, which is why Sunny needs to be the one to infiltrate and get under her skin and connect with her.
We were really intentional about choosing the moments where Rashida actually feels like she’s letting us in as an audience member. It was choosing those moments in closeup and choosing those moments that feel really real to her grief. It’s about being particular about them. When we are particular about them, they’re more powerful.
A good example of that is when she screams in Zen’s room at the end of episode four. She does a really incredible job with that performance. There was a variety she gave me in terms of being able to work with in editing. I chose what I felt was the most animalistic. I always feel very emotional when I see that performance from her. That was a moment where it’s like, okay, we’re choosing to let this out. And so, there were other moments throughout the show where you could go further or back with it.
But when we were working on the series as a whole, where do we pick the moments to feel like she’s actually breaking down and she’s actually letting us in? That was a conversation that me and the other editors on the series, Tyler Cook and Taichi Erskine. When do we really need to feel internal with her? Then we go from there.
Sunny is now available to stream on AppleTV+.