Editor Craig Scorgie on the Role of Gender in Canadian Screen Award-Winning ‘In Flames’
Film/TV editor Craig Scorgie may not speak a word of Urdu, but that did not stop him from injecting Zarrar Khan’s In Flames with the same urgency and suspense Scorgie has brought to the rest of his impressive filmography.
The Toronto-based editor and visual effects artist has worked on such acclaimed projects as Sarah Polley’s Women Talking or the hit HBO series Big Little Lies. In many ways, In Flames — a Canadian-Pakistani co-production — is a natural extension of Scorgie’s career thus far, carefully tackling issues of gender and violence.
“I do have a personal investment in gender politics, as someone who navigated a lot of toxic masculinity as a young man,” says Scorgie. “And now as a father raising a young boy, I am curious about the ways that men can unlearn the misogyny that our world teaches us.”
This powerful perspective is evident in Scorgie’s rhythmic work on In Flames, which recently won the John Dunning Award for Best First Feature Film at the 2024 Canadian Screen Awards. I sat down with Scorgie to learn more about his experiences transcending certain linguistic and cultural boundaries on the film.
Hi Craig! Your latest project In Flames offers an interesting blend of supernatural and human elements. How did you and director Zarrar Kahn navigate the film’s different tonal shifts?
This balance was of such importance during the editing of In Flames. Working together on this film, Zarrar Khan and I experimented a lot with tone. It was important to both of us that we find the right balance between supernatural horror, humanist drama, and gritty psychological thriller. These three elements needed to work in harmony in order for our story to have the maximum impact. When there was too much supernatural horror, this stole focus from the organic drama and tension that the characters were feeling. And when the horror was too light, this took away from the wild roller coaster this film really is. We used test audiences to get us a pulse on how moments in the film were landing with people. Reactions from these screenings would inform what moments we needed to work on, and we’d experiment with different approaches from there.
In Flames is a Pakistani-Canadian co-production. How did you approach the editing process, keeping in mind the film’s unique perspective on Pakistani society and culture?
This film’s unique perspective on Pakistani society and culture was one of the pieces that drew me to it. I believe that specificity makes for some of the most powerful stories.
As an editor, I often find it important to remind myself that I am not an expert on the stories I’m working on. Although I have my instincts and preferences, I am always humble to the needs of the story and what the process of editing reveals. I believe this is even more crucial when working on stories that incorporate lived experiences that are beyond my own. As a person of European origin, there were certainly aspects of this story that I didn’t initially comprehend when I began working on the film. It was important for me to approach this with curiosity — asking questions to deepen my understanding of the world this film took place in so that I could succeed in portraying it authentically. Throughout the edit of In Flames, Zarrar and I had many conversations about Pakistani social norms and how they play into the motivations of our characters. I learned a lot from these conversations, and they helped me a lot in bringing this world to life.
There is certainly a lot of universality to this film, but there are also some aspects that only a Pakistani audience will pick up on. And I think that is so awesome! Especially now in the days of Letterboxd and Reddit, there are resources for non-Pakistani audiences to learn about those Easter eggs if they want to. It makes the final product so much richer, I think.
Did you have any familiarity with the Urdu language while cutting the film? How did you navigate the linguistic challenge of editing a film that is not in your native language?
So fun fact, I actually had no familiarity with the Urdu language before editing In Flames! In preparing for this film, I consulted with mentors of mine who had edited films in languages they didn’t speak. I discovered that there are many workflows for this type of editing, but the one we eventually landed on came from Bryan Atkinson who edited the incredible Tagalog language film Islands. When preparing footage for Islands, Bryan had someone create English subtitles for one take in each scene that covered all of the dialogue. This provided a phonetic reference for each line in the script. Once he had this reference, he was able to listen for the same sounds in other takes, and find the footage he needed that way.
Our director Zarrar Kahn is thankfully fluent in Urdu and also an editor. So for In Flames, Zarrar edited the first draft of the film and added English subtitles. He passed his edit over to me, so that I had this reference in case I needed to search for alternate takes of any dialogue. I found this workflow to be surprisingly easy, once I got into the rhythm of it.
An interesting realization I had during this project was how much language can be a blind spot for editing. Once you can’t understand dialogue, it’s amazing how much of the non-verbal aspects of the footage come to the forefront — actor performance, visual storytelling, rhythm, etc. I could easily tell if something was working when I could understand the emotion without understanding the dialogue. So in many ways, I ultimately considered the language barrier to be an advantage for me.
In Flames has received immense acclaim, premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and winning Best Picture at the Red Sea International Film Festival. It was even Pakistan’s official selection for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. What has it been like for you and your collaborators to see the film achieve so much success?
Most films are edited over several months, even several years in some cases. You spend all of this time in a room with the director dreaming of the story — what kind of shape it will take, and what kind of life it will live once it is out there in the world.
To have this film premiere at one of the biggest festivals in the world is definitely a best case scenario, and incredibly unlikely. I certainly never expected that! And for the film to have such a long and fruitful run after its premiere was even more wild. Our Cannes premiere was on May 19th 2023, and on that same day this year we were making our theatrical debut in the UK. This film continues to live and be celebrated. It’s beyond anything I would have ever imagined.
I feel incredibly happy for the entire team who worked on this. And beyond all of the premieres, prizes, and acclaim, the biggest honor is to read the reviews and stories from people who have been profoundly affected by the film. When making any film, my biggest hope is that it will be seen and felt by an audience. And by that metric, this film has performed incredibly well. The critical success is just the cherry on top.
The male characters in In Flames are obviously the villains of the story, but they are also surprisingly kind and disarming at times. How important were these complicated portrayals in conveying the film’s message?
I’m so glad that you picked up on this, and that it continues to be a point of discussion around the film.
This was in the DNA of In Flames from the very start, and was important for us to execute correctly. I think in stories of oppression, it can be uncomfortable to see antagonists portrayed as human. It is comforting to think of these characters as evil villains, because it means that we or the people in our lives could not possibly be part of the problem. The reality, unfortunately, is more uncomfortable. So it was important for our misogynist characters to be almost likable, in hopes of influencing a more proactive discussion around the conditions that create oppressive behavior and allow it to flourish in the first place. When editing these characters, I personally chose not to view them as villains, but as humans trapped in a system that enables their oppressive behavior and beliefs.
The classic binary of good vs evil in storytelling can be entertaining and satisfying, but it is not as poignant if the goal is to create something that will reflect reality and ask complex questions. Especially in today’s world of polarized beliefs, I believe nuance is what we’re missing in the conversation. I’m glad we were able to achieve that with this film.
With credits ranging from Big Littles Lies to Women Talking, you have consistently dealt with issues of gender throughout your career. How did these experiences inform your work on In Flames, and why do you think this has emerged as a through-line in your career?
My first job as an assistant editor was on a documentary film called David & Me. The film’s goal was to prove the innocence of a man named David McCallum, who was serving a life sentence in prison for a murder he did not commit. A couple of years after the film came out, David’s case was vacated by the district attorney and he was released from prison. Shortly after, David traveled to Toronto to meet the crew that worked on the film.
Meeting David was a formative experience for me as a young filmmaker. It was a powerful example of what the work we do as storytellers is capable of. Since that experience, I’ve focused a lot of my career on stories that I believe are attempting to make a positive impact in the world. This is partially what attracted me to Big Little Lies and Women Talking, and ultimately In Flames.
As for the gender issues aspect, that is an interesting observation! Although I haven’t intentionally pursued this as a theme in my career, it is true that gender plays a significant role in many of the projects that I’ve worked on. I do have a personal investment in gender politics, as someone who navigated a lot of toxic masculinity as a young man. And now as a father raising a young boy, I am curious about the ways that men can unlearn the misogyny that our world teaches us. Coincidentally, my wife happens to be a therapist and social worker who specializes in gender-based violence. My relationship with her has significantly deepened my understanding of gendered oppression, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was an influence on the projects that I’ve taken on.
You have a background in VFX as well as picture editing. How did your VFX experience factor into your work on In Flames?
There are many ways that I think my background in visual effects factored into our work on In Flames.
First, we had a very small visual effects budget on our film, and my experience helped us to be really efficient with those resources. Shots that were small and straightforward I was able to tackle while editing, freeing up resources for the bigger, more expensive VFX shots in the film. We also were incredibly efficient in our review sessions with our VFX team at Wild. Because I speak the language of visual effects, I was able to translate feedback from Zarrar and our producers in a way that would be actionable by our VFX artists. The time saved here allowed us to allocate resources to more shots that were previously only on our “wish list”, enriching the visuals of the film.
The second contribution is how my knowledge of visual effects influenced my editing on the film. A significant amount of editing is problem solving, and visual effects is an incredible tool for finding solutions. For many of the scenes that we were initially struggling with, we were able to find fixes by creating shots in visual effects. Some of my favorite moments in the film don’t play out at all the way they were originally intended, and a lot of that was because of our experiments with visual effects in the edit.
Your experience across both VFX and picture editing is a testament to the many hats that creatives can wear in the film and television industry. Do you have any advice to young creatives who may have multiple professional aspirations?
I personally think that the old saying “jack of all trades, master of none” holds no relevance in the world of creative professions. Professionally I am a film editor and a visual effects editor. But I also consider myself to be a photographer, a cook, an improv comedian, a writer. I don’t get paid for these things. But in my eyes, the only difference between a creative hobby and a creative profession is economics.
So, whether you’re pursuing one creative profession or five, I recommend having creative hobbies that you can fill some of your downtime with. Throw yourself into gardening, pottery, painting, playing an instrument, anything that brings you joy. Do it for your own enjoyment, and aim to only satisfy your personal standards of good work. I guarantee that if you do this, you will notice huge improvements in the other avenue(s) you happen to be pursuing professionally. That’s because creative brain skills are transferable across most art forms. We only have so many hours in a day that we can dedicate energy to our professions, so any additional hours that we can spend developing our creative brains (while also unwinding!) is really beneficial to your development as an artist.
Thank you for reading. Keep up with Craig’s work on Instagram or via his official website.