Maxance Vincent
When approaching the second season of Beef, which contains more characters and storylines than its first season, editor Laura Zempel, ACE, explains to Awards Radar on Zoom that one of the biggest challenges that arose while cutting the series was to be more cognizant of how many characters they would follow in this sea in comparison to the last one:
“In season one, we had two main characters. It was Danny and Amy, and everything revolved around them. If we were in Amy’s world, we would be following Amy. She was our main character. If we were in Danny’s world, we’d follow Danny. He’s our main character. However, in this season, we had four, maybe six main characters. We had each side of the couple. Balancing everyone’s storyline was a huge challenge compared to season one.”
Another challenge was figuring out how each character arc would be cut, given the number of people the audience follows throughout the season. For editor Lauren Connelly, ACE, a few methods can be used when editing a show with a significant ensemble like the second season of Beef:
“When you’re editing a large ensemble, inner cutting works really great, and it’s really exciting. Sometimes you end up wanting to join character scenes more, so you can really sit with those characters longer and dive into their emotions and motivations. I actually think it helps the audience connect with them more, and they get involved in the story faster. We did some of that, but not everywhere. In episodes two and three, we grouped many scenes together just so you could really dive deep into the characters, especially once you start introducing Dr. Kim [Youn Yuh-jung] and Chairwoman Park [Song Kang-ho] as the third couple we need to track.”
The second season’s cold open introduces the audience to the main couples, Josh (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), and Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton). Instead of the inciting incident occurring at the top of the show, this season slowly builds to its dramatic core, as Josh and Lindsay find out that their domestic dispute has been recorded by both Ashley and Austin, who will use this video as a way to climb up the social ladder at the country club where they are working.
In approaching the scene, Zempel compared it to season one’s opening, “where we have the car chase within the first two minutes. As soon as you tune in, you’re immediately hooked by this big action sequence. We didn’t have that this time around. We had about ten or twelve minutes before the title card. [Showrunner Lee Sung Jin] really wanted to make sure that people stayed engaged and felt like it was building as much as the car chase in season one. Obviously, there are differences, but each scene builds upon the next.
It was his idea to have this suite of music throughout the entire thing. That became a huge part of building the tension, giving each couple its theme and integrating them together. Finneas did an incredible job with the music. We knew we had to land the beef and set up the season, because people were coming into it with high expectations from that cold opening in season one.”
Of course, there was so much to dive into in our conversation, including how the editors approached sequences that blur the line between fiction and reality, how to cut performances where the actors convey more emotions with their facial expressions than words, playing with comedic timing, and approaching the show’s eighth episode, where the characters travel to Korea, and the season’s scale opens up.
You can listen to the full interview below and stream all episodes of Beef on Netflix today:
[Some of the quotes in this article were edited for length and clarity]
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