Angus Alexander Wall (born March 15, 1967) is a
film editor
Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film stock, film which increasingly involves the use Digital cinema, of digital ...
and film title designer. He and fellow film editor
Kirk Baxter won the
Academy Award for Best Film Editing
The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Nominations for this award are closely correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. For 33 consecutive year ...
for the
David Fincher
David Andrew Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American film director. Often described as one of the preeminent directors of his generation, David Fincher filmography, his films, of which most are psychological thrillers, have collectiv ...
film ''
The Social Network
''The Social Network'' is a 2010 American biographical drama film directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the 2009 book '' The Accidental Billionaires'' by Ben Mezrich. It portrays the founding of social networkin ...
'' (2010) and again the next year for ''
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
''The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'' (original title in ) is a psychological thriller novel by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. It was published posthumously in 2005, translated into English in 2008, and became an international bestseller.
''T ...
'' (2011). He and Baxter were nominated the
Academy Award for Best Film Editing
The Academy Award for Best Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Nominations for this award are closely correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. For 33 consecutive year ...
, the
BAFTA Award for Best Editing, and the
American Cinema Editors Eddie Award for the 2008 film ''
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'', also directed by David Fincher. Wall's title design work on the
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...
television series ''
Carnivàle
''Carnivàle'' () is an American television series set in the United States Dust Bowl during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The series, created by Daniel Knauf, ran for two seasons between 2003 and 2005. In tracing the lives of disparate gr ...
'' and ''
Game of Thrones
''Game of Thrones'' is an American Fantasy television, fantasy Drama (film and television), drama television series created by David Benioff and for HBO. It is an adaptation of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of high fantasy novels by ...
'' both received
Emmy Awards
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...
in 2004 and 2011, respectively,
and his work on the series ''
Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
''s titles was nominated for the
BAFTA Award
The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs or BAFTA Awards, is an annual film award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to f ...
in 2005.
Life and career
Wall graduated from
Woodberry Forest School
Woodberry Forest School is a private, all-male boarding school located in Woodberry Forest, Madison County, Virginia, in the United States. Woodberry's current enrollment is 391. Students come from 34 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and 36 coun ...
in Virginia in 1984.
He then earned a BA from
Bowdoin College
Bowdoin College ( ) is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. It was chartered in 1794.
The main Bowdoin campus is located near Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River. In a ...
in 1988. In 1992, he and Linda Carlson started the firm Rock Paper Scissors, which has become "a respected West Hollywood creative editorial house known for its commercial work for such clients as
BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Th ...
,
HP, and
Nike."
Wall's relationship with the director David Fincher extends back to 1988, when Wall entered the entertainment industry. Wall had edited some commercials directed by David Fincher, and he edited the titles for Fincher's film ''
Se7en''.
He became an "editorial consultant" on ''
Fight Club
''Fight Club'' is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel ''Fight Club (novel), Fight Club'' by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays The Narrator (F ...
'' (1999),
which was edited by James Haygood, and he then co-edited ''Panic Room'' (2002) with Haygood. While Wall became the sole editor credited on ''Zodiac'' (2007), Kirk Baxter worked with him as an "additional editor". Wall proposed to Fincher that Baxter be the co-editor for ''The Curious Case of Benjamin Button''.
Wall and his firm are noted for being early adopters of all-digital filmmaking using digital cameras.
The film ''
Zodiac
The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south celestial latitude of the ecliptic – the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Within this zodiac ...
'' (2007), which was directed by Fincher and edited by Wall, is noted as "the first major motion picture created without using film or tape," although some parts of the film were shot with conventional cameras. One important aspect of using digital cameras is that the director can view a scene immediately after it is recorded; as Fincher commented in an interview, "
Dailies
In filmmaking, dailies or rushes are the raw, film editing, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. The term "dailies" comes from when movies were all shot on film because usually at the end of each day, the footage was dev ...
almost always end up being disappointing, like the veil is pierced and you look at it for the first time and think, 'Oh my god, this is what I really have to work with.' But when you can see what you have as it's gathered, it can be a much less neurotic process."
Digital filmmaking also creates new possibilities for film editing compared to the "cutting" of reels of physical film; among these possibilities are subtle changes in the timing of an actor's performance, and combining of two different takes of a given scene within a single frame. ''The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'' has the additional novel element that the facial performances in many of the film's scenes were recorded independently of the body performances, and were combined to create the final film.
Brad Pitt
William Bradley Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. In a Brad Pitt filmography, film career spanning more than thirty years, Pitt has received list of awards and nominations received by Brad Pitt, numerous a ...
's face performances for Button were used in all the scenes, but for many of the scenes a second actor's performance was used for the rest of Button's body.
Filmography (as editor)
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wall, Angus
1967 births
American film editors
Best Editing BAFTA Award winners
Best Film Editing Academy Award winners
Bowdoin College alumni
Living people
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Woodberry Forest School alumni