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Q&A with Tim Johnson, Editor of THE BADDEST SPEECHWRITER OF ALL

Editor Tim Johnson

We’re so looking forward to having editor Tim Johnson join us for The UAPB Film Festival & THE BADDEST SPEECHWRITER OF ALL. In anticipation of his visit, we asked him a few questions about his work on the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film and collaborating with co-directors Ben Proudfoot and Stephen Curry.

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What was the process for working with the directors on this film? Was the edit driven by a clear narrative arc from the onset or did it develop through working with the interview footage of Clarence B. Jones?

We started with our material from Clarence, which was an eight hour long interview completed over the course of a couple days. In addition to the main interview, our archival team dug up a deep library of footage from the Civil Rights Movement, and started scouring to see where we could find Clarence, ultimately yielding a few shots that even Clarence himself hadn’t seen.

Dr. Clarence B. Jones

The narrative arc took a while for us to crack—we knew that the heart of the story needed to be about Clarence’s relationship with Dr. King and how that changed the course of his life, but we also wanted to show Clarence’s impact on the history we’ve all come to know. Staying laser focused on these parts of the story was our biggest challenge as Clarence is such a gifted storyteller and his own life is such a grand tale. It took some experimenting and cutting several scenes that we liked to get the film where we wanted it to be.

You’ve worked with Ben Proudfoot before on FINAL COPY OF ILON SPECHT. What was similar and what was different working with him on this film?

Ben Proudfoot

Ben is such a thorough and dedicated filmmaker, and he puts his entire effort into every facet of each project. He’s relentless in crafting films in a bespoke way that suits each storyteller and their story. 

The big difference with this one is the scope. This film, being set in such a pivotal moment in American history, required a lot of research because we felt a responsibility to get it right. 

What was your collaboration with Steph Curry like? What drove the decision to include his voice in asking questions?

Stephen Curry | Credit: Michael Schwartz

As you can imagine I haven’t worked with a director like Steph before. This film would not exist without him because Clarence’s mentorship of Steph was the genesis of the whole project. 

I was interfacing with Ben in the office, and he would review cuts with Steph between games and while he was on the road. Steph offered notes to help us fill story holes, and also had some fun ideas regarding the animations to help bring some of these moments to life with active camera movements. 

As soon as we tried a cut using Steph’s voice asking questions, we knew we had to keep it. There’s a certain intimacy that it offers from the beginning: if Steph Curry is sitting down to listen to this guy, maybe I should too.

It’s a snapshot of the whole project and how Steph is using his platform to lift up someone who inspires him. 

We love animation director Daniel Bruson’s animations in the film. What was it like to work with them and how did they fit into the editorial process?

Daniel Bruson and his team of animators painted 3000 watercolor frames for this film, and our other editor Nick Wright oversaw that process.

Animation from THE BADDEST SPEECHWRITER OF ALL

I thought the animations gave the film an impressionistic quality that fit perfectly with the reflective nature of Clarence’s memory, and I was blown away when I saw it all together.

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Director Sara Dosa on Time and Water

We're thrilled for our upcoming co-presentation with Arkansas Cinema Society of the new documentary from National Geographic Documentary Films, Time and Water. This majestic portrait of Iceland, family, and the passage of time screens on Wednesday, April 8 at 6:30 PM at Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. Tickets are available here.

In anticipation of this special event, we'd like to share thoughts from the documentary's Oscar-nominated director, Sara Dosa.

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Director Sara Dosa (Photo by Leon Bennett)

IN A TIME when the violence of the climate crisis ravages the earth, we need stories that can act as maps for our shifting world. TIME AND WATER is a gesture toward such a map, one that traces the ice of Iceland through the human story of one family, anchored by the first-person perspective and expansive archives of celebrated writer Andri Snaer Magnason.

To illustrate the interconnectedness of humans and glaciers, our narrative arc braids the story of Andri’s grandparents with the glaciers and oceans that have sustained their lives and those of generations of Icelanders before them.

As Andri’s grandfather Arni’s memory recedes, so too does Iceland’s ice. A story of the earth, which has been frozen for millennia inside glaciers, is rapidly melting away. But, through the framing of our film as a time capsule, which is also a nod to Andri’s work as a poet and sci-fi author, we illustrate how the transmission of stories and memories into the future can be an act of not just holding onto our beloved present world, but a way of dreaming up possibilities for a habitable future.

Stream runs down glacial ice covered in volcanic ash. (credit: National Geographic)

We think of the film as polytemporal: existing across multiple timescales at once. And our editing style juxtaposes collaged archival materials with our originally shot footage, creating an interplay that bends and folds time. The associative flow of these images evokes subjective memory, echoing how glaciers themselves hold the frozen layered imprints of planetary history.

The future is unwritten, and what we do now matters.

Our cinematography was focused on how time is expressed through systems of water: glaciers, fog, rivers and the sea. We shot in both digital and 16 mm formats to create a cinematic language that could dialogue with our archival materials, becoming bridges to the past and present.

A glacial tongue behind a waterfall. (credit: National Geographic)

Finally, the film maintains a sensitive tone, given the story of dementia and death at its heart.... Through Andri’s narration, the film sheds light on the tragic, incomparable effects of Árni’s memory loss, revealing broader truths about the human experience of time....

Two people hike up slope in glacier. (credit: Archival Materials Courtesy of Andri Snær Magnason)

The future is unwritten, and what we do now matters. Too much hope can lull us into complacency, while too much dread can convince us the future is already lost. Uncertainty, however, invites agency. It reminds us that our actions in this unstable present shape the world our loved ones will inherit.

-Sara Dosa

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