Director, writer and editor Rich Varville began his career in music before eventually coming to filmmaking, and he’s made quite a name for himself in the industry. In addition to his many credits working on features, shorts, and TV, he also helped build the film program for Wesleyan College.
As the editor for the dark comedy Glass Casa, Rich was a key part of the storytelling team. He recently sat down with us to talk all about his approach to prepping for a project, what it’s like to fall in love with a film’s characters from the editing room, and his favorite Glass Casa moments.
Rich Varville. Image source: IMDb.
So when did you join the Glass Casa team?
I was involved probably four or five months before filming began. So I saw the script and I actually sat in with some of the script reading.
Is it typical for you as an editor to join a project so early in the process?
Yeah, I try to. Most films I’m involved with, I usually I’m involved like probably a year ahead of time or six months ahead of time because, well, I wear a lot of hats.
So I was the editor on this film. But I actually do a lot more, so I get hired for a lot of positions. So, in the last year, I’ve actually script-doctored four feature films that have all been completed now in post-production. And I write, you know, I’m a screenwriter myself.
I think I’m very well-rounded in that regard, which I think you have to be as an independent filmmaker. You need to understand writing. You need to understand story structure and flow and pacing and all those things. And especially when it comes to editing, it’s nice to be involved very early on in a project. So you spend enough time with the director to really understand their vision for the project, the pacing, the tone, and what they’re really trying to accomplish.
So I think it’s very important to be involved early on. At least for me, it helps me absorb the material and really understand it. Because I think that’s an integral [component] as an editor is really understanding the story for one, but more so what the director wants.
So by the time you actually got to the point of editing the film, you had this whole relationship with [Glass Casa writer/director] Laa Marcus, and you had been around the project for a long time.
Yeah, I think we first met in August and filming started in December. So, you know, it was like four months ahead of time.
Honestly, a lot of times it never feels like there’s enough time ahead to prep. I’m really big on prepping my own projects. I spend a tremendous amount of time prepping. So when we actually get to production, that’s kind of the easy part, you know, because we really mapped out everything.
And I’ve been part of other productions where they don’t do that. And I kind of see the results of that. And it’s a bit more chaos on set. A little more disorganized. The actors, you know, I think it results in not getting as good of performances as you possibly could have by really preparing longer.
And for me, I try to learn from every project. That’s the great thing with filmmaking, is there’s always something new to learn. And that’s the greatest part of this business.
Was there anything about Glass Casa that was uniquely challenging, either when you were in the preparation process or when you were actually in the editing room?
It’s funny because I don’t really look at things as being like challenges, you know. To me, it’s like there’s troubleshooting, there’s problem solving, it’s like, I just figure out a way to do it.
So I don’t think it was a challenging one. I mean, it was time consuming. Let’s put it that way. So there was a ton of footage to go through. There were a lot of takes. There were some alternates. They did replace an actress three days into the production. So, that was probably a bit of a challenge. I think it was much more of a challenge for the actors adjusting to that, and they did a great job.
It was a great ensemble cast—I mean, really fantastic. And that’s interesting too—people probably don’t know that as an editor like I don’t know them personally, I met them on set a couple times, but as an editor you’re watching them for months, right? So you kind of fall in love with these characters and these people, but you don’t really know them. It’s kind of an odd thing.
Do you have a favorite scene or a favorite sequence?
Oh my God, well, I think the whole second act is just awesome. I mean this from the time they start popping the ludes or whatever, they’re on the drugs or mushrooms or whatever they were on, it just got super fun. And you could tell the actors were having fun. And, you know, the whole second act I thought was really a lot of fun.
As far as an individual scene, I mean, there’s scenes that probably no one would ever look at the same way because the way I cut it, I was very proud of the way it turned out, the way I cut the scene. But that’s stuff that people don’t really notice.
You know, like some of the stuff early on when the Jamie character’s talking about the book that [Charlie] wrote that she’s reading. And you can see she has an interest and it’s already kind of pulling her away from her fiancé. I thought that whole scene was shot really nice, looked really nice, the lighting and the setting. And just the DP’s choices of, you know, shot setup and composition and the way it started cutting together just had a really nice flow to it.
And when you watch it, it kind of flows around the room. And then toward the end of that, the Charlie character comes in and knocks on the window and kind of surprises them. So it kind of has this whole 360 vibe around the room when we finally introduced his character. And it was just kind of a neat scene.
I think the performances…Justin Michael Terry [who plays Charlie], I thought he was fantastic. I mean, he really, to me, was obviously the perfect casting choice. Playing off of the other characters and his mannerisms, I just thoroughly enjoyed watching him from start to finish. I thought he was just absolutely brilliant, but I think he also-I don’t know if it was a combination of the other actors making him better or him making them better, but I think together they made each other better in these scenes.
But I mean, I really liked all the characters.
Charlie (Justin Michael Terry) and Jamie (Harley Bronwyn) in a still from Glass Casa.
You know, knowing certain things about scenes that other people don’t know is kind of part of the fun too, and seeing the outtakes and all the flub lines and all that stuff’s kind of fun to see.
Because when you see real people delivering lines, make a mistake and then back into character, and then you’re working on that, it’s just kind of a neat process to see. Which you know, most people don’t see that stuff. They see outtakes and bloopers and things like that, but they don’t see what really goes into cutting a scene together.
Have you gotten to see audiences experience this movie in theatres?
Yeah. Well, we’ve seen it a couple of times played live now, so we did see it in front of an audience, which is always the best. Because then you understand if you’re hitting certain jokes. Or certain emotions or feelings. And so a lot of times with projects, I like to watch the audience, to just see the reactions. ‘Cause that’s a learning opportunity for me as well to see.
Sometimes the comedic parts are probably the most difficult in editing and filmmaking because of the timing. Because some jokes hit, some don’t. And if you leave too much time on screen on a joke that doesn’t land, then it gets kind of awkward.
And I’ve learned that the hard way. I had a film a couple years ago where we had a character deliver a joke. And the joke, the initial joke is really, really funny. But then he follows it up with an even funnier punchline. And my mistake was, I had him tell this joke and I didn’t leave enough room for it to breathe before the punchline. And it was in a theater with like 200 people and everyone laughed over the punchline, which actually was really even funnier. And I sat there and I was like, Oh my God, I’m devastated, because the whole audience would have just been floored. It was super funny.
But, you know, so you learn from that, from being in an audience. Because it’s a whole different experience when you watch a film in a group, a communal kind of atmosphere, as opposed to like watching at home on your TV. So it’s difficult—you have to make compromises in your edit to figure out what’s going to work, what’s not going to work, and you just have to go with your gut instinct.
I find the way that editors’ brains work so fascinating. You all are very unique people. It’s such a challenging job.
It’s made easier by the director, the choices, the performances. I mean, if all that’s good, editing is actually pretty easy.
You know, it’s when you have poor performances and you have poor direction and poor cinematography and lack of camera movement and certain things. Those [make it] a lot harder to really tell a convincing story. So it really starts with direction, the performances, the cinematography. You can have so-so cinematography and still tell a really amazing story with great performances and great writing. So, yeah, so it really starts there. There have been projects that I’ve pulled out that was like, okay, this was actually impressive to like make something out of nothing, you know?
But Glass Casa wasn’t that. I mean, they had great performances. It was harder to just choose the appropriate performances, the appropriate takes to match, and scanning through footage and watching hours and hours of footage. We had 38 terabytes for the techies out there, 38 terabytes of footage, which is an incredible amount to watch through. So it’s a lot of takes.
Oh, that sounds fascinating. Okay, so who would you say Glass Casa is for? What type of viewer?
It’s fun. I mean, it’s a dark comedy, right? So if you like some crude moments and you like kind of crude comedy, it’s that. There’s nothing gratuitous in it. So it’s relatively PG-13 other than the few items. But it’s like a fun date night-type film. I think this is really a film for couples.
It’s silly fun, too. Have fun, escape for a couple hours and watch a silly movie. It’s definitely worth watching the performances alone because they’re super fun to watch. And the story.
I mean, what they did with a single location shoot. It’s really interesting. And she used like every square inch of the house. And for a single location film I was very impressed with what they were able to do with a limited amount of space. And then it looks like a much bigger film because of that. So they did a great job with that.
Anything else you want to tell us about your work?
I do a lot of different genres. I don’t do just one thing. I like to do a lot of different styles because to me, it’s all storytelling. And there’s ways of connecting with people through comedy or through fear or different emotions. And that’s what it’s about. That’s our job, right? Is to create something that emotionally connects with someone in whatever emotion or regard that is.
Please note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
A still from Glass Casa.
Rich has a packed slate this year—in June, he wrote and directed the multi-Emmy-Award-winning San Diego Film Awards, which you can stream here. He’s also part of the team behind the upcoming comedy-horror reboot Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence, hitting theaters in mid October, plus two new feature films in the works: the psychological thriller Deathbed (written and directed by Rich) and the vampire tale Vampire Penance.
Be sure to follow Rich on Instagram for updates on all these projects and more!
Thanks so much for the chat, Rich!