Q&A w/NYFA Alum Charles Ancelle, Lead Editor on "War of the Worlds" starring Ice Cube

Charles Ancelle (C.A): Sure! I dreamed of being a director since my teenage years in France, and was always a big fan of American films, both studio and indies, and in my early twenties I decided to go film school in the US. I had already done a NYFA summer program and had loved it and wanted to do a school that gave us full creative freedom and the opportunity to have hands on experience, so it was an easy choice.

NYFA Alumni Network: What projects have you worked on since graduating? Have you won any awards or been showcased in any festivals or competitions?

• I directed significant reshoots on a Huawei commercial

• I worked in camera department for Kanye West's film album, Jesus is King

• I was camera operator on a big Chinese film called But Always

• I worked on a well rated Snapchat Series called Dead of Night

• I worked in the editorial department for the movies Profile, Missing, and another one called True Haunting - a Sony screen gems film that hasn't yet been released starring Erin Moriarty and Jamie Campbell Bower.
  
  On the award side:
  

• A web series I co-created and co-directed won Best director award at a festival and was selected in a few.

• Two short films I wrote and directed were selected at many festivals, I believe one of them won for best actress and another one won for best screenplay.

• I was semi-finalist at Austin Film Festival in 2020 for a screenplay pilot I wrote.

NYFA Alumni Network: Tell us more about your latest project War of the Worlds & how you got involved in the project?

The film itself was shot in 2020, and I got involved with it because I had begun a relationship with one of the producers' companies, Bazelevs, which was founded by Timur Bekmambetov, famous for Night Watch and Wanted as a director, and also Unfriended, Searching, etc. 

The company is very focused on the screen life format which it pioneered with Unfriended, and I started learning the format on two other projects before. They offered me to join pre-production to help on the Previsualization of War of the Worlds late in the process - they were very close to starting production and were nowhere near finishing. I quickly became the lead Assistant Editor on the project, and then got promoted some time later to Additional Editor, which was my first opportunity in the role on a serious film. Eventually, I was offered to be the lead editor to finish the film, which was completed in late June of last year, shortly before it was sold to Amazon.

NYFA Alumni Network: Can you talk about your transition from Assistant Editor to Additional Editor and eventually to Lead Editor?

C.A: Well as I mentioned my transition was gradual since I first became an additional editor before stepping into the role of lead editor. At first, when I became additional editor back in 2021, I was mostly interfacing with the lead editor, Jake York, who was then discussing the big picture ideas with the producers. But I already was interfacing with the producers on a more procedural level. However little by little I was invited to listen in on the calls between Jake, the producers and the screenwriter, Mark Hyman, for story-related discussions.

The movie went on hiatus for a time, then some time later I was invited back as the lead editor, which felt very smooth and easy. There were no real technical challenges at that stage since I had started as the Assistant Editor, I knew the project inside out already and by then I was essentially a one-man band.

NYFA Alumni Network: What were some of the creative or technical challenges you faced stepping into the role of lead editor so late in the process?

C.A: The challenges we faced were in many ways the same challenges that every film faces: not enough time or budget to do everything we want to do. Screen life makes that problem exponentially more difficult because the editing process is so slow and complex. What became difficult after working on the movie for four years was to maintain a fresh perspective on it. After a while, one becomes very desensitized to the footage, about what works and what doesn't work, finding the right balance for the pacing and the tone of the film.

NYFA Alumni Network: You mentioned working in the “screen life” format—how did your experience with that style influence your editing choices on War of the Worlds?

C.A: Screen life is a double edged sword. On one hand, the beauty of it is that it offers a ton of flexibility in the edit, to a degree that traditional filmmaking doesn't have. What I mean by that is that it essentially offers the ability to manufacture brand new scenes from scratch - one can simply invent things out of thin air and use apps or stock footage to tell the story. For example I manufactured the opening scene of the film from scratch pretty late in the game, maybe a month before we locked picture. On the other hand, there are two big drawbacks that come with it: editing screenlife is far more challenging than traditional filmmaking because it involves multiple layers at every level, animation, plus adding a digital camera everywhere, so it's a constant choreography between all these layers, so that means everything is much slower to do, and on top of that, the flexibility means there is an irresistible temptation from the creative team to try and manufacture new scenes everywhere, which slows the process down significantly.

I wouldn't say my experience necessarily influenced my editing choices from a creative perspective aside from a few basic screen life rules one learns quickly: the temptation for screen life novices is to play everything in real time and even create a full desktop view for every scene, which ends up slowing the process down enormously with poor results because real time is just as boring in screen life as it is in traditional movies. So from an editing perspective really the guiding principle is to focus on the storytelling and seeing what really matters to tell the story.

NYFA Alumni Network: What did you learn at NYFA that you applied directly to this project and others?

C.A: It would be far too long to list here, but on this particular project, what was particularly helpful to me was:

1. Having read 'In the Blink of an Eye' by Walter Murch which was required by my editing teacher, Shawn Sullivan, and

2. My understanding of story structure which I learned in screenwriting class.

NYFA Alumni Network: Are you working on any future projects?

C.A:  Yes. I worked on two other features between last year and earlier this year which are essentially completed and awaiting distribution - one is called Menace, featuring Isabel May. The other is called ANSWR, directed by Stephen Kay and starring Moises Arias. I'm also currently editing a horror film called Six Til Midnight starring Sasha Lane, we're in the late stages of the editing process, probably locking picture within a month or two.

NYFA Alumni Network congratulates Charles on all his success!

Read more about the movie here:  https://deadline.com/2025/07/war-of-the-worlds-release-date-ice-cube-eva-longoria-1236467372/