Episode 64 – Editing&Drumming - a podcast by Phi Phenonenon

As an editor and a drummer, I’ve been banging the drum — literally in many instances — about the connection between the two. Director/drummer combos range from Stanley Kubrick to Bob Fosse to Damien Chazelle. On today’s episode I’m joined by Heath Metzger, drummer for the beloved Evansville/Newburgh band Mock Orange, who edits some of the band’s projects, and Christopher Roldan, an editor who used to drum for the Himalayans, which featured a pre-Counting Crows Adam Duritz. On this episode, we discuss:

- Why drumming concepts like rhythm, release, syncopation, and sustains overlap in film editing;
- Metzger’s ever-expanding “hobby” of editing the band’s projects being informed by his drumming;
- how Roldan overcame a youthful need to be “perfect” to come back to playing drums in recent years;
- and how an interest in guitar players and melody really opens things up when figuring out more colorful rhythms and beats.

Also:

- Why Chris thinks this topic is obvious
- (spoiler: he’s worked on projects where every editor is also a drummer);
- if editing is has more in common with live music or studio playing;
- similarities in pacing setlists, album tracklists, and feature films;
- and how Mock Orange’s new guitar player, also a well-respected local drummer himself, is changing live playing for Heath.

Heath Metzger is drummer for Mock Orange and had a hand in editing their newest concert special, the “Virtual Intertainment Computer Special.” Tickets for the event are currently on sale and the special will be available VOD for 24 hours starting May 25. You can find out more about Mock Orange at their website, where their latest releases, The Record Play 20th Anniversary Reissue and The Bridge EP, are available.

Chris Roldan has edited on narrative films for directors Richard Linklater and Terrence Malick, documentaries (A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story, Abortion: Stories Women Tell), along with television shows for HBO, Facebook, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, TNT, Oxygen, TLC and the Discovery Channel. He is also an editing instructor at the University of Texas and was voted one of its top ten professors in 2015. You can find out more at Roldan’s website.

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