Chapman student Emma Roy swings to new heights
Photo courtesy of Emma Roy
With great power comes great responsibility; this is the guiding mantra that leads Peter Parker to balance his life between being an everyday high schooler and his higher calling as the iconic web-slinger Spider-Man. One might say sophomore film and television production editor Emma Roy faced a similar balancing act, going between her freshman year courses and then working with the editors and director of what is now not only the biggest movie of the summer, but one of the highest-grossing movies ever made: “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”
“I literally felt like an undercover agent,” Roy said. “Going from my 8 a.m. class to having to drive to Burbank and then walking onto the Disney Studios lot and being around all the creatives like that.”
Roy’s origin story begins long before that, in her hometown of Maui, Hawaii, where her love of storytelling began with reading long before she found the same passion for visual storytelling. Her mom, who teaches film, taught her how to edit on Final Cut upon her request. Roy’s own passion for visual storytelling blossomed further from an unexpected source: editing highlights of time spent playing Roblox and Minecraft (“I feel like everyone, once in their life, wants to be a YouTuber,” she told The Panther). Simultaneously, Roy started producing mini documentaries for a local PBS affiliate, showcasing Hawaiian stories and profiles.
And where Spidey had a mentor in his burgeoning heroics in Iron Man, Roy’s mentor came into view in the form of filmmaker, Destin Daniel Cretton, who started as an indie darling with his breakout film “Short Term 12” and has launched himself to the top of the Marvel universe with “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”
Like Roy, Cretton hails from Maui and, along with film teacher Brad Kester, helped create an opportunity for young filmmakers to further hone their developing filmmaking talents through a program called the Hisako Film Lab. The summer before her senior year of high school, Roy got to participate in the inaugural edition, in which the cohort got to work for weeks to come up with an idea for and see a short film through all the stages of production.
One of the perks of the lab for the young filmmakers was the opportunity to work with top-notch talent every step of the way as they figured out how to work through pre-production into production. For instance, Roy got to talk to Rachel Kondo, the Emmy-winning showrunner behind “Shōgun,” who also made an appearance in her short film from the program, “Driver’s License.”
The short is based on her own trials having to drive her younger brother, who starred in the short, as a result of being the sibling with a license. She helped unlock the story behind the short as a result of brainstorming with Cretton on Zoom, telling her woeful tales of taking her brother to his many extracurriculars and the toll it took on her free time. The short went on to play at a number of festivals, including the Hawaii International Film Festival.
While co-directing the short with her friend, Sam Paci, and shooting out the back of her car, Cretton suggested that Roy should be a director, declaring: “You’re directing this shit.” When it came time to decide on a university, she chose editing as her way forward. Roy stayed in touch with Kondo and Cretton, who provided her with a letter of recommendation for her application. She knew she wanted to be in LA, given what she’d gleaned about the industry from her experience in the Hisako Film Lab, and leaned towards the Dodge College of Film and Media Arts given its emphasis on hands-on filmmaking from the beginning of the first year of its programs.
A “Brand New Day” arrived in the fall of her freshman year, as she was still acclimating to the culture shock of moving to California for school. Roy sent Cretton a thank you note for his role in helping her find her way to Chapman, and in his response, he mentioned going into production on the latest Spider-Man film, which was then going by the codename “Blue Oasis.” This is when the possibility of Roy being brought on as a post-production intern was first broached, a role that does not exist within Marvel Studios and was essentially created for Roy.
She sent in application materials to the post-production supervisor on the film and then interviewed with him for the position. Soon she was sworn to secrecy and all set to start on the Disney lot in the Marvel offices that February.
Like any internship, Roy’s tasks sometimes boiled down to simply being ready to assist if anyone on the editing team needed help. Other times it was helping with crafty and lunch, shadowing other editors or helping the team stay organized when handing off the film to other departments. But beyond that, no day was the same. Roy went through the movie to make sure the actors who play the people “inhabited” by the film’s mysterious, formidable antagonist got their due in the end credits.
Part of the adjustment period for Roy was purely a byproduct of working with such a talented team of experienced editors, who between them had worked on films like “Moonlight,” “Wicked” and “Michael,” to name a few, and had worked on Cretton’s prior films. The internship had plenty of highlights, including shaking hands with Tom Holland and Zendaya when they visited and sat in on the scoring sessions for the film. But chief among them was getting to work alongside and befriend editors with such a professional pedigree.
“Once you get into [film editing], it's just, ‘Yeah, I was on this show. I was on this show. I did this show…’ I made a lot of good connections. I made a lot of good friends. I loved being around all the people in the office,” Roy said. “I remember they were talking about how that was their favorite crew that they've ever worked on.”
Roy saw the movie on opening night with her family and found herself profoundly moved by seeing the finished film. The film’s release not only gave Roy an opportunity to come clean about the afternoons she’d spent on the Disney lot and reveal what the deal was with “Blue Oasis,” but to relish in the work her and her colleagues had put into the film.
“I think I cried three times. It wasn't because of the movie but just knowing that the people that I worked with, this was the end product, you know what I mean,” Roy said. “It was sweat and tears, it was amazing and I was really proud of the people that worked on it, the [whole] office.”
In particular, the montage near the opening of the film, set to the song “Wolf Like Me” by TV On the Radio, provoked a unique kind of pride for Roy. Roy recalled being adamant with the music editor of the film that that song stay in given how much it spoke to the spirit of the character.
"You need to keep that song. It's the most Spider-Man song ever. You need to keep it, it's amazing,” Roy said. “I remember talking to him. I was like, ‘You need to keep it.’ And he was like, ‘No, but it might change. We don't know.’ And I was like, ‘Hey, Alex, you need to keep it.’ And they ended up keeping it; just seeing Spider-Man be Spider-Man was so good.”
Roy’s journey from the Film Lab to working on “Brand New Day” culminated in an event in August in Maui where the most recent Film Lab’s filmmakers got to premiere their shorts at a local Regal Cinema, followed by a screening of the superhero film, with Cretton in attendance. Roy got to share a few words with the audience about the impact the program had on her from the other side and as proof of the power of the program itself.
She doesn’t miss the commute, but this taste of post-production at the highest level has certainly made Roy wish her remaining years of collegiate courses would go by faster so she can start apprentice editing and getting her union hours. Regardless, she’s excited to work her way up the editing hierarchy and seeing the conversations between director and editor up close reaffirmed her belief that she’s on the right path.
“Knowing that I can be a part of that, it made me just 10 times more certain that that was what I wanted to do,” Roy said.
