Lee Smith is an excellent film editor nominated for the Oscar 2018. Read more about Lee Smith, his net worth, his experience as a film editor, and other interesting facts.
Who is Lee Smith?
Lee Smith was born in 1960. He is an Australian film editor who has been in the film industry since the 80’s. Lee Smith began his career as a sound editor with films like ‘Dead Calm’ in 1989, ‘The Piano’ in 1993, ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ in 1996 and ‘Holy Smoke!’ in 1999. During this time, he had also edited films like ‘Robocop 2’ in 1990. Since his work in the film ‘Batman Begins’ in 2005, Lee Smith has served as an editor for all of the feature films of Christopher Nolan. Smith was born in Sydney. Lee Smith was nominated for the Academy Award in the year 2004 for Best Editing for film, ‘Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ in 2008. He also was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Editing for the film ‘The Dark Knight’ and for ‘Inception’ in 2010. In 1993, he was nominated for BAFTA Award for Best Sound for the film, ‘The Piano’. In 1982, Lee Smith began his collaboration with director Peter Weir for the film ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’. He was associate editor in this film. He was also the co-editor with Anderson for the movie, ‘Fearless’ in 1993 and for the movie, ‘The Truman Show’ in 1998. Smith was the sole editor for the film ‘Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’ directed by Weir in the year 2003. He got an Academy Award for this film for best editing and also got nominated for an ‘Eddie Award’ from the American Cinema Editors. Recently, Smith has been working majorly with director Christopher Nolan and has edited seven of his films. Smith was nominated for a second Academy Award and also an American Cinema Editors Award for the film, ‘The Dark Knight’ in 2008. Lee Smith was also the editor for the film Interstellar in the year 2014. ‘Interstellar’ was about a team of explorers who travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity’s survival. The film ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ was released in the year 2012. Lee Smith has rendered his superb editing to the movie making it visually flawless. ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is the third and final installment of the Dark Knight trilogy. Bane, an imposing terrorist, attacks Gotham City and disrupts its eight-year-long period of peace. This forces Bruce Wayne to come out of hiding and don the cape and cowl of Batman again. 2011 saw the release of the film, ‘X-Men: First Class’ directed by Mathew Vaughn and edited by Lee Smith. The film, ‘X-Men: First Class’ explored the time during the Cold War, when fellow mutants Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr join forces with other mutants to save humanity from a nuclear attack. A science fiction film, ‘The Prestige’ was released in 2006. ‘The Prestige’ was edited by Lee Smith and directed by Christopher Nolan. It is the story of two friends and fellow magicians who become passionate enemies after a sudden tragedy. As they devote themselves to their rivalry, they make sacrifices with the purpose of bringing them fame but their decisions have terrible consequences. Lee Smith has been nominated for Best Editor for Oscar 2018 for the film, ‘Dunkirk’. Oscar 2018 will be held on March 4, 2018. Dunkirk is a 2017 war film written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan. The movie depicts the Dunkirk evacuation that occured during World War II.
Net worth of the film editor
The net worth of Lee Smith is $20 million. His net worth is sure to rise.
A direct conversation with Lee Smith
During a recent interview, Smith said that being able to work on Interstellar was the fulfillment of a life-long dream for him. “I’ve always wanted to work on a space movie since I was a kid,” he said, “It’s truly a career high to get to work on [this film].” Smith said that not only because of his love for space movies but because of his devotion to the notion of layered narratives, complex filmmaking, and the idea that need audiences to unravel complex puzzles. “His films are not ones you would want to tackle as your first film as an editor, or perhaps even your 10th,” Smith says. “They are complex in the extreme. You have to have a willingness to be someone who is very interested in puzzles and deconstruction and reconstruction… [The scripts Nolan and his brother, Jonathan Nolan] write are really more of a blueprint for a very complex piece of a kit. They are like a watch — you can mess with it, but it still has to tell time on the other end. The complexity [of editing the film] is really in the pacing.” While making the film, Nolan told him to edit the movie in a particular way. “But what [Nolan] said was, cut the entire movie as if you had no exterior shots [of space], and assemble it as such. You have to construct everything like it is going to work without those shots. Now, we knew [those shots] would be in the movie, but what his thoughts were, was that a lot of these movies have way too many of those shots, because you just can’t help it. You have a shot of a spaceship doing something, then you are bound to use it, even in animation form. What his thought was, that if I can construct it without those exterior shots, it will make us very, very accurate in when we do have to go outside, and we will much reduce the over-usage of the visual effects. He always comes up with something to mess with me, and that was pretty good.” (From an interview in Post Magazine.) Their friendly banter and unique ideas helped to create a masterpiece which is difficult if not impossible to replicate in Hollywood today. Christopher Nolan would not have made the movie such a great success without the brilliant editing by Lee Smith.
