In Season 6 of Netflix’s The Crown, a relationship blossoms between Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed before their deadly car crash. Prince William then tries to integrate back into life at Eton in the wake of his mother’s death. And as the Queen she reaches her Golden Jubilee, she reflects on the future of the monarchy.
Simon Brasse (pictured) served as editor on two episodes of Season 6 - Episode 3 (“Dis Moi Oui”) and Episode 5 (“Willsmania”).
“The editing took place, in partm at home during the shoot, using Salon Sync technology to link my home edit suite to the shared storage used by the whole team and The Crown cutting rooms in Soho, Central London,” says Brasse.
Episode 3 is essentially about a fledgling romance between Diana and Dodi, that is brutally thrust into the public eye. Furthermore, Mohamed Al-Fayed encourages Dodi to propose to Diana in the hope that a union between the two would give him the recognition from the British establishment that he’s so longed for.
“In Episode 3, one sequence, in particular, encapsulates this dramatic narrative, featuring Dodi and Diana’s arrival in Paris, their visit to Villa Windsor and then onward journey to the Ritz hotel,” Brasse explains. “Up until this point in the series, the relationship between Dodi and Diana, for the most part, has been conducted away from the prying eyes of the press. But as soon as they turn the corner into the arrivals hall in Paris, they are assisted by a wave of noise.”
The series pivots from the intimacy of two people alone into the public gaze. To amplify this in the edit of the arrivals sequence, Brasse stayed with Dodi and Diana, and arrived with them into the press hustle and bustle, so the audience is with them at the moment the volume is turned up and they are unexpectedly exposed.
“By cutting from behind them, so we see the press from their point of view, we make that moment of realization more powerful, as we are sharing the same sense of dread,” he explains. “I then used the long-lens material to give a sense that this is a moment of observational storytelling. The world is getting a look into this private relationship.”
The scrum of activity builds to a crescendo, coming to an abrupt moment of quiet as Diana is bundled into the car. At this moment, the viewer stay with her, not seeing, but hearing the muffled yells for her attention.
“It’s a harrowing moment, and in the edit, I chose to stay with her over hearing Dodi discuss the day's plans in French, which is something she doesn’t understand, but we as an audience do as it is subtitled,” he explains. “Allowing us to be ahead of the character builds the viewer's sense of despair for Diana, a mother who just wants to be left in peace for a moment so she can call her children.”
The journey from the airport to Villa Windsor is truncated.
“We stayed in the car, and in the edit, I chose to not be expansive, but to let the action unfold through the back window of the car, where you can clearly see the crowds and photographers on bikes giving chase. This makes the scene feel claustrophobic and sets the tempo for their day in Paris.”
The Villa Windsor scene shows Mohamed applying pressure on Dodi, pushing him to make a proposal that Diana does not want. The action plays slightly comedic, albeit at odds with the tension of the journey to the Villa.
“What follows is the most visceral scene of the episode,” says Brasse. “They drive to The Ritz and bring Paris to a stand still as they are chased by paparazzi across town. The cutting was ramped up to be as much like an action sequence as possible, and jumped from observational perspectives to highly-intimate moments inside the car with Dodi and Diana. The pressure builds as their car is flooded by bikes and their space is invaded by paparazzi banging on their windows. The edit was constructed around this idea that they are trapped and have no chance of getting the privacy they are looking for. Key to achieving this was to keep the shot selection tight. With the exception of three shots, the sequence is made up entirely of close-ups that have plenty of background action to keep the sense of being surrounded alive throughout.”
Daniel Greenway (pictured) served as editor on Episode 10 - “Sleep, Dearie Sleep,” which was the final episode of The Crown’s final season.
“I had previously edited episodes in Season 3, ‘Imbroglio,’ and Season 5, ‘Mou Mou,’” he recalls. “For this particular episode, the director, Stephen Daldry, involved me earlier than usual to discuss his ideas and give feedback as the script was being developed by the writer, Peter Morgan. He was very keen to include me in conversations about certain sequences that he wanted to incorporate and how they might be shot and cut, before the cameras rolled.”
Morgan decided early on that he wanted the series to end with the marriage of Charles and Camilla, as he strongly believed that carrying it on beyond 2005 would take the show too close to the present day.
“But with the death of Queen Elizabeth happening during the filming of the early part of the final season, we also needed to address her death and her legacy, as well as make sure it felt like a satisfying finale,” Greenway explains. “The other element we wanted to introduce was the growing tension between Princes William and Harry, as the repercussions of the eventual breakdown of their relationship is still the subject of heated discussion today. So the episode had a lot of heavy lifting to do, but in the end, I think we managed to make something that was both respectful and moving and also felt like a proper ending.”
Greenway cut the show on an Avid Media Composer.
“I love the very precise and fast way you can edit using the trim tool, sync lock and just key-based functions. It is also very stable and reliable. I assembled a lot of the episode from home, and I like the way that Media Composer organizes and lets you keep track of the media. I also always use a Wacom tablet, rather than a mouse, as I find it more comfortable to use and much quicker.”
Greenway points to a number of highlights in the finaly, including the scene where the Queen asks her Piper to choose a song to play at her funeral, and then to his and the footmen’s surprise, he performs it for her in the room.
“I’m also proud of the darkly-playful scene where her funeral planning committee starts talking through what they’ll do if she dies abroad, to which she replies, ‘I’ll do my best to keep it local!’”
Greenway also likes the scene in which Elizabeth is watching home movies, and tenderly touches the screen when she sees her younger self attending the funeral of her father, King George VI.
“We actually used real archives for these moments, which is something The Crown had never done until this final episode,” he notes.
Ultimately, he would choose the final sequence in St George’s Chapel, where Philip bewails the ineptitude of the next generation of Royals. Once he leaves, Elizabeth has a vision of the Piper playing at her funeral and then sees her coffin laid out before her, as it will be 17 years later. She is then visited by her younger selves in the form of a teenage princess, played by Viola Prettejohn, and her two previous incarnations as Queen, played by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman.
“The sequence where Elizabeth has a vision of her coffin was particularly interesting to cut as Stephen Daldry had no particular idea about how exactly we would introduce the coffin,” notes Greenway. “When I saw the rushes of the overhead shot of Elizabeth standing before her coffin, it was the most beautiful and impactful moment for me, so I wanted to save it as a big reveal. And so we see Elizabeth spot something in a wide shot without the coffin. She is walking towards something that she can see, but we cannot. I then cut to a tight tracking shot of her walking past the coffin, but we just see the orb and sceptre on the top and then the resplendent Crown. It’s a surreal moment as we don’t see the coffin underneath yet. I then cut back to the wide shot of her without the coffin as she continues to walk around the space. Then, as she turns around, the top of the space we punch up to is that overhead shot showing her gazing upon the coffin in all its glory. With Martin Phipps’ score hitting a beautiful chord at the moment of the wide reveal, it makes for a very impactful moment.”
Greenway says that throughout this sequence, and the episode as a whole, he really tried to get close and hold on Imelda Staunton’s face as much as possible.
“The Crown is about the world around her, and often she is not the center of the episodes,” he explains. “So it was a pleasure to let her wonderfully emotional and complex performance really drive this finale episode.”