Netflix's Escaping Twin Flames is a docu-series about Jeff and Shaleia, a couple who built a spiritual business to help people find true love. Over three hour-long episodes, former followers share the disturbing practices of Twin Flames Universe, which sells online classes that guarantee a harmonious union with partners. The series reveals stories of coercion and exploitation, stalking and manipulation, as well as active efforts of family members to rescue their loved ones from Jeff and Shaleia’s web.
Martin Biehn, ACE, Kevin Hibbard, Inbal B. Lessner, ACE, and Mimi Wilcox are part of the editing team that cut the series, which is Emmy nominated in the “Outstanding Picture Editing For A Nonfiction Program” category. Here, they share insight into how the series came together.
It must have been a challenge to tell these people’s stories, while also safeguarding them?
Inbal B. Lessne (pictured)r: “That’s very true. This was my third project as a co-creator with Cecilia Peck (previous two were Brave Miss World and Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult) and we’ve learned a great deal over the last 15 years about working with survivors of trauma. We aim to make what I like to call ‘responsible art,’ which means we prioritize the safety and well-being of our on-screen participants. We treat them as our partners in exposing this dangerous cult, and we try not to cause them any further harm. This trauma-informed approach dictates every decision from development through editing and delivery. One of my responsibilities was hiring the editors, and I was very fortunate to assemble a team of thoughtful, talented, sensitive artists, who are not only masters of their craft, but were also deeply engaged in all the ethical considerations of the storytelling, and each brought their unique perspective to the process. Personally, I’ve had some experience with family alienation and with coercive relationships in my own life, so I think that helped me relate to our participants.”
Martin Biehn (pictured): “I think the ethics and honesty of the show are most attributable to our director Cecilia Peck and Inbal Lessner’s guidance. They put in place a team of people who supported and worked closely with each other, but were unafraid to challenge each other and who were genuinely passionate about telling a true and compelling story, and all the complexity, nuance and difficulty that comes with that. People often shy away from nuance because it requires a lot of context, which has a tendency to bog the story down, but in the case of this show, exploring the complex hierarchy and morphing power dynamics of the group was absolutely necessary. Whether it was finding editorial solutions to difficult structures or conceptualizing animation to better instruct the internal world of the subjects, I think the ability to grind through those difficult moments, keep fresh eyes and continue to come up with the kinds of editorial solutions that wouldn’t have always been my go-to tools, was a skill that helped me there. Lots of trial and error, lots of thinking outside the box.’
Mimi Wilcox: “I began my career working with the Chicago-based documentary production company Kartemquin Films, and I learned so much about documentary ethics from Kartemquin’s founder Gordon Quinn. He taught me the importance of recognizing power dynamics in making ethical decisions when working with documentary participants and crafting responsible stories. In my career as an editor, and in my personal life, gender and sexuality have been major themes. All of those experiences served me well when working on Escaping Twin Flames, and I am so grateful for the environment that our showrunners Cecilia Peck and Inbal Lessner, and our supervising producer Morgan Poferl, created that made editing this show possible. Especially for a story as nuanced as this one, an honest and ethical approach in the edit isn’t possible without the feeling that you can safely express concerns and truly be heard. Cecilia and Inbal always made sure that was the case, and it led to spirited discussions that I think we all grew from and that also made the show as powerful as it is. They assembled such a brilliant team of people who care so deeply about this story and the people who lived and are living it.”
Kevin Hibbard (pictured): “In my career, I have edited many documentaries that have dealt with cult members and cult survivors. These are people who are willing to risk their lives and reputations to expose a harmful group and everything is at stake by doing so. And whenever I take on a project such as Escaping Twin Flames, sensitivity to their life and their stories are the first and foremost things on my mind. I think on a personal level, the experiences that have (given) me the ability to edit this doc really come down to just being human. We all have experienced the need to be loved or the need to have some feeling of connection in this world. And what that must feel like when that love or connection is manipulated to the point where you are abused mentally and physically, where you lose your financial livelihood, and where you lose family members. I really just kept putting myself in that position to completely understand what these survivors have been going through and still go through to this day.”
Can you comment on the way you developed the character arcs so they were clear and impactful?
Martin Biehn: “The character arcs were roughed out initially - as we understood them - and then the episodes were kind of formed around them as we figured out the parallel chronologies and which stories would contrast well narratively. The thing about this kind of work is, you’re doing the characters a disservice if you come in with too much of a preconceived notion. These are real people, with real depth and as such the characters evolved as we discovered more archival from the meetings and our own understanding of the larger picture increased. Flexibility is key in this type of editing because your understanding of the characters and narrative is always changing. You do the film a real disservice if you’re too married to your initial concept and you don’t let your footage guide you.”
Mimi Wilcox (pictured): “On my very first day working on Escaping Twin Flames, I watched the dailies of Elle making music at her laptop. I instantly thought, ‘Wow, Elle is so cool.’ Those kinds of initial impressions are so important as an editor; you bring fresh eyes and there is nothing more valuable than your first reactions to the footage. Inevitably, as you work for months on a project, your perspective warps, and it can be so grounding to return to those Day 1 responses. I made a note of all of the lines that made me laugh out loud, or lean into my computer screen, or take a pause to process. Of course, as the story evolves, you lose some moments and arcs that you have become attached to. But I was really pleased that in a small, subtle way we were able to build an arc for Elle through her music - and through her humor! In each of the episodes, her passion for music connects to the progression of her involvement in Twin Flames Universe, culminating with her joyful post-TFU experience in the end. Those small moments can do so much to help create a sense of connection with a character.”
Looking at the technical side, what was your workflow and editing set up?
Martin Biehn: “Having over 1,000 hours of archival, we relied primarily on our support team to process that tremendous amount of footage. Our story team of Kaitlin McLaughlin and Zoe Vock, our assistant editors Sebastian Enamorado and Langdon Van, our archival producer Jesse Hart, and our APs Nadine Bedrossian and Avery Fox, and even our supervising producer Morgan Poferl were up to their elbows in footage every single day, creating massive spreadsheets of clips, which we were able to search by keyword. Not much fancy software, at a certain point brute force is the only way to get through hundreds of hours of footage and actually understand what the footage is…Scripts can only tell you so much.”
Kevin Hibbard: “As a team we all utilized Avid Media Composer. It helped immensely because it was able to handle the collaboration between the story team, archivists, producers, assistant editors and the editors. We had hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage, all being utilized within Avid from members remoting in from New York while we were cutting locally in Los Angeles, and it worked flawlessly.”
Who were some of the additional contributors?
Inbal B. Lessner: “Cecilia watched a short film with unique animation she loved, which was created by Yukfoo, a company based in Auckland and Melbourne. We were very lucky to be able to hire them and to collaborate with them on our animation sequences and overall graphic design. Yukfoos’s Amy Neave and Alan Dickinson came up with innovative ways to visualize the internal and subjective experiences of the main participants and create scenes for which we had no other visual material. The series also features the results of our in-depth investigative journalism research - a great deal of documentation, including ‘insider videos,’ social media posts and private electronic communications. It was important to present all of these in a way that felt authentic but also ‘premium,’ meaning cohesive, clean and subtly stylized to help the viewers pay attention to the most important words in a dense document. Fish Eggs was the vendor who was able to take the Yukfoo designs and carefully execute about 180 VFX shots, with all the ethical and legal considerations, and get us to the finish line. We are also very grateful to the craft and artistry of cinematographer Matthew Chavez, composer Daniel Lessner, colorist Matthew Sakimoto and re-recording mixer Kevin O’Leary.”
Looking back at the completed series, what are your thoughts?
Martin Biehn: “Working on Escaping Twin Flames has changed my perspective on the harm that these kinds of cults can cause. It’s also opened my eyes to how fundamentally lonely so many people are in our society and the lengths at which they’ll go to assuage that feeling. The project has left me very grateful, not only for the experience and its success, but also for opening my eyes to a very real problem that I never really understood before.”
Mimi Wilcox: “I always tell people now that there’s a cult out there for anyone. None of us are immune to this kind of coercive control, and it is so important to be aware of it and recognize all the ways big and small these forces can appear in our lives. I am so in awe of all of the people who shared their experiences in Escaping Twin Flames, and I hope that the recognition the series has achieved will help shine a light on their incredible advocacy and finally lead to the shuttering of Twin Flames Universe and accountability for Jeff and Shaleia’s actions.”
Kevin Hibbard: “I just want to say thank you to all the members who have come forward and are still speaking out against this group. I know it comes at a great risk to tell your experiences, but hopefully your strength and courage will pave the way for others to come forward, and that viewers of this documentary will also spread your message that the leaders of Twin Flames Universe should be held accountable, and their harmful activities shut down.”
Inbal B. Lessner: “The team has said it all, but let me echo our most urgent wish. While we are deeply grateful to be recognized by our peers at American Cinema Editors (ACE), who awarded us last March for Best Edited Non-Theatrical Documentary, and by our Peer Group at the Television Academy for nominating us for an Outstanding Picture Editing Emmy, we truly hope that any attention generated by these awards will urge the authorities to investigate and shut down Jeff & Shaleia’s Twin Flames Universe and The Church of Union. The abuse must stop.”