Sandra Powers’ passion for editing comes through as she talks about her work for Disney Channel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Here, she describes how she discovered the power of editing through her film learning journey. That led to a discovery about how much freedom there is in editing animation. Finally, she details how music videos and experimental film have a big connection for her, and how that work has helped immensely with the creativity the show has, visually and musically.
The Contending: I was unfamiliar with Moon Girl before I was being pitched for this, and I was curious if she was a character you knew about or was she new for you when you started this project?
Sandra Powers: Oh, wow. I’ve been a fan of the Marvel Universe for a while so I actually was familiar with her character when I first heard about the show, but I wasn’t super familiar. When I got on the show I fell in love with her character, her world, and the entire idea.
The Contending: The show is very frenetic with Moon Girl constantly zooming around on her boots, and there are a lot of cutscenes within the battles. I’m curious what kind of challenges that creates for you as an editor?
Sandra Powers: It’s kind of incredible. So what’s interesting about the show is she is a superhero and it is really frenetic as you’re saying, and it is a challenge but there’s also so much heart in the show. Every episode has a really heartfelt message, and it has a moment that really is profound and deep and calm, so it’s finding that balance, which I think makes it so exciting to edit. It’s being aware that I need to find those sections within each episode where it is crazy, frenetic, and insane but also where it balances out with the gentler, softer, more intimate moments that she has in each episode. It also gives me the freedom to be a little bit crazy with the frenetic parts because I’m aware that I get to balance it out with the incredible story and and all the heart in each episode. So those frenetic moments are just helping escalate the drama that we’re going to get to later. That’s the way I see it.
The Contending: Another major aspect of the show is, of course, the musical numbers that you have in each episode, and I’m curious what kind of challenges that creates for you.
Sandra Powers: Working with music on the show is awesome and when the show is as musical as Moon Girl is we’re super involved in it editorially. It’s one of these things where the timing has to match the music so perfectly that we actually begin working with the music essentially in animatics and pre-production before we even get it to animation. As editors we are challenged with not just doing the usual kind of editing in animation, but we’re also music editing and working with the sound design. We have certain episodes where the actual sound design and sound effects play a musical role so all of the sudden we are creating a kind of rhythm within the sound effects to lead into the music. I adore it. It’s a fun challenge because we’re constantly trying to find that pacing and that music video sensibility within the episode. Which means that all of us have to be really strong working with music, which I think is a really fun thing.
The Contending: You mention music videos, and I looked up your page and it says you’ve done a lot of editing with music videos as well, and you’ve worked as a director and writer on short films. I’m curious. What’s got you interested in that side of entertainment, and does working on those help you with your work here?
Sandra Powers: Oh, that’s a great question! Absolutely! I went to CalArts for grad school and actually studied experimental film, and I realized eventually what I loved was music videos. At the time it felt like this was the only way I could make a really elevated experimental film– by putting it with music. So I kind of inadvertently fell into music videos and I started directing music videos for DeVotchKa and some Grammy nominated bands. I conceptualize them and direct them but then I also edit them. I can’t imagine not editing them because I see it so clearly, and I actually think that that has been such a profound help with working on Moon Girl. I’m bringing in all that experience where I’m used to music videos, I’m used to the timing, I’m used to having edits land in a certain way on the beat with the rhythm of the music. I’m just aware of that kind of pacing, that kind of energy.
Every episode has a mixtape/music video within it and I know exactly where that needs to go, and how to shape that and how to lean into that, and it’s kind of a vocabulary and a formula that’s really fun to play with because if you know you’re going to be getting into a mixed tape or music video you want to pad the surrounding areas of it in a specific way. Because you don’t want it to be just music video, music video, music video, you want to emphasize that section of it. We build each episode aware of what the structure is going to be, where we’re going to hit certain things, and how we’re going to get to it, how we’re going to amplify those moments once we get to them. Hopefully that makes sense!
The Contending: It does! In the episodes I watched I noticed that the music videos came at a certain point. But what I found interesting is that I could never call when the music video was going to happen. It would just appear and it would feel natural that this was the time.
Sandra Powers: Yeah, in Moon Girl it’s usually when she finally knows how she’s going to win, how she’s going to battle whatever nemesis she has in that episode. She has a revelation or idea about how she is going to do it. Whether it’s by herself or her and her team, they have a plan and it’s in that music video/mixtape that we see her execute that plan.
The Contending: Yes, and it always looks very creative mixing the music video aspect with animation.
Sandra Powers: It is pretty awesome. The show is just phenomenal and everyone is so amazing. We have such an incredibly talented team of artists, and it’s fun for me as an editor because every single mixtape looks different in every episode. I think every single episode is uniquely tailored based on the character, the story, the moment. It’s so fun because as an editor you never know what kind of animation you are going to be working with. Is it going to be more fluid or is it going to be more staccato? Are we going to be a bit more jagged on the timing on this one? So it is a fun challenge because you never know how it’s going to go.
The Contending: Looking over your filmography a lot of your editing work has been with animated TV shows. Is there something particular about those kinds of shows that speak to you, or is it something you’ve been more trained in as an editor?
Sandra Powers: I really love animations and I watch animation a lot for fun. It’s actually one of my favorite genres in the world so it makes sense I’m drawn to it. There’s something kind of beautiful about editing animation. It’s very special, it’s not like editing life action. You are so much more involved in animation than you are in live action, at least in my perspective. Because in animation you’re not just post; you are helping build the show in production and in pre-production. You begin with the radio play, which is essentially what everyone listens to when the board artists start boarding, and you can add sound design to it, You could already start creating the tone and the mood that they’re going to be drawing to. So you’re helping to shape it from the very beginning how they’re going to create the show.
Then in the animatic you’re continuing to create, and what I love about it is that you’re not dealing with footage like live action, you’re dealing with frames, and it’s crazy how two frames can actually make a difference. But you can’t think about it that way in live-action. It’s a very specific thing to animation that we can go inside a scene and cut and people won’t even notice because animation just stitches itself together in such a different way. You have this unique freedom to sculpt the way you edit in animation versus live-action. For me live-action actually feels a little bit more limited, though perhaps that is because I’m so used to the animation world and used to playing with the editing the way I do. But I think it’s just a really different animal. It’s almost like two different worlds, you can’t compare them. You have to put yourself in a different state of mind when you’re working in animation. What I love is that you’re not grounded so you can have a creature with a sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before. You can mock up something rough. Then of course the incredible sound team is going to get inspired and take that to a whole other level. But you can start implementing all the seeds of ideas for everyone to go crazy with their imaginations.
The Contending: You mentioned you went to school to do experimental filmmaking. What was it about editing that it became such a major focus for you?
Sandra Powers: It’s really funny. When I was in high school I painted a lot but painting wasn’t fulfilling me so I kept creating weird sounds on a little tiny cassette player and I kind of messed with them. I would do this thing where you’d have my painting and then I played a sound with it. I didn’t realize at the time but I was trying to sculpt emotion. That’s what I was trying to do. So then I go to art school and I’m required to take a video class because t was part of the foundation year and video editing was one of them and iMovie. I became obsessed with iMovie. I was like a crazy person who just wanted to work in iMovie. I was creating horror films in my dorm room by shooting twine and it was a horror film solely because of the editing. The second you change the music or put red lighting on or add sound design and start editing it you are manipulating the emotions and you’re creating a scene. I was like, wow, editing is so powerful, it’s crazy. I think I continued this love I had with editing even when I went to Caltech to study experimental film and film directing.
I continued realizing that I just loved being in the editing room, manipulating the footage, knowing that I could cut it and help shape it and take it into the direction it needed to go. I think it was a natural progression that I ended up in animation, editing, and being in the zone that I just love being in. I always talk about with my team that it’s not necessarily a technical thing–it’s part technical but so much of editing is subconscious-based. You’re editing and you’re in your zone and you’re literally thinking how long do I hold on this beat. There’s no logic to it, like, there’s no formula, you just have to feel it, you just have to understand what’s happening and where to go with it. You need to be so in touch with what you’re thinking and feeling in that moment. So you just have to listen to your little voice a lot, and that is a space that I just love being inside. I think experimental film has a lot of that also where you’re just in your own zone listening to that weird little voice in your head. They’re both combined within the same realm to me.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur can be streamed on Disney+.
