“My biggest goal in anything I'm cutting, is to make sure the audience has some sort of connection to the characters.”

How to Cut a Murder

The scene most challenging to edit this season was the murder scene in episode one. I've never cut something about real people before, and I didn't want to be exploitative and insensitive about any of it. I wanted to make sure that even though this was a television show, the audience watching felt viscerally how brutal that scene was.

The thing about this show is that we don't know what's real. We can look at crime scene photos and know they were shot this many times in these exact spots, but it's that moment in the first episode. It was important to portray the murder as real as possible and get as close to the truth as we could, because in the rest of the series, we would keep going back and seeing it through other people's perspectives.

They shot it so that they could do a lot of takes with no blood on set, so all the gunshot wounds and shooting was added in VFX later. When I finished the first cut, I went back to count the shots and realized I was two short. It already felt so brutal. Adding those final shots made it hit even harder. 

Finding the Right Tone for the Show  

The edit evolved over time. Finding the tone of the show was always tricky, because there were episodes that were sad and hard to watch.

My first cut of the show was more serious than the version you see on screen. Carl (Franklin, the director) was adamant that we should lean into the funny whenever it existed, because the series was going to get really dark. We stayed in a few shots longer than we would have to let people feel the awkwardness of it.

My biggest goal in anything I'm cutting is to make sure the audience has some sort of connection to the characters. That's easily done with music in the right spots, or a longer reaction shot at a pivotal moment. What makes people love TV and movies is when they see something on-screen that reminds them of them.

The Animatte tool in Avid is one of the best things that exists for editors to play with footage. It’s about changing things around the actor so that you're focused on that performance, so that there's not a head turn in the foreground or a boom shadow across their face. Animatte is really helpful for a lot of things, for setting the pacing, for highlighting the best performance and not scrapping it because something was happening in the foreground that we don't like.

One of my favorite things about Media Composer, specifically to this project, is sound design. It was so important for selling my cuts. There's a scene where Erik is in a dream, gets up, walks into the room where he murdered his parents and sees the bloodstain on the pillow. There's no sound. We had to make it feel dreamy and interesting. So much of that was helped by the tools in Avid Media Composer like Audio Suite, Audio EQ, and lots of D-Verbs, that helped us enhance sound. 

Editor and Producer

I was nominated as an editor, but also as a producer. That's a whole new world for me. I feel very proud that the show overall got a nomination because there's something of me in every episode. I got to put my stamp on it. That feels really good.

This first episode set a tone in a world that people hadn't had access to. It's a story that we've not only heard a great deal about in the news media, but we've seen a lot of biopics trying to depict what happened. This was a really well done one.

It's weird to call it a fun show when it's about murder. Everyone brought their best to every episode, so the acting, lighting, production design, and cinematographer are incredible. Every shot felt like a still from a feature. I felt lucky to be working on it. Every day I opened my dailies bin and saw even therapy scenes that could be boring and they're lit beautifully and the acting is superb.  

From Reality to Scripted

I was very into documentaries. Once I got to college I was exposed to people making documentaries and I saw how much creative control the editor has in shaping the story. I liked that. I've always been a writer so editing feels like an extension of that to put puzzle pieces together and figure out the best way to tell a story.

I worked in reality and unscripted for 17 years before I moved into scripted. I've been on reality shows like Project Runway, RuPaul's Drag Race, and Keeping Up With the Kardashians. All the shows were starting to feel the same. I got an opportunity at Ryan Murphy Productions to work on 9-1-1, the first season. They only hired me for one episode because it was a trial for them and me. That first episode, something clicked. I knew I was in the right spot and that this is what I wanted to do. I love narrative storytelling.

My favorite thing about being an editor is the collaborative nature of it. Everybody thinks we sit in the dark room alone, but I'm in so many meetings. I'm constantly on the phone talking to the composer or music supervisor, my assistant editor or an editor on another episode. We're collaborative and always trying to make the best show possible. That's what I really love: the people I've met, the directors I've worked with. I've learned so much from them. 

The One Skill Every Editor Needs 

You can't cut on a network show or even a cable or streaming show without being on Avid. You can't assist me.  Very few things are cut on other things. If you want a career and longevity in this field, you have to know Avid.

I wish I'd had more kindness to myself in my early days. Anytime I got a note, I would beat myself up. The directors, the showrunners have it in their minds what that scene is going to be. If they say this isn't what I wanted, you just do the work. You can't take it personally because the whole thing is a collaborative process.

Tell people what you want or what your ultimate goals are. If you're an assistant that wants to edit comedy but you're in a drama show, let people know. The next time an editor from that show is going on to a comedy show, they remember, oh, this assistant loves comedy, let me bring them with me. People get scared to say what they want so you stay in the same place doing the same thing. I don't think I ever vocalized that I wanted to be in scripted television. I wish I'd thought about where I wanted to see my career in five years and that I'd spoken to people about it. 

About the Editor

Peggy Tachdjian, ACE, Emmy Award-winning Lebanese-American editor with 20+ years of experience across multiple formats and genres. Nominated for two Emmys for her work on Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. Recent credits include Only Murders in the Building (2 Emmy nominations), Shrinking (Apple TV+), American Horror Story (FX), and The Prom starring Meryl Streep. Her reality work includes Project Runway, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and Born This Way, earning her 4 Primetime Emmy nominations and a Daytime Emmy win for NBC’s Starting Over.