01/24/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 01/24/2025 07:58
Image Source: Sundance Institute
"The Perfect Neighbor" premieres at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th, offering a visceral look at the consequences of Florida's "stand your ground" laws.
Told entirely through real-life footage - including police body cameras, dashboard cameras, Ring cameras and more - the documentary transports viewers to the center of a seemingly minor neighborhood dispute that slowly becomes something much darker. Director Geeta Gandbhir explores the complex, tense dynamics between a small community and the legal system in this uniquely American story.
Editor Viridiana Lieberman used Premiere Pro to experiment with a unique structure and manage the range of sources with different frame rates, sizes, colors and more. "The magic of Premiere Pro is how easy and seamless it is to work with so many different types of media," Lieberman said. With multiple lengthy police interrogations to comb through, Lieberman also relied on Speech To Text to streamline the process, allowing her to dedicate even more time to creative storytelling.
Read on for an inside look at making "The Perfect Neighbor."
Geeta Gandbhir (the director) and I have worked together on many things, dating back to my very first full editing credit on a feature documentary. We've explored so many different conversations, themes, and approaches together, and this film took that creative exploration to a new level. This film is a personal project for Geeta, and I couldn't be more honored that she trusted me with it.
I was on vacation in Idyllwild, CA visiting friends when my phone buzzed with a text from Geeta saying to call her when I could. At the break of dawn, I sneaked into the bathroom to avoid waking up my wife. However, my efforts proved futile, as moments later, I found myself cheering with tears in my eyes, and she joined me in the moment. This is such a specific and unique film in its approach. To have Sundance recognize it is wonderfully validating and encourages us to trust our instincts.
I love watching raw footage and my obsessive heart will always start by watching it all, chronologically in most cases. I'll take handwritten notes along the way to capture initial thoughts as I experience it all and then I'll begin to organize the project in whatever way feels most intuitive to that story. I'll create a set of keywords according to the project and mark up the footage and then it's time to fill the wall with the dream-machine index cards. I'm a passionate believer in the card wall, assigning colors to theme, character, structure…etc. Those cards will start to go up as I begin to make selects and roughly assemble the building blocks throughout all of the material.
There is an event at the center of our film where all of our sources of media come together to create an almost real-time experience of what happened from many perspectives. There was immense responsibility in choosing where we were for what moment between an abundance of police body cameras, dashboard cameras, 911 calls, neighborhood ring cameras, etc. It is so raw, heart-pounding, and then heartbreaking. No matter how many times I worked on it and watched it, I still found myself gripping my seat, tears swelling.
The magic of Premiere Pro is how easy and seamless it is to work with so many different types of media. All of our sources were different frame rates, sizes, colors-you name it. The solutions were embedded in the application to make these elements work harmoniously and made swift work on things like a temporary blur and to lighten up some rough darkness in the night footage.
For this project, we only needed to use Premiere Pro. It was a relatively straightforward edit, though I will note that the new transcribing feature, Speech To Text, was a game changer for navigating interrogations. It saved so much time.
Try Speech To Text! It took me way too long to start playing with it, and it is truly real-world magic.
Even though documentary is in my heart, my inspirations have come more from narrative work. I was very drawn to Kelley Dixon's editing on "Breaking Bad " and films from Lynne Ramsay, Céline Sciamma, Denis Villeneuve, Lynn Shelton, Steven Soderbergh, Robert Zemeckis, and many more who have captured emotion and an experience of story. That pushes me to follow the footage in every project I get the privilege of being a part of. Expanding the scope of the feel of a project while staying true to an attention to detail that harnesses a compelling narrative. Particularly one that is striving to be an effective tool for the world.
My top advice go-to's that I share with others (and also to hear myself say as a reminder) is to trust the process, and it all counts. I could never have foreseen the path I've taken to get where I am. What projects I would meet, what collaborators would become family, and what profound moments I've witnessed our work create in the world. Magnificent emotional highs and creative soul-searing lows-such as working with teams who have lost sight of why we do this or being a part of projects that were shut down for one reason or another. We all still dream of what could have been. I've taken lessons from every single opportunity that now inform everything I do. The process is never-ending, and we are so lucky to be a part of it.
Image Source: Viridiana Lieberman
I've had larger setups and smaller setups. As I started traveling more while directing, my setup got more and more mobile, and I've never looked back. I do find myself in offices plugged into those wonderfully massive setups here and there for collaborative work sessions, but these days, I'm primarily editing on my laptop plugged into an external something wherever I find myself and that has given me the freedom to even edit in the woods - which I strongly suggest everyone do at some point.