Editor Ralph Jean-Pierre is a relatively new kid on the block who got his big break with M. Night Shyamalan’s horror / mystery series Servant. Based on his work on that series, and a hearty recommendation from Shyamalan himself, Jean-Pierre took a leap into the neo-noir world of Tokyo Vice. Jean-Pierre edited episodes three and four, and then came back to cut the final two episodes as well.
Based on Jean-Pierre’s outstanding work on all four episodes, it’s hard to imagine that his agent’s phone isn’t going to start ringing at a faster clip. In his four episodes, Jean-Pierre shows great expertise at managing a variety of pace, while never losing dramatic flow. He also edits for performance at a very high level–trusting the actors to deliver on a show chock full of outstanding thespians.
In our discussion, Jean-Pierre and I discuss how he got this opportunity, what he did to fit in with the show’s set style while adding his own personal touches, and the heavy weight of closing out a great show’s final two episodes of the season.
Awards Daily: Your first series work as an editor was on Servant. So then you take this move to Tokyo Vice, which is a pretty different show, built in this neo-noir space. How did you go from here to there?
Ralph Jean-Pierre: I was in L.A. for a long time, but after working on Servant, I transitioned to moving to the East Coast. I needed my first East Coast New York job, and my agent set me up with Tokyo Vice producers Brad Carpenter and Alan Poul, and we interviewed really well. Alan spoke to M. Night Shyamalan, and he gave me a great review, and they gave me that chance to jump in. I feel my background and living in Japan helped and having some knowledge of the culture really helped, but I’m honestly really thankful that Alan took a chance on me just from Shyamalan’s recommendation.
Awards Daily: The template for this show was set by Michael Mann in the first episode with his direction. He’s a very particular stylist, right? I’ve been so impressed by how the filmmakers that have followed have been able to keep that same feeling. When you were thinking about this show established by this incredible director, and how do I fit in and make sure that my cutting is matching what came before.
Ralph Jean Pierre: Honestly, you hit it on the head. After watching the pilot and seeing what Michael Mann did, I was like all right, keep that in the back of my mind, but still do my own thing. Episode nine, when our team is in the reporter room and they’re figuring out the FBI situation connecting with the Yakuzas, I literally thought of Michael Mann. Our DP had the camera moving and it gave that energy. So in my mind, I thought how do I keep this going to keep that energy flowing. At the same time, I like what our director (Josef Kubota Wladyka) was doing where we slow down the tempo, slow down the image. Our characters are so amazing in what they do. Once you sit on them and let them do their job, it made it easy to cut and stick with a lot of those slower and more paced shots. I think one of my other challenges was episode ten, Sato’s ascension. We had an ascension in the pilot and I was like all right, how do I follow that? We’re in the same room. We gotta kind of get the same story. The first one moved around a lot, this one we got to breathe. We got to sit with Sato, sit with these characters, and really live in the glamour of the ceremony. That ceremony was 20-30 minutes long by itself. How do I turn that down to two to three minutes? I thought of Mann, but honestly, I appreciated what our directors were giving us room to change the tone of the show.
Awards Daily: The episode where the architect and Rachel Keller’s character are meeting at his house and you have this sort of dance that they’re doing. She does like him and he really does like her, but she’s also got to do the classic almost Hitchcockian thing where you run off to the bathroom, sneak into the office and get the file. How did you approach that scene to maintain character and also keep that sort of classic suspense trope going too, and I mean trope in the best way.

Ralph Jean Pierre: It’s funny, for that scene, I actually had to break it down beat by beat. I had to kind of focus on Samantha, what is she giving us, her journey, navigating through the room. We know she likes him, we know she’s into him, but I need to show her torment, her fighting what she needs to do. I remember breaking it down with Masahito (Takayuki Suzuki) tracking him and tracking her. I think for me, having the song there really helped tie everything together where we can see their intimate moment. I remember when we started this song, I’m focusing on her face. She’s struggling with this situation, this decision, but for some reason she loves this connection and the song really helped us slow down and take this time. By the time she peeps in his room and runs away, we feel that guilt, feel her torment. She has to do what she has to do. She’s here to save her club, here to save her girls. She hits it off and Rachel gave me such great stuff to work with. It kind of made it not too difficult to navigate that. A little insider in that scene though, is the song we chose. Initially scripted, we had something totally different that was actually baked into the script, baked into production, audio, and it flowed. However, it just felt a little too slow. I’m a big fan of The Weeknd, and listening to his last album, I was in a deep dive and noticed that he covered the song that we ended up using. I played it on my radio, watched the cut at the same time, and I was like this works perfectly. Her movement was in sync. I didn’t have to do much, so I was able to sneak that in and it ended up being such a hit, a city pop song from back in the day, that even my music supervisor was happy.
Awards Daily: We’ve seen this in shows before, but the cut that you made when they nearly bump into each other in the hallway after Samantha leaves Masahito’s office, the timing was exquisite. When you edited that down, did you say oh, we got this right away, or was that hard to get that right?
Ralph Jean Pierre: I had to work a bit on that feeling. My scene was even longer, having Samantha walk down and the timing of the chopping, the timing of her taking the photo. Does he see it? Does he not see it? And so forth. Fortunately, I had that one take. I’m thankful for my director, Joseph, that I was able to end tracking him all the way around and bam, they’re right there together. It did take a little bit of digging and shaping, but we had the material there.
Awards Daily: There’s also the sequence where Hayama and Sato go to the gun runner to buy guns and he doesn’t have the guns at the time that they get there, which of course for Hayama is a no go. That scene is very dark because the character’s home is very dark. Cutting that sequence that turns very violent in so much darkness and then making sure that people could tell what was going on, was that particularly difficult because you knew you were shooting in such a dark sequence?
Ralph Jean Pierre: Fortunately, the slight darkness helped us out because part of that scene was shot during pickups and we had to reshape. That scene lived in temp for a while as we needed more pickups to show the action and the punching and the stabbing and the eventual killing. But our cinematographer actually enjoyed having that darkness. Especially when we’re tracking Sato (Shôw Kasamatsu) going to the bathroom, coming back, and then it’s just creep level. Right there. It’s like wait, where is everybody? These guys were just here. What’s going on? I think once we hit that bang, when he comes around the corner, I felt that’s when we’re now in Sato’s world. Because we were kind of lost in the moment, in Hayama’s world and this guy just kind of in the back watching. I’ve found that I like to use some dark and light where I bring my characters in. There are many scenes even from Mrs. Tozawa where she’s in the dark and comes to light, so this was another one for me where we’re starting kind of moody and I’m making sure I can keep my audience placed where everybody is, who’s who. And then hopefully, when the chaos started, everything’s tracked. I did a couple of tricks, a lot of editorial tricks to flip a shot, flop a shot, move this, move that to make it all work.
Awards Daily: Tokyo Vice could easily be thought of as an action series, but it really kind of isn’t. It’s a show about culture, about crime, and then it has occasional action sequences. A fantastic one that was pretty short that you edited was the chase scene at the school, when Eimi’s brother comes to take away her boyfriend’s son. Even though it wasn’t a very long sequence, what you’re doing is creating the stress level of this predatory concern that all parents fear, which is somebody coming to pick up their kid who shouldn’t be picking up their kid. It tells an emotional story too, about how the father deeply cares about Rinko Kikuchi’s character (Eimi), but my son has to come first. You told that in the editing, I thought.
Ralph Jean Pierre: You know how you mentioned it was kind of short? It was longer. But again, we realized the longer it was, you lost that intensity in that scene. We had involved a security officer chasing and more things happening, but no, we needed to narrow this down to just Shingo (Soji Arai) and Kaito (the brother) and that relationship because that’s what it really was all about. What is he doing? We saw him in that earlier scene going through the school photos. Where is he going with this? And once we’re there, I needed to build up that tension, build up those moments, build up those looks. And I think it flowed very well. The young boy was so good with his “Who are you?” and getting slapped. As a father myself, honestly, I could feel that. I remember I wanted to feel him. Shingo doesn’t know it’s his son for a moment from afar. But once he hears his son screaming, that’s immediate. Any parent, bam, we’re going straight after. No holds barred. I don’t care who it is. That’s my kid, don’t touch him.
Awards Daily: The sequence where Jake (Ansel Elgort) goes to the high level FBI agent (Lynn Oberfeld played by Geraldine Hughes) and plays her to get the information that he needs to know. The decision about who’s face to focus on, whether you’re focusing on the person reacting or the person speaking, how do you make those decisions? Because it’s really key in how the scene plays.
Ralph Jean Pierre: When I start my first cuts, I usually cut with dialogue on a person’s face, back and forth just to get what’s happening. But as I continue to build the scene, I start pulling back and sitting with the reaction. I remember on this scene, I went close up early on, but I felt like no, I need to pull back more and keep this between Ansel and her character. It wasn’t until towards the end when they hit the punch. That’s when I went close up, “You listen to me you little shit”. That’s what really, really hits. It really matters. So honestly, seeing her face receive the information that Ansel has, and seeing that she’s stuck in a corner, was really all in there. And that’s all I felt like the audience needed to see. We don’t always have to tell everything. Our audience can see the expressions. Our actors are amazing, they’re giving you everything and while you’re still receiving the information you’re getting two at the same time. You’re receiving and feeling what she’s feeling at the same time and back and forth with Ansel because he knows he has her. He has that great smirk. He comes in with that ace card ready to pull it out. I love how it flowed and even with our DP where we start on the side a bit, we had our profile shots and then bam, we’re able to get head to head tight and really play that Western back and forth shootout between them.
Awards Daily: You had episodes three and four, and then you have the last two episodes, nine and ten. You close out the season. So, I think there’s probably a very different perspective you’re taking when you’re in episode three and four, which is the building process to the culmination of the series. Tell me about how you looked at episode three and four and then went okay, now it’s time to ratchet it up for nine and ten.

Ralph Jean Pierre: I think for me, the pressure was how do we end this massive story and close every question, close loopholes, but still keep the audience interested and satisfied. As you know, endings of many seasons can tear up an audience left and right, so that was one of the biggest things I had to deal with. With nine and ten, for me it was actually exciting to tackle that area, because now we have all the information that we’ve been building upon. We’ve played all the pieces. All the chess pieces are out, everything is there, now we get to do our final moves and honestly I just took my time. We did block shooting, so I didn’t have a lot of time. It was honestly a rush to get nine and ten’s first cuts out. For me, I think it was just attacking each scene and each storyline and making sure I gave every character, every B story, C story, D story, their full arc in there and making sure they were connected from what we saw in the beginning. From three and four to nine and ten, I put a lot of easter eggs that connected towards the end. It’s one of those things where if you pay attention, you’ll catch some of those answers and questions that I know we laid out from the beginning. Another challenge when it came to nine and ten again was that even though, as you described, this can be an action show, it’s more pace and drama. Nine was the penultimate episode that had that big shootout. However, there was so much information we had to give, and therefore that’s where we honestly had to rearrange these episodes a lot. The ending of nine was originally the beginning of ten. At the ending of nine, initially, Mrs. Tozawa just pulls up, Hagino comes out of the car and says we need to talk. That’s it, cut to black, but we felt like that cliffhanger did not satisfy. We wanted to close out this chapter so our audiences feel complete and that kind of helped shape some of our decisions like how do we track what our characters need to go through and what information they get that still makes sense and still resonates with the audience once they have to wait another week for the next following episode.
Awards Daily: IThere is a moment in episode nine where one of the reporters is attacked and it happens very, very quickly, just like that. You barely get a chance to figure out what happened before it comes to you and then you don’t stay there too long. Then you move to the raid of the apartment. You barely had the chance to understand the consequences of what had just happened before dealing with these new possible consequences that are coming forward. I’m assuming it was a very conscious decision to not let the audience catch their breath there.
Ralph Jean Pierre: Yes, that is very true. At this moment, this was like, bam, everything is converging all at once. You know, Tozawa’s audit, we had TinTin getting stabbed, the attack on Chihara-Kai and later on Tozawa showing up to Jake’s place. So it was supposed to be a bang, bang, bang move. But also, how do I show that? How do I show all these three things happening at the same time? That’s where the sense was like all right, we’ve got to keep this going for the audience. So, when I was building the shootout, that was honestly a major challenge. We had the Tozawa gang coming up, Chihara-Kai inside, Jake and everybody upstairs. You have levels of things happening. How do we track all these things happening at the same time and keep people believing that everyone’s still at the same place at the same time. For me, it’s how do I take this massive scene and break it down? And that’s what I did. Every level had their own thing. I focused on Jake and Sato and what they’re dealing with, hiding upstairs, and then having to creep downstairs. Dealing with our Tozawa gang coming upstairs and tracking down the people that break off. Once I had all my pieces, I was able to start intercutting. That way I could keep the pace. I’m like okay, bang, bang, bang, slow down. Bang, bang, bang, slow down in a sense. My editing is like a puzzle. I love to have my pieces everywhere. Once I could start placing them and seeing how it builds, it makes it a lot easier. Of course, we reshaped those scenes over and over, even changed where things happen until our final cut. But that’s how we wanted to bring it. Let’s keep the audience at the edge of their seats. Then we’ll pull back, let them breathe, but then boom, no, we can’t.
Awards Daily: You had mentioned the ceremony and you’d also mentioned earlier the use of music. The final ceremony with Sato has these pounding drums and you pace it so slowly, like every layer of clothing. going over him, so that you could feel the significance of this moment of this ascension. When you are editing and you have music that you have to deal with that is very much in the foreground, how did you think about this scene as going slow while these drums are just driving at you at the same time.
Ralph Jean Pierre: Well, actually, I edited the scene in reverse, with no music. Sato getting robed was its own scene, the speech was its own scene. And initially I was intercutting him getting robed and the scene, but I felt like we wanted to really sit there with him because this is a job he kind of doesn’t want. It was a heavy toll. In episode one, we saw him placing the clothes. We saw him as the person giving, but now it is him. And we wanted to sit with him with that weight. So when it came to the music, as I built, I had an initial temp track that our composers, Saunder and Danny, gave us. I played with the temp track to kind of build the pacing and build the feel and the energy in that room because that speech is just so powerful. As I mentioned before, it is a long 20 to 30 minute speech, which was actually taken from a real Yakuza ceremony. I wanted to give it as much of its honor as I could. That’s why I lifted the best lines or the most poignant lines to tell the story. Once I was able to lay down all those pieces, our composers came in right after me and honestly laid their thing right afterwards. And I didn’t really hear the mix of that until sitting in the final mix room. I was like whoa, okay, this came together amazingly.
Awards Daily: And then conversely, you have Tozawa’s final scene. You cut to his back, you cut to his face, you cut to his front, you showed him slowly undoing parts of clothing to complete the ritual that he was backed into a corner and had to complete. I think it was better that you didn’t, but it’s an interesting choice to not show what he actually does, and then just see the aftermath.
Ralph Jean Pierre:This is maybe a philosophy where not showing was stronger than showing. Showing it would have been like okay, it’s done and we’re outside. Oh, this is what happened. But I kind of wanted to give a little David Chase/Sopranos finale/we’re out of this. What happened? Our POV character is gone. So that’s where we wanted to lift that and make it much more powerful. So when you come back into the room, it really did happen. It also, beforehand, left a did he, did he not sense. Hagino’s still in the room. What’s happening? Is he really gonna do this? Is this really the end? And honestly, I felt it was more powerful not to show that there.
Awards Daily: Did you personally feel the weight of doing nine and ten, of closing out the show? That’s obviously pretty heavy. I mean, the only thing that could probably be heavier is doing the first episode of the first season, maybe.
Ralph Jean Pierre: Oh, the responsibility was heavy and I sure did feel that weight. But honestly, I’m very thankful for my producer, Brad Carpenter, who gave me the time I needed. As I said, we had block scheduling. Had to do both back to back. Having my assistant, Noriko, helped. I had her cut maybe a scene or two here just to keep the dailies flowing. ‘Cause again, we had a crunch time to get it all together. I dig into my dailies all the time. When I receive a note or a change, I will go back and comb through the dailies, comb through footage. Because I do that, they knew that I was going to do my best to choose the best performances, the best take. Every single one of my cuts matter to me. I pay attention to every edit, every frame, and honestly, it was me just digging down, headphones on, locked in my living room, and really focusing and producing the best I could for these last two episodes. As you said, it was heavy, but working with Joseph on all four episodes, since I was his editor for all four, it does help. By that time we had a language. We were like left and right brain, where I understood what he wanted as a director, and by the time I got to my producer’s cut with Alan and JT (Rogers–show creator), I was still able to translate their needs and find the looks, the footage, the beats, that they’re looking for. It was one of those things where it was heavy on my mind, but it was just a matter of sitting down and taking it day by day, beat by beat, cut by cut, scene by scene, and the higher ups allowing me the extra time I needed to finish the edit.

Awards Daily: I want to talk about the final scene between Jake (Ansel Elgort) and Katagiri (the great Ken Watanabe). You do this thing where they have this little back and forth about can you just count to ten without thinking about other things? And then Jake/Ansel can’t do it. He doesn’t get to three, probably. He walks out of the room and then Katagiri thinks, I wonder if I can do it? And then all you do is you just focus on this great actor’s wonderfully expressive face. And the show ends with him grinning at his own failure. Was that just a delight to say, I don’t really have to do a lot here, but let it rest?
Ralph Jean Pierre: Twofold. So the work, honestly, was finding the shot. We had multiple endings. I think it was JT who said, can we find him a smile? We just need to find that smile. And of course. I went right back into dailies, every single take, every single reset, and again, getting to edit Ken Watanabe’s footage is a dream. As a young person, The Last Samurai was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Getting to edit him was amazing. Once I found that shot, I was able to sit on him and he laughed right at the exact moment. I actually held it right up until he broke character. So it was just the perfect timing. It did take a little bit of digging to find it, but once we found it, honestly, if I don’t have to cut and I can leave it there, I will leave it there. When you have great actors who give you great performances, there’s honestly no need to cut or change. Like I said, every one of my edits serve a purpose and a story.