Awards Daily talks to Shōgun editors Maria Gonzales and Aika Miyake about Episode 10’s “A Dream of a Dream” and cutting the most challenging sequence of the series.
Watch one episode of FX on Hulu’s Shōgun, and you’re immediately struck by the editing. Just as Lady Mariko (Anna Sawai) threads communication between Portuguese-speaking Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) and Japanese-speaking Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), the editing, too, provides a crucial cross stitch for audiences, making a simple conversation in multiple languages riveting.
In the finale, Episode 10’s “A Dream of a Dream,” editors Maria Gonzales and Aika Miyake reveal how they approached the showdown between Blackthorne and Toranaga in what they call one of the hardest sequences of the whole series for how it combines a dream, tension, and a reveal.
“It was trying to get the right tone, getting the flashback to [Blackthorne’s] dream working properly,” said Gonzales. “Also, at this point, Blackthorne’s Japanese has gotten to a certain level. Plus, Muraji (Yasunari Takeshima) reveals who he is to Blackthorne even though we’ve known all along. There were all of these little beats in the scene that were important to get right. This is one of their last interactions. At one point, we had a lot of music in that scene, but ended up stripping it back.”
“Another challenge is there’s a fragility in where Blackthorne’s mind is and the flashforward,” said Miyake. “I haven’t really seen this done in periodic TV shows. We are trying to show that he is choosing his own fate, and Mariko was there to guide him. In the end, we nailed the perfect balance, but to get to that balance of feelings, that was difficult.”
The episode starts with what appears to be a premonition of Blackthorne as an old man, but both Gonzales and Miyake know it as something else completely.
“I know that opening seems like a flashforward,” said Gonzales, “but I think it’s his own personal reflection on who he came to be. He arrived there to conquer this country and looked at everyone as barbarians and savages, and eventually, he came to respect the culture and the people he met along the way. It’s more of a reflection of what he could have been rather than who he became.”
Miyake, who grew up in the region where legendary samurais Taiko and Toranaga lived, never thought about it as anything other than a dream because she knew the real-life history.
“I know the William Adams, who Blackthorne is based on, stayed in Japan and had a family. He definitely left his mark in Japanese history, so I didn’t really think about whether he ever went back [to London].”
Even though Lady Mariko is gone, her presence is felt throughout the episode; when Toranaga finishes her poem, there’s a space in the background where Lady Mariko would have been. Saving space for Mariko was something the editors were very conscious of in scenes between Fuji (Moeka Hoshi) and Blackthorne.
“When I cut the scene of them at the house,” said Miyake, “I really wanted to feel the absence of her space and stay in the wide shot of them sitting from the back, emphasizing that emptiness before cutting to Fuji. She always gives amazing reactions. That scene was particularly special for me for sure.”
Collaboration between the editors proved to be key throughout the series, as the two would frequently discuss the show on car rides to work. That shorthand really came in handy for the final episode.
“We ended up sharing credit on Episode 10,” said Gonzales. “We worked very closely together. From the get-go, we established a good relationship even before we started. We were working with the same directors and discovering the show alongside each other. Once the footage started coming in, we discussed how we felt about the performances. A lot of it was the same shooting style.”
Both editors faced many challenges across the series, with Miyake having to edit down a 100-minute episode to a digestible TV format and “let go of some of the precious moments.”
“That was something that was heart-wrenching, but we had to cut it down to 55 minutes. We did trim a lot of stuff, but ultimately we just have to let go of some of the scenes. That was really, really difficult.”
For Gonzales, her plight was a bit like Blackthorne’s; she, too, didn’t speak Japanese,
“We had a really diligent crew and all the translation and subtitling was done in the cutting room for us so we could be flexible with it in the cut as well. Thanks to our assistants, I was able to approach the show as if it were in English. But it took a while to get used to the cadences of Japanese, and for the most part, I was trying to use my own intuition building scenes the way I would in English. That was one of the bigger challenges. I used Aika as a crutch for the Japanese at some point.”
Shōgun is streaming on Hulu.
