Jay Cassidy Finds More Than The Silver Lining

WEBN Staff Photo

By Darian Harvin 2-22-2013 

Most people cringe at the thought of video editing, but not Jay Cassidy. He looks past the notoriously tedious duties and finds the beauty in making all the pieces of a compelling film fit together perfectly.

“It’s just take out the bad parts essentially,” says the “Silver Linings Playbook” editor. That’s how he describes his job to WEBN Boston today in Los Angeles.

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence star in the film which was shot in suburban Philadelphia, but Cassidy worked out of Santa Monica.

“We would receive the footage and start putting scenes together. I never met Dave before starting on this movie. I didn’t meet him until we finished shooting and [he] came back from Philadelphia because he was already there when I was hired. “

He quickly caught on to director-writer David Russel’s style. Russel would rewrite and shoot different versions of the same scene. Cassidy views the editing process as an extension of the writing process.

Cassidy finds moments of clarity rather than dead ends when editing an entire project. His job allows him to play a part in setting the tone for the entire film.

He’s a storyteller, so the emotional moments and the climatic scenes that touch the viewer, do the same for him.

“It is all rooted in telling a serious story, and if it’s serious and truthful, it can be funny because life is that way. So with that kind of mandate from David, that is how we approached the film.”