CR 048: Editor Wax Taber: ‘I find reality much more interesting than anything that can be written’
The Emmy Award-winning editor discusses her latest project, PBS’s “The Class,” and her love for long-form documentaries.
Growing up, Wax Taber didn’t have her sights set on a career in post-production. In fact, she wasn’t entirely sure what she would do. “Everyone, when they’re in their teens, thinks there’s this grand plan,” she says. “You do this, then you do that, and it takes you here and then you end up there. And that’s not how it goes.” As a child, she took daily classes in acting, dancing, singing, and scene study, all under the watchful eye of her stage mother. When she finally got the courage at 16 to tell her mother that she didn’t want to pursue acting and modeling, she was kicked out of the house. And yet, as horrible as that experience was, it was those years of classes and activities that led her to where she is today.
“From age 6 to 16, while other kids were playing, I was going to classes,” Taber says. “I had all of this knowledge, [I figured] I might as well put it to use. It’d be a shame to not do something with it.” After seeing Michael Moore’s 1989 directorial debut Roger and Me, Taber decided to pursue a career in documentaries. A coveted spot as a video journalist at CNN enabled her to try out a wide range of roles, and it was there that she developed a passion for post-production.
“I fell in love with editing,” she says. “I realized that for long-form documentaries, the real directing is in post. It’s once you get into edit [that] you see, what have I captured? And how can we authentically present this story in an entertaining way? I just went, ‘This is home. It’s everything I want.’”
After a decade at CNN, where she worked as Senior Editor/Producer on a wide range of projects, including Larry King Live and Piers Morgan Tonight, Taber left the network to freelance, and in the years since has edited numerous unscripted series and features, including Netflix’s Down to Earth with Zac Efron, Peacock’s Preaching Evil, and HBO Max’s Gaming Wall Street.
Her latest project is PBS’s The Class, which follows six high school students and their college adviser over the course of the 2020-21 school year. Executive produced by Daveed Diggs, the series offers a poignant glimpse into an unprecedented time, while serving as a powerful reminder of the importance of mentorship in education.
I recently chatted with Taber about her personal connection to The Class, where she finds inspiration, and her advice to aspiring documentarians.
Most of your work focuses on unscripted projects. What about documentaries appeals to you?
Well, that’s a two-part answer. Answer one would be: I love reality. I was raised in an abusive household where I was constantly trying to figure out what the truth was in any situation, so finding reality was always a big thing for me. And I was such a nerd when I was a kid. I wrote a letter to Walter Cronkite, inviting him over for dinner. [Laughs] I’ve always been interested in the news and documentaries. I find reality much more interesting than anything that can be written. Most times, when I’m doing a documentary about something completely insane, I end up turning to the director and saying, “If this was written as a script, the viewer would say, ‘That would never happen. That’s totally unbelievable.’” And I love that.
But the second answer is—remember earlier I was saying I wanted to put into use all of this scene study and character development that I had learned? Well, I was interested in doing scripted, and that’s where those skills would have come into use. I specifically wanted to do scripted comedy. However, in the world that we live in, people will hire you for the experience that you have. And because I started going in this documentary route, this is the road that it went on and it’s very hard to go the other way. There are a few amazing editors out there who can jump between [scripted and unscripted], and I don’t know how they’ve convinced people to allow them to do that. I’d love to be allowed the opportunity to do that, but it’s just not how the world works.
You’ve shared on social media that The Class is particularly important to you. What about it made such an impact?
This is the little project that could. This series is so special in so many ways. It is a series that will never happen again, not like this, because it was a perfect storm of obstacles that ended up creating these beautiful moments captured in really bizarre ways. People were isolated in their homes, so we got this very intimate look into their lives without the cameras in their faces half the time. We were all going through the same thing at the same time, in front of the camera and behind the camera. So that makes it special in its own right.
But my personal connection is still so moving to me. So, Mr. Cam [college adviser in The Class] is the main character. He works for the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) out of California. And there are programs like this all over the country. I, myself, am an EOP/EDP Educational Development Program student, and you think that would be the connection, but it’s crazier than that.
I was homeless in New York City. I wanted to go to college. I didn’t have any parents. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I graduated [high school] when I was 16. I skipped a couple of grades, and I went [back] a few years later and said, “I want to go to college.” And high school counselors are overwhelmed, so they just pushed a State University New York application in front of me and said, “Fill this out. Good luck.”
I was sleeping on friends’ couches, and I brought it to wherever I was staying. I realized I couldn’t fill out the financial aid forms because it required a parent and a home address, and I had neither. So I called what I thought was the financial aid assistance line and a man answered, and he stayed on the phone with me for a few hours. He was so nice, and he got me through the whole process. I said, “How can I ever thank you?” And he said, “Actually, you dialed the wrong number. My name is Will Ortega, and I am the head of the admissions department at State University New York in Fredonia.” And I burst into tears, because I hadn’t experienced that level of selfless kindness in a very long time, if ever. So I said, “How can I thank you?” And he said, “You have to choose four schools within the SUNY system. Make Fredonia one of them. Also, there is a program called the Educational Opportunity Program and the director of that program here at SUNY Fredonia, I’m going to give her your information. Her name’s Kathleen Bonds. Write an essay about your life and let’s see what we can do.”
So I filled out the application, kissed it, put it in the mailbox, and went on my way. I’m working till four in the morning, bartending, because it was the ’90s and you could bartend underage, and I’m staying on some person’s couch, and the person picks up the phone and says, “It’s for you.” I answer the phone, and he said, “This is Will Ortega. Where have you been? I have been calling house after house to find you. You’ve been accepted to SUNY Fredonia through the Educational Opportunity Program. You have 12 days to get up here.” And I burst into tears. I went to work that night and one of my regulars gave me a couple hundred dollars and said, “Buy a new life. I never want to see you again.” So I went to a Salvation Army, bought all new things, left everything from my old life behind, got on a plane, flew to Buffalo.
[Will Ortega] picks me up at the airport with a cup of McDonald’s coffee. I had no idea what this guy looked like. This could have been a scam, right? He brings me to Fredonia. The woman, Kathleen Bonds, director of the Educational Opportunity Program, told me later that I was a hot mess. I fell into her arms, burst into tears, and she helped me figure out where you get books, the meal program, and courses on how you study in college and what’s best practices and what to watch out for—all these things that the Educational Opportunity Program offers.
Will was there the entire time. He moved on to other universities within State University of New York, helping kids. He had been fighting his whole life with childhood diabetes and in 2023, there was nothing more they could do. Two weeks before I got the call for this job, I went to Buffalo to Will Ortega’s memorial. I came home and thought, “I really need to have one of my next projects be focused on helping students who don’t have support systems get into higher education and have the support they need.” Not financially, just emotional support, mentorship, confidence boosting. Two weeks later, I get a call offering me this job. That’s Will. That’s why this is so important to me. This is definitely one of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on.
You edited some of the episodes and also served as the finishing editor. Each editor undoubtedly has their own style, so how do you go about ensuring that the series feels cohesive?
They started editing this four years ago and then there was a hiccup, because there was feedback that viewers didn’t want to see anything about the pandemic. It was too fresh. It was too raw. Streamers, therefore, were like, “You don’t want to see this? We’re not going to show it.” Basically, whoever it was went to the directors and said, “If you can cut this without mentioning the pandemic, we’ll air it.” [That’s] tough for any documentarian, because you want to get your story out there, but you have to know when to say when. They were brave enough to say, “We’re going to shelve this.” They waited patiently and eventually enough time had passed.
So when everyone came back, it was the two original editors, myself, and another editor, and because so much time had passed, the story had changed. We now had hindsight on the pandemic and what had actually happened. We had had more time for them to go through archival and find those great news stories. So instead of it being a normal edit process, all editors worked on all episodes, which can be really crazy because everyone has their own style. Luckily, through the wonders of Slack, we were always in communication with each other. The directors would give feedback and say, “I love what was happening here. I love what was happening there.” And then we would try and emulate that.
When they brought me in to be finishing editor, it became a struggle, because editors are artists. You wouldn’t want somebody to come in after a painter had painted something and paint over it. But in order to create a feeling that this is one six-episode story, it had to be done. I tried to be as respectful as possible. I had to accept the fact that some feelings might be hurt. But if you want the series to be its best, then you’ll do what’s best for the series. And if the directors want it to be a certain way, then that’s how it’s going to be edited.
When you’re working on a project like this, what process do you take to find the actual story? How do you parse through the footage to figure out what beats you want to hit?
It depends on the project. On The Class, we had two story producers who had a lot of time with this footage to really think about the larger story arc. One story producer who I worked with the most would card out the story and all the sub arcs, and then we’d sit and talk about it, move things around, and throw things up in the air. It’s this wonderful collaborative process.
Once I lay it out in the timeline [points to monitor], we put the whole thing together. When it is a verité series, nothing’s manufactured, nothing is egged on. We’re just following what happens. If you just sit, it will tell you what it wants to be. And in edit, you have to go, “All right. You want to be this.” And sometimes you’ll be thinking this character is going to be our hero, but when you lay it out you start to notice character flaws, and you go, “So now what do we do?” We have two options: We can manufacture it so that we take out those flaws and we make it exactly the way we storyboarded it to be, or we pivot and go, “Okay, this is who the person is.” You just kind of abide with what the footage is telling you.
As an editor, are you constantly noticing edits or cuts when watching something you haven’t worked on?
What I like to do if I’m watching alone is, no matter how I feel about what I’m watching, I love to study what I watch. I watch things three times—the first time as a viewer, the second time for the editing, and the third time for story arc, character arc, all that stuff. With a series like Severance, I’ve watched each episode four times. There are documentaries I’ll watch over and over and over again. People probably find this incredibly unhealthy, but I watch about two, three hours of film or television every day. [Laughs] Because that’s research! When I hear somebody who works in this business say, “I don’t watch television,” I get a little thrown off.
When you’re working on a project, do you find yourself turning to specific films or TV shows to get inspiration?
I feel it very challenging when I am interviewing for any kind of project and they say, “What’s your style?” My style is, I want to emulate what it is you want. When I start a project, the first thing I do is ask my director, “What is it that you love? What is it that you want this to be like? Give me a list.” And then I sit for a week before I even start on the project and I watch everything that they’ve listed, and I take notes, and I climb into their brain so that I can understand what it is they want. So, for me, the inspiration is it comes from what inspires them. I am their artist to create the vision that they have.
Now, if they don’t have a vision... [Laughs] Like, the reason I loved Down to Earth so much was they went out, they shot it, they brought it back. I went to the executive producers and I said, “What’s the color story? What’s the tone of the voiceover? How do you want the story to be told?” They’re like, “Go for it. We trust you.” So I got to go for it. I did the music supervising, created the graphics, co-wrote the voiceover, was even in the tracking booth, coaching Zac [Efron]. All of it, beginning to end. [With] that kind of stuff, I pull from the things that I love and then I utilize the things that the footage tells me it wants.
There was one shot—it’s a static shot of a wall in France and there’s this guy that just walks across and off the other side. The first thing I thought of was Wes Anderson. I noticed that this was the eye of the DP. Symmetry was his thing. And I went, “Well, there you go. There it is.” And from then on, all graphics had a very Wes Anderson influence. So I let the footage tell me what it wants, and then I go, “This reminds me of ABCD.” Then I go back, and I watch ABCD, pull from that. But it all starts in the footage. If you try and force your view on something and it’s not what it wants to be, people will see it. They just will.
Now that The Class has aired, what’s next for you?
I have a lot of projects in the hopper, but one is a fully verité documentary called Brothers and it is phenomenal. The film was shot overseas by somebody that used to work on huge productions in the studio system and realized that all the red tape that goes along with it was hindering telling these very niche, special, and important stories that might not be commercially viable. So they got some freelancers to shoot this incredible documentary about people in their twenties suffering from PTSD and how they are caring for themselves without the assistance of their local government. And the reason they should be seeking help from the local government is because they got their PTSD through events that were caused by wars going on between their government and other governments.
What makes this film so special is these are very intimate conversations that could only be done with small crews, small cameras, run-and-gun style, which is, I think, the product of this new landscape we’re in in terms of filmmaking. We’re going back to that old indie style of, “We’re going to do it no matter what you say. We’re going to do it on a $5 budget. We don’t care!” Brothers is hopefully going to be a representation of what the future of art in this business can look like—not product, but art. The art of filmmaking, what it’s going to look like in the landscape that we’re living in right now.
Things are so different now than they were 20 years ago when you were at CNN. What advice would you have for anyone who wants to follow in your footsteps and work in the nonfiction storytelling space?
When I started, I wanted to create, edit, direct, do all of it, but we didn’t have this [holds up smartphone]. You needed to go rent a massive camera. You needed to have money; you needed to have access. I didn’t have that, so I went this route of learning every job along the way to get to the point where now I can do that, which is great. I love going out in the field and directing. And sometimes I see content creators now that are just taking their phone and they’re just going ahead and doing it. They’re just going right for it. And I think that’s amazing.
But my advice would be, please take the time to learn about the positions of all the people that are doing the jobs around you. Because as your career evolves, you’re going to get bigger and bigger projects, and the reputation that goes along with you as a collaborator, as a creator, depends on how you do your job. And if you don’t understand what everyone else is doing around you and you can’t, at the drop of a hat, pick up the boom, pick up the second camera, go grab a sandbag, then you’re hurting yourself. So I think, in a way, this [holds up smartphone] is a hindrance because it’s not forcing you to go through the gauntlet. Learn your craft. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it should be. [Laughs]
To learn more about Wax, visit her website.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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What a great read! We talk a lot about creators, but not enough about craft. Wax Taber’s story is a reminder that editing is authorship. And as storytelling gets flattened into templates and AI tools, the editors who carve clarity out of chaos are still doing the most human work in the room: listening.