Born and raised in Bengaluru, Varun Viswanath has been nominated, along with Patrick Tuck, at the 76th Emmy Awards in the category, Outstanding Picture Editing for a Single-Camera Comedy Series for the television series ‘Reservation Dogs’.
‘Reservation Dogs’ is an American comedy-drama series created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi. The series, which first aired on Hulu, follows four indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma. It is currently streaming on Hotstar.
Varun who is now based out of Los Angeles, edited short films directed by Kannada film director Hemanth M Rao (of the ‘Sapta Sagaradaache Ello’ fame), before going on to study film editing at the American Film Institute (AFI), a conservatory in Hollywood.
At AFI, Varun edited eight short films and interned as an assistant editor on a feature documentary at Varsity Pictures. His thesis film ‘Samnang’ (directed by Asaph Polonsky) was nominated for a Student Academy Award, and premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2013.
He then worked on Ravi Kapoor’s first feature, ‘Miss India America’.
‘Arrested Development’, ‘I Am Not Okay with This’, ‘Florida Man’ and ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ are some of the TV series he has edited.
‘What We Do In the Shadows’ earned Varun an American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Award nomination. He later received the ACE accreditation (highest honour for a Film Editor).
Speaking about the kind of relationship he shares with his directors, Varun says, “I find myself often feeling like a therapist or a cheer leader to the director. They feel the entire weight of the project on their shoulders, and a significant portion of that stress comes during the editing process. That’s when you really know if you have your movie or not.”
Varun wishes the directors talk about their editors and the relationship they share more in public or to the press. “I think it’s a key relationship and process that is so integral to a film. But even people in the industry don’t fully understand or appreciate it,” he tells Showtime.