Editor Jack Hessler shares how open dialogue helped shape the edit on Jean Jacket, why he stepped into producing, and how he's finding flow in both work and life.

Where are you from originally, and where are you based at the moment?

I grew up outside of Boston and now live in Salt Lake City, but I’m currently in Dallas for a film festival. I originally got into filmmaking from making snowboard and skateboard videos. This led me to start editing action sports documentaries and branded films, but over the last couple of years, I’ve put a lot more of my focus into cutting narrative films. I’ve basically become a full-time editor.

Are you still snowboarding competitively?

I’m not competitive anymore. I was, up until a couple of years ago, but it just takes so much time. And the older you get, you're like, what do I really want to be spending my energy on? I think for people who have had aspirations with a sport, it can become really hard to let go of the dream. I didn't want to ruin my relationship with snowboarding by trying to be too serious about it. So a couple of years ago I got back into doing it just for fun, and now it's amazing. I live in Salt Lake and I edit full-time, so I can go snowboard for a few hours in the morning just to enjoy life. There’s no pressure to make it my job.

Jack snowboarding in Utah. Photo: Joshua Poehlein.

It’s a lovely passion to have. I imagine when you're in it, you're not thinking about anything else, you're completely present, in the moment.

Completely. When you're snowboarding, nothing exists except for trying not to hit the tree in front of you. It becomes very intuitive, you don't have time to react logically, you're just in the feeling. And I feel like it's the same with editing: when you're really in the flow and in the zone, you’re not connecting data points in your brain. You're just moving like a poem. It’s one line to the next, you don't quite know exactly why you're doing it, you’re just following the thread.

How much of your post-production collaboration happens in person?

I still always love being able to sit down with the director. But I feel like at this point, especially on more commercial or branded films, those are almost 100% remote for me. And then occasionally, if it’s a passion-project film, especially if the director’s in Salt Lake, then we might sit down together to do it.

When did you first start using Louper?

I started using Louper around April 2023. I feel like the whole workflow has improved so much just since I started using it, and now it's just pretty seamless. I use the Transmit plugin for Premiere: you send the link, click a button, boom, and it's ready to go.

AnnaSophia Rob as Jean Jacket.

Let's talk about Jean Jacket. It’s such a cool little film! The lottery is a fascinating thing: you pin your hopes and your dreams on it, it's like the answer to all your prayers.

Yeah, it is kind of a symbol, it’s the only thing that can get you out of your situation. There’s always this idea in screenwriting or story structure: what does the character want versus what do they need? And the question, even for Jean Jacket, is: if she wins the lotto, is she gonna be happy? And maybe there's something deeper there that she's still having to work through.

The actress, AnnaSophia Robb, was really magnetic.

Yeah, just the feeling of that real innocence, with this hardened, beat down by the world, wise-beyond-her-years energy at the same time. 

Jean Jacket anxiously checks her numbers.

What was the origin of the story, and when did you come on board?

Max and Lucy Nebeker are twins who wrote and co-directed it together. They grew up in Utah, adjacent to that modern-day cowboy, Western world. So they know a lot about it, and they had these really cool, dark films about grappling with being a modern-day rancher and the problems that they face, but with more of a horror lens, set in these isolated wilderness ranches. They call it “Rocky Mountain Mythology”. I’d seen their films and connected with their style, and we had always talked about finding something to work on together. They became friends with AnnaSophia, and then received a grant from the Davey Foundation, an organization based in Salt Lake that gives grants for short films. This was all last summer. They called me, “Hey, we're trying to hit the first festival deadline in August. We're going to shoot at the end of July. Do you think we can cut this in two weeks?”

I was just like, yeah, I think we can make something super cool. And I have a lot of experience in post-supervising and post-producing as well, so I could basically take the footage all the way through to delivery. I just really liked the script, and I wanted to make it happen.

Jean Jacket dreams of what she has lost.

How much freedom did you have in your first assembly?

Lucy and Max both edit as well – I think they had edited all of their own films before this. So this was their first time working with an outside editor. And Max had put together the very first assembly just to get the sense of it, and they had storyboarded the film with illustrations. So I get all the footage and then reorganize the project to what makes sense for me. And there's a fair amount of VFX in this, and shots that we needed to composite, like there's one shot where there's just a hand reaching into frame and you're like, what are we doing here?

That looked great actually, that was really nicely done.

Yeah! Our production designer, Meg Cabell, did such a cool job on the miniature. So Max was in Salt Lake with me. He was just coming into my office, and Lucy was in New York. We would get into the office early in the morning and have our coffees and then we'd load up Louper and Max would be standing there at my desk, and Lucy was on the stream. And we just cut together for the next seven days.

Did you find that Lucy enjoyed seeing your timeline or did she just want to see the full-screen output?

I think Lucy really appreciated seeing the timeline because she is an editor, and so she could understand what's going on. With some other directors, it feels like it doesn’t matter as much to them, but for the most part, I feel like people like seeing the timeline and it helps contextualize stuff. When we're talking about where we really want the music to start, it makes more sense when you can see the timeline versus just watching and guessing where it's really lined up on the frame.

I can imagine it’s hard for a director if you've never worked with an editor before. Now you're having to voice the things that you normally just feel and do.

I think since we're pretty good friends, we could just be honest with each other. They were awesome to work with together. And as an editor, I have learned not to take things personally. Any pivoting from an idea is never about the person. We were all just committed to finding the best version of the edit. 

The whole collaboration process changed the film. There were a couple scenes where we had shot stuff that on paper seemed really cool. Then once we were cutting it, they felt drawn out and we were like, do we actually need all this? There was one point where the camera's looking at a gun and there's the barrel right here and it's spinning. And we spent a couple hours figuring out how we wanted to play this part. We tried really punching into the barrel, we tried superimposing different frames into the barrel… we were able to explore, watch it with the VFX, and then watch it without real quick. And then ultimately, we really trimmed that whole scene where she's loading the barrel, and it went from a 30-second moment to a 15-second moment. 

6: the number of bullets in Jean Jacket's revolver.

They’d shot a bunch of match cuts of her shooting cans, and it's in different times of day. In the script, it was a super cool idea. But then as we were cutting, we were like, what if every time she shoots, it just flashes to four frames of her dancing? And that was just one of those things we never could have predicted, we just found it by being there together. I don't think you can find that answer just from notes. You have to just be open and find it through conversation and experimentation. Who knows what the film would look like if we weren't able to have the conversation as we were cutting? You get to explore ideas that you haven't really thought of yet, the person you're talking to gives an idea that's building on your idea – you can never find it alone.

Shooting cans, day and night.

That's awesome. And in your process with Max and Lucy, did you share uploaded files on Louper?

Once we’d finished for a day, we'd upload a cut to Louper. It was super helpful to be able to step away, because we'd been in tunnel vision for the last 10 hours. We’d look at it in the morning, jump into a room and talk through the notes on a call with fresh eyes. That’s one of my favorite parts about being able to talk about notes versus just trying to interpret words. It’s like texting versus calling, texting can be so passive-aggressive. And you're like, what's really bugging this person here? And I feel like with notes, it's always about interpretation. 

With clients or directors they'll find a problem and be like, “this isn't working for me," and they might try to find the solution. But that’s not their job: it's our job to find the solution. So we have to be able to interpret the notes beyond just the words that they are writing, and that gets us back to conversation.

You can't always fix the problem in a static cut, because you don't know what the other options are. You don't have the footage in front of you to see what else could work .

Yeah, especially when you get close to the end of a cut and then there's still notes, it's a domino: the whole point of this scene was calling back to the thing we set up at the beginning of the film. You know, every piece of the film is so cohesive. So it's really just being able to talk about what it means if we're making this change here? How does that affect the rest of the film, and does it still work? Or can the problem we're having here be remedied a different way? Maybe it's the song. Maybe it just feels melodramatic.

Megan Byrne as Karli, wishing for "a little something fancy".

I see that you are a producer as well as an editor on some of your projects?

Yes, I produced a handful of documentaries, and I’m actually at the Dallas Film Festival right now for a short I produced and edited. And I produced my first feature last year, a film called Mouse by Kenny Riches. It's going to premiere at the Brooklyn Film Festival next month. (Update: it won Best Narrative Feature at Brooklyn in June 2025!)

It really all started from just wanting to edit narrative features: I wanted to get to the point where I could cut features full-time. And the way to do that is either be an assistant editor at a post house or just find the right editor and be their assistant for 10 years, or just start cutting small indie films. And so I was like, if I can produce this film, get this feature off the ground, then let me edit it. And that happened. And then I cut two narrative features last year.

That sounds like a really fun route to take, because you're able to take the film all the way from writing the script to final delivery. Which of your films will be showing at Tribeca?

I’ve had films premiere in smaller festivals, but I cut two films in Tribeca this year, Jean Jacket and Kites. Kites was a really special film because it's a narrative film, but there was never a script. It was the first feature from the director Walter Thompson-Hernández, and it was my first feature as an editor. We really approached it like a doc, which the majority of my experience was up until this point. Instead of a script, Walter had developed some character arcs, cast his friends to play the characters, and let the story evolve over five years of shooting. We edited over the last two years, and were really finding the story as we were cutting. We've been so deep in it, we're like, “okay, this is connecting, it's working emotionally for me”, but we haven't really shown it to anybody else. I'm excited to hear how people feel, because we believe in it and we love it, but you never know what anyone else is gonna think.

Daniel Fernando do Prado Dorea Lima as Duvo, in 'Kites'.

Compared to Jean Jacket, Kites is a really different film, but maybe they are both building my taste for these darker, but hopeful, stories in such different styles. And I'm excited to see how those festivals differ from the smaller festivals. 

I love the idea that the universe will put the key in the door for you, but you have to open the door. In my case, yes I’ve got some films in Tribeca, but nobody's gonna care, nobody's gonna do anything for me. It’s up to me to build off of this moment and create momentum out of these small little things that we're blessed to have happen. I want to cut narrative features full time, but so do a lot of other people. The only difference is… I’ll work harder.

Overlooking the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Duvo consults his guardian angel, Phil.

Jack Hessler is an editor and producer, based in Salt Lake City.

Check out Jack's site, and view the trailers for Jean Jacket and Kites which both Premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.

Jean Jacket was written and directed by Maxim Nebeker and Lucy Nebeker. Kites (Pipas) was written and directed by Walter Thompson-Hernández. Kites was selected as the Special Jury Mention in the Viewpoints category at the Tribeca Film Festival, June 2025.

Jack edits on Premiere Pro, using Louper Transmit to stream his live sessions.

Visit our setup guides for detailed instructions on how to stream from Louper Transmit.

Watch the full interview with Jack Hessler on our Youtube channel!