Simone Smith, an award-winning Canadian film and television editor based in Toronto, has carved out a significant reputation for her nuanced approach to shaping narrative. A graduate of Vancouver Film School’s Film Production program, Smith honed her craft through commercial post-production before solidifying her focus on dramatic storytelling at the Canadian Film Centre’s Editor’s Lab in 2014.
Known for her ability to navigate a diverse range of genres and tones, Smith's work has consistently garnered critical acclaim and industry recognition. Her credits include the celebrated feature films Firecrackers and I Like Movies, both of which earned her the prestigious Canadian Screen Award for Achievement in Editing.
Currently, Smith is editing Chandler Levack’s second feature film, Mile End Kicks. The project boasts a notable cast including Barbie Ferreira (Euphoria), Devon Bostick (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), and Jay Baruchel (Goon).
Set against the backdrop of the early 2010s indie music scene in Montreal, the film is poised to tap into a vein of millennial nostalgia. "I'm so excited for people to see this film!" Smith enthuses. "This is a time a lot of millennials are currently nostalgic for, so I think a lot of people will be delighted to see their youth be brought back to life." She describes the film as "funny, moving," and highlights Barbie Ferreira's performance, stating, "Barbie Ferreira delivers an incredibly complex and vulnerable performance. She is a star!"
This isn’t the only high profile project that Smith has worked on. Firecrackers received widespread praise following its TIFF premiere, with Vulture notably naming it one of the best films of 2019, while I Like Movies was recognized by Exclaim Magazine as the #4 best films of 2023.
Smith's additional feature work includes Never Steady, Never Still, Goalie, and The Queen of My Dreams. On the television side, she has edited series such as SYFY's SurrealEstate, CBC's Strays, Amazon's The Lake, and the recently released Netflix series Bet.
A member of both Canadian Cinema Editors (CCE) and the American Cinema Editors (ACE), Smith is frequently sought after for her insights into the editing process. She has spoken on numerous panels at major festivals including TIFF, SXSW, and the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, sharing her expertise on crafting compelling narratives.
Smith recently offered a glimpse into her creative process, particularly the intricate task of editing projects that blend comedy and drama – often referred to as 'dramedies'. For Smith, flexibility is paramount when tackling such tonal shifts. "I think it’s important to be flexible and I change my approach to each project depending on its specific needs," she explains. "How I cut comedy, drama or action are totally different. It’s really fun when you start mixing different tones within the same film."
This mixing of tones necessitates a delicate emotional balance, a skill Smith describes as intuitive. "A lot of it can come from intuition, and you get to a point in the process where the film starts to tell you what it wants," she says. The timing and placement of humorous moments are crucial; a joke, while intrinsically funny, must serve the narrative and emotional arc. "You can have a joke, and the joke itself works, but when you watch it back you think, is this really a time where the audience wants to laugh?" Smith notes.
"There are moments when a joke can undercut the drama, which can be really effective if it’s done by choice, or it can ruin an otherwise good scene. It takes a lot of refining to see what temperature each beat needs to be."
Developing this intuitive understanding of story and character, Smith believes, is partly a result of deep immersion in cinema. "I think part of this has been from ingesting so many movies across my entire life, that you learn some of it by osmosis," she said.
Experience further refines this instinct, providing a reservoir of knowledge to draw upon when common storytelling issues arise. Despite years in the edit suite, she finds setting up the narrative the most consistently challenging phase.
"Setting up the story is continually the hardest part of nearly every project," she explains. "You need to convey so much information at the top, but it also needs to be entertaining and draw you in so you keep watching."
Smith also comments on Toronto's enduring role as a centre for independent filmmaking. While acknowledging the "rich legacy of boundary pushing filmmakers" like David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Patricia Rozema, Clement Virgo, and Sarah Polley, she highlights an exciting new wave of talent emerging. "Now we have a new crop of exciting voices making a big splash on the international scene like Grace Glowicki & Ben Petrie, Alicia K. Harris and Bec Pecaut whose beautiful short film Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail? just played at Sundance," she says, anticipating their future work.
