Bandra boy was an assistant editor of film that won 7 Oscars

Mumbai: Apart from the two stellar Indian wins at the Oscars — 'The Elephant Whisperers' and the RRR song 'Naatu Naatu' — a family in Bandra celebrated the trophies presented to a movie featuring their son as assistant editor.

The film 'Everything Everywhere All At Once', which won seven Oscars, including one for editing, had 30-year-old Aashish D'Mello on the crew. Aashish was an assistant editor to Paul Rogers, editor-in-chief. The other assistant editor was Zekun Mao. Aashish's father, Denzil D'Mello, a lawyer in the Bombay high court, and his mother, Ruth, live near Mehboob Studio in Bandra.

Reacting to the win, Aashish said, “It was surreal to be in the room while history was being made. We all worked so hard on this movie, and seeing the incredible reaction it's got from audiences, critics and now from the Academy, is so rewarding and makes all the hard work worth it!” He said, "My journey from Mumbai, a city so tightly connected to film history, to Los Angeles, the centre of Hollywood, has been crazy. Growing up in Mumbai certainly fuelled my love for movies."

Aashish got a bachelors in mass media degree from St Xaviers College and worked in the city before going to Los Angeles. "After graduating in 2013, I interned at the post-production arm of a reputed company. I was an assistant editor there, working on multiple commercials, as well as on the film 'Mardaani'. I learnt Avid editing software on the job," he said.

Aashish joined the American Film Institute’s editing programme in Los Angeles in 2015 and graduated in 2017. He is based in LA and has worked on many short films that were screened at film festivals.

Much of the editing for 'Everything...' was done remotely during Covid. "We were entirely remote for most of the editing process. Filming completed in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Because the situation was so unfamiliar to everyone, we had to get creative," he said. "The directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, like being very hands-on with the editing and visual effects process, which meant including them in our workflow. The footage was shot in multiple formats, which added to the complexity of editing with it as well as doing visual effects on it."