Bio

Michelle Harrison

Michelle made her first short film while in college and has been working as an Editor for fiction features, shorts and documentaries ever since.

Originally from Canada, Michelle received the prestigious Canadian National Apprenticeship Award for writing the short film RE:ACTION while completing her undergraduate degree at Queen’s University. She then went on to co-direct and co-edit MY WITHERED TOMATO FRIEND. Although a student film, it was selected to be in general competition at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival.

The short film’s success lead to graduate school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where Michelle fell in love with editing and found herself editing many of her classmates films along with her own.

After receiving her Master’s degree, Michelle stayed in New York and began her editing career working as an Assistant Editor on documentaries. These included work at Maysles Films as well as on the Academy Award Winning feature THE LINE KING. She then moved into fiction features working with luminary feature editors like Dede Allen, Craig McKay, Zach Staenberg and Lee Percy on films such as COP LAND, PRACTICAL MAGIC and SALT.

Michelle was promoted to Associate Editor on BOYS DON’T CRY directed by Kimberly Peirce which won the Academy Award for best actress for Hilary Swank. Michelle then moved to Los Angeles to further her career in Hollywood. Other directors she worked closely with include Philip Noyce, Paul Schrader and Mary Lambert. She also continued to work on documentaries enjoying the challenge of creating a story through editing.

In 2014, she co-edited CAKE directed by Daniel Barnz and starring Jennifer Aniston and left Assistant Editing behind. The film earned a Golden Globe nomination for best actress for Aniston as well as several other awards and nominations. After CAKE, Michelle was brought on as Additional Editor for CREED directed by Ryan Coogler. She then went on to edit the feature MIDNIGHT SUN directed by Scott Speer, 3 seasons of CHANNEL ZERO from the showrunner Nick Antosca and one season of TELL ME A STORY with Kevin Williamson.

For Michelle, editing is very much like solving a puzzle. The goal is to evoke various feelings in the audience by finding and then piecing together the best performance using the right timing with the most interesting aesthetic. Whether it’s laughter or suspense or deep emotion, if the audience is feeling something, than she has succeeded. She looks for projects that allow her to use her imagination and intuition, not always following the rules, looking for authentic, grounded performances, to create maximum emotional impact. With this goal in mind, Michelle has been able to work on a wide variety of projects from comedies to thrillers to dramas.

In the last five years she has edited several features including AFTER (winner People’s Choice Award, Best Drama), TO ALL THE BOYS, ALWAYS AND FOREVER directed by Michael Fimongnari (winner MTV Movie and TV Awards, Best Movie), LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT directed by Vanessa Caswell and THE STRANGERS Chapter 1 & 2 directed by Renny Harlin for Lionsgate.

Her most recent venture has been working with Vanessa Caswell again on REMINDERS OF HIM, a drama for Universal Pictures.

As a former national level competitive swimmer, Michelle still enjoys swimming laps in the morning to relax and reset as well as taking long walks with her dogs in the hills above Los Angeles.

If you want to learn a little bit more, check out her column from Cinemontage: https://cinemontage.org/tom-tykwers-run-lola-run/

CONTACT: HTTP://WWW.MIRISCH.COM/ 310-282-9940