Rodrigo Brazão On Editing ‘Selena: My Mind and Me’ With Delicacy and Respect

We have seen an innumerable amount of behind-the-scenes documentaries chronicling the private lives of superstars, but Selena: My Mind and Me is a truly intimate look at how one star puts her personal mental health first. In order to become the best performer that she can be, Gomez takes the admirable steps that some of us don’t know we need to take. With countless hours of footage, editor Rodrigo Brazão had a wealth of videos and images to pull from, but he knew that he needed to honor Gomez’s personal journey.

Near the beginning of the AppleTV+ doc, Gomez is heard saying, ‘This is the most important tour I’ve ever done.’ As a viewer, we automatically imagine what is at stake–not just financially for everyone on Gomez’s team but for the performer’s own personal happiness. Brazão reveals how he felt the pressure going into the editing room.

“We had tons of footage, and we originally needed to focus on more than the tour,” he said. “We have the Revival tour from 2016, and that was actually what the movie was going to be about. When she had the breakdown and canceled the tour, that all changed. We stopped filming for two years, and it shifted to a film about mental health. Since she is a public figure as well as a very famous singer and actress, people don’t always connect with her because she has that level of fame. For us to bring more humane moments were the biggest goals for that. We wanted to show all of her vulnerability, and that helps people connect with her in ways they never thought they could. It was hard to balance what we should show and what we shouldn’t. We needed to be mindful of her privacy and how much to explore. We needed to find that sweet spot.”

This documentary does not shy away from true emotions, but it’s always curious to walk that line of showing the truth without being inappropriate. We never want to offend anyone involved, especially with the sensitive topic of mental health. How does an editor know when to cut and when to let the camera reveal?

“Since we are dealing with mental health and that can be triggering for some people, it’s more about adding enough that we need,” Brazão explains. “There is a scene near the end where she has a lupus flare-up and she cries, and she is in a lot of pain. It’s a very vulnerable moment for her, but we need to show how she is feeling. Since she was really in pain, we didn’t want to dwell in her physicality too much. It would be too invasive. When you have so much good stuff, you are tempted to show everything, because you want everyone to see it. That’s when editing becomes very hard. If you don’t need it, you have to let it go. Specifically when I watch a scene, I will find an idea from a scene to hold onto and you build a scene around it. If it doesn’t fit what you want that scene to be about, you have to release it.”

The opening sequence is impressive for how much Brazão introduces to us. We get a sense of Gomez’s level of fame, and the tone is light as she jokes with costumers and rehearses on stage. After Gomez steps into private quarters, however, she is hard on herself and she needs team members to lift her back up. It’s a sharp turn that we don’t expect so early, but it is a representation of how your darkest moments can sneak up on you.

“We wanted to get into the state of mind that she is going through,” he said. “She is happy an having a great time–those rehearsals are going well and everyone is cheering her up. But then it changes, and no one can cheer her up. On another level, we wanted to show how truly great of a performer Selena is. When you watch a music documentary, you expect it to be about her music, but that’s not the route that we wanted to take. We wanted that change to happen quickly to show that dramatic change.”

When we see Gomez’s ‘Lose You to Love Me’ become a worldwide sensation, it is a joyous section. Brazão stiches together moments of Gomez greeting her fans with home movies of her as a youngster as well as publicity tour footage on talk shows. All the while, we are hearing the song playing on top of that. Since it was a true milestone in her music career, Brazão wanted to show that happiness.

“Our idea was to have to her realizing that it was a moment to share some sadness and vulnerability with her audience, and the way to do that was with her music,” he said. “At that point, she already has her bipolar diagnosis, and there is the scene where she gives the speech at the McLean Hospital. She is connecting with those young women there, and that was the start of her sharing more. It felt very pivotal. Before that, she was very contained in her feelings, so doing the song was, I think, very cathartic. We see her crossing that bridge. We didn’t want it to be a happy moment necessarily as cathartic. It is, to this day, her biggest hit.”

Director Alek Keshishian is no stranger to delving into the private lives of global superstars. His Madonna: Truth of Dare from 1991 revolutionized the genre of behind-the-scenes documentaries, and Brazão was eager to talk about what he learned in his collaboration with him.

“Alek has a very specific ideas for the scenes, so it was helpful to work with him to flesh that out,” he said. “He has a keen sense of everything having a purpose in a movie. We aren’t doing something to show something. It has an intention and meaning. It was a challenge because some scenes are longer, and he wouldn’t want it in the film since it didn’t go along with the story. I would watch the movie and try to cut things or re-cut them. As an editor, sometimes you would get a scene that would work in a longer format, but Alex would ask us how much we wanted to show. He would film whenever, and so, for instance, you would be walking through a door and there was a camera there. That was a great experience to learn how to cut out things that didn’t belong.”

Selena: My Mind and Me is streaming on AppleTV+.