I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started PBS’s “The Class,” a six-part mini-documentary series that started airing in March. Directed by Jaye and Adam Fenderson and executive produced by Daveed Diggs and Nicole Hurd, the mini-series focused on six Deer Valley High School seniors and their college advisor Mr. Cam who is trying to help them navigate the labyrinthine college process in California, starting in 2020. By the end of the six episodes, I was deeply moved by the stories of these six students and counselors as they faced hurdle after hurdle over the year and a half of filming to get to graduation and into college.
I had the chance to talk to Wax Taber, finishing editor for the entire series and editor for four of the six episodes, about “The Class” and her own experiences in documentary work. She began her career working at CNN and spent over 10 years there, winning several Emmys and Peabody awards for her work. Since leaving CNN, she has worked on several films and television shows, including serving as lead editor and supervising producer for “Down to Earth with Zac Efron” for Netflix; editor for “Gaming Wall Street” for Max; and editor of true crime documentary series “Preaching Evil” for Peacock.
The story of “The Class” was very personal for Wax Taber since she credits the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) for saving her life and getting her into college. As a homeless teenager, she had been trying to call a financial aid center that assisted potential college students, but she called the wrong number. She ended up calling an admissions counselor at Fredonia State, instead of the independent financial aid office.
Instead of directing her to the right place or ending the call, he listened to her and helped her navigate the whole process of applying for college and financial aid. They talked twice a week and even picked her up from the airport in Buffalo. We’ll talk more about why her experiences with Mr. Ortega and other EOP counselors motivated her to work on “The Class.”
How did you get into editing?
I was an involuntary child actress. I didn’t want to be a child actress, but I had a stage mom. I come across as outgoing and vivacious, but I’m actually quite the introvert, and so it was an uncomfortable thing for me. I [went to a] performing arts high school for the drama department, but then as soon as I said I didn’t want to be an actress at 16, she disowned me. She kicked me out.
I had all that training in understanding character development and scene study. I knew I would put them to use someday. I was a writer. When I went to college, I thought, “Well, I’m gonna study journalism.” I love journalism. I love the truth of things. That comes from my upbringing of trying to navigate abusive households. I craved the truth of things.
The Video Journalist Program at CNN was my big break. Twenty kids get brought in out of thousands of applicants. You start as a floor director, a prompter operator, field tech, all that stuff. It’s like a paid internship. They allow you to try every job, follow around people and see what gets your interest. I went out and into the field. I was an associate producer. I did all these things.
I worked in the control room, and I immediately realized that I liked long form [stories] better than short form. I wanted to know every job that is underneath the director, so when I become a director, I understand what every single person is doing and how they do it. I said, “That’ll make me the best director possible. And I think editing is so important, so I’ll start with editing.”
So I started as an editor, and I got onto long form [work] at CNN. I was there for 10 years, and I only did social, environmental justice, and human rights issues. [Then CNN] got rid of their long form and I realized there was no future for me there. I thought I’d be there for a while but this is the universe kicking my butt out the door. You need to make a hard choice. I [still] wanted to do these long form documentaries so I started with these production houses as an editor.
The more I edited, the more I realized, if you are a good editor, like a lead editor or editor producer, you’re like a secondary director. If it’s unscripted, in the edit bay is where you shape the story. It’s where you do the story arcs. You find the midpoint, the dark night of the soul. You decide what the inciting incidents are going to be, all of these great things that form a beautiful story arc, that’s up to you. I really liked that kind of control.
I also like the art of it. I’m a musician, so I loved scoring it and working with the music and creating the style and writing the voiceovers. I got to write the voiceover. It was a real creative process where it seemed like the director in the field delegated. I said, “I didn’t want to do that. Okay, I think I’m going to stay right here.”
So there I stayed, and it kind of worked in my favor, because when I left CNN, I was a senior editor producer, and now [all] these years later, I’ve been lead editor, supervising producer. On the [project I’m working] on right now, I was the story producer and also the lead editor.
It’s so different in unscripted documentaries. You become a chef in the kitchen. I don’t need to be out in the field. I don’t need to be the farmer, growing the vegetables, raising the cattle. Just bring it to me and let me create something beautiful. I decided I’m happy right here, and it’s a thankless job, right? Nobody ever is screaming on the red carpet for the editor.
So how did you end up working on “The Class”?
There’s two theories as to how I got this job, and it’s up to you to decide which one is right. One theory was a dear female editor, a friend of mine, [knew] one of the directors. They asked her if she would work on it and she said, “I’m sorry, but I’m already booked, but I’d like to recommend Wax. She’s amazing, and I know she’s available right now.” [The directors and I] talked on the phone and went “We love each other. Yes, let’s do this.”
Here’s theory two: My Mr. Cam, the guy who rescued me when I was homeless in New York City.
[He had been] struggling with childhood diabetes his whole life. Two weeks before the job was offered to me, I was in Buffalo, New York. I went to his funeral. There’s a great video of me where I talk about what he meant to me and his wife is holding my hand. We’re both crying and I’m saying I’m so grateful to his family for sharing him with us students and helping us. I’ve advocated for any kind of higher education assistance programs like EOP ever since I got in. It’s been 30 years now. I was talking about how great it was and then all of a sudden I got this job. So that’s option two. That Will was somehow involved.
Why is “The Class” such an important series for you?
[Because] of the Educational Opportunity Program. It’s different in every state, but it usually always has the same initials. It’s a program that is part of the state budget. It’s not a large program and it doesn’t pay for students to go to college. It pays for counselors to be either in high schools or in colleges, helping disadvantaged kids move through the system including how to fill out your financial aid; [give you a place to stay] if you have nowhere to go on holidays, or [help] if you have to buy books.
It’s this amazing program. And even when I was in college in 1998, [the programs] were constantly under threat at losing their funding. And now, it’s so important, because now more than ever, usually both parents in a household are working — If you have a two parent household — there’s a lot of kids under the poverty line right now.
That was [what the story was] originally about. It was about this amazing college counselor, Mr. Cam [at Deer Valley High School in Antioch, California], who represents a very small average of counselors for students. Right now, the student to counselor ratio in the United States is 376 to one.
[Now] 70% of all jobs require a college education. It became really important to tell this story when these college counselors are constantly under threat of losing these jobs. They’re not doing it for the pay.
Then what happened is then the pandemic hit after they had already started filming, and then it became this whole other level of a story. With my EOP counselor, they didn’t just help me figure out the financial aid process and all that stuff. They also were a shoulder to cry on. They helped me figure out how to fill out a rental application. They’re there to mentor you. This became the role of Mr. Cam. He became their lifeline, especially for a lot of these kids, whose parents were first responder jobs. During the pandemic, they were home alone all day, if they had parents at all.
It was such an important story to tell because, unlike a lot of countries, I feel like the United States is not one of these countries that understands the importance of investing in the next generation. Investing in the future of the country means investing in the youth, and that starts with education and counseling services, not putting cops on your campuses. Not in policing, but instead in mentoring, counseling and parenting.
[“The Class”] ended up being an important window, which is going to age beautifully with every year that goes past as people rediscover this documentary series and remember what the pandemic was really like.
When did you get involved in the story? In 2020?
Some of the greatest stories are the ones that had the greatest struggles to get on air or become streamed. This one was one of them. The directors started filming this right before the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, they said, “We don’t know what to do.” Luckily, people who have been involved since the beginning encouraged Jaye and Adam to keep going.
They figured out a way through Zoom and [created] really safe COVID procedures. No one ever got COVID on any of the shoots. It was amazing. They were really careful. They had very small crews. So they kept going.
They edited the first episode. I don’t know the exact details, but whomever they were pitching it to said that the data shows no one wants to see programming right now that reminds them of the pandemic. It’s too triggering. It’s too soon. [They said] “We will take this, but only if you edit around the pandemic.”
A lot of the depth of this story is about the fact that [these kids and Mr. Cam] are trying to do this during the pandemic. It would be inauthentic to [edit out the pandemic]. So Jaye and Adam shelved the whole series, and they started working on something else.
In 2023, they finally got a bite from someone at PBS who was like, “Yes, we will do this. We will air this.” They got extra funding. PBS doesn’t buy [documentaries]. You get your own funding from grants. [But Jaye and Adam] pulled it off. Now it’s been three and a half years. By the time this series comes out, our kids will be now graduating from the colleges that they got into. I ended up thinking it was a blessing because it made the story that much richer.
[When I was working on the film,] I didn’t know if any of them had gotten into college. I didn’t know where they ended up after they stopped filming until I was done editing because I didn’t want it to influence my point of view as I’m editing.
How did working for CNN help with a story like this?
CNN was a blessing. I will always be grateful for my time at CNN. Some people call it CNN University. We’re united for life. You’re in the trenches, right? I joined CNN right at the beginning of the Iraq War. Whether it’s in a control room or doing these live breaking news programs 一 I also worked for CNN International 一 they have you rotate [positions], and so you get to see humanity unedited. You get to see the reality of life. It’s when I realized and appreciated how important that was.
I would get these interviews from the field when I worked on “The Freedom Project,” about human rights and human trafficking. I would get the raw footage and see people’s foot tapping, their hands shaking, and these extra little nuances that were happening as CNN were setting up for the live shot. You would not get it if the Director of Photography went out into the field and interviewed somebody for a documentary. CNN would have the cameras rolling for us for 20 minutes before they went to the anchor because they needed [interview subjects] on standby. You get to watch people and it became part of my style to show the before and the after [of the interview]. It really developed that style of showing the authenticity of the human condition.
I remember back in journalism school, and then also when I started CNN, they made you take an oath of impartiality. No human can be completely impartial but it’s to be as humanly impartial as possible. I bring that journalism outlook into my pieces, and even if I have sympathy [for the person on film], if they’ve got an ugly side, I want that to show as well. I love giving that impartiality. I hate it when I’m seeing a documentary where you can tell that the person was sculpted to be in the image that they want to present, versus just presenting them as they are flaws and all and allowing us to love them anyway.
In “The Class,” [the kids are] sitting in their bedrooms, where they’re hanging out with their siblings or [walking around]. There’s something more authentic about it. Their guard is down. They’re less influenced by the cameras. They’re more focused on their life. You get a truer story, a richer story.
I mean there were some really heavy moments in the series like that one scene caught on the microphone.
We under edited that. The reaction and the sound was more visceral. We’ve given the viewer enough that they can fill in the blanks. It was a pure accident that the audio guy was still recording [during a particularly traumatic scene]. Adam and Jaye were more concerned about [the kid involved].
This is the reality when I went to performing arts high school in New York City. In the four years I was there, six kids died. It was NYC in the late 1980s; this isn’t the city of today. You hear people say this all the time: “I just never thought it would happen to me.” The directors were there; they were filing this as it happens. It makes “The Class” so special. Unlike a lot of unscripted series 一 yes they’re manufactured because people realize it is for entertainment purposes 一 but “The Class” is purely unfiltered. There were no readings that happened; there was no coaching; there was no line feeding. It happens, it happens. I’m just like, “My god, this is like a tragic window into these kids’ lives.”
The interesting thing about this series that I find so special is [the directors had to figure out how to film them]. They have an amazing director of photography and a very small crew, and they just went out and they did it when they could. They used a lot of these Zoom interviews. But they weren’t Zoom interviews; they were Zoom meetings [between Mr. Cam and his mentees], necessary meetings that needed to happen, which is the part of the story.
They had these Zoom meetings with Mr. Cam and his students, or Mr. Cam and the principal, and because they were recorded, we have this window into a reality that you’re not going to get any other way, because they don’t feel the camera is on them. They don’t feel affected by the fact that there are people filming for a documentary. There’s this authenticity.
[They’re just] sitting there with their hoodie on and in pajamas, [which] they would never become dead looking like that. We would never have gotten that kind of insight into their lives if they hadn’t been sequestered in their homes and forced to do this entire thing on Zoom. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Obviously this is a serious documentary series set during a really tough time with some really shocking moments. There’s moments of levity or hope, such as focusing on the students’ excellence or a sporting event. How do you maintain that balance between the horrible events/experiences that the students and teachers face and the humor and hope?
That’s one of my signature traits that I use in all of my series. This goes back to my acting experience and understanding how to tell a good story and the emotional arcs and ebbs of anything. If you do an entire play where the person is being beaten over the head with a stick, no one’s going to watch it. That is not good storytelling.
I make sure and care for the viewer. When something particularly heavy happens, I always try and look through the raw footage, find these moments of levity. For example, the scene where Ebei [one of the six teenagers in the series] is trying to call the financial aid hotline [and is left on hold]. It’s raw. [The footage] was about three times as long as you saw it, and it’s just sitting there like a lump.
There’s many ways you can edit that. You can edit it with really dark music, and you can make it defeating and show her miserable expressions and her getting angry. Or you can edit it a totally different way, and you can edit plucky music to it, and you can show the other side of her, which was this kind of ‘I’m gonna laugh through this.’
I just chose in those moments to create those bits of levity, because as a viewer, we need it, especially when a lot of the viewers are going to have these flashbacks to their own experiences during the pandemic and their frustration with whatever hotline they were calling for whatever reason.
I’d like there to be lots of emotional arcs, which you can’t create. You can’t create what they do, but you can alter how it’s perceived by not manufacturing what really happened. Instead, [you can show] the non-verbal cues that the person you’re featuring. I think that’s missed a lot of the time. I go through the rough footage and find those little glances that they make 一 the toe tapping, the fidgeting with something, breaking a pencil between your hands, the scratching your head furiously while smirking 一 so that it takes a viewer on more of this journey.
What about the athletic games like the football and basketball games?
These are documentarians. [They don’t] have heavy sports backgrounds. They’re shooting again from the sidelines. There’s none of this beautiful NFL film footage. You’re not cutting it for the game, you’re cutting it for the story within the game.
It was an interesting challenge as a woman. I’m a huge tomboy. I play sports. I love sports. I am an athlete. I have never been hired to edit sports before, no matter how many times I have interviewed for the job. I’m not going to say it’s sexism. I don’t know, but they never hire me.
In “The Class” I was the sports editor. Every single sports moment they gave me. It was the first time in my entire career that somebody has actually believed me and given me the opportunity to show that I can indeed do this. They finally let me do it, which was great.
How did the kids react when they saw the screening of “The Class”?
It’s the premier. So as soon as the editing was over, I connected with them. [It was like] “Hi, this is gonna feel really weird, but I know everything about you, and I’ve spent the past year of my life with you in my face.” And they’re just giggling. We positioned ourselves so that we could watch their faces. Their families were there too.
It felt like when people survive a terrible tragedy, and then they reunite after it’s over. It’s just a beautiful moment of joy. [The kids] were just kind of astounded that they did what they did. Somehow they made it through that senior year. We did that and got out the other side. They’re all so beautiful, successful, and alive right now, just kicking ass.
