I was offered the opportunity to chat with two members of the Welcome to Wrexham Season 1 editing team in the run-up to voting closing on this year’s Emmy Awards. Amongst the show’s six nominations, the finale was up for Outstanding Picture Editing For An Unstructured Reality Program.
Editors Curtis McConnell and Mohamed El Manasterly gave a fascinating insight into the highly collaborative and character-driven work which went into shaping the show and its Emmy-nominated episode.
The transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity
On Their Career Journeys
Host: Mohamed, how did you get started as an editor?
Mohamed: My background was actually music, I am a musician. I play percussion and I used to DJ back in college. During an advertising course we needed an editor to edit a commercial, and I’m the one who took this task.
When I started editing, I loved it because I found a lot of similarities between creating a DJ set and constructing a story. I love the idea of taking people on a journey. When DJing, you only have music to influence people, but with editing, you have picture, you have sound design, you have actual people, you have dialog.
So I fell in love with it. I spent hours and hours cutting and not feeling how many hours I’ve been working. I realized my passion and I’ve been there ever since.
I started my career doing a lot of music videos, commercials, news shows, and all these disciplines later really helped me out with documentaries because it gave me speed. I was able to cut beautiful montages and I was able to do tell the story in a very concise way. But at the same time it’s coherent and compelling.
Host: It’s funny, I’ve heard a few people say, “Oh yeah, I ended up as an editor because no one else wanted to edit this thing”. Sometimes maybe Editors are the Goalkeepers of Film and TV. “No-one wanted to go in goal so I ended up there!”
Curtis: It’s a very, very accurate description.
Host: And how about you Curtis? How did you get started?
Curtis: To go way back, I grew up in southern Africa and did not have much exposure to TV or film.
I lived in Namibia, which is like, a million people in the whole country, or at least there was back then. And I’ve always had a love for storytelling, love for theater, love for just writing. And so I came came to the U.S. to go to college.
While I was there, I ended up falling into film production and learning about, you know, just all of the different sort of mass media. So that’s what I ended up Majoring in and then basically moved to Los Angeles with the intention of becoming a writer because that was what my love was.
But while I was in college, I had learned some of the basics of how to use Avid Media Composer and didn’t realize how significant that skillset would be.
So as I was out here struggling to find anybody that would be willing to take a meeting or whatever for writing, I ended up at this party down in Beverly Hills.
I was desperate. I was about to just take a job working in a coffee shop because I had to make money. But I ended up in this conversation with a post manager person or whatever. And she said, “Oh, hey, do you happen to know how to use Avid? We need somebody to do some casting reels. You interested?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll do whatever.” So I went in for night shift on Monday and got my first job as a casting editor.
So I was working on these two, three minute high intensity little packages to try to sell. This was in reality TV stuff. So it was like shows like the Supernanny, and shows for MTV or whatever. I ended up just kind of skipping over the whole assistant editor thing, which was great for me.
I mean, there’s certainly skills that I wish that I had that like other AE’s or people that have been AE’s have. But no, it’s a different path than I think a lot of editors have had, working in the preproduction side of things, doing casting.
And then I moved into development, cutting sizzle reels, concept reels and things like that, and then eventually worked my way into the post-production side of things.
Mohamed: I did my fair share of assisting for about a year and a half or something. At the beginning of it I was trying to break into the industry back home in Egypt because I’m Egyptian, so I used to offer editors my services for free and I used to enjoy just being in the post house and witnessing everything that is happening.
And there is like a believe it or not, there’s some sort of a rush when there’s a deadline. And I used to love watching the editors rushing to finish their shows for the deadlines, and I used to offer to do sound sync or, you know, organize folders and my pay was just sit next to them and watch them, watch them edit.
And this was great for me, like just seeing real pros doing their job, you know? I learned a lot from it.
I think also that’s what’s great about our job is that every year you learn so much and you think like, what more can you learn?
But then you like deal with a new director or collaborate with other editors and see the variety of ways that you can tell a story. And then you start getting ideas from the different people that you collaborate with, and then you add them to your toolkit and start using them and blend them the way that works for you.
It’s fascinating how much we learn every year and how much we improve our storytelling techniques.
On Getting the Welcome to Wrexham Job
Host: So had you done sports documentaries before, are you guys football fans? And how did you end up am working on Welcome to Wrexham?
Curtis: I’m a big football fan. All the way back to, you know, childhood days. It took me a little while to get into the sports arena.
My path had been true crime stuff, the real heavy, darker sort of stuff. And I hit a point a few years back where I was like, I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to just bring some joy into the world!
So I took a pretty hard stance, to like, “I’m not going to take these true crime jobs anymore,” which was dangerous, but I did manage to get recommended for a sports show called Last Chance U on Netflix about an American football team. That was a really good calling card back when that show was really big.
So after that I was able to really pivot pretty hard into the sports arena and I just loved it. Even if it’s a sport that I don’t necessarily love, like I’m not an American football fan or basketball or whatever, and yet I’ve done those sorts of shows. But sports is such a good device to just get into very interesting stories and to get into these like very human stories, which is what I love about all of this.
Getting back to Welcome to Wrexham, I believe I was listening to a podcast, an interview with Rob McElhenney, and he was talking about their whole venture to buy the club.
And he said that they were making, this documentary series about the whole journey of it and that they had hired the production company that did Last Chance U and Cheer. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, I have to figure out how to get on the show.
So I made some calls, sent some emails, just sent a cold email to the showrunner, John Henion. And I was like, “Hey, you don’t know me, but I really want to get on the show. Here’s my here’s my credits. If there’s any sort of availability, please consider me and here’s my resume.”
He ended up calling me and we talked for like 2 hours and like just really bonded and connected and everything and then I was eventually hired on.
Host: How about you, Mohamed?
Mohamed: I have a little bit of a different story because I’m Egyptian and I come from the Middle East, and when I came to the U.S. I came with a documentary, The Square, about the Egyptian revolution.
It’s very political. So I was known for doing political Middle Eastern documentaries because I speak Arabic and I understand the culture and because I know how to bridge the gap between cultures, and I really enjoyed that. I’m proud of where I came from. But after three years doing the same kind of content, it was tiring because the topics were very serious and it was kind of crazy, you know, like living in L.A. and working and just seeing all this footage from the Middle East.
Most of it was very hard-hitting stories, and it started really affecting me. I really wanted to do something different.
A few months before I got introduced to Andrew Bank from Boardwalk Pictures, we hit it off and he’s like, “We need to bring you to Boardwalk and collaborate somehow.” So one day I got a call from him about Welcome to Wrexham and learnt about Rob and Ryan and you know, the soccer aspect of it, and I was like, this is great, man.
I really need this breath of fresh air, you know?
And again, I talked to John Henion and he was amazing. We hit it off right away and I joined and it was an amazing experience.
On Differing Perspectives
Host: Are you a football fan, Mohamed?
Mohamed: Actually, I’m not a football fan. But I played water polo for something like seven years of my life.
So I can relate, you know, with sports and the highs of it, and the sense of camaraderie and sacrifice. So I was trying to project a lot of my experience in my work and, you know, try to bring it in the forefront for the audience.
Host: It’s funny isn’t it, all of these different career paths that we take, very unexpected.
You guys from opposite ends of Africa, and then suddenly working on a show about a working class town in Britain, a football club owned by two Hollywood stars. All these things coming together. It’s crazy.
Mohamed: But I have to tell you, this really benefited the show, the diversity in the edit room. So I’m Egyptian North African. Curtis is South African. We have Charles who is black and Michael Brown is white, and everyone comes from a whole different cultural background. So, the way you perceive the footage is different and your choices are different and the basis for your choices are different.
And we used to have all these deep conversations about why we chose the soundbite or why this specific scene is important. And it’s really fascinating how different we are and the kind of work that we do to, you know, to bring our thoughts together and try to create something that is relevant for everyone. And I think this gave the show a unique kind of depth.
This really benefited the show, the diversity in the edit room. …the way you perceive the footage is different and your choices are different and the basis for your choices are different. And we used to have all these deep conversations about why we chose the soundbite or why this specific scene is important.
Mohamed El Manasterly
Curtis: It also affected even the way that we cut the games because obviously there’s so many matches that we have to go through.
Because I love football, I probably had a tendency to want to actually play the moments out a little bit more because like, I see, oh, there’s this little move or whatever.
Like, Oh, that’s so cool. Let’s play that out. You know, Micho might say, you want to do more like, montages and just get all the nice, beautiful moments. Both are valid, you know, and so I think us being able to come together, learn from each other, I think it worked out well.
Mohamed: Yeah, it’s just like blending. Like for example, like how Curtis is so into the sport and the idea that that’s an important tackle, or that’s an important move, you know, plus maybe I’m like, “Oh, I love this like slow motion shot,” you know, and it’s so beautiful and just blending this with that.
That’s the kind of depth that I’m talking about. But also, this is a very simple example about editing again, but also in the personal aspects of our characters and how we’re threading the arcs and what what is and what isn’t an important beat and why it’s important, you know? And these kind of conversations are what sparked that.
On Finding the Heart of the Show
Host: I think that’s one of the things that was interesting about Welcome to Wrexham, yes, it’s a football show, but also I’ve got friends and so on who have watched it who don’t care about football and all watched it and enjoyed it.
Obviously, Rob and Ryan are a good way into that, but I think the show does a really good job of, as you said before, you use sport as a way to talk about other things. And I think it has a really nice balance of this hardcore sports stuff, but has a lot of character stuff and it has a lot of a sense of the community.
The way you cut out of the final game at key moments and you come to these very personal bits, you know, with the players, but also with the lead singer of the band.
And he has the letter about the scan and it could feel very gratuitous, but it doesn’t at all because it feels like like the team behind the shows cares.
The challenge is, the footage is so repetitive, right? Like you go to the practices, and then you have matches, and then you have after the match. So how do you approach this in a way that every time, it’s fresh and new?
Mohamed El Manasterly
Mohamed: Yeah. I mean, that’s the approach to the whole show, actually. And this was one of the challenges that we’ve been facing, and this was the solution to it. The challenge is, the footage is so repetitive, right? Like you go to the practices, and then you have matches, and then you have after the match.
So how do you approach this in a way that every time, it’s fresh and new? It was always from a perspective of a character, and every episode had like two or three characters that we’re focusing on and everything is threaded around them and around their story.
So some matches were about one of the fans, and some matches were about the coach, some matches about some of the players, and knowing and understanding what is the theme of every episode before you start it and you build everything around it.
And also I think this broke the idea of getting into the nitty gritty of sports and the details of it. Sport is just the outside, you know, but what it’s really about is about the people.
Curtis: Yeah. And in terms of the finale the idea of breaking out at those key moments and flashing back or flashing forward that’s, as far as I remember, that started with our showrunner John Henion, and he had the vision of like, okay, well, this episode, we have all of these storylines that we’ve been following throughout the season and throughout the show.
Scoot is a great example of that. The musician, there was a previous episode where he is going in for his chemo and while he’s getting treated for his cancer, there’s a match happening and they’re singing his song at the stadium. And so it’s all connected.
So yes the entire show was following the perspective of one or two characters. But in the finale we had to wrap all of it up while still maintaining that strategy of “this is about these individuals”.
And so it just turned into this little vignettes, the match represented moments in everybody’s life.
We’re going to use this match as a way to launch into these different vignettes. It was also the perfect match to do that. Such a high scoring game, so dramatic.
Mohamed: I also have to give you, a backstage story. I was against this approach with John. I was like, “Why? We can’t, why are we breaking the match? The match is so strong. We need to stay in the match.” And it’s like, No, no, no.
It’s not about the match. It’s about the characters, you know? And he was right, honestly. If any aspiring editors are watching us, this was a great lesson of open your mind to things that may not seem logical for you, because most of the time this is the great stuff.
This is the genius of the new stuff, that makes the work different. Obviously, after a while, after some debate with John, I went on board and I aligned with the vision and the episode became what it is.
On Clarity and Balance
Host: Yeah, it’s funny because, obviously you guys are up for the Emmy Award and you get this debate that goes, “Well, how do you tell what’s good editing?”
And I think that’s a question that people who don’t know much about editing do find difficult.
You know, it’s kind of like, editing isn’t editing. Editing is about the people, and it’s about the emotions, and it’s about the empathy that you have with all those characters.
And I think one of the things that the episode does really well in rewatching it is that sometimes filmmakers have a reluctance to be explicit about certain things and be kind of clear and obvious about the stakes.
The finale starts with a little preparation montage and then straight into the explanation of the playoffs. I think it’s Phil who says, “if we win we’re through, if we lose, we’re out”, and you have the on screen graphic and it’s very much “okay, first thing we do is just talk about the stakes.”
I think as editors, there’s a tendency to always want to be subtle and nuanced about everything and not be like, “Oh, we’re going to just like hit our audience over the head,” which is great. But I think you also have to pick and choose the moments that are important to do that.
Curtis McConnell
Curtis: I think as editors, there’s a tendency to always want to be subtle and nuanced about everything and not be like, “Oh, we’re going to just like hit our audience over the head,” which is great. But I think you also have to, like, pick and choose the moments that are important to do that.
And I think we figured out early on that understanding how the whole English football system and everything works is not a time for subtlety. Like, let’s just just explain it, make it super clear, and then we can put that aside and then we can like we don’t need to worry about, like trying to weave in the nuances of how the playoffs work.
It’s like we’ll just address it and then we can spend that sort of subtlety and stuff with our characters because that’s really where it’s important, you know? What football means to these individual characters is much more important than how the system works.
Mohamed: So yeah, but also I think to double down on what Curtis just said, the balance of explaining stuff, you didn’t want it to just be like, okay, this section is about understanding.
I was like, “okay, when do we need to explain something to help the scene?” As you said, when Phils, “if we lose, we’re out.” Then you explain it here because it’s important in the context of the drama, because now you know the stakes, now the pressure’s on and now you really like let the viewers focus on that.
Host: There’s also too much information, which is boring, and there’s too little information which is confusing. And then part of the trick is to find where you spend a bit of time explaining something and where we just go, “Okay, people will figure that out.”
Mohamed: I think you put your hand on that. The tricky part, which is the balance between everything. And I think that’s the essence of editing, you know, being able to give just enough information to enjoy the scene and stay in the scene just long enough so that you connect with the characters and get what you want out of it, and then move on.
That’s what we’ve been trying to do throughout the show, we’re cutting between storylines, which is Rob and Ryan, the fans, the players, and we’re going through, you know, around the horn between these three categories of characters and trying to build arcs and balancing between the excitement of the match, the highs and lows of it, the humor and the explanation.
On the Show’s Workflow
Host: So you mentioned that the idea of coming out to the characters at key moments in a match was something that came from the Showrunner.
When you guys, whoever it was, first start on the episode. Was there kind of a script for that episode? Was there a plan that was the kernel of that idea where you ended up in terms of structure?
Mohamed: So this is this is how the editing process worked.
They go in and film stuff, right? And they’re like, this is for the final episode. So John our Showrunner talks to the Story Producers, and then they watch footage, see the interviews and basically script it, and then they put it on Google Doc, and then they bring the editors in and then they pitch us the structure and how we want to tell the story in this specific episode.
And then the Editors come in with their fresh perspective and then be like, Oh, maybe this would be a nice place to transition. Let’s move this from here to there. Eventually you reach a point where you’re comfortable with it, and then you start doing it.
But not every time when things make sense on paper, they work in the edit.
So there’s a process of experimentation. You can plan as much as you want, but when as an editor the scene is prepped for you and you have like the b-roll and the verité and the interviews, it’s really up to you to shape it the way you see fit and find the right tone and pace and mood for it.
And it’s exciting. After doing that and then going back to your showrunner and trying to surprise them with executing their vision. And that’s how I did it. You follow the vision, but also you try to put a spin on it to make it even better. And this episode was a great collaboration. All of us chipped in and everyone had their own, you know, addition to it.
And you have Curtis, the master of transitions, You know, he did amazing transitions between the game and going back to the characters to to tell their back story, but then also to conclude it.
You follow the vision, but also you try to put a spin on it to make it even better.
Mohamed El Manasterly
Curtis: A good example was that opening sequence when everybody’s going to the stadium. So in the outline, it would have said “fans arrive at the stadium” and that’s the beat.
Michael, he was the editor on that sequence and he saw it as an opportunity. I’ve praised him many times on this whole thing. I think most editors would go in and be “All right, it’s the top of the show. We got to make this exciting. Let’s get loud, percussive music going and make it everybody’s pumped or whatever. Got to get excited for the game.”
And Michael went the opposite way. And he has this beautiful, sort of choral track underneath. That feels like a religious moment, a spiritual moment.
And it was very purposeful. , because people in that town talk about the Racecourse, that stadium is their church, that when they go to those games, they are going to church. And he was like, “Okay, well, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take that concept and we’re going to apply it here.”
And it’s the rituals that everybody goes through, on their way to the stadium, that was his idea. And so that’s that’s one of those things of, “Okay, here’s what we need to accomplish.” And then a great editor like Michael takes that idea and makes it so unique and special.
Host: Yeah, there’s a great shot in that opening that’s a really nice bit of visual storytelling.
It’s someone cleaning the pumps in the pub, and it just says “getting ready for the big day”. It’s a lovely little shot.
On Collaboration
Host: In terms of the hierarchy, for want of a better word, obviously different shows are crewed differently with Showrunners, Series Directors, Episode Directors, or Edit Producers, how did that hierarchy work in terms of this show?
Curtis: So, John Henion was the Showrunner. We had a Co-Executive Producer of Post, which was Alan Bloom, and then underneath that it was pretty much us Editors, and a team of Story Producers.
The Story Producers were both writing up the outlines or scripts or whatever. They would also help build basic stringouts, so here’s the beats from the interviews as they apply. I mean, we had some incredible AE’s that were technically phenomenal. But then also, we would be able to hand off little moments here or there and almost treat them a little bit more like junior editors or additional editors at times, too.
And we were in communication a lot with the field as well, those guys were just incredible. I mean, you can see in the show it has such a unique sort of palette to it, which made it just so much more enjoyable in the edit room, because, I mean, editors know, there’s nothing more frustrating than when you have a great story that is shot poorly.
Mohamed: Also the way we collaborated on this show was very unique to me, where no-one does an episode from start to finish. I can start an episode and Curtis finishes finish it and vice versa. We got different scenes, and these scenes go to other episodes and yeah, the collaboration of it was great.
There wasn’t a hierarchy of a lead editor or anything. It was just all of us doing it. And working with these guys was amazing because everyone left their egos at the door and the work comes first, the story comes first, our characters come first.
And yeah, always pushing forward to craft these scenes in the best way possible, to the point where, your first rough cuts had a sound mix, sound design, very polished, and everyone is great in what they do.
And there was some sort of healthy jealousy of, “Oh, my God, look what he did with this scene. I have to do my scene better.”
So you’re always racing to be the best at what you do. And it ended up benefiting the show greatly.
Curtis: Yeah, there had to be a lot of trust between all of us to where I trusted that if I had done a sequence and then I moved on to another episode and then Micho was coming behind me, I had to trust that he was going to take what I had done and only make it better.
And he only ever did that. All of us, we only ever I think really enhanced what the editor behind us had done on anything.
On Refining and Polishing
Host: How long did you guys, I mean, this is probably a difficult question to answer again, how long do you think the edit was on an average episode of the show?
Curtis: I could say for the end product that you saw, maybe eight weeks combined. But that’s ignoring the fact that so much went on in the months and everything beforehand.
I can usually give a pretty specific answer because we have a post schedule and calendar and we have weeks allocated to the episodes, but this show in particular was a very unique beast.
Mohamed: Because what happens is that Rob McElhenney came and had amazing notes that really turn the show around, adding the humor and making certain episodes shorter, and moving stuff around.
It’s very refreshing because he comes from the scripted world and his nuances and additions and techniques were a little bit new to us. And he kind of pushed the boundaries of the medium and made the show very unique.
Also, most of the humor that is there is because of his additions, most of the funny text and translations and all this stuff was all his spin on it.
This extended the process a little bit, but it was very beneficial.
Curtis: Yeah, I think it probably took us about, I would guess, 4 to 5 weeks to get to a rough cut version of the finale. And then it was just continually revising it and enhancing it and tweaking. There was a lot of that.
I think we actually got to that rough cut stage fairly quickly, but then there are a lot of adjustments and stuff after that.
Mohamed: Yeah, it was amazing how post-production was planned because you have this army of editors and then you’re like, for example, “Oh, episode four is due, how can we finish it fast?”
Okay, bring two editors, divide the episode, each one takes an act and then work on it and boom, it’s done. You met the deadline. It’s an army of people, Soldiers ready to do their mission. It was great.
But then when you get the notes, things change because, for example, you get a note to restructure something and you have these 18 episodes that are serialized and it’s a domino effect.
When you move a scene, other things crumbled, So you have to go and restructure and you have to have communication between everyone.
Okay, guys, this scene is moved, this story beat is moved from here, so this will affect this character arc. So how can we solve this?
There’s always this line of communication of how we deal with these kinds of challenges.
The unscripted process is about action and reaction. Right? So, for example, as we said, John Henion would give us the brief, you react to the brief and then take action. You give him something and then he takes what you did and then he reacts to it and he gives it to, for example, our production house Boardwalk.
They take it, they react to it. So it’s this evolution. And then at the end, Rob and Ryan came in and it just keeps evolving. It’s very hard to have a blueprint for non-scripted because there’s a lot of magic that happens in the edit room and we have to embrace that.
But one of the things is that our amazing production team, they’ve been embedded with these characters for a very, very long time and they brought all this amazing verité footage, and these characters, it takes time for them to open their hearts for you.
And so one of the challenging things is that you have great stuff, but then you have the duration of the show, and you can’t put everything in.
But I think the challenge was also, how can we can still put everything in a way that makes sense and is coherent. The solution was to really boil down and distill their their stories to the pure essence. How do we mould it to be the best shape possible, so it’s not a little bit long or not a little bit short, to do justice for our characters and for the production team.
Curtis: Yeah. And it’s also because production is happening simultaneously with post-production, naturally because we were in post while the season was still happening. And so, we were forecasting a little bit, okay, episode 15 is going to be about X, Y, Z, but we don’t know until it actually happens.
For example, Wrexham plays Dover Athletic. Now Wrexham is right near the top, Dover Athletic at the very bottom. We just assume we’re either not going to play that game or it’ll be in a quick montage. That match ended up being one of the most dramatic matches in Wrexham history, where they were up by two and then suddenly we’re down by three.
And then in the dying minutes Wrexham comes back and the final score is 6-5 to Wrexham. And so it ended up being the final act of the episode.
There was actually one game that we thought was going to be a really intense one, and it ended up in a 0-0 draw, but it happened to be the one game that Rob was watching back in the US at his pub in Philadelphia.
And so they’re watching the game and all of his friends are going, “We want to be excited for you, but this is really boring.” And, and so it was , Oh, okay, we can highlight the difference in culture between America and the British, the way that we view the sport or whatever.
I think to answer your question, though, I don’t remember any really significant things that were left out of the show. They may have felt significant in the moment, but then they go and you’re like, Oh I think it worked out.
Host: It sounds like you guys were part of a great team that did feel very collaborative and did feel that you had each other’s backs, and that you were able to elevate your work.
Just as a final question, is there anything in terms of a scene or a sequence or a moment, that you or one of your colleagues did that for whatever reason didn’t end up in the show which you would have loved to have as a deleted scene somewhere?
Mohamed: No, I don’t think so. On the contrary, you see your scenes, for example, we used to work a lot on sound design and polishing these scenes and adding good reference music, to be starting the conversation with our amazing composer.
But then you watch the episodes and you, you find, “oh, the sound design is so enhanced, the picture is so amazing. And some of the reference tracks that we used were licensed. Oh my God, FX really honored our work and just took it to the next level.
And there’s something about you as an editor when you’re working with offline stuff for six, seven months and then suddenly you see it on the TV, all polished and it’s all Mixed. And, you’d be, “Oh my God, this is so beautiful.”
Curtis: I went to an event here in Los Angeles for Welcome to Wrexham.
I took my son to go see it on the big screen with big surround sound. I was like, “Oh, this is so cool.” I cannot believe that we got to just be involved in this thing, let alone, actually craft it.
But no, I’ll second what Micho said with it, but it’s also funny. Our whole team, we’ve been texting each other about the finale, revisiting it for this process, and we all keep asking:
Did you do this part? Did I? And at times, I think I did. Because again, it was so collaborative, we all had our hands on every different element that it is just a truly shared thing.
So I don’t feel a personal ownership, but I do feel this collective ownership of it.
Mohamed: It’s such a privilege to be able to cut shows like this and be able to tell these kinds of stories with amazing and interesting characters, and to collaborate with great editors and showrunners.
It’s such a privilege. I’m very grateful to be in that position.