DREAMFARM

"Art is the concealment of effort" -- how I wish I had said that. If you take any great piece of editing in a film -- you either notice it or you don't. Either way, you can tell whether it is good or bad, if you notice it, in the first place. The best editing can be seamless and invisible. It doesn't get in the way of the story, but it certainly pulls the story forward. The pacing creates tension. The pacing can also be like notes in a piece of music -- building to a pitch or climax. But what if you have editing that is obvious because it is cool? SHERLOCK HOLMES, directed by Guy Ritchie, has a signature feel to it. Slamming fast beats with a freeze for emphasis at the end. With LOCK, STOCK and TWO SMOKING BARRELS by the same director, it was crisp editing, it was new, kinda fresh. It had an original indie appeal. But with SHERLOCK HOLMES, the big Hollywood blockbuster (that takes place in the 19th century), the editing wasn't true t...

Non-linear editing brought about the ability to create *mash-ups*. I have fallen in love with this genre of editing. It is both a fine audio cut and a fantastic visual compilation. You have to get the audio to work before you even try to address the visuals. And if you can get that to work seamlessly, you have it made. Didn't we all include these in our demo reels at one point -- we called them -- a montage. My favorite, these days, happens to be a version of Rick Astley (oh gosh, remember him) singing his hit "Never gonna give you up" mashed-up with Nirvana's "It smells like teen spirit". How about seamless? Works, yes!

A director that I have known for years explained, "The true definition of BIV is -- Boring Industrial Video". If you are "bivin' for a livin' ", well, you know what I mean....we aren't doing art, we aren't making "films", and we aren't making porno (unless you choose to look at it that way) -- just plain old corporate video. We, BIV-ers are the unsung heros of American media. We roust the the legions of corporate marketers. As they watch the marketing propaganda, they can hold their heads up high, and listen for the true corporate-speak, those familiar words ringing out - "due diligence", "cross-platform", "smart thinking" or "accessibility". Who the hell talks like this? Once in a while, we (the universal BIV-ers) can get a vicarious thrill. For instance, agency commercial editors, film and documentary editors have looked down on our legions for decades. They would surmise that the w...

I am putting this out into the universe -- do guy editors suffer postpartum depression? Let me explain -- you put your heart and soul into making something good, beautiful, poetic, creative, inspired, possibly fun and it just ends. You pack up your toys, you thank your clients, you hope they thank you and you go away. Now I admit this is the life of a free-lancer or consultant, (whatever you want to call it), and it is expected. You have been doing it this way for 30 years, but you still don't get over it. A staff person sees everyone they have worked with on Monday morning, but anyone who works on a film crew, as a sound mixer or on an editorial staff knows, when the job is done -- you are done. How do you feel after you have given birth to your film? I read a lot of postings on various industry blog sites, but they are all about critical mass technical emergencies. Not about the serious steam-blowing ranting of a stressed out human being (doing), who has stared at ...

If you haven't heard already THE HURT LOCKER is a 2009 American war thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Hello, Oscar nominations -- you heard it here first! Ok, I admit I like the fact that it is a woman director directing a war movie. Sorry, guys, women can blown things up too. Shot in Jordan, the film is based on recently declassified information about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) (bomb squad) team in present day Iraq. From Indiana Jones to Iraq, Jordan is one of those places that sets up well on the big screen. Dusty, exotic, stark and threatening -- the perfect heated background for suspense. THE HURT LOCKER is written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded within an actual bomb squad. Now this is where it gets interesting. The director and the editor take you, not only inside your character's mind, but his visual and visceral movements. "When you see it, you're gonna feel like you've been in war", is a quote from th...

I didn't come up with the coinage "cocaine to Rogaine" , but it seems to define a certain period in the mid-eighties, when editing was wild and crazy fun. And now we look back and tell war stories about those "good old days". Yes, it used to be fun. We were young and on fire. Video was a new medium -- MTV was king and Michael Jackson's videos were mini-sojourns into a magic merging of music and storytelling. And everyone wanted to do video art. Or a music video. At that time the newest techo box to come out was the ADO -- which faked a 3D cube which you could place moving video into. And it spun around or sailed across the screen in a layered effect. Hours of fun... The device that had a small screen with green formatting type that you had to toggle through with a joystick to set up an impressive X and Y axis of spins and twirls. Whoa. Do that again! But really, the biggest advantage was the industrial plastic casing on the box. It had hori...

With editing you either notice it or you don't. And if it is good and you don't notice it, then it is seamless. But if it is good and you notice it , you are seeing something rare. Like a great painter's telltale brush strokes, editing can have an identity -- a style and rhythm all its own. But the real mastery is in the invisible craft of it. The newest remake of "PELHAM 1 2 3" is crafted visual poetry. There are stanzas of visual verse taken down to the literal detail of a frame, a look or just a feeling. The sweet spot is always claimed with a perfect beginning and end to every cut. Each visual verse came with the hook at the end of its stanza. You saw 3, 4, sometimes 5 angles to complete a sentence by an actor that concludes with a drumroll of punctuation to set the scene. Throughout the film, the direction is to keep things moving like that train going through the tunnels. Don't stop we have a destination to meet. A story to unfold an...

The first time I met the creative director for a large East Coast advertising agency -- I really wanted to impress him. So I got a little dressed up. It was the early 90s and I thought I had to look a little corporate to impress. In fact, I even bought a "power suit" to go on interviews, until a producer told me she couldn't hire me because I dressed better than she did. The suit ended up in the back of my closet from then on. In this instance, my creative director, to say the least, was not impressed by my dress for success. His reaction was to give me, the once up and down, with a sneer, "Well, if I don't make you cry by the end of the next 3 days -- I'm not doing my job". The gloves were off. Here I am cutting my first national spot, with a big-wig A-hole from NY. I can take a challenge. So we were off and the race was on. I just cut. And cut. And re-cut. I pulled the music. I didn't think. I just cut. I step-framed -- a new ...

When I first started doing what I do, it would have been called an unusual job. Now, I can probably name several jobs which have facial identity crisis problems : bus driver, ambulance drivers, taxis drivers, conductors, piano players (if they are up against a wall), computer programers (we are getting closer), graphic designers, but at some point all these folks will turn around to face you, and make a little eye contact. I can go a whole day talking over my shoulder and it is rarely expected that I have to make any eye contact. Unless I am getting really serious...and I need a little feedback, perhaps. I started styling my hair with all this in mind. French braids, lovely short curly bobs, crazy hair clips -- clients would nod with approval and say that I was looking good that day. They weren't looking at my face, just the "do". At some point, I started cautiously turning around and trying to inject myself into the day-to-day conversations of the people beh...

It started as a whim and turned into a mild obsession. Every time I began a project with a new client, I would ask them their birthdate. Really what I was looking for was a hint into their personal mythos. This wasn't a party game, this was a serious way for me to determine what I was up against that day. Will I have a churlish or childish day? Is it a teamwork day or planned act of attack? So I would spend a lot of time trying to figure out the weather, before any storms started blowing and astrology would open some crazy window to freshen the air or let me know if there was a hint of rain on the horizon. People I worked with would readily give me the information because it is fun for them to hear insights into their personality makeup. It was easy for them to agree with what I was saying because it was simple, direct and usually true. I wasn't going for doom and gloom, I was looking for the sunny side and the way out of my dilemma of being caught in a room wi...