ACE is high: Why it's easier to get in than move up

George Jarrett reports from this year's American Cinema Editors' London EditFest

George Jarrett Jul 5, 2018

George Jarrett reports from this year's American Cinema Editors' London EditFest

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American Cinema Editors' sixth London EditFest saw over 20 brilliantly compiled clips explained by the editors responsible. It was one hot term of film school in six hours.

Fronting the day, ACE president Stephen Rivkin, said its purposes were, Furthering the educational awareness of what we do, and raising the perception of the job of the editor and the creative contribution we make within the filmmaking process. Every time we work on something that is successful either critically or financially it gives us more power and increasingly more people understand the importance of editing.

We have come a long way from being considered technicians. We are the first viewers of the dailies and also the first viewers of the film as we construct the sequences, he added.

A four-session program started with Cutting for Crime Dramas and the one general discussion was on whether editors find something universal in their approach to cutting murder mysteries compared to their work on fantasy, sci-fi or love story shows.

Elen Pierce Lewis (Luther, Marcella) said: Every drama I work on I approach differently. I react to the material I am given. You never stop learning. All material is different. The directors are all different.

She also highlighted the difference between the BBC and ITV: for a Miss Marple episode she cut she had to ramp up the drama going into ad breaks.

Andrew John McClelland (Line of Duty, In Plain Sight) said: The most important thing that editors do for any drama, especially crime, is set the tone of it. If you don't it won't work. And if you use the tone from one area of crime and simply impose it on another, that's not going to work.

na N Dhongha le (Three Girls, The Missing) pointed at the rushes: That is the first port of call, how the series is shot. Once you have responded to them, whatever show you are cutting is an organic process with the team.

Stephen O'Connell (The Name of the Rose, Howard's End) said: It's almost looking for a pulse with any story. The hardest thing that I find is to step back, not to be too academic or too filmy about what we are trying to do. When you look at making a murder mystery as audio it is just captivating because it is story and the rest is irrelevant because the pictures are in your head. If you close your eyes and hear any story, are you in or are you out?

Session two was all about making the jump of Assistant to Editor and the general chat away from clips was about getting into a cutting room in the first place.

Eve Doherty (Hang Ups/Assistant, Game of Thrones) had assisted for a decade. I was assisting for so long I got assistant fatigue, she said.

One call, to help on the pilot of Hang Ups and with the potential of getting an episode of the show once commissioned, reignited her love of editing. It is very much an edit build, and we turned the pilot around in a month, she said.

Adam Gough is currently finishing Roma for writer/director Alfonso Cuar n. First up he got two weeks of work experience in a Pinewood cutting room, and when a film moved in upstairs he secured the position of trainee editor. His big break was editing Johnny Depp's documentary Happy, about Keith Richards.

There were a very fortunate number of steps that I have taken, so I have not really had a big game plan of desiring to be somewhere, he said. With assisting there is a certain element of it being an apprenticeship.

Charlene Short (Dagenham (Assistant, Peaky Blinders) started with work experience on a TV drama and in a sound post house. For me it was easier to get into the industry than it was to move up, she said.

John Venzon, ACE (The South Park Movie, Storks (Assistant, Fight Club, The Game) looked back to his opportunity with an in-turn position. I expected to learn from an assistant, then I would become an assistant. Then I'll learn from the editor, and then I will move up. I showed up at the cutting room to find the entire assistant editing team had walked off the job.

Venzon was offered and took the first assistant role. Later in life and armed with great credits he was unemployed for seven months and came back by assisting people he knew from Fight Club and other movies. My single biggest piece of advice is do not rip yourself up if you have to go back to assisting. You are on the continuum and need to go out to the 20,000-foot view of your career and understand you might be assisting now, and you might get bumped up. Do not have ambitions for your career because it will destroy you.

Steven Worsley (Jamestown, War & Peace (Assistant, War Book) went media production at university, cutting short films, the ACE internship in LA, then found himself in Soho as a trainee working on Green Zone. He said: Relationships are integral. It's a challenge when you have been an assistant editor to get people to see you in a different light.

Session three was all about Editing Features, with Rivkin in the chair. He had in mind the jump from making teas to a full editing career.

Joe Walker, ACE (Blade Runner 2049, Arrival) was succinct. Lie a lot. There is no escape from saying yes. I went to BBC Manchester and lied about what I was capable of doing and my experience, because nobody wants somebody who hasn't done it before.

Alex Mackie, ACE (Out of Blue) assisted on Still Lies, the first

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