In New York, Allan Title gave a talk on how they edit ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter.’

He doesn’t call the show reality TV. It’s ‘fast cut verité’ – a non-narrated documentary. It covers the stories arising out of the lives of a family of Bounty Hunters based in Hawaii. The family that hunts bail jumpers together, stays together.

He said that they need to make sure that they don’t re-write reality too much. As they are dealing with police suspects who are about to go to trial, they need to be able to defend their programme to trial judges. If they play with time or change too much, the people in the programme can sue.

The show grew out of a series of individual documentaries on people who have interesting jobs. People audiences don’t usually get to meet. Allan has become a TV producer based on his editing experience. He says that documentaries need to be about people who are relatable but inaccessible.

As A&E have had a lot of success with the show (there have been over 85 episodes), they have a very generous production schedule.

1. Sequencers: Make up sequences that combine all the clips in order. They groupclip the multicamera sections.
2. Editors spend six weeks per show. Allan said that if they had narration to strcuture the show and also if they didn’t have sections that are edited to commercial music (the music video sections), then they would only need to spend three to four weeks a show.
3. By week 3 of the edit, they have a 45 minute cut for a 22 minute show.
4. By week 5 it is down to less than 30 minutes with almost all effects and music complete.
5. They allow a week for the changes required by standards and practices.

Dog is made at Hybrid Films in New York. Allan briefly outlined what he needs from trainees:

You start as a logger. Loggers get promoted if they can recognise what moments ‘pop’ from the rushes. Editing this kind of the documentary can be about taking footage that was not professionally captured and making it work. “You reveal your ability by making the unusable usable.”

Allan also said that you will spend a great deal of time with producers and other ‘higher-ups.’ This means that being an editor is like being a bartender or therapist. You have to be ready to talk about whatever they want to talk about.

Let discretion be your watchword.

I envy the community over at Cinematography.net. That’s where you’ll find the host of a group of mailing lists that I’m subscriber to. I only lurk on these lists, for they are for professional cinematographers to “talk and exchange ideas about cinematography.”

Every night I receive digest emails summarising the current debates amongst camera assistants, those working on full-resolution digital productions, working cinematographers and those needing to understand post production issues. Emails representing a small subset of all the lists you can subscribe to at cinematography.net.

“There’s something about Cinematographers, and the passion we bring to our work, that gives us a sense of being blood brothers. We have a love and admiration for each other, and a desire to help each other out” Conrad Hall ASC

It’s a pity that I haven’t found a similar place for editors to get together. What do editors need to ask each other? I guess we never need any help!

I suppose it’s up to us to create what we need.

The best way to learn from editors is to assist them in their work. The problem with the current technology is that assistants no longer need to be at the editor’s shoulder. They used to have to be able to hand over any piece of film the editor would need to make the next splice. Now they are more likely to be working on a different computer on a task not directly related to making editing choices.

In an interview with Sean Valla, first assistant picture editor on Spider-Man 3 said that picture editor Bob Murawski is “good on his own” and that he has a sign on his door saying “If I want something, I’ll ask” (found in Avid Podcast no. 11).

In smaller productions, the deal should be that assistant editors work the technology to create the space for the editor to make artistic decisions. Picture editors shouldn’t have to think about ‘workflows’ (file formats, backups, media locations) – that’s administration. They should put themselves in the hands of an assistant to handle that. In return, if the assistant should have sometimes have access to the process and thoughts the editor have as they edit.

Over on Filmsound daily, production mixer Jeff Wexler says:

For many reasons… there has been a trend towards a disconnect between those working in production and those working in post.

He also talks about how there is less and less pre-production involvement for the production sound people. This means that a DP may like a given location, but if it will very difficult for the sound team to get a good result, it will cost a lot more further down the line in post to fix things.

There are times when someone on the set says something like “this place sound awful, Jeff’s not going to like this!” and I have to say, as nicely as possible, that if I don’t like it you have to be sure there are others far more important than me who also are not going to like it (the actors who may have to needlessly ADR a scene, the director who is going to have to get a good performance TWICE and probably 4 months apart, and of course the producer who is going to have to pay for it all).

Meanwhile, in the Editors Guild magazine, there was an op/ed(it) piece on the credits due to assistant editors:

Placing assistant editors in the post-production portion of the crawl is inaccurate and a disservice. We would like to call for the re-establishment of the correct placement of assistant editor credits. Namely, the editorial crew should fall behind the camera crew, which mirrors the editor and cinematographer main title credits.

I wonder if the extra responsibilities given to assistant editors in recent years mean the the job has outgrown it’s title? Would a new name for what they do help? It would be related to being a kind of post-production supervisor that starts their work during preproduction. Usually supervisors have authority of co-ordinators in post.

If assistant editors were known as ‘edit co-ordinators’ or ‘edit administrators’ would that better define their job? Would that give them the chance to move into post supervision? Maybe there is no problem here, and everyone has a very good idea what assistant editors do. I know that some people think that some film job titles are overblown enough as it is. Why don’t we have a picture recordist (‘director’ of photography) to go with our sound recordist (instead of ‘production sound mixer’)…?

I suppose production supervisors won’t listen to assistant editors any more or less than they would if their title was changed to ‘edit administrator.’

I think I’m reaching the limit of what a one-sided conversation can do… I may have to talk to someone about this… Serves me right for starting to write without a clear end in sight!

Edward Dmytryk’s 5th Rule of Editing: All scenes should begin, and end, with continuing action

Scenes should not start at the moment the actor starts his first action for the scene. Scenes should not end at the conclusion of the last action of the scene. The audience needs to get the impression that each scene is ‘a fragment of continuing life.’

This is a matter for experienced directors to allow for warm-up actions before the action at the start of a scene, and for editors to recognise these actions so that they know at what point in time to start. The examples Dmytryk gives are an initial walk across a set, sitting down or standing up or hanging up a telephone. Actors can use these actions to ‘get up to speed’ so that the context is set for the scripted content of the scene.

Extra actions at the end of a scene also help editors cut while the actor is in action, so that the audience is left without a complete resolution, a resolution they hope to find in the next scene.

From ‘On Film Editing’ – which is also available in an omnibus edition: ‘On Filmmaking’