FEATURES

From CMX to FCP
Weynand Has Trained Editors on Many a System
by Selise Eiseman


Diana Weynand.

Diana Weynand, editor, producer, director, teacher and author, is the co-owner of Weynand Training International, a leading provider of training services to the post-production industry, as well as an Apple-Authorized Training Center. Weynand began in the industry as a director and co-producer of the Emmy award-winning PBS series Cinematic Eye, and then worked at ABC on The Barbara Walters Specials in the 1970s.

She has also written several books in the Apple Pro Training Series, including Final Cut Pro for Avid Editors, Final Cut Pro 5 and How Video Works, and writes a column for the trade paper Below the Line. Weynand spoke to Editors Guild Magazine about her background and her decision to teach editing.

Editors Guild Magazine: How did you get your start?

Diana Weynand: I got my undergraduate degree in music education and I was going to get my masters at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Somewhere along the way, I met a professor there who had worked with the conductor Arturo Toscanini at NBC, and he believed that television was where the artists of today were going to flock. He would say that you could take an artist and teach him the technology, but you couldn’t take a technician and teach him to be an artist. He really plucked me out and said, “Don’t come out and teach music, but become part of the media department and get your second masters.” So I became part of that process. It was a great place to develop other media skills.

EGM: When did you make the move into training?

DW: I actually started the process of a training company in 1980. I quit my job at ABC and started in training in New York. The company was called Training Associates International.

EGM: Why did you make the transition?

DW: What was interesting is that this wasn’t what I set out to do. Directors and producers I worked with didn’t know enough about the technical aspect of editing; they didn’t have a clue. I ran into so many situations like that, and became really dedicated to raising the industry’s overall knowledge, so that when they came into the edit bay they could be more efficient. I did a lot of consulting. I decided to go into teaching full-time because there were just too many people out there at the time that didn’t know enough to work confidently in the post-production process.

EGM: Where did you start conducting classes?

DW: I started training classes in New York, Chicago and a few other places. Until that time, the only way that you could learn a particular skill like CMX editing was either by paying a great deal of money to go to the class, which was only in New York, or by being sent by the company for which you worked. I wanted to bring the knowledge to the people. If you wanted to learn it, I would teach it to you.

EGM: Can you talk about the transition from linear to nonlinear editing systems?

DW: In the early ‘80s, I had the opportunity to introduce the first nonlinear editing system to the industry. It was called Montage. I was brought in to work on it and I wrote the manual for it. We trained editors from Cagney & Lacey at that time. I did a demo for Sidney Lumet and Orson Welles, who was very interested in it. Initially, Montage was taking Hollywood by storm. We trained all the editors on Dallas and then Falcon Crest.

DW: Shortly thereafter, George Lucas came out with the EditDroid. The Lucas people brought me in to look at the system from the training point of view. They wanted a training program like I developed for Montage. We developed an authorized training program. My process was that I’d get on a new system and teach myself how to use it. Then I’d figure out what the best way was to teach it to someone else.

EGM: Where did you start?

DW: The first thing they did was hand me their manual, which was four or five inches thick, and I asked them who their target audience was. They said their target audience was film editors. I asked if they actually expected people to sift through five inches and give up film, with which they were very comfortable, and work on an EditDroid. They said no, so I told them to put the manual in the trashcan.

EGM: Where did you go from there?

DW: I told them that step one was to start a training program, and I did a book for them, which is very much like a survival guide. That’s what people needed to know: how to survive and get to work as quickly as possible. I came up with a tiny little booklet that had one page per topic, and we went around and trained people using it. That was really fun with the EditDroid. After Montage and EditDroid, Avid came out.

EGM: Can you describe how Avid editors can learn Final Cut Pro (FCP)?

DW: I wrote the book Final Cut Pro for Avid Editors because people were transferring over from Avid to FCP and they didn’t need to start from scratch. My idea was to take a topic, break it down and make it as simple as possible to digest. Avid editors don’t need 850 pages of editing information––they only need to know how it’s done on FCP. It makes a great reference. You can look something up and say, “How do I do a list? How do I extract? How do I get into the trim mode? Tell me exactly how I do it.” This book is now part of the Apple Pro Training series.

EGM: How do you like teaching?

DW: I love making things simple for people and empowering them with knowledge. I see a lot of people coming into class with fear and anxiety. I’m only successful as a teacher if you leave the class feeling good about what you can do. I have a lot of energy when I teach and really like getting to know my students. By the end of the class, I’m able to talk to everyone on a first-name basis and get a clearer sense from them of what they want to learn. Just by having a personal dialogue: Why you need to know this? What are you going to be doing with it? This creates a real sense of the person having their needs met in a training situation.

EGM: Any final thoughts?

DW: Teaching has been great fun, and I feel like I’ve ridden the trail of all the different video editing systems since the beginning when I started. It makes me feel really confident about what I’m doing.

(Weynand can be contacted at www.weynand.com.)

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