FEATURES
Collaboration is Key
Andrew Mondshein
by Kevin Lewis
The
craft of editing has received short shrift in film education, believes
Andrew Mondshein, ACE, whose most recent editing credit is Lasse Hallström's
Casanova, due in theatres November 30. "Even when I go now to some
of the top schools, they have very few editing professors and I am
shocked and disappointed," he relates. After a beat, he adds, "I think
it's a difficult discipline to teach."
While acknowledging that the director is "the most significant person in the filmmaking process" Mond-sheim emphasizes that editing plays a major role "in the ultimate design of a film and its construct." However, he says, "If I'm doing my job, I'm doing it through the perspective and the vision of what that director wants."
According to the editor, "The best directors have a very strong sense of editing, and so their contributions in a cutting room are significant. The collaboration is what I marvel at--you push each other to reach a level to accomplish something that neither of you individually would have been able to accomplish. And that's one of the magic things in the cutting room; it's a shared perspective."
Mondshein estimates that most successful editors are in harmony with their directors, and says that he has been especially lucky with his collaborators. Swedish director Hallström was "an editor who wanted to expand his editing artistry with another editor," while helmer M. Night Shyamalan worked very closely with Mondsheim on the development of The Sixth Sense (1999); they even devised the storyboards together.
"I have never worked with a director who hasn't said to me that editing was his favorite part of the film," he says. "It is essential to have a good relationship. A director has to really trust an editor or else he is going to be spinning his wheels. You have to be able to communicate and be passionate about your perspective--and still be totally respectful of the director's point of view."
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Chris Tellefsen:
Auteur Theory? Au Contraire
by Kevin Lewis
Chris
Tellefsen, who edited the acclaimed Capote, currently in release,
feels that editing went unrecognized for so long because the "one
singular vision" concept of the director has dominated critical discussion.
Discussing the editor's contributions would "complicate the equation,"
he claims.
"Also, revealing the complete process is sort of like saying, `Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain,' and lifting that veil that opens up a huge amount of questions and thoughts," Tellefsen continues. "The complexities are endless." The auteur theory surrounding the director "had its place in cinema history," he adds. "It's just different now." Which is not to say that editors went unrecognized by producers and studio executives in the past, he is quick to acknowledge. Indeed, Billy Wilder's editor Doane Harrison became a producer, Barbara McLean always had the ear of Darryl F. Zanuck, and Margaret Booth was a trusted advisor to Louis B. Mayer.
Tellefsen attracted scrutiny by the film students in the audiences at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater after the Edge Codes.com screening because of the cult film he edited, Gummo. "The main question seemed to be the difference between cutting on film and digital," the editor explains, laughingly positing that the question arose because the young film students "never touched film and were very curious. "Andy [Mondshein] and I had both cut quite a bit on film—Andy even more than I.
"My first nine films were cut on film, and then, Flirting with Disaster in 1995 was the first film I cut digitally on an Avid," he continues. With digital, Tellefesen appreciates "the fluidity and being able to do versions of things without having to reconstruct after you construct something on film. "But I loved cutting on film," he confesses. "Interestingly, the length of time it takes to do a film from beginning to end has not changed all that much as a result of digital technology--the technology condenses time to a degree, but it increases the amount of experimentation."
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