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Prime Cuts Celebrates Emmy-Nominated Editors
By Laura Almo
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In the afterglow of the 59th Emmy Awards, the Television Motion Picture Editors Peer Group Executive Committee held Prime Cuts: Primetime Emmy-Winning Editors on their Craft, a panel discussion on editing with several Emmy nominees and winners for picture editing, at the Leonard Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood, California, on Wednesday, September 19. This was the first of what promises to be an annual event celebrating the art and craft of television editing.
"This evening is not about the Emmys; it’s not about who won and why––because at this level of craft, the separation between shows is subjective," said Jason Rosenfield, ACE; who, along with Mary Jo Markey, ACE; Michael Ornstein, ACE; and Scott Vickrey, ACE, produced the event.
The evening was hosted by Shawn Ryan, executive producer/creator of The Shield and executive producer of The Unit. Before getting into the specifics of each genre or show, Ryan asked panelist to talk about the most enjoyable part of working on an Emmy-nominated show. Following is a sampling of the panelists’ answers.
Dean Holland (The Office, winner, Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series): The whole process is enjoyable because you start with this extremely long editor’s cut and somehow manage to make a 21-minute show out of it––and still make it good, keep the story and keep the laughs.
David Rogers (The Office, winner, Outstanding Single-Camera
Picture Editing for a Comedy Series): I really like when we’re just
about to lock the show.
When we’re a minute or two or three minutes over––that’s
the point when we get to watch it at double speed and see what we can take
out.
Sue Federman (How I Met Your Mother, nominee, Outstanding
Multi-Camera
Picture Editing for a Series): I love the four-camera world and I get to laugh
all day.
Stephen Semel, ACE (Lost, nominee, Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For a Drama Series): The point at which you look at the show with music for the first time is exciting. At that point, you have a sense of the show and where it’s going to go from that moment to the final version.
Michael Ornstein, ACE (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, winner, Outstanding Picture Editing for a Miniseries/Movie): The best part was when we showed it to HBO and we were all puffed up and thinking this was something terrific and they said, “It’s a pretty good movie but we can make it great!” And they did. They tear it apart, they deconstruct the whole thing and when you put it back together it is better. That’s an amazing process to go through with HBO.
Mitchell Danton (The Path to 9/11, winner, Outstanding Picture Editing for a Miniseries/Movie): We really tried to tell the story accurately and dramatically simultaneously. The adventure was trying to keep every cut unexpected, unique and exciting.
Eric Sears, ACE (The Path to 9/11, winner, Outstanding Picture Editing for a Miniseries/Movie): At one point, we had eight editors and the most enjoyable part had nothing to do with me; it was working with these very talented people, because there was absolutely no sense of competition, no sense of proprietary ownership of the material. Each one of us seemed to have distinct talents.
Ryan then asked questions specific to each genre/category. A clip was shown prior to discussion of each show. Following is a sampling of some questions and answers.
How different is it to edit comedy shows with a single camera rather than the traditional four cameras?
Rogers: In this show, the camera is a whole different animal. In a four-camera show, you're set; you're just looking for the best take. In this show, we have cameras moving all over the place and it may be a great take but the cameras are moving and zooming.
Is part of your job as an editor to fill the laugh track?
Federman: Yes, I have a bank of about 200 laughs all sorted out by duration and intensity, and those are in every episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Are you the first person to determine the length of laugh each joke gets?
Federman: Yes. This show is done in front of the crew, so the pace of the show is created in editing. They're very into keeping it seem like it was shot in front of a live audience, so we add the laughs and pace it up––the pace is very fast.
How often does the show air in the order it was scripted and how much do you [or the producers] shuffle things around?
Semel: I'd have to say it never airs in the order it was written in the script. When executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse sit down and watch the show for the first time, the first thing they do is restructure the material to try to come up with something that works better.
I could ask this question to anyone on this panel, but it seems especially pertinent to this project which has historical roots. How emotionally involved do you get when you watch something? Are you able to just approach it technically, or do you find yourself getting emotionally tied into it?
Ornstein: I think one of the things that makes a good editor is great empathy. You need to be that way so you can feel the emotion and get into the scene. At a certain point, you start to look at it differently. You always have to maintain a certain kind of perspective so that you can really see and judge what material you've got.
You're dealing with something real [9/11] that had an impact on each of you individually when it happened. What's it like to sit in an editing room and work on something so believable that it feels like a documentary? Did you go home at night depressed?
Sears: I went home proud every night to be a part of this. To be doing something in relation to this [9/11] was very important. But more than that, there was this sense that it was time well spent and so it wasn't depressing, it was serious. We wanted to make sure we were fair, correct, mature about this subject matter, because real people died. This wasn't a fantasy or a fictional account.
A team of five editors put [The Path to 9/11] together. What is the difference between editing as a team vs. editing on your own?
Danton: We owe some thanks to editor Geoffrey Roland, ACE, because he put together the team. At times, it's trying because everyone has his own little way of doing things. Individually, all the scenes were really good, but the project superceded the scenes, so lots of them had to be pared down in terms of pacing or momentum. We tried to let people feel the story unfold and we tried to work selflessly without ego.
[Editors Note: The full-length version of this article covering the Prime Cuts panel will appear with our Emmy Awards coverage in the NOV-DEC issue of Editors Guild Magazine.]
Laura Almo is a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker. She currently teaches editing at El Camino College and can be reached at lka@alumni.stanford.org.