Sight, Sound & Story: Post Production Summit 2015 by Sight Sound & Story

EVENTPROGRAM

NYIT AUDITORIUM ON BROADWAY 1871 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2015 9:30AM â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 8:00PM

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Welcome to

SIGHT, SOUND & STORY 2015 I

n 2005, we launched a series of public events with prominent film editors - providing an intimate and casual environment where both students and members of the local film community could gather and explore the art of visual storytelling. From those events, we began co-producing ACE’s EditFest NY, an all-star lineup of the industry’s most exciting and expressive talent. Over time, June became a beacon - a welcome friend we looked forward to seeing each year. After two year’s of successful runs of Sight, Sound & Story, we are bringing back another event that digs even deeper into the concepts of storytelling - not only television and film editors, but behind the scenes of creating a non-scripted story in Reality T.V., and one of the most renowned film editors of the last 10 years, William Goldenberg, ACE. Sight, Sound & Story is where we hope many pieces of the post puzzle fit together, a familiar enclave for the creative exchange of ideas and a celebration of the collaborative process of making movies and television. — Josh Apter, Manhattan Edit Workshop, Photos on this page Owner and Founder from Sight, Sound & Story June 14, 2014

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SCHEDULE n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n

9:30 am CHECK-IN 10:00am - 11:30am THE GREAT UNSCRIPTED: The “Real” in Reality Television MODERATOR:

Gordon Burkell AOTG.com SPEAKERS:

Alanna Yudin Ink Master, Mob Wives Joe Schuck Alaskan Bush People, Best Funeral Ever Julie “Bob” Lombardi Teen Mom, Town of the Living Dead

11:45am - 1:15pm ANATOMY OF A SCENE: Deconstructing Documentary Films MODERATOR:

Garret Savage My Perestroika, Ready, Set, Bag! SPEAKERS:

Andy Grieve Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, The Armstrong Lie Zac Stuart-Pontier The Jinx, Catfish Pax Wassermann Cartel Land, Knuckleball!

1:15pm - 2:15pm INTERMISSION SIGHT SOUND & STORY IS SPONSORED BY

MASTER STORYTELLER SPONSORS

LEAD EDITOR SPONSORS

SUPPORTING SPONSORS

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manhattan edit workshop

*All speakers are schedule permitting.

119 W 23rd Street, Ste 700 New York City Tel:212.414.9570 www.mewshop.com twitter @mewshop

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2:15pm - 3:45pm TV IS THE NEW BLACK: Television’s Cinematic Revolution

MODERATOR:

TALIA SIMPSON

talia@mewshop.com Social Media & Marketing

DANIEL JAMEISON

Editor and Office Manager daniel@mewshop.com

RIVA DANZIG

Event Program – Graphic Designer riva@danzigdesign.com

TOM BEHRENS

Photographer tomabehrens@gmail.com

KIRI ROBERTS

6:00pm - 8:00pm NETWORKING PARTY & TECH LOUNGE n

ORGANIZATION PARTNERS

Sponsorship Director mvalinsky@me.com

William Goldenberg, ACE Argo, The Imitation Game, Zero Dark Thirty, Unbroken

MICHAEL VALINSKY

SPEAKER:

Director of Education janet@mewshop.com

Bobbie O’Steen “Cut to the Chase,” “The Invisible Cut”

JANET DALTON

MODERATOR:

VP of Operations jason@mewshop.com

4:00pm - 6:00pm “INSIDE THE CUTTING ROOM WITH BOBBIE O’STEEN”: A Conversation with Oscar Winning Editor William Goldenberg

JASON BANKE

Fabienne Bouville, ACE American Horror Story, Masters of Sex Sidney Wolinsky, ACE Ray Donovan, The Sopranos, Jesse Averna Sesame Street, Monica’s Mixing Bowl

Owner & Founder info@mewshop.com

SPEAKERS:

JOSH APTER

Michael Berenbaum, ACE The Americans, Sex and the City

Photographer kiri@mewshop.com n

MEDIA PARTNERS

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THE ART OF THE CUT: WITH ANDY GRIEVE By Steve Hullfish partmentalizing information, so as not to get completely overwhelmed. SH: How do you keep from getting overwhelmed? How much footage do you think you went through on the Scientology film? 120 hours? 130? AG: I’ve never really done the math. Probably 25 hours of interviews and easily 100 hours of archival. I had an assistant and researchers helping out. But easily 75 to 100 hours. I start by watching the interviews if that’s possible because it clues you in to the kind of archival footage you should be looking for and because you kind of start to see threads through stories and can see that, for example, these two characters shared an experience and can be intercut, or they talk about the same thing. So if the driving thing for the film is going to be the interviews, for me that guides the rest of it. Those are the characters you want, so even though they are “talking heads” you want people to feel that these people are live characters that are driving your storytelling and don’t feel like experts sitting in a chair, blabbing on. So I really let the stories just come out of people’s experiences and let that guide me.

Editor Andy Grieve has an impressive list of mostly documentary features to his credit including Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief; The Armstrong Lie; We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks; an episode of ESPN’s 30 for 30; The Carter; Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure; and others. He also directed and edited Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police. STEVE HULLFISH (SH): Your background is mostly documentaries. Talk to me about cutting docs. They’re so much more freeform in their storytelling than a narrative feature film like the one you cut (The Burrowers). What’s your approach to this vast sea of material that you have to draw from to create the story from the ground up?

SH: In addition to story, how do you build or create emotional impact in your documentaries? Do you have to worry about being too manipulative with emotion?

ANDY GRIEVE (AG): Before the project that I’m working on now, I did the HBO Scientology documentary Going Clear (with Academy Award-winning documentary director Alex Gibney). The approach depends on whether it’s a “talking heads and archival film” or is it an archival film or is it a verite film? I’ve edited all of those styles, so it’s kind of different for each film but my general process is that I like to watch everything before I start cutting. I can’t really cut and screen at the same time. I like to watch and absorb things and not really make choices at the beginning. It’s all a process of comn

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AG: I am always concerned with cause and effect. I am OK with manipulating things for emotional impact or story arc, but I never want to be creating a false sense of cause and effect. In the end, documentaries are about finding truths and you have to be honest in that pursuit. SH: Talk to me about organizing this stuff. How do you approach this stuff so you don’t go crazy? n

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that tough. I really just keep a master interview selects reel for each interview. The interviews are organized in the timeline by subject with locators separating them. Some editors, I’ve seen, end up with a ton of sequences, but that would overwhelm me. I’d rather have fewer longer sequences than more shorter ones. SH: And how are you going in to those longer sequences to find the specific items you are looking for? AG: After I pull my selects, I’ll have my assistant go in and put a locator at the head of each clip and sometimes even in the middle of the clip and put in the first few words of the sentence or the key words so we can search through locators within the sequences. And the last film I worked on was a little different. There were only eight key interviews. Then on We Steal Secrets about WikiLeaks, there were 35 interviews and a lot more footage, so that was a little trickier organizationally. Then I did a film about the OJ Simpson car chase that was entirely archival footage so that had no interviews at all, so that was a completely different process. You have to approach each film separately. The OJ Simpson thing was about one day in sports with the car chase and all of these sports things that took place on that day that kind of wove through that. On that we ended up mapping out a 24 hour timeline of all the best footage we had from that day, so it ended up being a time-of-day timeline on different layers so that we could see when things were overlapping. So that was a little different… almost like detective work. Each one has its own little challenges and idiosyncrasies so you have to adapt to that. I did one narrative feature film (The Burrowers) and other than that I’ve never been given a script. One of the things I really like about the job is really being able to own that and be in charge of that. And I like directors who will give the editor the space to run their room their way and figure out the best way to achieve all that.

SH: What editing system are you using currently, or have you always used the same system? AG: I’ve used Final Cut Pro on a few things but if I never saw it again, I’d be happy. I’m very much an Avid person. For every reason: media management, timeline function, effects. Final Cut has no Script Tool (Script Integration) where you can bring the transcript of an interview into Avid and link the footage to the transcript so you can do word searches. Later on in the process it just makes it very easy to say “I know someone said that, but where is it” and it allows you to do a very quick search. That for me is really the biggest “Final Cut versus Avid” thing. Towards the end of the process I try to take a pass back through all of the raw interviews to see if there’s something I’ve missed, or I might see an interview differently in the context of the story I’ve built or maybe they recorded an interview later and now something that someone said earlier has different meaning than it had the first time I listened to the interview. So being able to jump to parts of the interview in the Avid from the transcripts makes it easier. SH: How are you organizing these selects reels you’ve got?

SH: If you build a cut with primarily the interviews, when you go back and add b-roll and archival, do you add that in a layer or layers on tracks above the interviews, or do

AG: My assistant organizes all the raw footage, so that’s got its own system. It’s not n

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you try to keep everything on a single track when possible?

worked on, I was the third editor and I came into it five years into the process. They cut it and they recut it and shot some more and then reshot a bunch of stuff, then I came in and recut it. I mean, it’s one thing being the editor and it’s another being the producer or someone who spent five years of his life. At film festivals, people always ask “What was the budget? And the guy had the great line that he’d say: “This cost me five years of my life.” Which I think is the perfect answer. It’s a labor of love by definition.

AG: I always work in multiple tracks for organizational reasons and also because sometimes I have multiple options stacked on different tracks, like if I am debating about using one image over another, this shot versus that shot, I will leave them all in the timeline on different tracks. SH: What are some of those timelines you were working on? AG: The range is probably six months to 18 months. We Steal Secrets took about 18 months. The Scientology thing I did took a little more than a year. And that’s just me as the editor. On both of those, the assistant started a good three or four months before me and before them were researchers who were trying to pull together the archival. It could easily be two years from the first interview till someone gets to see it at a festival or whatever. But we’re talking about Alex Gibney films where there’s a good budget and people are getting paid and other films that have smaller budgets, like the first film I

SH: Do you get an opportunity to ask the director for additional footage or a reshoot on an interview if you don’t feel you have enough to tell a story? AG: That’s the way Alex Gibney actually works, is that he shoots the interviews and we wait till we’re pretty much picture-locked before we do any of the re-enactments or b-roll or graphics or anything like that. n

creativity in your hands

n n n n n n n n n n www.padcaster.com SIGHT, SOUND & STORY

@thepadcaster

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INSIDE THE CUTTING ROOM:

WILLIAM GOLDENBERG, ACE & THE INSPIRATION GAME

By Bobbie O’Steen

’m excited to be moderating a panel honoring the master editor William Goldenberg - and an added pleasure was discovering that Goldenberg’s mentor and ultimate source of inspiration is the legendary Michael Kahn, my honoree from last year’s Sight, Sound & Story. Goldenberg had other mentors along the way, beginning with his teacher at Temple University who recognized his editing talents. He was also fortunate to be apprentice editor for the iconic Dede Allen whom he called “a force of nature” and to assist such editors as Ron Sanders and David Rawlings. Then Kahn took Goldenberg under his wing for four years - during which time he rose from assistant to co-editor - and Goldenberg fully absorbed Kahn’s artistry and wisdom. For starters, Kahn taught him to trust his instincts, or in his words, “lose your forebrain.” Kahn had also, early on, discovered a book called “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind,” which inspired him to approach every film without bringing along any previous baggage. Goldberg clearly acquired an ability to be focused on the film he was working on at that moment, which enabled him to move dexterously among a range of genres. Case in point: last year, when he worked on two very different kinds of war films, Unbroken

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and The Imitation Game, as well as the 3D effects-laden, Transformers: Age of Extinction, the latter two simultaneously. Another parallel: Goldenberg received two Academy Award nominations in the same year - for Argo and Zero Dark Thirty - a record he shares only with Kahn and Walter Murch. Goldenberg learned from Kahn how to handle himself with powerful people and, as an example, found himself at the outset of his time with Kahn, making changes after preview on Always – with such majors as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas standing behind him. Goldenberg has proved to be adept at negotiating the politics of the workplace and adapting easily to a wide range of cutting room situations, which includes working frequently and comfortably with multiple editors. When he edited two Transformers movies, the atmosphere was a free-for-all, with everyone editing each other’s work; and on the four films he did for Michael Mann, more than one editor was a necessity, given the countless versions and incredibly long hours required with that perfectionistic director. Beyond Mann, Goldenberg has dealt with the full spectrum of directors in terms of personality, style, and working method, among them Jon Turteltaub, Frank Marshall, Gary Ross, and Ben Affleck – all of them using Goldenberg repeatedly, often resulting in long-term friendships. n

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acting is brilliant and the moment is working. This was particularly true when Goldenberg was editing Benedict Cumberbatch’s remarkable portrayal of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. Goldenberg realized how much story could be told by watching the actor’s eyes, what was going on inside of him; and how important it was, he said, to “get out of the way instead of just cutting.” Goldenberg and Kahn both talked about how frightening it was to dive in and edit at the beginning of their careers. Goldenberg specifically spoke about how “terrified” he was cutting his first scene for Mann, a highly complex action scene at the end of the film, Heat. In fact, no matter how impressive Goldenberg’s career is, he shares a feeling that virtually all the master editors I’ve interviewed admit to having: occasional periods of selfdoubt, especially when they’re beginning a new film. However, when an editor experiences real success and receives lots of positive input, the opposite emotions kick in as well: a strong belief in themselves and the courage to take chances. That is when editors of Goldenberg’s caliber truly set themselves apart - and achieve editing magic. n

Jerry Bruckheimer, a producer Goldenberg worked with on numerous films, once called him the “story guy;” and now Goldenberg says that he’s apparently considered the “tension guy,” after doing films that involved such scenarios as escaping from Tehran (Argo) and hunting down Bin Laden (Zero Dark Thirty). Goldenberg has edited an inordinate number of films based on true stories, the two just mentioned being prime examples. Some of them had to be approached delicately - whether it was because of actual events unfolding as they were filming, as in Zero Dark Thirty, or to clarify a life that was unfairly perceived and forgotten, as was true of The Imitation Game. All these films affect the legacy of the people portrayed – impacting those still alive and their survivors – and Goldenberg has always felt a profound responsibility to do justice to them. Part of that involved the ways in which he helped shape the actors’ performances. Another lesson Goldenberg learned from Kahn, who specifically talked about this when he was editing Lincoln, is resisting the temptation to cut, especially when the

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WILL VR BE THE NEXT BIG THING? I HOPE SO.

hen I started in the industry, oh so long ago, virtual reality was already a thing. I remember people waiting in line at a Siggraph for a chance to strap on a bulky headset and see some really blocky animation representing a weird CG environment. While the technology might not have been ready back then, the idea of getting lost in a world you would never get to see in real life was attractive. Fast-forward 15 years or so and virtual reality is officially a thing. I am a newbie to this, but I am jazzed. I heard people talking up virtual reality at NAB but didn’t have the opportunity to get a full-on demo. That happened, oddly enough, in a cigar bar in New York City. Jaunt VR’s Miles Perkins plugged a Samsung Note 4 phone into a GearVR HMD (head-mounted display) — you can purchase this Samsung Note 4 or S6 HMD for around $200 at Best Buy — and blew my mind. As conversations went on around me, I was transported to the Grand Canyon. There was beauty everywhere I turned. Up, down, to my sides, and below. If you have a fear of heights, watch out for the below view. Amazing. Then I was at a Paul McCartney concert, but I was seeing it from his perspective. Even more amazing. So, I guess I’m officially a believer. Unlike 3D stereo, which failed to really launch anywhere except for animated films playing in theaters, this is going to happen, particularly for concert films, games and when providing viewers with immersive, one-of-a-kind experiences, like the Grand Canyon. While headsets from the likes of Oculus

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By Randi Altman

Rift (coming in 2016), Sony, and Samsung cost hundreds of dollars and offer a more high-end experience – higher resolution, higher frame rate, better color — there are many more affordable and just as fun options for people to get their hands on, which will make the adoption of virtual reality a sure thing. In fact, Jaunt is HMD agnostic, acknowledging you don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars to see virtual reality – just check this out from Google https:// www.google.com/get/cardboard. It’s called Google cardboard, and it costs more in the range of $20 to $30 — if you’re lucky you might even find Google Cardboard for as little as $5, and, in some cases, luckier you might get it free as a promotional item. And companies such as Jaunt — which just announced the opening of Jaunt Studios in Hollywood, aimed to be a major VR content provider, sort of “Netflix of virtual-reality content” — are making sure if you want to experience virtual reality, you will have the chance. What about the audio side of the experience? Dolby aims to help with Atmos format, which provides object-based sound in a 3D space, so when you turn your head, the sound stays where it belongs – locked to the object that made the sound. So incredibly cool. n Randi Altman is editor-in-chief of postPerspective.com

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SPEAKERS AT SIGHT, SOUND & STORY n

JESSE AVERNA (@Dr0id) is, for the last six seasons, the series editor for Sesame Street, for which he has won five Emmys. Jesse also teaches Continuing Ed at the School of Visual Arts, recently directed a new children’s series Monica’s Mixing Bowl and is in active development on his own film. He also leads a weekly Twitter chat every Wednesday night for Post Professionals, called #PostChat. When Jesse’s not engaged in the above, or spending time with his family, he’s editing recap promo’s for SyFy’s 12 Monkeys. Basically, he’s a workaholic insomniac with a love for his daughter, Post Production, monsters and droids.

WILLIAM GOLDENBERG, ACE, has more than twenty film and television credits since 1992. He won the Academy Award for Film Editing for the film Argo, and has been nominated for The Insider, Seabiscuit, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Imitation Game. He has also received nominations for nine other editing-related awards. Goldenberg has had an extended, notable collaboration with the director Michael Mann including Heat, The Insider, Ali, Miami Vice, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction. Some of his other work includes Unbroken, Alive, Pleasantville, National Treasure, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and Gone Baby Gone.

FABIENNE BOUVILLE, ACE, grew up in a suburb of Paris until age 16 when she moved to Manhattan, where she attended high school, college, and grad school, as well as getting a separate degree in photojournalism. When she was done getting an education and it was time to face the mountain of debt she accumulated, she moved to Los Angeles in hot pursuit of the mighty dollar. This is where she honed her skills as an editor, starting as an assistant on reality shows and slowly n

GORDON BURKELL is an editor who has been in the industry for 15 years, editing predominantly documentaries. He is the founder of aotg.com, a site that shares and organizes new information and news for post professionals, recognized as one of the top sites for the film industry by MovieMaker Magazine. The site includes Aotg.tv, The Cutting Room Podcast and mobile apps to keep post professionals up to date on current post news. Gordon currently teaches and hosts panels, events and lectures at Ryerson University.

MICHAEL BERENBAUM, ACE served as editor on both Sex and the City and Sex and the City 2, the box office hits based on the HBO series, on which Berenbaum also worked. His other recent projects include the hit FXseries, The Americans, and Netflix’s Marco Polo. Berenbaum also edited What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and Hollywoodland. He has worked with such directors as Joel and Ethan Coen, JohnTurturro, Al Pacino, Julian Schnabel and Martin Scorsese. During his six-year stint on the series Sex and the City, Berenbaum received two Emmy Award nominations and two American Cinema Editors (ACE) Awards. In addition, he received an Emmy for his work on the pilot episode of Desperate Housewives. Berenbaum’s other television work includes the hit series Nurse Jackie, Running Wilde, Life Is Wild, The Comeback, The Wire and Ed, as well as several telefilms.

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finding her way through editing for all different kinds of formats. She was lucky when she landed her first job on a Ryan Murphy TV show, Nip/Tuck, 7 years ago, giving her an entrée into the scripted world and among an exceedingly talented and dedicated group of editors. She received two Emmy nominations for her work on American Horror Story.

ANDY GRIEVE is an editor and director who’s recent collaboration with Oscar winning director Alex Gibney include Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, The Armstrong Lie, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. Andy’s other credits include a short film for the Stand Up To Cancer prime time special, winner of the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Picture Editing; The Carter, a feature documentary about rap-sensation Lil’ Wayne that n

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premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival; Jason Kohn’s Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), winner of the 2007 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best U.S. Documentary as well as the 2008 Cinema Eye award for Best Editing; Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure, winner of the 2008 Berlin Film Festival Grand Jury Prize; and Lionsgate’s recently released narrative feature The Burrowers, directed by JT Petty. In 2012 Andy also directed and edited Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police. JULIE ‘BOB’ LOMBARDI is a producer and editor of documentaries and television. Bob made her editorial debut with the Oscar nominated, 2004 documentary, Super Size Me directed by Morgan Spurlock. She went on to cut Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? and MTV’s critically acclaimed hit series 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, and World of Jenks. Her other credits include David Blaine; Dive of Death, Extreme Makeover; Home Edition, Room Raiders, and Town of the Living Dead to name a few. She just finished producing and editing Made in Japan and is currently working on the documentary Free-

dom! The Road Movie for Warrior Poets. BOBBIE O’STEEN is a writer and film historian dedicated to sharing the editor’s invisible art with students, professionals and the movie-going public. Educated at Stanford University, she is an Emmy-nominated film editor and the author of two acclaimed books about editing.”Cut to the Chase” is based on interviews with her late husband and colleague, legendary editor Sam O’Steen, about his work on such landmark films as The Graduate and Chinatown. Her second book, “The Invisible Cut”, deconstructs the editing process of classic films through a cut-by-cut analysis. O’Steen has hosted evenings honoring master editors involving screening and discussion for UCLA Film and Television Archive’s Billy Wilder Theater, Emerson College’s Bright Screening Room, NYU’s Cantor Film Center, 92Y Tribeca. She is currently partnered with Manhattan Edit Workshop for her series “Inside the Cutting Room,” and she also moderates panels for American Cinema Editors’ EditFest. O’Steen has taught graduate film student workshops at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has recently cre-

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ated an ongoing course entitled “Making the Cut,” which is based on her interviews and examines the art and technique of master editors. In addition, she contributes to such publications as Editors Guild Magazine and Cinema Editor Magazine, the latter naming her “Film Editing’s Greatest Champion.”

Citibank, Sperry, Nike, The Shins and—of course—Missy Elliot PAX WASSERMANN is a film editor and producer with twenty years in features, television and documentaries. In addition to Cartel Land, his documentary work includes Devil’s Playground, the Sally Mann documentary What Remains, the recent films Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, The Notorious Mr. Bout, Knuckleball!, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, and Which Way Home, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009. His fiction work includes Peter Bogdanovich’s upcoming comedy She’s Funny That Way, starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, and Noah Buschel’s directorial debut Bringing Rain.

GARRET SAVAGE is a editor and producer based in Brooklyn. His documentary editing credits include the Peabody Award-winning My Perestroika, HBO’s How Democracy Works Now series, Ready, Set, Bag! (LA Film Festival), and IFC’s 4-Cylinder 400. He is producing Rachel Shuman’s upcoming feature documentary, The Fall and was an associate producer of the Emmy nominated Pressure Cooker (Participant Films). He has worked on projects for Paramount Pictures, ABC/ESPN, Discovery, IFC, AMC, MTV, and more. Garret was a 2009 Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Lab Fellow, the Program Director of the Nantucket Film Festival’s Teen View Film Lab and is a founder and current Board President of the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship.

Born in Winnipeg, Canada, SIDNEY WOLINSKY, ACE graduated from Brandeis University and received a Masters in Film from San Francisco State University. As an editor he has worked on feature films, documentaries, and dramatic series. He edited David Chase’s film Not Fade Away. Among the series he has worked on are The Sopranos, Rome, Ray Donovan, and House of Cards. He edited pilot episodes for Blue Bloods, Boardwalk Empire, Ray Donovan, The Strain, and Extant. He has received two Eddies for his work on The Sopranos and an Emmy for the Boardwalk Empire pilot. He is currently completing the second season of Power.

For the past two seasons, JOE SCHUCK has been editing Discovery Channel’s hit show Alaskan Bush People. He also served as editor on the first season of Best Funeral Ever. Other projects that Joe served as assistant editor on include MTV’s True Life, A&E’s The First 48, Oxygen’s Jersey Couture, Discovery Life’s Facing Trauma, as well as several years at MLB.com as a Senior Game Night Editor. He is a graduate of the New York Institute of Technology, where he majored in Communication Arts specializing in Film and Video. Joe is also an alumni of Manhattan Edit Workshop’s Six Week Intensive workshop, as well as a former Apple certified editing instructor.

ALANNA YUDIN is an NYCbased film and television editor. For over fifteen years she has been crafting, re-crafting, and losing sleep over numerous reality TV series. She honed her skills on Extreme Makeover and Wife Swap for ABC. Some of her more recent credits include Discovery’s “Storm Chasers,” VH-1’s Mob Wives, and MTV’s Teen Mom, on which she served as Series Supervising Editor. She currently edits SpikeTV’s Ink Master, which, in its sixth season, remains one of the network’s highest-rated series. As a documentary editor, she edited the Hearst Corporation’s Seven Days That Changed New Orleans, which won a Telly Award in 2006, and is currently cutting an indie feature, entitled The Sheriff of Mars. n

ZAC STUART-PONTIER is a Director and Editor, chosen as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Film in 2010. His editing work includes the HBO miniseries, The Jinx (for which he also served as co-writer and co-producer), cult documentary Catfish (also co-producer), Sundance award winner Martha Marcy May Marlene, SXSW award winner NY Export: Opus Jazz, and numerous short films, music videos and commercials notably for n

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By Steve Hullfish THE ART OF THE CUT: WITH FABIENNE BOUVILLE, ACE to the editing I do during the shooting schedule (usually about 9 days), I get four days to complete the editor’s cut and four days working with the director to complete his or her cut. After that, the cut goes to the producers and it takes about another week to 10 days before we lock. In my experience, different shows require a very different amount of work in post. American Horror Story is more crafted because of its style; the experience of it is dependent on dynamic and creative editing. American Horror Story is the gold standard for me because of how honed it is and it’s really a feat to get it done on that schedule. In terms of resources (number of days) it’s the same as other shows but the creative requirements are more intense.

Editor Fabienne Bouville, ACE has been working consistently in scripted TV with stints as an editor on Nip/Tuck, Glee, American Horror Story, and Masters of Sex. STEVE HULLFISH (SH): I know that although Glee is considered a “single camera” show, it was usually shot with multiple cameras. Any differences in editing a show like Glee and American Horror Story?

SH: Talk to me about how American Horror Story is creatively different from Masters of Sex or Glee.

FABIENNE BOUVILLE (FB): Calling things multicam and single cam is a bit of a misnomer. Everything I work on is shot with at least two cameras. Typically maybe 60% of what I get is shot on three cameras, maybe 20% is two cameras and 20% is one camera. My assistant groups them. I try to keep my assistant as creatively involved as possible. We gave up ScriptSynching for example, because it takes a lot of time. I’d rather have them work on the sound design, which on American Horror Story is very intensive work. Also, I like to offer my assistant at least one scene to cut per episode if possible, for their own development. I prefer to have them do creative work where possible instead of grunt work like ScriptSynching.

FB: Everything about American Horror Story is crafted and honed. Each season is completely different and we are constantly looking for a fresh strategy for everything. The sound design is key, and I discuss it with my assistant and then turn it over to them. They will comb through our extensive sound library and distort the individual sound effects in every which way – it’s a real free-for-all - to get the kind of quality we are looking for. Then I work on music, which is different from the process on other shows, too. Music plays a much more important part in horror. It’s mixed much hotter than with something like Masters of Sex. There’s a big conversation with the composer that starts happening right at the script delivery. I’ll send him (the composer) a rough cut of an act or an initial assembly of scenes as soon as I can and then he sends me ideas and themes with all the stems so that I can also play with them in other ways. It’s a lot of back and forth and a really fun part of the process. Initial scoring of an episode takes a few days, which is why I need my assistant to handle the sound design.

SH: Talk to me about the deadlines you’re working on in TV. FB: The schedules in TV are uniformly set-up in a one-size-fits-all scheme, which is frustrating because each project involves a different set of creative challenges, which translates to a very different amount of time required. In addition n

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From the set of American Horror Story: Freakshow.

FB: The stems I’m getting from the composer are typically for each instrument – 3 to 10 instruments. I like separate stems so that I can pick and choose which instruments I want in the mix for a particular scene and change it up for a different scene, according to the feel I am looking for. It’s a helpful way to work in themes so that I don’t just repeat the same piece of music but modulate it for different scenes.

I only get 4 days for my editors cut and 90% of my time at that stage will be devoted to music. On another show – Masters of Sex – I don’t talk to the composer hardly at all. He’s used to working with the post producer in the spotting session for all episodes and then the show runner. I might sit in on the spotting session and have a thought or two, but the process is a lot more streamlined. I use the cues he’s written for other episodes and other seasons as temp score, which gives him a good indication of what we are ultimately looking for in each cue. The overall feel of the music is very consistent, which is what the show runner wants. She does not want to reinvent the wheel with each episode or call attention to the music, which would distract from the story beats. In TV, generally directors don’t get very involved in the music. Directors come in and out of TV shows during the season, while the editors are part of the entire run of the season or even the series, so we understand the tone of the show better and we are a lot more clued into the process of acquiring and shaping the music. In one episode I cut of American Horror Story the director didn’t like the music I had cut in, particularly the needle drops, because they sounded too experimental. It is his prerogative to use music he feels is right for his cut, so I changed it for him to what he liked. But when the producers saw his cut, they felt, like me, that it didn’t sound right, that it sounded too conventional for our show. We ended up putting all of the music I had originally picked back in.

SH: Explain how you use stems to modulate the music. FB: Typically, each main character or story line will have a theme. Sometimes that theme is dangerous and sometimes it feels really tense, or it can be lyrical. What I do is that I modulate the music by pulling stems out or altering the stems, or changing the mix… I play with the music – and do a lot of audio mixdowns - making it sparse in one scene and more dramatic in another scene, while using the same theme. Instead of going to a completely different piece of music you can make the original theme feel different. You can change the tempo of it. You can change the mood by changing the instruments in the mix. Sometimes, you can even create a whole new theme by mixing stems intended for different cues. SH: Are you a musician? Many editors I know are musicians. FABIENNE BOUVILLE: When I was growing up I played piano. I don’t consider myself a professional musician by any means, but I do have a musical background. However, I don’t have much formal music theory training. I do my music work by ear. I’ll try something and if it sounds right to me, I’ll use it. At some point, I’ll send everything that I do back to the composer to make sure I’m not doing anything he would flat out object to. I don’t want him to feel like his music is being mis-used, that something sounds terrible to him. Sometimes, he’ll give me notes, which I always try and address. It’s a collaborative process and it’s really fun.

SH: You talked about getting stems from the composer. What are these audio stems? How are they broken out? n

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SH: Can you give me an example of a scene n

SIGHT, SOUND & STORY

From the set of American Horror Story: Aslyum.

where you edited the stems to get what you wanted during the edit? FB: It happens all the time. But I remember there was one story-line last season that involved a crazy ventriloquist. Neil Patrick Harris played this part where he really loses it. He has a doll he thinks is real and he has long discussions with the doll and he’s having a total breakdown and ends up killing the doll – or so he thinks. So with the composer we had the idea that his theme should be like a machine that’s breaking down. He sent me a cue in stems and I ran the theme intact during a relatively normal interaction in the scene, but then I broke up the stems and cut them in a fairly random and completely non-musical way so that they sounded like a machine breaking down. I repeated the process while emphasizing different instruments from the stems for different scenes. When I

was done, I sent the show back to the composer for his impressions and he was completely game for it. SH: What edit system are you using? FB: In my experience the industry standard for television editing is Avid. On American Horror Story we worked on Final Cut 7, but when FCP-X came out the post team freaked out and we switched to Avid, along with the rest of the industry. Ryan Murphy was also the show-

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From the set of American Horror Story: Freakshow.

it’s all about building tension, in every scene you’re building tension until it explodes. In comedy, you’re looking for the funny. You still need to be grounded in the emotional experience of the characters and make sure each step of the plot is clear, but your approach is ultimately all in service to the funny. In drama, there isn’t that extra layer of manipulation. Beyond the plot being clear, conveying the emotional state of the characters is really all that matters. So in the cutting room, the conversations are very different. In horror you want to always keep your approach fresh, you always have to be inventing a new way so that you can surprise an audience. If you are approaching the material the same way twice, you will never be able to keep anyone on the edge of their seat, unsettled. They will know what’s coming and there will be no tension. Creatively it’s very demanding because you always have to be inventing a new approach. In drama, all of the craft is in service to the emotional state of the characters and the editing is fully in support of the writing and the performance. It does not call attention to itself because that would distract from the emotional experience of the character, whereas with horror you are willfully shaping the edit so that it doesn’t feel right. Of course, there is crossover and you might end up using a lot of the same techniques, but the approach on the material is definitely different. With comedy, the use of atypical editing techniques like jump cuts or very loud music or jumping the line, for example, falls somewhere in between. With Glee I got to use some of these techniques because sometimes the audience needs to be caught off guard for comic effect. The musical numbers on Glee are cut like a music video. You have the music track and all of your different tracks that are sunk to it and you cut it with a visual sensibility. n

runner for Glee which was also FCP, until the switch to Avid. I still miss Final Cut Pro in some ways. It felt more streamlined to me, and faster to navigate. I really miss unlimited soundtracks and how it handled sound. And I’m very frustrated with the trim tool in Avid. How you have to go fishing for an edit on every track before you can even begin to trim anything. I’ll be clicking away on every track and then, the ultimate insult, the whole thing comes undone because I clicked a millimeter off course. Ugh! SH: Most Avid editors would say that trimming is one of Avid’s strengths. FB: Not in my mind. To be fair, part of my frustration is that on American Horror Story we’re cutting on MC 5.5, which is very old (the current release is version 8). Keeping sync is fussy and then we also don’t have nearly enough audio tracks. FCP has 99 tracks. In Avid 5.5, there are only 16 voices. I just find it very frustrating to constantly have to mix down audio in order to fit into those constraints, and then the more tracks I have the more cumbersome it is to use the trim tool, which is my bread and butter. SH: Let’s discuss the way that editing these different genres – comedy, horror and straight drama – are different. FB: It is very different to edit those three genres. With all of them you want the number one objective to be conveying the emotional state of your characters and also to be able to follow the plot, which is the backbone of the story. That’s the same for all genres, but the objective of the story is different. With horror, n

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SIGHT, SOUND & STORY

WELCOME TO THE ‘FITNESS IN POST’ REVOLUTION By Zack Arnold

2. Be more active in the edit bay

s post-production professionals we don’t “edit for a living,” we live to edit. We are passionate about being creative, but that passion often comes with a price – poor health. Until recently there was no resource for people in our industry who wanted to take control of their health…until the creation of Fitness In Post (www.fitnessinpost.com). Fitness In Post provides you with a set of tools, resources, and most importantly a community to help you invest in your health no different than you would the latest CPU, hard drive, or plug-in package.

The simplest way to say this is stop sitting. But even transitioning to a standing desk is just a different form of being sedentary. The key is to constantly be active. Set alarms or reminders to get up and take walks or activity breaks every 45-60 minutes. My #1 suggestion for being more active in the edit bay is a program called ‘The Sitting Solution,’ learn more about it at www.fitnessinpost.com/sitting.

3. Have one densely nutritious smoothie per day Working long hours often (always) precludes us from having time to prepare healthy meals. Even when working 18-hour days, I make sure at least one meal is a densely nutritious smoothie to ensure I’m getting all of the macro and micro nutrients necessary to maintain my health. My go-to is a product called Shakeology (store.fitnessinpost.com/shakeology). I also recommend products by Primal Nutrition, Upgraded Self, Onnit, and Vega. Paving the path towards better health is not always easy, but at the end of the day that journey will also lead towards being a better editor, a better spouse, and a better better parent. I’d rather invest in my health while I still have it so I can enjoy life for the next fifty years and beyond. n

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The most common question I get is, “how do you do it?” They want to know how I balance working extremely long hours on a high profile series like Empire, but still maintain my health. The key is to avoid the “all or nothing” approach and make one small change at a time. Below I have outlined three simple changes members of the Fitness In Post program have told me are easy to implement, but make the most profound impact on their overall health.

1. Ditch the sugary drinks

There isn’t a more detrimental path towards poor health than drinking empty calories. Whether it’s soda (especially diet sodas), sports drinks, energy drinks, or even so called “health drinks” (e.g. Vitamin Water or Naked Juice) drinking sugar is the quickest path to weight gain, sluggishness, and even type 2 diabetes. Stick with water, tea, or unsweetened coffee. n

SIGHT, SOUND & STORY

Zack Arnold is a Film & TV editor with credits such as Empire, Burn Notice, and Glee. He is also the creator of Fitness in Post. To find out more information on Fitness in Post, please go to www.fitnessinpost.com.

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THE SCARCITY OF TIME By David Shapton

e live in interesting times, and, mostly, it‘s not a curse but an exhilarating ride through a vista of new products and technologies. The pace is too fast for some, and others say that machines will soon become sentient and want to destroy us, the inferior species. Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen for a while because we have more new cameras to play with than we ever have. For the price of a small Audi, you can buy a camera kit that will make films that you can show in any cinema. And you can get started for a tenth of that. Just fifteen years ago you’d have had to use a consumer camcorder with a small digital sensor (most likely three of them and a prism beam-splitter) and record to tape. It was digital but in standard definition. While you arguably could show this in a cinema, you’d notice within milliseconds that it wasn’t as good as film. But now the question is often “is film as good as video?” So the budget you need to make a film has plummeted — especially compared to even working with 16mm film.

Are we better off? There are those who argue that we’re not. In the same way that transistor amps don’t (apparently) sound as good as tube ones. Times have changed. It’s just not like the old days. But in those bygone days the costs were often prohibitive for small film productions, and today’s filmmaking environment would have seemed like a dream. Yes, knowing that film was just so expensive made everyone focus on getting the shot first time, but you could view that as a type of fiscal tyranny that surely nobody could possibly feel nostalgic about. In a sense, we’re entering a post scarcity era, where there are enough cameras at all levels to suit absolutely any budget. Any financial one, that is. But there’s another budget, where there’s still scarcity. It’s time. Yes, in theory you can turn things around faster now. You don’t have to wait for film to develop. Editing can be faster. Except, that is, when you have a shooting ratio of fifteen to one, and every shot needs CGI elements. And then there’s grading. And multi-channel audio. And other stuff. Just figuring out a workflow can take days. And why are there so many codecs? So, yes, we’re living in a land of plenty. And the results can be wonderful. But don’t ever imagine you can get results quickly. David Shapton is the Editor In Chief of RedShark Publications. He’s been a professional columnist and author since 1998, when he started writing for the European Music Technology magazine Sound on Sound. David has worked with professional digital audio and video for the last 25 years.

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SIGHT, SOUND & STORY

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Sight, Sound & Story: Post Production Summit 2015

Articles inside

The Art of The Cut: with Fabienne Bouville, ACE

Will VR Be The Next Big Thing? I Hope So.

Inside The Cutting Room: William Goldenberg, ACE & The Inspiration Game

The Art of The Cut: with Andy Grieve