August 2013 www.tvbeurope.com


“Rushes are milk, and we are trying to make cheese” — Oral Norrie Ottey


directors barely get a chance to see it as a whole.” On the issue of approaching


cuts for emotional scenes, Hetherington said: “It goes back to when you view the rushes. You look for the emotional beats to the scene. If they feel it I would feel it as the audience — the first pair of eyes.” Parker summarised the big change: “When we were on film we got progress reports every day and the most important thing was how much film stock we got through. Directors were much more disciplined. Now they can run any number of cameras endlessly. “The nature of post has changed. The blanket coverage now is like carpet bombing,” she added. “It means the producers can come in after the director’s cut and find other stuff. It gives them a much greater opportunity to put their stamp on the style of the cut.”


No time to think any more The feature editing team was composed of moderator Mick Audsley and the four ACE members John Wilson, Tracy Granger, Chris Dickens, and Eddie Hamilton. Issue one was do they miss the physicality and the crick in the neck from cutting film? “Experiencing film editing is not a prerequisite, but it helps,” said Dickens. Wilson added: “I edited quite a lot of film on celluloid and have cut quite a lot of films on computer and I do not miss handling film. It was a hassle much of the time. “The only thing that rewinding Steenbeck editors used to do was to give you thinking time, and that’s something we don’t get enough of today,” he added. Audsley favoured the Moviola in his film years. “Everybody was terrified of this noisy beast, and I think this is still relevant: literally only two of us could look down the barrel at the image. Only an editor and a director could look at this thing,” he said. “There was a very clear distinction between the process of cutting and us doing our work very privately. It was our little place, a safe haven of ideas. “Nowadays what we all


experience is you go into a room and there are dozens of screens, a sofa bed, and the whole thing is about, ‘Alright. Impress me. Show me your work.’” Dickens bemoaned the absence


of protection: “Everyone needs to be kept out of the cutting room. You lose your train of thought when too many people come to give you notes. When you had to cut film, you had to think it through first,” he said. “You need the opportunity to get it wrong too.”


TVBEurope 65 News & Analysis


“I watch everything in the rushes, but it is getting more difficult with shooting ratios now at 60:1. They were 15:1 … ” Frances Parker


Granger has a huge beef with


unwanted visitors: “Cutting rooms have become like kitchens, where people just hang out on their mobiles,” she said. www.ace-filmeditors.org www.editfest.com


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