Assistant Editor Glorily Velez Of Optimus Tops This Year's Competition
By Emily Vines
CHICAGO --This month, the Chicago chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) held its fourth annual Trailer Park Festival at Dante’s, a bar in the Windy City. The festival features trailers cut by assistant editors from AICE member companies. This year, participants could choose to cut a trailer for one of the following films: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), which won an Academy Award for best editing, Gigli (2003) or Modern Romance (1981).
In past competitions, the participants did not have a choice of films to cut. The previous selections included Chicago, which won an Academy Award for best editing in 2002, Black Hawk Down, which won the Oscar for editing in 2001, and Gladiator, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2000 for best film editing and won best picture.
“We thought, in addition to the Academy Award-winning film, that Gigli and Modern Romance would be fun to choose from,” said Kathryn Hempel, founder of the festival and editor/partner at Cutters, Chicago.
Another twist this year was that the assistant editors could choose to “sell” or “spoof” the movie they chose. Editor, fellow festival organizer and emcee of the event Jeff Landsman of Swell, Chicago, said he approached Hempel at last year’s screening about the spoof option. He noticed that people had done it for fun that year and proposed incorporating it in this year’s competition.
The grand prize winner, Glorily Velez, of Optimus, Chicago, chose to spoof Gigli. The trailer is cut like an old, silent, black-and-white film and opens with the following words on screen: “The studio is proud to present the most engaging story of the year.”
For placing first in the contest, which had 28 entrants, Velez won Avid Xpress Pro, which Avid and Midwest Media Group donated, a $200 gift certificate to Virgin Megastores, $100 in $1 bills, and a Smokey Joe Weber grill. Velez also received the Trailer Park trophy which is passed from winner to winner each year.
The five runners up were Mark Butchko of Optimus; Tim LaDolce, Outsider, Chicago; Jimi Jo Meretzky, Avenue, Chicago; BJ Moore, Cutters; and Michelle Orzechowski, Swell. These five winners each received $200 and Virgin Megastore gift certificates worth $25 each.
The final prize, the Tent City award, is for a winning trailer cut by someone who is not an assistant editor yet. This year Brain Hepner, an intern at Cutters, won that honor and received $50 and a $25 gift certificate to Virgin. Describing this award, Hempel said, “You’re not quite in the trailer park, you’re kind of nearby because they’re not official assistants yet.”
The judges were Masayo Kaneko, Swell; Steve Morrison, Foundation, Chicago; Greg Sunmark, Red Car, Chicago; Jill Bzibziak, Outsider; Tim Kloehn, Optimus; and Nadia Hennrich, Cutters. Hempel removed herself from judging this year to eliminate any implication of impropriety if Cutters were to fare well in the competition.
Next year, Hempel is planning to hold the festival in the summer and hopefully include an outdoor screening for a competition that she said has become the event of the year for editors and assistants. “It’s very validating for people to get recognition for their work, especially with assistants,” she noted. “I think that’s why it’s been successful. It celebrates and acknowledges their work and also pushes them.”Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More