With nearly 30 years as an editor–and the last eight months as the executive director of the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE)–under his belt, Burke Moody reflects on his latter capacity as the organization heads into a time of industry change for which it hopes to help navigate a proper course.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the transition to high definition television as the AICE has embarked on an ambitious HD Initiative for advertisers, clients and the production community at large.
“Everyone is starting to feel the pinch of living with one foot in the standard definition 4:3 world and one in the 16:9 HD world,” relates Moody. “While eventually the ‘common practice’ will be an HD master 16:9 with 5.1 surround sound, how long it will take to get there remains to be seen. So in the meantime the industry has to deal with what to do.”
Last September, the AICE was on hand for an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Production Management Committee meeting in New York. Out of that sprung the idea for the AICE to help educate the industry about options in the SD/HD mix. The HD initiative–born out of the AICE partnering with Kodak (film is an HD medium)–has both individual and collective components.
On the former front, the AICE and Kodak have made HD presentations to the following individual agencies thus far: DraftFCB, New York, Euro RSCG, New York, and The Richards Group, Dallas. Plans call for more such sessions to take place this year with additional ad shops. Various AICE members have participated in the sessions, including Moody, Chris Franklin from Big Sky Editorial, New York, Craig Gordon from rhinoedit, New York, and Ken Skaggs and Erik Johnson of Frames, Dallas.
“We’ve fielded agency questions regarding their concerns,” says Moody, “with the most obvious being format–4:3 or 16:9? ‘What happens if you have to provide both?’ Another recurring story was, ‘We were told we only had to provide a SD spot and now they want to run it in HD.’ Overall it’s been a productive dialogue.”
Meanwhile for the industry at large the AICE is working on some practical guidelines to help advertisers, agency creatives and producers and post companies to deal with what can be a confusing HD/SD landscape. While he acknowledges that the timetable might be a bit optimistic, Moody hopes to have a preliminary yet detailed draft of these guidelines completed by the end of the year’s first quarter.
“It’s almost universally agreed among our members that you have to start at the end to determine your pathway,” observes Moody. “You have to know what you want to end up with in order to decide what the process toward that end should be. At the same time, we’re still not sure what form our first draft will take–guidelines, best practices, procedures. This won’t be a document that discusses the difference between interlace and progressive in painstaking detail. Instead it will be in the spirit of what an agency producer needs to know. What do stations and networks require? How do you get there?”
Dialogue Perhaps most important to Moody is the means that helped bring the HD Initiative to fruition, namely the AICE’s aforementioned involvement with the ANA, which was followed up in October by AICE having a presence at the ANA Annual Conference in Orlando, Fla.
“It’s essential to open lines of communication with all industry sectors and all the trade associations in this business,” affirms Moody. “Making advertising that goes out to cinema, TV, the web or wherever is a teamwork enterprise. And having open dialogue with a cooperative spirit can only lead to good things. The more discussion there is, the more equitable and efficient our business can be.”
Moody notes that the HD guidelines in development also represent an opportunity for AICE to dovetail with members of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), providing them with relevant information. Moody adds that the AICE has enjoyed a longstanding positive relationship with the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP).
Also part of the AICE’s DNA is promoting dialogue within its ranks, a prime case in point being a New York chapter town meeting in October which drew upwards of 70 attendees, including edit house owners, managing directors and executive producers as well as chapter board members.
“We divided the turnout into individual groups of seven or eight people, with a board member present in each group,” relates AICE’s New York chapter president Bob Cagliero, executive producer of 89 Editorial. “These company owners and executive producers were asked to identify the two most important issues their businesses were currently facing. The dialogue was extremely productive in that it engaged and empowered our members as they voiced their concerns to a chapter board member.
“Out of this,” continues Cagliero, “came 10 issues for all of us to discuss, ranging from how late payment causes strife, particularly for small editorial companies, to the issue of [agency] in-house editing.”
Cagliero said that a follow-up town meeting is slated for April. “We plan on having two or three more sessions like this in 2007,” notes Cagliero, “because the more we talk to each other, identify and address issues–and find common ground as we come up hopefully with solutions–the stronger the AICE is as a group.”
AICE Awards
Another prominent item on the AICE agenda is its sixth annual awards competition. Designed to gain recognition for the contributions of editors to commercialmaking, the AICE Awards have become firmly established. In fact entries are up nearly 13 percent over last year.
This time around, the AICE Awards ceremony returns to Chicago on May 17.
The competition spans 10 prime categories: Comedy; Dialogue; Montage; Music/Sound; Local Spot; National Campaign; Public Service; Spec Spot; Storytelling; and Visual Effects.
Additionally, for the second consecutive year the AICE competition will encompass awards for the best work from each AICE chapter (Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Toronto). The Best of Chapter honors help gain recognition for worthwhile commercials that might otherwise slip below the radar.
“It allows for example the talent in Dallas to compete among themselves and be judged by another [AICE] chapter,” explains Moody. “We want to extend the competition’s reach well beyond the big-ticket spots that gain national notoriety.”
A new wrinkle in the AICE Awards this year is a revamped judging procedure, which entails 20 judging panels spanning all nine AICE chapters. The panels consist of a mix of editors, agency creatives and production people.
Each category will be judged by two panels and the results of their assessments will determine the top three finalists in each category and ultimately the highest scoring entry will be the winner. A winner and two runners-up will be announced in each category.
In years past the first stage of judging had AICE member editors having the opportunity to vote. They would pare a large field of entries down to 10 finalists per category. The finalists were then judged by a blue ribbon panel.
“With more than 600 editors in our chapters, the first part of the old judging process was quite cumbersome and expensive,” says Moody.
“We also didn’t have the benefit of other points of view–from the agency and production communities. We think the new judging procedures offer a more well rounded, better snapshot of the value of the editorial contributions in the marketplace.”
Trailer Park
The Trailer Park competitions being held by various AICE chapters have also gained momentum. “It’s an opportunity to showcase the editing talents of assistant editors [from AICE member companies] across the country,” notes Moody. “The competitions have become a popular phenomenon among our members and with the public. For the last two years this work has been shown during Advertising Week in New York.”
The San Francisco chapter is slated to hold its first Trailer Park competition this year. And for the second consecutive year, AICE’s Boston chapter is taking a novel approach.
“There aren’t a lot of assistant editors in metropolitan Boston,” relates Moody, “but the companies there like the idea of Trailer Park and what it can do for the advertising industry at large, helping to discover and bring attention to new talent.” Hence last year the Boston chapter decided to ask film students at colleges and universities in Boston to participate in the competition, which usually entails cutting a feature trailer against genre (i.e., making a comedy trailer for a drama or musical).
“Each editorial company will sponsor a couple of students who will cut their work while being tutored and mentored through the Trailer Park process by professionals at that company. That approach was a resounding success last year and Boston is doing it again now. It’s a wonderful outreach to students in the area.”
Chicago AICE VP Tom Duff, president of Optimus, Chicago and Santa Monica, notes the return of the AICE Awards gala to Chicago this year bodes well in terms of attracting a diverse industry audience. “Outside of New York, Chicago is the biggest agency market in the United States,” says Duff. “A lot of agency clients figure to turn out for the AICE Awards in addition to the core editorial community. Three years ago when the event was first held in Chicago, that was the case. We had about 700 people come to the show and we expect about the same this time.”
Duff adds that another AICE event is in the offing for the Windy City–this one from the Chicago chapter. It’s the second annual Cage Match in which teams of editors are held captive on a stage and asked to cut a spot on relatively short order from some 20 minutes of selects. In last year’s inaugural Cage Match, five teams consisting of three editors each competed before a boisterous industry crowd.
The work was displayed on large monitors, with the crowd voting on the winner. The wrestling match influence permeated the event, which was the brainchild of Chicago editors Sean Berringer of Red Car, Craig Lewandowski of Optimus and Steve Stein of Cutters.
Last year’s Cage Match drew some 300 attendees, including agency artisans. “It was a way for editors to get to know each other and have a fun time,” relates Duff.
“Usually the editor is ‘lonely,’ not used to working as part of an editing team. Cage Match got editors to step out of that shell a bit.
“But more importantly, it created a closeness and more camaraderie within the community.”
