LOS ANGELES—At press time, DVDs—each containing 32 spots—were on their way to blue-ribbon judges throughout the country for the second annual Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) Editing Awards. This past summer, editors from AICE member houses throughout the country judged 260-plus entries and assigned point scores to each commercial, culling that field down to the 32 currently in the running for AICE Editing Awards. The awards span 10 categories: Storytelling; Comedy; Dialogue; Montage; Graphics; Regional; Visual Effects; Music/Sound; National Campaign; and Spec Spot.
The award competition’s format calls for three finalists per category, which would amount to 30 spots overall. However, there was a tie in third-place point tallies for the Visual Effects and National Campaign categories, translating into this year’s total of 32 finalists.
Designed to gain recognition for the art and craft of commercial editing, the AICE Editing Awards honor the best-edited work from the past year as judged primarily by editors themselves. (To be eligible for this year’s competition, spots must have debuted between July 1, 2001 and June 30, ’02; the prerequisite for spec spots is that they have been cut within that same qualifying time span.)
The 10 winning spots and their editors will be announced and honored with AICE Award statuettes during a gala show and dinner on Nov. 14 at The Highlands Restaurant and Night Club, part of the Hollywood complex that is home to the Academy Awards ceremony. National AICE president Steve McCoy, principal in FilmCore—with editorial houses in Santa Monica and San Francisco—noted that the AICE Editing Awards had a venue shift from New York in ’01 to Los Angeles this year. Plans call for the awards ceremony to be held in Chicago next year. "The change in host cities and venues underscores the fact that this is truly a national event," related McCoy, who is also president of AICE’s Los Angeles chapter. "That’s part of our intent-to make the awards as inclusive of everyone in the country as possible."
Also highlighting the evening will be the return of the AICE’s Hall of Fame induction honor, which this year will be bestowed upon editor Jacques Dury, who maintained highly regarded commercial editorial boutiques Dury & Associates and then Decoupage, both in Southern California. Now retired, Dury became legendary for his artistry, working with such notables as directors Joe Pytka (PYTKA, Venice, Calif.) and Leslie Dektor (Dektor Film, Hollywood), and ad agency creative maven Hal Riney of Hal Riney & Partners, San Francisco (now Publicis & Hal Riney).
In order to focus on the launch of the AICE Editing Awards last year, the organization decided to table the Hall of Fame honor in ’01, the plan being to bring it back to the fore in tandem with the Editing Awards in ’02. This coupling of the events will come to fruition next month, with Dury becoming the first Los Angeles artisan to receive the lifetime achievement honor. Past inductees have been from New York, including editors David Dee and Jeff Dell, Bea Conetta Sands, Dennis Hayes, John Quinn, Howie Weisbrot, Edna Paul and Jerry Bender.
FINALISTS
The AICE has released bare-bones info on the 32 finalists, reasoning that detailed credits-such as editors, directors and ad agencies—could compromise the judging process. The field of finalists includes two spots apiece for Nike ("Move" and "Off Road"), IBM ("Axe" and "Heist") and Target ("Symbols: Women" and "Jump"). Among the other advertisers with spot finalists are: United Airlines, Gatorade, AT&T Wireless, Yahoo!, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, Federal Express, FOX Sports, General Electric, Hollywood Video, Snickers, Monster.com and Mercedes-Benz.
The Blue Ribbon judging panel consists of editors, agency artisans and directors. From the editorial ranks, the AICE Awards judges are: Steve Cox of Outback Editorial, Atlanta; Jonathan Del Gatto of Terminal, Santa Monica; Livio Sanchez of The Whitehouse, Santa Monica; Igor Kovalik of Inside/Out, Santa Monica; Rye Dahlman of Rye, Santa Monica; Jonathan Edwards of Red Car, Dallas; Gigi Cone-Welch of Mad River Post, Dallas; Tony Fischer of Fischer Edit, Minneapolis; Mike LaBellarte of Outsider, Chicago; Marty Bernstein, Machete Edit & Design, Chicago; Maciek Godlewski, The Blue Rock Editing Company, New York; Barry Stilwell, Jump, New York; Adam Liebowitz, Go Robot!, New York, Owen Plotkin, Editing Concepts, New York; Greg Dougherty, Homestead Editorial, New York; Bob Frisk, Phoenix Editorial, San Francisco; Doug Walker, FilmCore San Francisco; Jerry Fried, Red Car, New York; and Vito DeSario, Version2. Editing, New York.
Blue-ribbon judges from the ad agency community are: David Yost, executive producer, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco; Damon Webster, director of broadcast production, Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif.; Mike Monteiro, executive creative director, DDB Los Angeles; Jesse Diaz, creative director, Dieste Harmel & Partners, Dallas; Jeremy Postaer, senior VP/group creative director, GSD&M, Austin, Texas; Mike Lescarbeau, creative director, One & All, Minneapolis; Lisa Thotland, director of broadcast production, Martin/Williams Advertising, Minneapolis; Jeff York, group creative director, J. Walter Thompson, Chicago; David Moore, VP/exec producer, Leo Burnett USA, Chicago; Jim Lesser, creative director, BBDO West, San Francisco; Kyle Lewis, senior VP/group creative director, BBDO South, Atlanta; Patrick Scullin, managing partner/creative, Ames Scullin O’Hare, Atlanta; Ken Yagoda, managing partner/director of broadcast, Young & Rubicam, New York; and Peter Friedman, executive VP/director of broadcast production, McCann-Erickson, New York;
Four directors have also agreed to judge the entries: Kinka Usher from House of Usher, Santa Monica; Bob Giraldi of bicoastal GiraldiSuarez Productions; Samuel Bayer of bicoastal Mars Media; and Errol Morris of bicoastal/internatiional @radical.media.
Blue-ribbon judges must return their ballots by Oct. 30 in order to be tabulated by the accounting firm of Berson & Corrado, New York.
The AICE Editing Awards committee is chaired by Arthur Williams, chairman of the board at New York-headquartered Editing Concepts. The other awards committee members are: McCoy; Bernadette Quinn, business manager of Moondog, New York; AICE/San Francisco president Jon Ettinger, executive producer of FilmCore San Francisco; AICE/Chicago chapter president Bob Carr, an editor at Red Car, Chicago; AICE/Dallas president Richard Gillespie, editor/principal of Fast Cuts Edits, Dallas; and AICE executive director John Held.
The 2002 Los Angeles Awards committee is chaired by Therese Hunsberger, executive producer of FilmCore Santa Monica. She heads a slate of committee members that also consists of Cindy Carey, executive producer of Crush/Voodoo/ Stompbox, Santa Monica; Carol Lombard, executive producer of Superior Assembly Editing Company, Santa Monica; and Leah Welsh, executive producer, ARTiFACT, Santa Monica and Santa Ana, Calif.
The AICE Editing Awards finalists—including the 10 winning spots—will be inducted into the archives of the Museum of Television and Radio (MoT&R), New York and Beverly Hills. They will join the first year’s AICE finalists and winning commercials in the MoT&R archives.
"Making the finalists and winning spots part of the permanent museum collection in perpetuity is a significant acknowledgement and honor," assessed Williams. He added that the MoT&R is visited not only by industry people, but by the general public—meaning that awareness of the editor’s contributions to advertising can potentially reach the community at large.
The evening’s AICE Editing Awards and Hall of Fame festivities will be emceed by actor David Leisure, a.k.a. Joe Isuzu, the "Liar" in the classic comedy campaign for Isuzu automobiles. A cocktail reception is slated for 6:30 p.m., followed by the awards ceremony and Hall of Fame induction, then a dinner offering several different food-theme islands from Wolfgang Puck’s catering company, and finally entertainment provided by a live band, with dancing. Tickets are available via www. aice.org or by contacting FilmCore Santa Monica (310-587-2400).
