The Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) is launching an awards show that will honor the "best edited" commercials of the year (July 1, 2000-June 30, 2001). Dubbed the AICE Editorial Awards, the annual competition will recognize a total of 10 spots.
The winning commercials will not be ranked. Instead, they will represent the body of best-edited work in the ad industry, as determined by AICE chapter members and a blue-ribbon panel of judges.
National AICE president Jeanne Bonansinga, editor/principal at Edit Sweet, Chicago, observed, "The time has come—it’s probably past due—for editors to be recognized and rewarded for their contributions and excellence by a jury of their peers. There are editing awards within other commercial award shows, but no show that highlights editing. Our prime mission for the AICE is to heighten the awareness of the contribution that the editor makes to a project. The AICE Editorial Awards will go a long way toward helping to realize that goal."
Arthur Williams—chairman of the board at New York-headquartered Editing Concepts Inc., and a past AICE/New York chapter president—has been named chairman of the AICE Editorial Awards. He described the competition as being of "great significance" to the editing community. "Editors have always been on the backburner as far as awards are concerned," he contended. "There are shows that at most have but one category for editing, and that doesn’t do justice to the amount of deserving work and the number of deserving artists that are out there. It’s time for us to honor our own, and in doing so help to gain recognition for the art and craft of editing."
The AICE Editorial Awards will not be broken down into product categories (e.g., best-edited automobile commercial, best-edited packaged goods, etc.). The quality of the editing will be the only consideration for judges. The work can be local, regional, national or international. However, commercials must have been cut by editors from AICE companies. Only AICE shops are eligible to enter commercials into the competition. Each spot must be entered under the banner of the editorial company that the editor worked for when the job was completed. A tentative entry deadline of July 16 has been set. Eligible work must have debuted on air between July 1, 2000 and June 30, 2001.
While details still were being worked out at press time, the AICE plans to send DVDs containing all qualified entries to its seven chapters—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Dallas and Minneapolis—by mid-August.
making points
During chapter screenings, members will assign a point total to each entry, narrowing the field down to a manageable number of spots. That exact number was yet to be determined at press time—it could possibly be anywhere from the top 20 to the top 50 commercials, conjectured Williams. No person will be allowed to vote for any commercial edited at his or her company.
Voting results from the seven chapters will be sent to the AICE Editorial Awards committee, headed by Williams, in New York, where the results will be compiled and tabulated. The AICE will produce a DVD containing the top-scoring spots, which will become awards show finalists. The exact number of finalists is still to be determined.
Then, in September, a blue-ribbon panel of 12 judges will view and assign point scores to those commercial finalists. The results will be tallied, with the 10 highest-scoring spots receiving AICE Editorial Awards. Williams said that a physical award—perhaps a statuette or plaque—is currently in the design stage.
The blue-ribbon judges have not yet been named. They will consist of four editors, four ad agency professionals, two postproduction artisans and two directors.
The 10 winning commercials will be unveiled on the same day at AICE events in each chapter city. A firm date hasn’t been set, but AICE national executive director John Held estimated that the awards events could be held as early as mid-October.
The AICE Editorial Awards committee consists of chairman Williams; Bernadette Quinn, business manager of New York-based Moondog (formerly Billy Williams Enterprises); AICE/ Chicago chapter president Bob Carr, who recently joined the editors’ roster at Red Car, Chicago; AICE/San Francisco president Jon Ettinger, executive producer of FilmCore, San Francisco; and editor Richard Gillespie of Fast Cuts Edits, Dallas.
The AICE has been bandying about the idea of organizing its own awards competition for the past several years. But the elements began to fall in place during national board meetings in 2000, first at the session held at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas (SHOOT, 4/28/00, p. 1), and then at the AICE board confab last November in Chicago. At the latter meeting, the board voted to formally approve the establishment of the AICE Editorial Awards.
Williams said that AICE discussion about developing an awards competition dates back to around the time the New York chapter launched its Editors Hall of Fame gala, honoring editors who have been industry luminaries. The sixth annual gala was held last year, with editors David Dee and Jeff Dell inducted into the Hall of Fame.
According to Williams, the Hall of Fame gala will be tabled in 2001 so that the AICE can put its full event-organizing energies into the Editorial Awards. And in 2002, Williams envisions an event combining the AICE Editorial Awards and the Hall of Fame ceremony.
