Events Will Continue To Showcase Talent Of Assistant Editors
The international board of the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) has formally adopted Camp Kuleshov as the name for the trailer editing competitions sponsored by its regional chapters each fall. The moniker stems from Lev Kuleshov, the Russian filmmaker and film theorist behind the film editing montage/juxtaposition of images technique known as “The Kuleshov Effect.”
“By adopting the name Camp Kuleshov across all our chapters, it provides us with a single brand identity for this very popular competition,” related Burke Moody, AICE executive director. He noted that while each chapter’s competition has its own creative brief and requirements, the common challenge calls for assistant editors to choose from a list of feature films and create a trailer–an advertisement, in essence–that changes the genre or narrative of the film in an unexpected way. In the process, they’re creating an ad for a film that doesn’t exist.”
For example, the top winner at last year’s New York competition–which has been under the Camp Kuleshov banner since 2008–was a trailer (edited by Stacey Peterson) based on the warm-hearted ’89 movie Field of Dreams, which instead advertised the picture as if it were a brooding, introspective Bergman film.
The competition–designed to showcase the editing prowess of assistant editors–was originally known as Trailer Park. In response to a trademark infringement claim, the Trailer Park name was dropped and a vareity of names emerged: Splice Capades, Filmspotgting, The Winnebago Awards, Trailer Blazin,’ and Trailer Wars.
The idea for a trailer editing competition for assistant editors originated with editors/partners Kathryn Hempel and Steve Stein of Chicago-based Cutters. They saw it as an event which would involve not only assistant editors but the entire AICE community. Hempel conceived the idea for the competition while Stein came up wiht the name. With help from the late Katy Maguire, then at Optimus, and Nadav Kurtz, then at Outsider but now also with Cutters, Hempel and Stein brought the event to life. They saw the event as a way to challenge and honor talented assistant editors.
“Being an assistant can often be thankless and unrewarding–it’s the nature of the job,” said Stein. “The light very rarely shines on an EDL, dub or posting. This gave the assistants an opportunity to show off their mad skills.” Since spreading from Chicago to additional chapters over the past eight years, the event has produced trailers that have become viral sensations such as the Robert Ryang-cut ’05 take on The Shining, which transformed the horror flick into an upbeat, family-fun romantic comedy.
The 2010 round of competitions kicked off recently when the AICE N.Y. chapter hosted a meeting at MPE to review the brief for this year’s Camp Kuleshov New York competition.
Chris Franklin, editor/owner at Big Sky Editorial, and Lin Polito, an editor at jumP, led the meeting, which was attended by several dozen assistant editors from AICE member companies in New York. Franklin has run the New York chapter’s competition in partnership with Polito since ’04, and said he loves the new identity.
“I like the fact that if you don’t get it, you have to figure it out,” Franklin said of the contest’s namesake. (The Kuleshov Effect was an early demonstration of the power of juxtaposed images to radically alter the audience’s emotional response to a film.) “In the process you learn about Kuleshov and how he played with editing to influence people’s perceptions of film. It’s a fascinating story.”
Franklin said the Camp Kuleshov competitions are good for assistants because they give them “confidence that they can brainstorm around a problem and try to figure it out, and that they can work through the brief to come up with a solution. This is a daunting task, what we’re asking them to do–it would bring a lot of veteran editors to their knees. We’re basically asking them to pick apart a movie and turn it into something it’s not. And they have to do that on top of what’s already a full workload.”
Hempel related, “I would love for the festival to stay fun, inclusive and supportive of all the assistants as well as the editors, producers, librarians, receptionists, accountants–in short, all the women and men of post, younger and older, who work so hard in this crazy industry. It’s a great time to have a party and appreciate the power of editing.”
With the launch of the 2010 Camp Kuleshov New York call for entries, the work of the entrants this time around wil be based on a slate of films ranging from Blacula and Mommie Dearest to The African Queen and Freaky Friday. Entries are due October 13, and all entries will be screened and awards presented during an evening event on Oct. 21. Calls for entries for additional AICE chapters will start to roll out over the next few weeks.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More