By Robert Goldrich and Mildred Takaki

In some respects this is a continuation of a SHOOT feature story earlier this year (1/30) in which editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter of Rock Paper Scissors, Santa Monica, talked in detail about their working relationship with director David Fincher, among their latest notable collaborations being The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (for which Wall and Baxter were nominated for the editing Oscar) and the three spots for which Fincher recently earned a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award nomination as best commercial director of 2008. (Wall cut Nike’s “Fate” while Baxter edited Apple’s “Hallway” and Stand Up To Cancer’s “Stand Up For Something.”)
    Now in the context of our Directors Issue, we thought it a good idea to follow up with other editors regarding their give and take with directors, gaining insights into the telepathic short-hand communication that has developed over the course of special creative long-term relationships.

Jinx Godfrey
    For more than 10 years, editor Jinx Godfrey–who edits stateside via FilmCore and in the U.K. through Marshall Street Editors–has enjoyed a working relationship with director James Marsh, a recent highlight being the director’s Man on Wire winning the best documentary Oscar this year. The documentary earlier scored the best British film honor at the BAFTA Awards, won Godfrey the best edited documentary Eddie Award from the American Cinema Editors (ACE), and earned both the Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
    Man on Wire tells the story of a young Frenchman, Philippe Petit, who in 1974 walked on a wire suspended between the towers of the World Trade Center, 1,350 feet off the ground. He “danced” on the wire for more than an hour and crossed it eight times before being arrested in what was termed “the artistic crime of the century.”
    “I knew it was a very good story,” recalled Godfrey. “As soon as James started the work, I was able to see the footage and the quality of the contributors. The interviewees were incredibly articulate. The wealth of the filming archives added a great del–Philippe’s footage shot sync 16mm in the 1970s, and James found this amazing Brooklyn Museum of Art archive footage of the World Trade Center being built. All these elements and of course the original footage James captured made for a wonderful journey. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to work on it.”
    That work was on and off, spread out over the course of about a year–two weeks here, two weeks there–for what Godfrey estimates turned out to be a total of 12 weeks.
    “I’ve worked with James on dramas and documentaries,” related Marsh. “For the dramas, I can work while he’s shooting and present him an assembly. With documentaries, we tend to sit down together in the cutting room in a very close-knit, hands-on collaboration. We start in one place and move on to different places. It’s a great ride, intellectually very challenging.
    “Over the years, we have developed a shorthand in communicating, each knowing or at least having a pretty good idea of what the other is thinking. It’s a joy to work with James. There are no insecurities. He trusts me. I know what he likes.”
    Currently Godfrey is working on a Marsh-directed drama, Nineteen Eighty, a feature film based on David Peace’s novel of the same title, in which police corruption gets in the way of the intense search for a killer in Yorkshire, England.
    Godfrey and Marsh first came together on a documentary for the BBC about musician/composer John Cale. Godfrey said that before she met Marsh she was impressed by his documentary filmmaking and had wanted to work with him for some time. A friend of hers, an executive producer at BBC Wales, asked Marsh to take on the Cale project. That friend put the director in touch with Godfrey.
    “I think James might have decided to work with me reluctantly at first,” said Godfrey. “But we hit it off. He started to show me bits and pieces of Wisconsin Death Trip that he had already shot.”
    Godfrey then cut the drama Wisconsin Death Trip which went on to gain recognition at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals. Among the other notable projects Godfrey has cut for Marsh are The Team, a cinema verite documentary about a homeless soccer team from New York City that competes at the first annual Homeless Soccer World Cup in Graz, Austria, in July 2003; and the feature The King, in which a troubled man searches for the father he’s never met.
    There’s even been a short-form collaboration as Godfrey has cut the lone commercial Marsh has directed up to this point, an ambitious Audi job for Wieden+Kennedy, which he was awarded shortly after Wisconsin Death Trip.
    Godfrey conjectured that Marsh could garner more spotmaking opportunities now in light of the success of Man on Wire. Marsh is repped for ad assignments via Maximum Entertainment, New York.

Andrea MacArthur
    Some seven years ago, editor Andrea MacArthur was booked on a Lee Jeans’ “Buddy Lee” campaign directed by Dante Ariola, who has since gone on to be a DGA Award winner and multiple nominee at MJZ.
    “I actually don’t know how I got the ‘Buddy Lee’ job to begin with,” related MacArthur. “Maybe it was because I had a lot of quirky comedy on my reel for [directors] Traktor and Bryan Buckley. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful because I got the chance to work with Dante who I’ve come to adore. I naturally had a sense for him from the beginning. I see what he shoots and have a good idea of the way he wants it to be. It all feels very natural. We’ve grown to know each other quite well.”
    MacArthur, who cuts via Peepshow stateside and in the U.K., has edited assorted jobs helmed by Ariola.
    “What’s great is the tremendous range of those projects,” said MacArthur of Ariola’s work. “He can be and can do so many different things. From comedy to the beautiful strangeness of Heineken’s ‘Disturbance’ and Lexus’ ‘Missing H’s’ to the multi-layered special effects storytelling for Wrigley 5 gum and the recent Pepsi ‘Pass’ which takes us through different period pieces from the 1890s to today, showing us the common thread running through the different generations. It’s a variety that’s great for an editor to get the chance to work on.”
    Of Ariola, she added, “He usually prefers to see something that’s been done. He trusts me to do a finished cut and then we can work on it together if he thinks more work needs to be done. While there’s still time to then do this or that, he usually likes what I have done and there’s not all that much to do. Dante is very hands-on in all areas but to have him let go and trust me enough to let me do what I do is gratifying.”

Gavin Cutler    In January when director Tom Kuntz of MJZ earned his second career DGA Award nomination as best commercial director of the year, editor Gavin Cutler of MacKenzie Cutler, New York, could be seen smiling–not just because of the comedic content of the director’s entries but the fact that Cutler cut three of the four Kuntz-helmed spots that struck a responsive chord with DGA judges.
    Those three ads were Skittle’s “Pinata” for TBWAChiatDay, New York, FedEx’s “Carrier Pigeons” via BBDO New York (a 2008 Super Bowl commercial), and the California Milk Processor Board’s “White Gold Is” out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco (among the prime entries that helped Goodby, Silverstein earn distinction as both SHOOT’s Advertising Agency and Interactive Agency  of the Year in ’08).
    Cutler has enjoyed collaborating with Kuntz over the years, dating back to when the latter was part of the helming team Kuntz & Maguire (Mike Maguire), having moved out of their agency creative positions to pursue directing full time some nine years ago. Cutler cut the duo’s first job on the production house side but didn’t reunite with Kuntz until some years later when he went solo as a director.
    Ever since, Cutler and Kuntz have worked together fairly regularly though Kuntz continues to team with other editors as well.
    “I think the big difference I’ve seen is how Tom has evolved over the years not just as a director but as an editor,” related Cutler. “He really gets involved and spends a lot of time on projects all the way through. Not all directors can find the time to do that or want to but it’s part of Tom’s makeup. and it’s an approach that has contributed to his great success.”
    This means Cutler finds himself editing with Kuntz, with both collaborating in the same edit suite on some jobs. Other times they’ll work via postings when they’re not in the same city. But either way it’s a close-knit collaboration. At the same time, though, there’s a trust by which the director lets go and frees Cutler to do what he does best.
    Cutler and Kuntz will also come together in person typically when the job entails varied media content, extending beyond spots to web fare and music videos like in the “White Gold Is” campaign.
    “It was fun to help create this fictional character [the spandex clad lead band rocker White Gold, replete with milk-filled guitar],” recalled Cutler. “Tom shot so much that we generated a wealth of material, some of which didn’t get shown. For about four or five months, when someone asked for my reel, I just sent out a White Gold reel, partly because I wanted people to get to see the full body of that work, including some of the stuff that didn’t gain exposure.”
    And the collaborative beat goes on between Kuntz and Cutler, a prime example being Careerbuilder.com’s “Tips” from Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore., which debuted on this year’s Super Bowl.
   The spot depicts several red flags signaling that you’re in the wrong job and need to make a change. We open on a woman, for instance, who’s so distraught that she’s primal screaming in her car as she drives into her workplace parking lot. Other “tip-offs” that you should look for another gig include fantasizing about being elsewhere (we see the woman riding a dolphin through ocean waves), being regularly ridiculed by fellow workers (a man in deadpan fashion greets a guy who’s seated at a workstation with a cheerful “hey, dummy”), sitting next to an undesirable coworker (who’s dressed in Speedo swim trunks while clipping his toenails) and daydreaming about punching small animals (with a small cuddly, koala bear–who’s wearing eyeglasses–on the receiving end).
    These different tip-offs are recited and continually repeated in a Twelve Days of Xmas-like (yet not sing songy) fashion, heightening the absurdity as well as the all too real need felt by many that a change of job is imperative. And CareerBuilders is the place to help realize such a much needed change of employment.
    The end tag slogan simply reads: “Start Building.”
    Cutler and Kuntz started building a rapport long ago. “We communicate in short hand. I think you’ll find this with all the editors and directors you talk to who have had a working relationship for some time,” observed Cutler. “You build up this trust. For Tom and I, it’s very much built on the same sensibility and a work ethic. Tom and I are painfully focused. The way we work jibes together. And with a common sensibility, he normally doesn’t have to worry if I am going to find the right moments in what he’s shot.”

Steve Gandolfi
    Editor Steve Gandolfi, founder of Cut+Run, bicoastal and London, is also no stranger to director Kuntz. Gandolfi cut the fourth spot for which Kuntz earned this year’s DGA Award nomination: Xbox’s “Lips for TAG, San Francisco.
    Yet for the purposes of this feature story, SHOOT looks to Gandolfi to reflect on his longstanding working relationship with director Daniel Kleinman of Rattling Stick, London (repped stateside by bicoastal Epoch Films), encompassing assorted projects, including the lauded Guinness “noitulovE” spot, noted ads for Sony PlayStation, Audi (“Wakeboarder”), adidas (“Impossible Field”), even a few James Bond film intros.

“I did a lot of work through the production company Limelight many moons ago,” recalled Gandolfi, “and I was introduced to Danny Kleinman. We met, said hello and he gave me a job for Sky Television through BBH [London]. I believe this was one of the first jobs we did, it was such a long time ago now.
    “My relationship with Danny has been an extraordinary experience for me. Every job I do with Danny I learn a little bit more about editing. If I was ever to direct, which I would not, he would be the man to edit my films for me. When we work together, he always leaves me alone to cut the film and then he comes in and I can see in his face when he walks through the door he knows how the film should be edited. He looks at my cuts and then we put them to one side and start again. We work normally from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.–within that time span, the creativity level is unbelievable. He considers things from every angle. Once we have done various edits, we go back and compare all the versions that I have done with his and usually we mix them up together.”

Gandolfi feels it is “important to edit a rough cut of the film with the director to understand what was in their head before they put it to celluloid. This is true with U.S. jobs too, including my recent projects with Lance Acord, Mark Malloy, Tom Kuntz, Paul Midddleditch and Chris Smith. After I get the rough cut, I can go in with the agency with a complete fresh mind and look at the dailies again, do the usual rough cut, then look at the cut and the director’s cut–normally the best edit shines through in comparison, sometimes it is a combination of the two.”
    A number of Kleinman-directed commercials stand out for Gandolfi though he shared, “It’s tough to pick a favorite.” The editor related, “Working with Danny on every project he does is outstanding.”
    Asked if there’s an adjustment for him working with American as compared to U.K. agencies, Gandolfi observed, “For the last 15 years I have been working in America, Africa, Australia, London and more with every type of agency and every type of director. Editing is editing and at its core there is nothing different working with anyone. It’s how you adapt yourself. There is never animosity between people if the editor handles it correctly. I work with some of the biggest players in the film world and we never have a problem. It may be working for 25 years and it may be that I just absolutely love what I do.”

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