When veteran editor Billy Williams first started cutting commercials and film projects, he invested in a standard Movieola. "I took the first 10 grand I made and bought that machine," Williams says. Then, in 1993, when Avid Technology became the standard for state-of-the-art editing, Williams’ old "upright" became obsolete.
But Williams, the namesake behind Billy Williams Enterprises, New York, still keeps his faithful upright around. In fact, he’s so fond of the machine that he put it out in the lobby of his offices, treating it like a piece of sculpture. That Movieola, transplanted from the editing bay into the lobby, is a sign of exactly how the editing business has changed over the past 10 years. "I’m thinking about putting it inside of a plexi box and putting a plant on top of it," Williams jokes.
Williams was surprised when he found some of his younger editors gathering in the lobby around the Movieola. They were studying it. "Believe it or not, they didn’t know what it was exactly," Williams says. He talked with his editors and discovered that he had people working for him who had never worked on an upright before. "I have all these young people in my office," he says of his staff, whose average age is about 25.
Williams’ situation isn’t unique. There’s an entire generation of editors out there who, because of Avid, are the first to learn how to edit solely on computer. Right now, you might be working with an editor who has never touched a piece of film before, who has never spent a late night hunched over a flatbed or an upright, drinking black coffee and looping film through the machine, splicing and cutting.
Most old timers agree that the Avid is a superior way to edit. "There is nothing about cutting on a Kem that the Avid doesn’t beat to death," says editor Rye Dahlman, owner of Los Angeles-based Rye Films, referring to a brand of flatbed that, along with the Steenbeck, was a popular editing system back in the day.
Has something tangible been lost? Is this new generation of editors operating at a deficit for never having actually worked with celluloid? And do veteran editors with flatbed/upright experience have any advantages over computer-trained editors?
Seasoned editor Tim McGuire, president of Chicago-based Cutters Inc. wonders whether, because of the Avid, the new editors are taking too much for granted. "First of all, I don’t think they fully appreciate what they have," he says. McGuire argues that working on a flatbed was genuine, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-sweat labor. "It was harder working with film, more physically intense," he says.
Splice Of Life
Rye Dahlman says your body would know it after a day spent splicing film. "In the old days, you were actually physically tired because of all the stretching, all the leaning over that you were doing. It was aerobic. On the Avid, it’s physically very easy. Now, what’s the worst that can happen? Blisters on your ass, maybe."
Besides a lack of appreciation for how easy they have it now, McGuire says, computer-trained editors also miss out on something else: touching the film itself. "There’s the tactile, physical feeling of actually touching the film," he says. "You lose that. Avid editors don’t have that. And that touching equates it all to more of a craft."
Craft. That’s a word many veteran editors bandy about when they speak of the old flatbed editing days. Editing, they say, was once considered a craft. "Clients used to think of you as the master of a craft that was difficult to master," says editor Larry Bridges, owner of Red Car, bicoastal, Chicago and Dallas.
Bridges bemoans the lost art of flatbedding. "It’s a tragedy, I think, to lose a sense of film editing," he says. Bridges is a bit of an oddball in the business because every day he cuts on both the Avid and the Kem. "I have sort of a split personality," he says, laughing. "Today, I’m cutting a Coke commercial on Avid, but this morning I worked on my [independent] film on the Kem. I continue to edit in both modes very sincerely."
Bridges agrees that, as weird as it may sound, editors do get something intangible from actually handling film. "There’s a bind between the editor and the film because you’re touching it," he says. "That hand-eye bond is stronger." And because you are physically handling the film, Bridges says, flatbed-edits have a preciousness that Avid edits don’t. "Finding an edit [on film], making an edit, is like trying to find a pet in a zoo of possibilities; you make them, you hold them, you want them to live."
Editing on a Kem was considered a craft, Bridges says, namely because you used your hands. "There is something direct and simple about any handwork, as opposed to technology, like computers," he says. "If you think about it, editing is the only craft in filmmaking, besides acting, that requires the most work by hand. I just read something in a magazine about a cult of master craftsmen in France who are making kind of a semi-religion out of working with their hands. And if you take that approach-that purist, medieval approach-where you think of our European ancestors as master craftsmen, then technology, like computers, is a gross violation of the craft."
Still, Bridges isn’t ready to throw out his Avid. "One has to focus on the essential benefits," he says. "And obviously with the Avid, there are many."
"Commitment" is a word that gets thrown around whenever veteran editors gab about flatbeds and uprights. The stakes were much higher in the flatbed/upright era. Once the film was actually cut, it was very difficult to go back: One was indeed "committed." Tim McGuire says that editors had to use their brains, to think ahead before the cut. "Editing [on film] is actually destructive," he says. "You are actually destroying your materials by cutting them apart and splicing them together."
Bridges argues that that kind of commitment can be valuable for an editor. "The penalties for making a wrong decision are very, very high in film," says Bridges. "But you use that. You develop a sense of dance and performance that forces you to make hard decisions. You tended to rank things more decisively with film. It was a muscle that you developed. But that same muscle relaxes on the Avid because those same rankings [with Avid] are dispensable with a keystroke. With film, you have to commit. And it’s that commitment that makes the artist stronger."
Dahlman admits that he made his share of mistakes in his day. "Editors then had a lot more at risk," he says. "We made a lot of mistakes. But it’s almost too easy now [with Avid]. You don’t have to-in your mind-make a choice. You don’t have to make a commitment like that. You don’t have to put it out there, like, "This is the way I see it.’ "
Veteran editors argue that computer-trained editors do not have the same kind of "this is the way I see it" commitment to an edit-at least not to the degree that old-school film editors were forced to have. Making that commitment, says Bridges, forced an editor to cut film in a more personal way. "Working with film requires a lusty attack of film to render it as an edit. It’s always personal; it’s an opinion. And that opinion is the essence of the editor’s contribution."
Dahlman loves the Avid but agrees that personal point of view is valued less. "People don’t need to have the discipline of having a single point of view and going for it. Today, we can cut 7, 8, 9, 10 versions in two minutes. Your [personal] point of view doesn’t mean anything anymore."
"I miss the personal side," says Williams. "The privacy of [film editing]. The fact that you could create this whole thing in your mind. The old technology was more gratifying for your ego. It was more personal."
Public Domain
Because the Avid is so easy to use, the technology has not only made editing less personal, it has also made it more accessible. These days, editing bays have to be roomy enough not only for the editor but also for clients and people from the agencies. Editing is no longer a mysterious, solitary practice; it’s a public process. They now understand how it works. "With Avid, clients are involved from the start," says Williams.
Naturally, most editors resent working so publicly. "People are not working alone as much anymore," says Dahlman. "You can’t cut anything worthwhile with people around. People should not be around, participating in your edit, until you’ve done the whole job. I don’t believe in this editing by committee."
Williams has a piece of advice that he gives his younger editors. "Keep clients out of there," he says. "I don’t want to sound like some old timer, but that’s really what I believe. I tell that to all my staff. Keep clients out, at least for the first cut. Keep them out as much as you can. They’re not, however, as good at it as I am."
Another reason why editing bays are so crowded these days is because the Avid is so easy to use. Anyone who can run a computer thinks he or she can edit. "A few years back, we were the wizards behind the curtain," Dahlman says. "Agency people had no clue what we were doing, how we were working. An agency producer didn’t know how to work a Movieola. Now, they’ve seen behind the curtain. These days, everybody is an editor."
And because agencies and clients are so familiar with the Avid, some apparently take advantage of their editors. Editing jobs are now routinely taken out of one editor’s hands and handed over to another. "The thought of pulling a film job away from one editor and giving it to another was unheard of," says Dahlman. "You just couldn’t do it. Now, [with Avid], it happens all the time. And sometimes agencies will even have two editors cut the same project."
Do editors, because of this technology, have less value these days? Not necessarily. But things have certainly changed. For example, today’s editors need to be able to handle other technical responsibilities. "Editing has become much more technical. I spend 30 percent of my time doing the hard stuff," says Dahlman, "cutting a story together, molding the piece, making the right narrative choices. The other 70 percent [involves] putting in titles, recutting, doing music searches, stuff like that; all the stuff other than the basic cutting-together of the story. Mechanically, you don’t have to be Einstein to put titles in."
Dahlman says this is very different from the old days of film. "When we cut something on the Movieola, you wouldn’t see titles until opticals. Back then it was 96 percent putting the story together and 4 percent doing titles."
McGuire, who hasn’t touched a piece of film since 1990, says the main difference between editors today and editors 20 years ago is that editors today are also more creatively involved. "An editor now is more of a designer. You have to deal with title designs, effects, layers, sound effects, mixing. An editor is more involved in the overall process now, involved in creating the finished look of an edited piece. Today the editor is more of an artist. It’s become more of an art form."9
