“I want to be a comedic editor,” says Bill Cramer of Crew Cuts, New York. “That’s what I’m striving for.” It would seem that the editor is succeeding–he’s cut a string of very funny Dairy Queen spots for Grey, New York, directed by Baker Smith of harvest, Santa Monica. Those spots include “Shock Therapy,” which features a woman hooked up to electrodes–each time she reaches for a Dairy Queen Moolatte, she’s shocked. By spot’s end, her hair is sticking up, and the lights are flickering in the room, but she still hangs on to her coffee drink.
Cramer has also cut several very funny MTV promos, including “Maria” and “Chris Rock,” for the MTV Movie Awards. The latter spot features Jimmy Fallon, host of this year’s awards, impersonating Chris Rock over the phone to a bunch of MTV execs to convince them to call on Fallon to host. “Maria” features Fallon smuggling the MTV Movie Award trophy–a bucket of popcorn–into the country in a rather uncomfortable place. Michael Bellino of MTV On-Air Promotions directed both spots.
In addition to his regular spot work, Cramer often cuts the well-known parody ads from director Jim Signorelli that air on Saturday Night Live. One such spot is Swiffer Sleeper, which re-imagines the popular floor cleaning mop as sleeper suits for kids, who can roll around and pick up dirt and dust–one shot even shows a mom getting dust out of the corners of the ceiling with her little girl. Cramer relates that working on the parody ads can be challenging–they are often done on a very tight timeline, with a final version delivered while the show is in dress rehearsal. Crew Cuts, which is located near Rockefeller Center, home to Saturday Night Live, has worked on the ads for Signorelli for the past few years. Cramer began cutting the SNL work while he was an assistant editor to Chuck Willis, a former partner in Crew Cuts, who is now partnered in Cut +Run, which has offices in London, New York and Los Angeles. “One of the great things about Saturday Night Live,” relates Cramer, “is that it’s an enormously huge, [tight] schedule, so you get dailies on Thursday night [before the Saturday show], and traditionally, editors are sometimes booked, so often times a younger assistant might get the opportunity to work on it.”
The editor notes that working with Signorelli and Willis provided a great education in comedy editing. (Willis is a noted comedy cutter.) “I assisted Chuck for four years,” says Cramer, who became a full-fledged editor in the spring of 2004. “It was awesome–I could have traded film school for that. He was very, very open to me doing everything I could to improve his cuts, and help him in every part of the process. I think that even more so now; I realize having seen that not every editor gives their assistants opportunities. I realize now that Chuck gave me enormous, enormous help and huge responsibilities.”
Cramer attended film school at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and upon graduating, moved to New York, where he briefly worked cutting sports-themed videos, but quickly realized he wanted to get into commercial work. “Advertising is something that for me is so much cooler, because you have the opportunity to work on so many different things in one year,” he explains. “A feature takes forever–not that I would ever turn my nose up at one–but I love commercials.”
In addition to the Dairy Queen package, Cramer recently cut some Verizon spots out of McCann Erickon, New York, and directed by Chris Bean of MacGuffin Films, New York, as well as work for Pringles and Dentyne Ice. Cramer just wrapped up a music video shot in high-definition for the Subliminals–a band formed by Grey, New York, to compete in the Battle of the Bands competition, held last week as a part of Advertising Week (the band came in second). Cramer, who has cut other HD projects–including the Pringles “Can” spot out of Grey, likes the medium, noting that HD will likely “push the envelope in the next few years.”
As for working with directors and agencies, Cramer enjoys the collaboration, and although he would like to carve out time for other projects–he’s shot his own documentary film–he’s happy working in commercials. “Storytelling for me, that’s what editing is,” he says. “Once you know how to tell a story–and know what you can leave out–and still get your point across in thirty seconds, is to me the biggest challenge.”
