For this week’s special report on editors, SHOOT canvassed agency creatives to get a sense of what they are looking for in the editor/director equation. Each answered the following questions: When working on a project, do you solicit the opinion of a director about the choice of editor? What do you think of the European approach to editing, whereby a director remains involved in the spot through an edit? Do you often work with editors who have strong working relationships with directors? Does that help a project? What are some recent projects you’ve worked on that have turned out well, from an editorial standpoint? Have you worked on any recent projects where an editor contributed to the spot beyond the edit?
Wayne Best
Associate creative director
Fallon, New York
It really depends on the director [whether or not to solicit his opinion]. I’ve had some really good experiences having directors involved in postproduction.
I don’t know if the European approach would work here. Because the postproduction process gets so intense and our clients are so involved, most directors simply wouldn’t want to deal with the hassle. Sometimes a good director has pull with a top editor so they can ask them to make room in their schedule, which benefits the agency.
I always hope a director will be pleased with the final cut. Most likely I’ll want to work with them again, so the last thing I want to do is leave them unhappy at the end of the project. I prefer to let a director do his cut first. That way we can see his vision of the spot as we move forward.
Alex Bogusky
Partner/executive creative director
Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami
We might [solicit a director’s opinion], and then we can cross that name off the list. The problem is not that we worry that the editor will not be right for the job, or even that we don’t want the director involved in the cut. We do—but not with his/her own editor. We’ve just run into too many instances where it hasn’t worked well. The problem arises because the director has a very definite idea of how he/she would like the spot cut. Which is fine, but in general, you hire an editor because you believe they are better at editing than anybody else involved. And you want them to be free to find better editorial solutions to the spot that may have evaded everybody else. So in the same way I wouldn’t want the editor to sit over the director’s shoulder, I don’t want the director hovering behind an editor.
What we do want is for the director to review the cuts and get feedback [about the cuts] all through the process, and even come in and do cuts of his/her own once the process has begun. This has worked really well and avoids stalling the process with arguments. It’s proven much more experimental and collaborative.
Bill Bruce
Executive creative director
BBDO New York
Perhaps my approach is somewhat different than others, but when I start on a project, I choose the editor first and then discuss directors with them. I have a long-standing relationship with a few editors that I trust and depend on. At times, I have even bounced ideas off of them to get a read from their reaction before presenting to the client. Guys like John Murray and Tom Muldoon at Nomad Editing Company, Santa Monica, have been instrumental in making the work tighter, more cohesive and just better. So before any film has been shot, the collaboration has begun.
The best result on any project is when everyone has a strong relationship. A great example of that was on a recent Mountain Dew project, "Spy vs. Spy" (see Top Spot, p. 10). Traktor [of bicoastal/international Partizan] directed. Tom Muldoon edited. Method, Santa Monica, did the effects. Francois Blaignon of Nomad did the sound design. It was one great collaborative machine. From the intensive pre-production schedule, through the shoot, to the more intensive postproduction period, everyone stayed together, focused, and worked incredibly hard, long, grueling hours to the long, grueling end. And I can only hope every project is that much fun.
Roger Camp
Creative director
Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Most often I don’t solicit the opinion of a director about an editor choice. On occasion I’ve had a director ask for a certain editor, and it’s always worked out quite well. But for the most part, I have a number of editors I’ve worked with in the past that are just brilliant. So it’s a matter of lining up the project with the person.
As far as the European approach to editing, I think it’s important to realize that before a concept ever gets sent to a director, I have already gone through the process of internalizing, debating and presenting the script to enough clients that I have a pretty good sense of what it will be. If the director can change the script for the better, God bless him, and he should absolutely be intimately involved in the edit so he can bring his vision to life. If he is shooting the board we’ve given him, then I’d rather edit the spot that is in my head and use him as a sounding board to make sure we haven’t fucked it up. I think it’s crucial to have someone with intimate knowledge of the film stay fresh. It’s easy to sit in an edit bay too long and overlook some small, crucial part that completely changes the spot for the better.
I think working with an editor that has a strong working relationship with a director is usually quite beneficial. They tend to have a better idea of the director’s thought process and sense of timing.
A campaign that maintained a level of excellence for several years now is the Miller High Life campaign. It began with an amazing collaboration between Errol Morris, "the Jeffs" (agency creatives and High Life’s creators Jeff Williams and Jeff Kling, along with agency producer Jeff Selis), and Angus Wall at Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles. Over the years, each of these people has developed such an understanding of the campaign that they seem to think with one brain. Jeff Williams has credited Angus as being the best editor ever. Angus also won over Errol when, after the first High Life shoot, Errol took the footage back with him to Boston and edited some of the spots while the Jeffs parallel-pathed it with Angus in L.A. After seeing Angus’ cuts, Errol admitted that they were great and stopped his own edits. The campaign continues to be an open, collaborative process, and I think it’s why the work is still brilliant.
I think a truly great editor will always contribute much more than just an edit. It seems like it’s become natural to have them find music, as well as influence sound design. I’ve even had editors on conference calls with the clients to explain certain aspects of the edit and timings.
Kathy Delaney
Managing partner/
executive creative director
Deutsch, New York
I’m always interested to hear directors’ thoughts on editors. It’s usually a good litmus test to see if you are both on the same page as far as a vision for the finished campaign.
I haven’t experienced working in a way where directors get briefed, go off (often without the creative team present), shoot and then cut the commercials themselves with the editor. It makes me uncomfortable to not have the agency creative team present at every aspect of production, and since the creative team is also "brand steward" and more intimately involved in the client’s business and expectations, this has the potential to quickly turn into a "runaway train" without their input and insights along the way.
We had a great experience recently, working with an editor that we’ve had a relationship with for years, Hank Corwin of bicoastal Lost Planet. The director, Scott Hicks [of Independent Media, Santa Monica], was someone we were using for the first time, and had worked with Hank on prior projects. It was a very collaborative process since Hank had a relationship with both the director and the agency. He was able to contribute very naturally to the shooting of the commercials by brainstorming with the director and us before any film was shot. And Scott, knowing Hank’s editorial style, shot with an eye towards what he knew Hank would find editorially compelling.
Fred Hammerquist
Executive creative director
DDB Seattle
I often find the spots that end up sticking out for me on directors’ reels seem to be created by the same team of people. From grips to DPs and editors to colorists. When everything clicks—the right blend of talent that is able to spend countless hours working together without issues—it’s a very special thing.
With that said, I think it only makes sense to hear the director’s feeling about the whole team. In fact, if a director [didn’t offer an opinion] about the team I would be suspect.
Last winter, we spent a few weeks in Brussels with a fabulous Belgian director [Lieven Van Baelen of Czar.BE, Brussels, and Czar.US, New York], shooting an HIV awareness spot ["Dumpster" for the Kaiser Family Foundation]. The group the director had collected had previously collaborated on quite a long list of marvelous work. Brussels has a pretty small production community, but some very talented people that know each other quite well. The whole group worked together through every step with very few issues.
As it turned out, our director had started out in post as a colorist and editor, and then made the jump to directing. He was great in edit because of past experience, and the result was phenomenal.
[Whether or not to have the director involved in the edit] depends on the director. I’ve also had the experience of disliking the director so much after a shoot, I never wanted to see him again, much less edit with him.
If you are on the same page as the director on the vision of a spot, it helps the edit enormously. On the other hand, if you are seeing things a bit differently, it can hinder your ability to really get what you’re after.
The edit most often dictates that fragile balance of the timing in an idea, and depending on how everyone sees that, it can make or break a spot. Having very detailed conversations of treatments and the process before awarding a project can save your hide down the road.
One of our recent projects that turned out quite well, our director edited. Doug Pray, a documentary filmmaker [with Oil Factory Films, Beverly Hills, Calif.], shot and edited our Gill Foundation campaign promoting gay rights. Given Doug’s documentary style and his uncanny ability to capture the right moments, he was fantastic. It was like he shot with the edit already in his mind. He struck just the right balance in terms of timing, and captured truly powerful moments of real people "coming out" at work in states where their employment is not protected based on their sexuality and gender identity.
Charlie Hopper
Creative director
Young & Larramore, Indianapolis
We’re always interested in a director’s input on anything about the spot. If they have an opinion, we want it. The way the bidding process goes, though, we’re usually deciding on director and editor pretty simultaneously to get the numbers to work, so in the end, for procedural reasons, it ends up being a choice we make ourselves. Still, if talks are going really well with a director and he or she’s got someone they feel strongly about, that’s great.
Sometimes we see directors’ cuts of spots on reels that, frankly, the punch has gone out of. It’s like they add extra (and extra beautiful) footage, but the joke or the pace gets messed up, and the spot just isn’t as good longer as it was cut to a real :30. And it makes us wonder, when we see that, if the director can cut stuff he’s real close to, or if he loses objectivity and just wants certain footage in because as a stand-alone scene he’s sort of in love with it. Maybe if we see stuff like that on a reel, we’re a tiny bit less anxious for their editorial input.
I love for the director to stick around (if things have gone well). After he and we’ve been knee-deep together in the production, it’s actually disappointing and kind of weird (if things have gone well) when we shake hands and he/she disappears from our life. ("Well, good luck raising that kid we had.")
Sometimes the directors, if they’re "in town" (whichever town the edit is in) do wander in and we try to make them feel welcome. But they sometimes seem a little nervous, like they’re less comfortable when they’re not in charge. They’re used to calling the shots. Frequently when they show up in the edit room, they seem overly polite and solicitous, asking permission "to try something" with the editor—very different from the guy running the set a week before. They know that in the end, we’ll make the final decisions as the originators of the idea on behalf of the client; but a good, collaborative director adds so much, and knows so well what he shot, his presence is very valuable. Ah, Europe.
We are in the midst of a couple of very long-running campaigns where there is a very strong working relationship between the agency and an editor. But the directors have changed and rotated through the years. I suppose it would help the project, but it’s just not the way the business seems to run, so we haven’t really seen it very often.
The most obvious examples are three special effects-heavy spots we did for Galyan’s with Rock Paper Scissors and A52, [Los Angeles], where the editing was very intricate from both a storytelling (there were no on-camera lines and no announcer voiceovers until the end on any of the spots) and a technical perspective. And the long-running Steak ‘n Shake ads—where we make several at once and edit little partial spots together in different-timed fragments to make a :30—are an editing puzzle where the pieces don’t necessarily all fit. Our stalwart friend Mike Ullrich always manages the madness, and helps us preserve the quirks and weird rhythms that have come to define the Steak ‘n Shake "voice."
In the Galyan’s spots, Ben Longland of Rock Paper Scissors brought a lot of subtlety and depth to the stories. He and Patrick Murphy helped keep the flow natural and not "effect-y." And Mike, on Steak ‘n Shake, always adds to the decisions and the quirky unconventions of our campaign, including mix and transfer ideas, and helping us do five tons of editing in a short time.
Craig Jelniker
Producer
Element 79 Partners, Chicago
I do try to find out whom the director prefers, especially if the director’s and editor’s combined efforts have proven successful in the past. As long as an editor challenges the work when the film is handed over, you get to a better place (and sooner) than you would without this relationship.
As far as the European approach, if there’s time in the schedule to give a director a chance at a cut, I’m all for it. Creating commercials is supposed to be a collaborative process. I know the realities of time and money, but I believe in hiring people better than you and giving them a chance to bring their vision to life.
Over half of the projects I worked on in the course of the past year relied on using an established editor/director relationship. For UPS at The Martin Agency, [Richmond, Va.], we found that [House of Usher, Santa Monica’s] Kinka Usher’s relationship with David Brixton [of The Whitehouse, London, New York, Chicago and Santa Monica] helped us move quickly. Brixton has a firm grasp of Usher’s storytelling style, and that led to an approved cut in record time on our last round.
My first jobs at Element 79 are currently prepping, but the last round of UPS at Martin turned out well. I think "Frank and Franco" got UPS closer to a pure story than it had before. I expect an editor to make contributions up until the commercial ships, so that extends far beyond the edit itself. The editors we’ve been working with have made the work better in terms of the music, sound design, telecine and even graphic content. It is a crucial role.
Linus Karlsson and
Paul Malmstrom
Creative directors
Mother, New York
We don’t have a preferred, airtight model for it. The most important thing for us [when] choosing what director or editor to work with is always personality. Motivation always beats talent. He or she has to be nice, clean, decent—and someone you look forward to spending many hours with.
Of course it can help [if editors have strong relationships with editors], but [sometimes] it can also be boring and comfortable. We like to involve all the persons in a project as much as possible—if they have worked together previously that’s fine with us; if not, that’s also fine.
[We worked with Trish Fuller] at The Whitehouse for [a Chipotle corporate video] and we worked with Mad River Post for the NBA. Dick Gordon at Mad River Post, New York, is definitely someone we keep coming back to. He is always going out of his way to make the things fantastic. We can’t even start to give you examples, but that’s just the way it is. And he has a nice, weird laugh.
Josh Kilmer-Purcell
Creative director
SS+K, New York
I always invite and encourage the director to stay involved during the entire process. Frankly, it worries me if they fall off the face of the Earth right after the wrap party. A director who flees has something to hide—maybe we should work out some sort of bail system.
I have had one horrific experience with an "editron" that ultimately ended with us pulling the job. The director wanted the entire :60 to be one take. The editor, who only worked with this director, literally would not touch the keyboard. We just sat there yelling at each other, breaking only for lunch.
However, a job I did with Noam Murro [of Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles], and Avi Oron [of Bikini Edit, New York], who have one of the strongest relationships in the industry, became the best spot I’ve ever been involved with. And I hated the director’s cut when I first saw it. Now it opens my reel of course.
Last year, we finished a spot for Time Warner Cable shot by Robert Logevall [of bicoastal Anonymous Content] and cut by Kirk Baxter [of Final Cut, New York and London]. Robert shot an embarrassment of riches, and Kirk effortlessly (it seemed) pulled all the best bits together, and then worked seamlessly with Robert Miller [of RMI, New York] to create the perfect score, and with The Mill on effects. I’m pretty sure Kirk even headed up a client presentation as well, since I was off on another shoot for almost the entire process. If I stopped to think about it, I’d face severe esteem problems.
Cheryl Lindquist
Executive producer
Element 79 Partners, Chicago
Some of our best cuts have been with the director’s recommended editor. The only potential problem is that you can run into the "editor working for the director" syndrome, where the editor wants to get the best cut for the director vs. giving you the best cut for the job. You need to make it very clear up front that they are working for you; the director’s cut can come after you have your cut. That said, I prefer working with the director’s editor, and I’ve only ever had to pull one job due to creative control. A well-partnered editor knows the particular style of his director and will find those little "gem" pieces in the film that others overlook. Of course, if the director is a total egomaniac on the shoot, he can get his own cut on his own dime.
I’ve done the European way of editing, but I’ve found most directors don’t have the time to follow an edit all the way through finish (even Europeans who may promise they will). They’re way too busy and on to their next job.
Editor/director relationships definitely help a project, especially if there are special effects. When I bid a job, the director’s editor preference is one of my first questions to the executive producer. If it’s someone I know from previous jobs, it’s an easy choice. If it’s an editor I’m unfamiliar with, I’ll compare his reel to an obvious choice and then make my decision.
The beauty of working with Errol Morris [of bicoastal/international @radical.media] is that he has his own editor—Karen Schmeer—who only cuts his work. She is completely devoted to the project and really understands Errol’s style for real people and comedy. She finds unbelievable moments in the film that most editors would tend to overlook or find weird.
Actually, Errol stays involved with a project from beginning to end. He won’t let his commercial out of his hands unless he has complete creative editorial control. It’s a hard sell for some agencies, but an easy choice for us. In the three years we’ve worked with Errol on Quaker Oatmeal, he’s never let us down.
Cliff Sorah
Creative director
The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va.
We almost always ask the director for an editor recommendation. Our job is to make sure that the director has the best resources for bringing ideas to life. We hire directors who can make our ideas even better than we imagine. We want their input at every stage of execution.
Yes, there are many occasions when the director and editor talk before film even rolls in the camera. It seems to me to make perfect sense. The objective is to tell a story or create an emotion. When would it ever not make sense to have a director and editor working toward the same objective? The story will always be told best when everyone is writing the same book.
I think the most recent example of a project turning out well editorially is our NASCAR campaign. Matthew Wood at The Whitehouse was involved in every aspect of the production, from the pulling of existing film, to the shoot, to the compositing and finish. He was involved in each decision and contributed ideas well beyond the traditional editor’s role.
Kash Sree
Senior VP/creative director
Leo Burnett USA, Chicago
Whenever possible, I do like to get the director’s input on editors. We hire directors for their way of seeing things; their comfort [level] of working with an editor that they feel can enhance that vision is obviously really important.
I prefer the European way of editing. I feel it’s a bit wasteful hiring this mind/point-of-view to shoot your spot only to lose it during what I consider one of the most critical phases of the job, the edit.
More often than not [I work with editors who have strong working relationships with directors].
I think the Ad Council’s "Dummies" spot was a good case in point. Errol Morris [of @radical.media] had shot some fantastic footage, and Angus Wall [of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles] had not only cut it to capture that disturbing feel of unease we’d been looking for, but even found the music, that for me, made the spot.
