I don’t believe as a person of any craft that one should ever become so complacent as to believe they are a master, rather than a perpetual student. There is always a better way to do things, a more evolved process to incorporate, and a new method to be discovered. Having spent my time as an editor on several docs and feature films, I have always appreciated how such a different process informs what I do for the medium I am most passionate about: advertising. Whether that process is a TV show, a doc, a music video or a YouTube video for your 13 year-old son, each realm informs the other.
Fledgling editors learn to handle music and sound. It’s the first and easiest step to amplifying a project’s attitude and edge. Over time we become pigeonholed into every genre at least once or twice in a career, hopefully picking up a bit of metal along the way to help our egos believe we’re extraordinary. That said, our core discipline is the moving picture and distilling the best of a director’s execution and the shared idea of the agency. We leave the task of honing sound to the aural wizards, because frankly it is a very separate language technically speaking–we in offline just do our best to approximate it.
I have been bouncing to and fro from a film to commercial projects the past six months and had a hiatus in March so I took on a very run-and-gun docu-style project for some phenomenal people at 72andSunny—a Carl’s Jr spot directed brilliantly directed by Sam Cadman. Managing five people speaking in a scene with seven or eight different microphone channels on the film, I discovered a new way to manage such complex sound in an ad-lib situation and also refine those individual mics in much the same manner a professional mixer would — by digging out and enhancing the sound — thus making it more audible for the offline presentation world. In the spot the audio was recorded “by-the-seat-of-our-pants” as the hero was engaging various street vendors in a hidden-camera style while holding the microphone to them, unaware, as if it was a cell phone.
Using what I learned on the feature I was able to enhance and isolate the audio I wanted to the point where I could use picture that I might have otherwise had to dispense with. The spot was bold and daring and a maze of complicated situations. What I learned on the film helped me do things for the folks at 72 that I would have otherwise not been able to do. It reminded me that it’s always exciting to learn a new process. New editors learn so much, so fast, and the creative process is one of second-guessing and analyzing their every move.
Nothing is taken for granted and great things always come from that. I never want to get to a place where I discount that fresh approach for the easy route of just being set in my ways. It isn’t a job. Jobs are boring. I want to lose track of time, hunker down and constantly second guess myself into the best work possible. Every editorial problem has a solution and there’s always a better way to do what we do. This is what keeps it interesting for me every day.
Click here to see the Carl's Jr. spot.
