"I’ve always had a desire to put things in some kind of chronological order, so for me editing is a great field," Rick Bennett said with a hearty laugh, citing obsessive and self-admittedly anal efforts to organize baseball card collections throughout his life. In January, Bennett opened Tampa-based Naked Eye Editorial, where he is both editor and VP. Bennett chose the title Naked Eye because, as he explained, "What I try to do is help people see things unaided."
Bennett has been an editor for 20 years, beginning his editing career straight out of college as a 1" online editor. More recently, Bennett was a part owner at now defunct Cypress Productions until ’93. According to Bennett, Cypress was one of the first companies in Florida to get an Avid, and Bennett noted that he was an early convert to nonlinear editing. "As soon as I saw the Avid, even back in its infancy, I knew that was going to be the future," he recalled.
Bennett stayed on at Cypress until a year after the company was bought out by CPN Television, after which he moved on to Broadcast Video Inc., where he was co-creator of the creative editorial division Engine Room, Coconut Grove. After heading up Engine Room for five years, Bennett left in July ’98 with plans to form a company that was more homegrown. "I basically wanted to go out and start my own boutique," he related. "Having had my share of working at large facilities, [I] wanted to do something that was more creatively driven, as opposed to a rate card mentality."
So Naked Eye is designed to enable Bennett to work at a pace that is conducive to his brand of editor’s due diligence. Bennett’s philosophy is to ensure that he will have enough time with each project to thoroughly immerse himself in the material and complete an edit that he feels does the material justice. "I enjoy working with people that honor the editorial process," he said. "What I mean by that are people that know that it takes time to cut something right, and that the editor really needs to spend some time with the footage alone and get to know it."
Instead of hourly rates, Bennett charges a flat fee for projects and completes about one job a week. Bennett added that though agency and production teams might be enamored of particular shots that were difficult to achieve or technically complex, he tries to evaluate scenes on their individual strengths when he begins the editorial process. "I have favorite shots and shots that I like and little moments when the camera is panning at the beginning or end of a take that I love to use like most people," he said. "But I try to make sure all shots have the same weight."
One of Bennett’s beautifully edited pieces is a job he did for The Golf Channel for Crispin Porter+Bogusky Advertising, Miami. The spot, in visual and audio form, captures a flood of stream of consciousness thoughts that flash through the mind of a golfer as he swings a golf club. The layered images range from a clip of an old-school golfer explaining the fundamentals of a swing to composited layers of golf iconography. "Part of the interesting process for that spot was melding all the different layers for the composites that you see," noted Bennett, explaining that the spot took three days to conform.
With many spots in the Miami market containing Spanish- or another foreign-language, Bennett observed that his experience editing this work has brought him to focus more on the visual stories and less on dialogue. "The thing I have gleaned about working in that environment was to be able to tell a story with pictures beyond the language barrier," he said, adding that he particularly enjoys editing comedy spots.
A recent if somewhat unexpected project for Bennett was The Paper Route, a short film by director Todd Thompson. Bennett explained that the film weaves together different story threads using the central character of a paper delivery boy. "My wife called it ‘the mistress,’" Bennett said, referring to spouse, Kathy Bennett who is owner and president of Naked Eye. "Once I got into editing the scenes, I didn’t want to stop." The film was slated to be screened at the Florida Film Festival this month.
