Variety is the spice of life. Ask any spot editor who cuts features, shorts or documentaries on the side. Each will invariably say that moving between longform and shortform sharpens their chops and refreshes their outlook. Lance Doty, partner/executive producer at Homestead Editorial, New York, believes that "doing narrative work is going to strengthen our editors’ skills."
Last year, Homestead launched aWounded Knee, New York, a feature film production company that utilizes Homestead cutters. Doty explains that he and his partners, editors Charly Bender, Greg Dougherty and Chris Hellman, had considered getting into features for quite some time before they made the leap in September. "As advertising was being affected by the economy, we decided to broaden our business model," notes Doty, who envisions aWounded Knee producing about 10 low budget features a year. "What made sense was to open our own production company, which would give us the opportunity to produce movies and edit them."
Ash Tuesday, which was co-produced by aWounded Knee, screened at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Homestead’s Bender cut the film, which was directed by Jim Hershleder, and written and produced by Tony Spiridakis, who also appeared in the feature. Another movie that was shown in the festival, The Lucky Ones, was written and directed by Loren-Paul Caplin; the feature wasn’t aWounded Knee production, but Doty was a co-producer, and Homestead’s Sam Welch served as editor.
Doty says that during the making of Ash Tuesday, he and his partners got along with Spiridakis and asked him to be a part of aWounded Knee. Spiridakis is currently directing Noise, starring Ally Sheedy and model Trish Goff, which Doty adapted from the 1975 novel Noise: The Dark Descends, a thriller penned by Diana Ramsay. Bender, whose recent spotwork includes an ad for Ethan Allen, is cutting the feature.
Eric Zumbrunnen, who cuts commercials out of Spot Welders, Venice, Calif., has been editing projects helmed by Spike Jonze—who’s represented for spotwork via bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander—for close to a decade. As Jonze moved from music videos to commercials to feature films, Zumbrunnen did too. When Jonze directed his first feature, Being John Malkovich, he brought along his commercial crew, including Zumbrunnen, who later went on to cut the director’s second film, Adaptation.
What was it like for Zumbrunnen to transition to longform? "When you’re working on a commercial, often the problem is how you fit it all into thirty seconds," he says. "You really micro-analyze every edit [because] you’re working over a very small amount of material.
"When I first started working on Malkovich," he continues, "I would cut each scene like it was a commercial, not realizing that later on we may not need that scene or that we were going to get out of a scene half way through. I learned not to pay so much attention to every little detail in the first go-around. You’re going to go back and revise everything anyway."
Zumbrunnen recently cut Honda spots directed by Erich Joiner of bicoastal Tool of North America via Rubin Postaer and Associates, Santa Monica; and Microsoft ads helmed by LeMoine.Miller—Rick and Steve, respectively—of bicoastal/international @radical.media for McCann-Erickson, San Francisco.
Sloane Klevin, who cuts spots through The Blue Rock Editing Company, New York, is a veteran feature editor. She’s cut a dozen movies, including the breakout indie hit Real Women Have Curves; Pumpkin, starring Christina Ricci; and Bleacher Bums, which closed the ’01 Chicago Film Festival.
From ’95 until ’02, Klevin spent much of her time working on longform projects. In between those jobs, she cut commercials as a freelancer. Her recent jobs include a Ricoh spot directed by Juan Delcan of Spontaneous Combustion, New York, via Gigante Vaz Partners Advertising, New York; and a Coppertone campaign helmed by Peggy Sirota of HSI Productions out of Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners, New York.
Klevin was recently invited to lend her editing expertise to the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, a three-week workshop where filmmakers hone their skills while working with established actors, directors, editors, and directors of photography. The Lab is sponsored by the Sundance Institute and takes place every June in Park City, Utah.
In addition to cutting spots and features and participating in workshops, Klevin is also a professor of film editing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, New York. Commenting on her varied activities, Klevin says, "It’s hard to build momentum in any one [area]. But I do it because I like to be constantly challenged and I get bored doing any one thing. If you leave and do something else, you get a different perspective. Then you come back and it’s exciting again."
The Short Route
John Zieman, partner/editor at PS 260, New York, compares editing The Delivery Boy, directed by Stephen Marro (who helms ads through Marro & Associates/SMP, New York), to enduring a strange version of Survivor. "[Editing Delivery Boy] was like whipping out ten spots in a week," he explains. "There was no opportunity to get away from this film … [but] fortunately for us, we sharpened our instincts and worked together well."
Zieman edited the nine-minute film in four grueling days during the Extreme Filmmaking Competition of the ’03 Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. According to the competition’s rules, the shorts had to feature a Chrysler and be developed, cast, shot and edited in only 10 days. Delivery Boy depicts a kid with an overactive imagination who regularly gets crushes on girls and Chryslers.
The short is one of five finalists in the festival, which is a joint marketing partnership between Chrysler, Universal Studios and the bicoastal branded entertainment company, Hypnotic; Chrysler’s ad agency partners, BBDO Detroit, Troy, Mich., and The Arnell Group, New York, are also involved in the festival.
Zieman and Marro’s collaboration in the multi-phased competition goes back to when the pair teamed up on Marro’s The Quality of Mercy. The 12-minute film was selected in the competition’s first phase (which received 650 submissions), and was one of 25 films screened on the Chrysler Web site.
The competition’s final phase will take place this summer in Los Angeles, where Zieman will join Marro to cut a seven-minute scene that will be used to pitch the helmer’s feature project. The winning filmmaker will walk away with a $1 million feature production and distribution deal at Universal. Zieman recently worked on an American Ballet Theater spot, "It Will Move You," directed by Michael Thompson of bicoastal Mission Critical Media via Ziccardi Partners Frierson Mee, New York.
Patching Cabbage, written and directed by Peter Rhoads, was cut by Peter Odiorne of Crew Cuts (which has offices in New York, Santa Monica and San Francisco), and his assistant, Chris Magliozzo. The short, which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a sweet Christmas comedy set in ’82, which follows a single mother and her suitor/neighbor on a humorous quest for a Cabbage Patch Kid doll, a gift for the woman’s daughter.
Odiorne cut Patching Cabbage over a period of a couple of months while continuing to work on spots. "That’s why [Chris Magliozzo] was so integral to the process," says Odiorne. The film is the longest piece Odiorne has edited. Did he have to adapt much? "Not really, because you break it down into scenes," he says. "When you’re cutting a thirty-second spot, you’re given hours of footage and you cull it down. We cut a twenty-two-minute film and we only had four hours of dailies, so the decisions were actually easier."
Odiorne frequently co-directs with his brother Jeff Odiorne, co-creative director at Odiorne Wilde Narraway & Partners, San Francisco. Peter Odiorne says that working on the projects served as a platform for him to transition into directing. During the past year, Odiorne has helmed a number campaigns for videogame maker Electronic Arts, often co-directing with his brother. Additionally, the pair has created a treatment for a television series that is currently being shopped. Odiorne’s recent commercial work includes a pair of Lipton spots directed by Tom De Cerchio of Incubator Films, West Hollywood, Calif., for J. Walter Thompson, New York.
Documentary Ways
In addition to features and shorts, commercial cutters work on documentaries. Michael Mees of Ohio Edit, New York, and Gabriel Wrye, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, are currently working on Them That Believe, a film about Pentecostal snake handling churches. The pair share producing, directing, DP and editing duties. They have already shot 135 hours of footage and plan to shoot 100 more. The film’s domestic rights have been pre-sold to the Sundance Channel, and the filmmakers plan to finish the project by December.
Mees was inspired to create the film after reading an essay about serpent handlers; he and Wrye then spent months researching the subject. Mees says that Ralph Hood, a professor of the psychology of religion at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, played a key role in the project. He introduced the filmmakers to their subjects and helped the pair put together a tape that was used to pitch the project to Sundance. "The first few trips, we didn’t take cameras," he says. "We just met people and went to services and went to their homes. They felt like they’ve been stereotyped a lot of times by the media as being crazy, so they were sensitive to us doing a piece. Eventually, people started to trust us and we started shooting. We’d send them footage so they could see what we were doing. Now we have really great relationships with these people."
Mees, who recently cut a series of promos for the documentary The Road to Memphis, an upcoming PBS series about blues music, likes moving between working on spots and his documentary. "The nice thing about the documentary is that it’s a longer process, so I can work on that between commercials," he says. "The timing of it seems to work out really nicely. I really like the mix of those two things."
Chad Sipkin of Consulate, New York, started his career editing music videos, music documentaries and live concert projects. Even after he moved into cutting spots, he continued to work on the occasional longform piece. Last year, he edited Report from Ground Zero, directed by Lloyd Kramer, which chronicles the events of Sept. 11. The documentary is based on the book Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center, written by Dennis Smith, a retired firefighter who also penned Report from Engine Co. 82, a ’72 book detailing the lives of firemen working out of a Bronx firehouse.
Sipkin originally met Kramer years ago, when the editor cut promos for television movies that Kramer had directed. More recently, Kramer optioned Smith’s book, and got ABC’s entertainment division involved in making a documentary. @radical.media also came on board, and Sipkin cut Report over a period of about four months; the film debuted on ABC on Sept. 10, ’02.
Currently, Sipkin is editing Letter to True, a film by the photographer Bruce Weber, who directs spots out of Little Bear Productions, New York. Sipkin describes the 40-minute film as a personal meditation on the state of the world. Sipkin is currently cutting AT&T spots helmed by Jeff Preiss of bicoastal Epoch via Ogilvy & Mather, New York.
Another documentary, The Kid Stays in the Picture—which is a portrait of legendary film producer Robert Evans, who oversaw production on films such as The Godfather and Chinatown—directed by Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgan, was cut by Jun Diaz of MacKenzie Cutler, New York. The film was part of the ’02 Cannes Film Festival, and recently aired on HBO. Diaz also recently edited a Federal Express campaign helmed by Frank Todaro of @radical.media through BBDO New York, and a Budget campaign directed by Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/international Hungry Man, for McCann-Erickson, New York.
Diaz first met Burstein and Morgan in ’99 at the Sundance Film Festival, which screened the pair’s boxing film, On the Ropes. Another documentary that Diaz had cut, American Movie by Chris Smith—who directs spots via Independent Media, Santa Monica—was also in the festival. Diaz says that Burstein and Morgan wanted an editor with both a visual background and non-fiction experience. Diaz has never billed himself as a designer, but designing is one of his skills. "I just happened to fit that bill," he notes.
"[Kid] is primarily composed of stills, so the film was basically made in the edit," explains Diaz of the project, which was narrated by Evans. "Every scene had to be built by hand. When I arrived, all [the directors] had were a couple of thousand scanned photographs. Otherwise there was no game plan. We had the problem: How do you make a film work when all you have is a man talking?"
