SHOOT presents a sampling of editors who have been honored during this year’s industry awards show season. Here are mini-profiles containing their observations on the state of editing and prospects for the future:
Chris Franklin The recently released film An Inconvenient Truth has brought heightened attention to the issue of global warming. Helping to further send a message on this vital topic are “Tick” and “Train,” two affecting PSAs from the Ad Council and Environmental Defense Team, out of Ogilvy & Mather, New York. Tony Kaye of bicoastal Supply & Demand served as director/DP. Chris Franklin of New York-based Big Sky Editorial cut the spots, and says he is very proud of this campaign.
“Train” features a man standing on train tracks as a train rushes toward him. He discusses global warming, and concludes that in 30 years, the situation will not affect him. He steps off the tracks in time–revealing a small child still standing in harm’s way as the train approaches.
“Tick” features cuts–at an increasingly fast pace–of different kids saying “Tick” as we are reminded that the clock is ticking on the problem of global warming. Franklin says that he made the spot a little uncomfortable, a little off-putting, with his use of music and sound. “It needed some weight,” the editor relates. “I grabbed this cello track with ascending and descending cello notes for punctuation.” He also manipulated and layered the kids’ voices.
The powerful spots are some of the latest examples of Franklin’s editing prowess. The cutter was a big winner at the recent 5th annual Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) Awards, winning the “Best of New York” category and the dialogue category, each for the comedic New York Lottery’s “Dollar Store,” directed by Jim Jenkins of bicoastal/international Hungry Man for DDB New York. His third award came in the music/sound category for the “Kurt Busch” spot promoting FOX Sports’ Nascar coverage, which was directed by Joseph Kahn of bicoastal HSI for Taxi, New York.
“I love doing comedy and tend to get comedic spots, but I love to do sound,” Franklin relates. “I usually try to build the soundtrack first, and then build picture. [This] helps me understand where the rest of the piece is going.” He says his rough cuts tend to have in the range of 10-16 tracks of audio.
He also enjoys collaborating with directors, and talks about his longtime working relationship with director Jenkins. “The good thing is we are friendly and that helps,” Franklin says. “You develop that short hand. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him –so we can try things and you’re not embarrassed if it doesn’t work. If you’re not comfortable, you may hesitate to try things and put yourself out there.”
For their award-winning New York Lottery spot, Franklin relates, “I was trying to keep the pace going. [Jenkins] wanted something that was rapid fire in the way the actors were delivering the lines. The actors were fantastic and were directed by Jim to fire out the lines as quickly as possible. It was something sharp and fast and clean.” The pair is currently working on a campaign for Bacardi Rum via Young & Rubicam, London.
Looking ahead, Franklin suggests that creative editorial will be tied to technological advancements. “Is the TV spot dead? I don’t think it is. Are we going to be watching on cell phones? I don’t think so. [But whatever the deliverable] it’s about delivering media. I think more and more it is going to fall into the editor’s lap to appropriate that material– And you need limits in telling a story in a certain amount of time and in being effective.”
“The one think I hope for is some bravery to come back,” he adds. “I think it’s been lacking a little lately. I think it is a symptom of people just needing to get the job done.”
Carlos Arias Carlos Arias of bicoastal/international Final Cut collected an AICE Award in the comedy category for Match.com’s “Andrea” helmed by Peter Chelsom of Independent Media, Santa Monica, for Hanft Raboy and Partners, New York, which featured an energetic sports fan dashing across the playing field and toward TV cameras to win the heart of love interest Andrea.
“The starts were aligned; everybody was on the same page,” he said of the director and agency on the spot. “Whatever made us laugh was going in.”
Arias has been editing at Final Cut for six years, after starting his career at New York-based Consulate. When asked what changes he sees ahead, Arias identified HD video as a production format, and explains its impact on the editorial process.
To do this, he cites his new Volvo “Buried” for Euro RSCG, New York, directed by Matt Lenski of Reginald Pike, Toronto. The spot is part of a promotion for Disney’s upcoming release Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and introduces a ‘treasure hunt’ for a Volvo XC90 V8 that has been buried somewhere.
This spot was lensed with a Panasonic HVX200 camera, which records to a P2 solid state memory card. The camera–launched in December–combines multiple HD and SD formats, multiple recording modes and variable frames rates.
“This was an efficient way to lens a lot of footage,” Arias says. “But we had to sort through a lot of footage because the camera was on all the time.” He noted that as a result, he had plenty of creative choices, but it is more time consuming to get through the footage.
He added that with the P2 camera, he was also able to go straight to work on Final Cut Pro, skipping the loading process. Final Cut, he relates, has both Final Cut and Avid systems. “It keeps you fresh,” he says. “The interfaces are quite similar. At the end of the day it’s just a tool. You have to have the sensibility to put [the spot] together.”
Paul Martinez Paul Martinez of bicoastal Lost Planet had a great night in front of the home crowd last month when he was presented three awards at the 5th annual Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) Awards. The editor topped the montage and “Best of Los Angeles” categories, both on the strength of his work on adidas’ “Night Practice,” helmed by Kinka Usher of House of Usher, Santa Monica, for TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco. He also tied for a win in the national campaign competition for Altoids’ “People of Pain,” “Mastering The Mother Tongue” and “Fable of the Fruit Bat,” directed by Craig Gillespie of bicoastal/international MJZ for Leo Burnett, Chicago.
On the heels of this recognition, Martinez was named a partner in Lost Planet; with this new role, he will collaborate extensively with owner/editor Hank Corwin and executive producer Betsy Beale in growing Lost Planet’s business and style.
The editor began working with Corwin in feature editing on various projects. Martinez was Corwin’s associate editor on Snow Falling on Ceders, and as an assistant on U Turn.
This collaboration led to a strong working relationship that brought Martinez to Lost Planet and the commercial world seven years ago. “Hank gave me my big break,” says Martinez. “I want to thank him for this.”
Martinez recent cut a Virgin Mobile campaign, directed by Baker Smith of Santa Monica-based harvest via Mother, New York. The spot advertises a new text service; the mockumentary features mimes marching through New York to Washington Square, where they ask: “Give Us a Voice.”
“It was a really challenging job editorially,” Martinez relates, explaining that the campaign was shot on video with multiple cameras that captured more than 20 hours of dailies. “But it was nice having all that footage,” he says, adding that it gave them options. “Originally there was a ‘spokesmime’, but we dropped him –it made it more real. You can change conceptually the spot, that’s something I love about editorial. You can change the content in the editing room and try something totally different.
Another example of this is the end of his award-winning “Night Practice,” which featured kids that appear to be playing soccer with professionals who are projected against a wall. “[Creative director] Chuck McBride –suggested a quiet moment instead of a big score,” Martinez explains. “It was a really good way to end.”
When asking about trends, Martinez observes that an increasing amount of commercial work is lensed in HD video. “That changes things a little because people tend to shoot a lot more, so that has an effect on the schedule,” he relates.
Martinez also expects the standard lengths of advertising assignments to continue to change, noting that Lost Planet is doing more Web-based work as well as longer-form cinema commercials.
And looking further out, he expects commercial editorial companies will become involved in creating mobile content. “No mater what happens, advertisers in America are going to find a way to display their product, and that pays for the content,” he says.
Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter Xbox 360’s “Water Balloons”–edited by Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter of Los Angeles-based Rock Paper Scissors–was recently honored for editing at the AICP Show. The clever spot features a water balloon fight and was directed by Frank Budgen via London’s Gorgeous Enterprises and bicoastal Anonymous Content.
“‘Water Balloons’ is a metaphor for collaborative games,” explains Wall. “There was a lot of attention focused on the sound, and we used real war sounds for the balloon hits. That made everybody nervous but it was quite largely the thing that made it great. The challenge was ‘how do you make that work without upsetting people?'”
Baxter agrees that the music and sound was the key, “The life of any commercial is the music track –It affects the editing and how everyone perceives it.” Baxter’s career has spanned three continents, having also worked in Australia and the U.K. He moved to New York in 2000 with the Final Cut office launch there. He then relocated to Los Angeles and Rock Paper Scissors about two years ago.
Wall–founder of Rock Paper Scissors–is currently serving as lead editor on director David Fincher’s next feature, Zodiac. Baxter has contributed to some of the editing on that movie.
The feature was lensed with Thomson’s Grass Valley Viper Filmstream digital cinematography camera, recording to an S.two hard drive.
So Wall’s job began by collaborating with Fincher, the editorial team, and technical expertise from Andreas Wacker and Joe Wolcott to build a unique tapeless postproduction workflow.
Essentially the images were transferred from the S.two recorders directly to a storage area network (SAN), allowing post to begin without digitizing. Shake was used to downconvert the raw media to DVCPRO Quicktimes for dailies; these were distributed via the Web to Paramount or DVD to Warners. The feature will be edited on Apple’s Final Cut Pro.
“I think this is a whole new way to do things–it’s intelligently using computers to do the job of a lab,” Wall says. “Our philosophy on Zodiac was to use commodity level equipment to do amazing things– the equipment is becoming so commodified that it’s really just becoming about the people, which is great.
“I think it is a model for how things will be done,” he concludes. “I think it will have a huge impact on commercials.”
