The Directors Guild of America (DGA) recently announced its nominations for best commercial helmer of ’99. The directors submit several spots to the DGA for consideration, and on that basis the nominees are chosen. While the award honors directors, many individuals contribute to the spots’ success, including agency creatives, post artists, composers, sound designers, and of course, editors. To that end, SHOOT spoke with a few of the editors about their contributions to the ads that earned the DGA nod.
Gavin Cutler
"It’s tricky. You have two directors. One is directing something that is selling the product of another director’s work and vision," says editor Gavin Cutler, discussing "Promo" for the film The Minus Man. Cutler is owner/ editor at MacKenzie Cutler, New York.
"Promo," which was directed by Rocky Morton of Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ), Los Angeles, via Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, was one of the spots that earned him a DGA nomination. Morton’s other entries include Lexus’ "Fly" out of Team One Advertising, El Segundo, Calif.; and Homestead Village Guest Studios’ "Stick" and "Comb" for just partners, Richmond, Va.
Most trailers are comprised of footage culled from the movies they’re promoting. But "Promo" takes an entirely different approach. The spot has its very own story, one intended to hook the viewer into seeing The Minus Man, a film about a serial killer that was directed by Hampton Fancher and produced by The Shooting Gallery, New York. In the ad, a couple who has just seen the film is shown passionately discussing it outside the theater, then in a bar, on the streets and at a late-night eatery. The two wind up at the waterfront, still chatting about the feature, when the man stops to admire the sunrise. His date looks at his watch, realizes she’s late for work and runs off. Arriving at her lifeguard job, she’s greeted with the sight of two drowned swimmers. The spot cuts to supered copy that reads, "Careful, you can talk about it for hours."
"The narrative spans the whole night," explains Cutler. "It was challenging to try and figure out how we were going to elapse time in order to let people understand clearly—but not in too pedestrian a way—that [the couple has] been talking all night. We tried many different editorial devices, but we didn’t want it to become too technique-y.
"We ended up [using black footage between shots] because it was the least intrusive technique," he continues. "It wasn’t quite as conventional as fade-ups and fade-outs."
Cutler notes that the story could have been told in various ways. "There was quite a bit scripted out. Within that body of material, you could have painted the film in any number of ways, depending on what dialogue you wanted to highlight," he says. "The movie could have sounded more sinister or more romantic. What we felt were the most compelling parts of the film’s story wasn’t necessarily going to be what The Shooting Gallery or Hampton Fancher wanted to emphasize [about] the movie. When you get a lot of voices involved, it’s challenging."
He is pleased that Morton received a DGA nomination in part because of "Promo." "He’s got a strong creative vision," says Cutler. "He’s a detail-oriented guy, and not just in terms of what he shoots. He really wanted to be involved in the whole process."
A veteran editor, Cutler studied English and experimental film at the State University of New York at Binghamton, N.Y. Upon graduating he worked at First Edition, New York, for 10 years. Three years ago he and Ian MacKenzie joined forces to form MacKenzie Cutler.
Some of Cutler’s recent work includes Budget Rent-A-Car’s "Art Film," directed by Traktor of bicoastal/international Partizan via Cliff Freeman and Partners. It’s the latest ad in a campaign that portrays Budget executives brainstorming crazy ideas about ways to improve their company’s services. "I think it’s a great campaign," says Cutler. "It’s pretty simple, as I find most successful thirty-second commercials tend to be. Rent-a-car advertising isn’t exactly cutting-edge. The ads are different for that kind of company. It was nice to see the client go out and take a chance with it."
In another Budget spot, "Jet Propulsion," directed by Dante Ariola of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films, the Budget executives decide that the quickest way to get their customers from the airport to their cars is with a jet propulsion pack. Cut to a Budget employee shouting operating instructions to a befuddled customer wearing a jet pack. The customer, who can’t hear a thing, presses a button and suddenly he’s airborne. A couple of seconds later, he gets zapped by telephone lines.
"[All the ads] build to this crescendo," says Cutler. "With ‘Propulsion,’ the idea, editorially, was to go through and find the best moment for when the guy hits the wires. Obviously no one got fried on the wire; we did a bunch of effects to achieve that, but we’re always holding it up against the light to make sure it looks authentic. The humor comes out of making it seem real."
—Fred Cisterna
Rye Dahlman
It’s opened up new avenues for creativity," says editor Rye Dahlman of the Internet. "It’s one thing when you have to sell a box of soap; another thing when you try and sell something as magical as the Internet. You don’t have to say ‘Your headache will be cleared up in ten minutes.’ It becomes a forum for entertainment, and not necessarily a forum for information."
Dahlman, who has been editing since ’72, and owns his own shop, Rye Films, Santa Monica, recently cut eSCORE.com’s "The Debate," directed by Leslie Dektor of Dektor Film, Hollywood via Saatchi & Saatchi, San Francisco. That spot—along with Allstate Insurance’s "Anthem" out of Leo Burnett Co., Chicago, and Coca-Cola’s "Downhill Racer" out of Edge Creative, Santa Monica, helped earn Dektor a DGA nomination. "The Debate" features a group of little kids excitedly discussing the possibility of life on other planets. The tag on the spot, which promotes the education-based Web site, asks: "What if they brought the same intensity to math or English?"
Dahlman appreciates the Internet, and the impact it’s had on editing and advertising, and the fact that it has made it easier for him to do business. For example, Dahlman says that some of the edits on "The Debate" were approved by e-mail. Although he likes what the Internet can do for the approval process, Dahlman cautions that all this lightning-quick speed can sometimes leave editors at a disadvantage. "Because it’s so fast now, we never have time to sit back and look at the work, go home and come back to it, the way we used to," says Dahlman. "There’s such a race to the finish. … We’ve either got to ship it, or we’ve got to e-mail it to somebody to get a reaction. Is that good for advertising? Probably not."
He also points out that by being able to easily ship cuts over the Internet, a wider variety of people are getting the chance to react. "I don’t want to be negative—and this is going to sound negative—but before [the Internet], we’d cut something and there would be a small, elite group of people who would look at it, approve the work, and we’d go on," Dahlman explains. "Now everybody gets a shot at it. Is that good? I’m not sure. There are some capable creative teams who are able to do the work, to create the work, and to approve the work and know that it’s good. Again—not to be negative now—but there are a few account people making decisions in advertising which aren’t necessarily positive."
Dahlman grew up in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He made short films in high school and charged admissions to his screenings. After graduating from UCLA in ’71, he worked on Story In Hollywood, an ABC newsmagazine show. From there he "stumbled" into advertising, landing a job with now defunct DeSort and Sam. He was an assistant editor to Rob Lieberman, who wanted to be a director and brought Dahlman along. (Lieberman now directs spots out of bicoastal The Lieberman Company in association with Straw Dogs.) "I was cutting spots in six months," says Dahlman, who also tried his hand at directing during that time but quickly gave it up. It was in editing, he discovered, that he could have more impact. "There are a lot of ways you can change the film. I like that."
How has editing changed since ’72? "It frankly wasn’t any better—it was just different," he says. "There were actual people who really knew how to edit film, knew how to take film, tape it, splice it, add another eight frames, undo tape. Now, you make a couple keystrokes and you’re done. A lot of people are working on computers these days. Whether they’re editors or not, that’s a different [story]."
Dahlman has also noticed changes at agencies. "A few years ago, agencies were more prone to putting together their all-star team for a job," he says. "Here’s a director they really like, here’s an editor. That’s changing a little. Agencies are starting to become a little more sensitive to a director’s needs. They’re at least letting them recommend an editor. I think that’s a positive thing."
Dahlman says it’s essential not to get too worked up in the hyperactive world of advertising. "I’m so relaxed," he says. "I don’t hang around the office all day long. I take time off. I think you can burn yourself out by being too intense. I’m a little intense, but I know that when I’m not working, I do as much playing as I possibly can. … It’s kind of funny watching people get wound up. They’re not going to be very healthy; they’re not going to last. People go crazy. To a certain extent, there are a lot of very serious things happening in this business. But not much of it is life-threatening."
—Scott Jones
Deirdre Heaslip
"Storytelling with abstract images really interests me," says Deirdre Heaslip, an editor at Spots BME, Chicago. "I look at it as poetic."
Heaslip recently brought a poetic narrative to Allstate Insurance’s "Anthem," directed by Leslie Dektor. "Anthem" illustrates through various images of disaster how Allstate is there in times of crisis. From a helicopter’s perspective, there are scenes of a multi-car highway pileup, a neighborhood ravaged by a tornado, and a landscape charred by fire. Interspersed throughout the scenes of devastation are images of the people affected. The spot is accompanied by the voiceover of Allstate claims analyst Chris Wittenberg, who says: "I don’t like trouble. I just love making it go away. You’re in good hands with Allstate—mine."
Cutting "Anthem," Heaslip says, was like being a part of "a model for how the creative process should go." Her work on the spot began more that a year earlier, when she was called to edit a demo spot using existing footage to give the client a visual of the proposed concept.
"I’d like to think that I made it as good as it could be so they could sell their script," says Heaslip. "Once they finally got the go-ahead, I was brought on as the editor. There was an extensive stock footage search, but we wound up using only two stock scenes—the rest was created on location in California."
Applauding the collaborative effort that produced "Anthem," Heaslip recalls the contributions made by team members in giving the footage a variety of treatments. "A lot of the decisions were Dektor’s call," she relates. "He definitely had strong opinions on the pieces he loved, but he was also really open to input and seeing things in a different way." "Anthem" was part of a five-spot package that featured actual Allstate employees. "Leslie Dektor got such great performances out of them, so in a way, it had a bit of documentary as well as commercial style."
Heaslip was comfortable with Dektor’s documentary style, having begun her career as co-producer/ director/editor of Green on Thursdays. The ’93 documentary is an examination of hate crimes against gays and lesbians in Chicago. "I moved to Chicago in 1991 when a friend asked me to come out and explore doing a project together," recalls Heaslip of her involvement on the film. "I figured at the worst it would be a two-week vacation, and it turned into my new home."
Doing the offline edit and supervising the online editorial of the film was Heaslip’s first foray into post. "I looked around and said, ‘I can do this,’" she says. A few months later, she was working as an assistant editor at Optimus, Chicago, and then joined Spots BME in the same capacity before rising to full editor in ’95.
Heaslip has since cut commercials for clients such as McDonald’s, Ameritech, Philip Morris, Sears and United Airlines. "777 PTQ," a United spot via Leo Burnett Co., which was edited by Heaslip from existing footage, chronicles the construction of an entire Boeing 777 jumbo jet in sixty seconds, set to the rhythm of George Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue." "They shot every aspect of building the plane; it was the most amazing reel I’d ever seen," she says. "It’s not something you can storyboard, but they knew it would make a great spot and we were able to make something great out of it."
As a rule, Heaslip begins the editing process by requesting time alone "to sink my teeth into the footage." Her next step is to make two rough cuts of the spot—one the way it was boarded and the other the way she personally sees it. She then presents both versions to the client. "You kind of have to be an interpreter," she says. "Everyone’s talking behind you, thinking of different ways to go, and you have to take all that and then translate it into the cut. A good editor should be able to do that skillfully, and not have to think, ‘I’m going to listen to that guy but not that other guy.’"
Heaslip also works on longer-format projects and graphics work in addition to spots, but whatever the assignment, her goal remains the same. "Sometimes," she says, "the agency has lived with a board or a script for a year before it gets to me. So it’s really wonderful when I can show people a cut and suddenly all those months of meetings and squabbles can fade away and they can say, ‘Yes! That’s exactly the idea!’ "
—Jon Katz
Sherri Margulies and Erik Johnson
It looks like a trailer for a-sure-to-be-a-dud action film. It’s filled with explosions, dynamic music, and a dramatic voiceover announcing the virtues of an action flick: "A mad bomber on the loose. A renegade cop with one last chance. And a city’s fate up for grabs. This summer, everything—yes, everything is getting BLOW’D UP! From TriMount Studios comes the $200 million event of the year."
It quickly becomes apparent, however, that this is not the typical Hollywood trailer, but rather a parody used to plug the online stock service E*Trade. The spot, "TriMount Studios," ends with a man disgustedly watching the trailer, then going to E*Trade to sell his shares of TriMount stock.
The ad, via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco, is one of four spots to earn director Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/international hungry man a DGA nomination. (His other entries were "Broker," also for E*Trade and GS&P; Monster.com’s "When I Grow Up" out of Mullen, Wenham, Mass.; and OnHealth.com’s "Friends" via TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco.)
The editing team behind "TriMount Studios" was editor/partner Sherri Margulies and editor Erik Johnson of bicoastal Crew Cuts. (Johnson is a partner in the company’s San Francisco office.) "I tend to do a lot of comedic stories," says Margulies. For "TriMount Studios," she researched the genre thoroughly. "I got every action trailer I could off the Internet. We tried to copy the style very closely."
"TriMount Studios" was part of a four-spot package directed by Buckley that Margulies and Johnson both worked on. (Margulies was the primary editor on "TriMount Studios" and "Cabin," while Johnson cut "Sugar Momma" and "Ed.") Johnson, who says that "TriMount Studios" is "Sherri’s spot," explains that he did post work on it because "her schedule didn’t allow her to spend an extra couple of weeks on it." The piece was retooled for a film release, which involved converting the video to film and creating a film soundtrack mix, which Johnson supervised.
The duo found the job to be a smooth ride, except for the tight deadline. A quick turnaround of about a month meant that the four spots had to be divvied up between the two editors, who work out of two separate Crew Cuts locations—Johnson is in San Francisco, while Margulies is based out of New York. The spots were cut in the San Francisco, Santa Monica, and New York locations of the company. Such juggling might have unbalanced some, but not Margulies and Johnson, who first met when he worked as her assistant in ’91. "I started part of the job [in New York]," recalls Margulies, "then we went to San Francisco and Santa Monica. It was interesting because the company had never used all the resources at all the different facilities for one job. There was a point where E.J. and I were working and he was in San Francisco, I was in L.A., and the voiceover was in New York. It was cool."
Margulies planned to be a biomedical engineer but found the sciences "really tedious and boring," so she switched to communications. After graduating in the summer of ’88 from Boston University, she toyed with becoming an entertainment lawyer, but eventually took a job as a production assistant on TV commercials. An agency producer invited her to see an editing session at Crew Cuts, and she was soon working as a receptionist at the company. She found editing to be fascinating, and after answering phones all day, she learned how to cut film at night. She became an assistant editor to partner/editor/company founder Clayton Hemmert, and eventually began editing on her own. Promoted to partner four years ago, she feels she was lucky to learn editing in the pre-Avid days. "I assisted on film and got an understanding of film technique. I learned a lot from Clayton, and was exposed to very talented creatives through working with him. The [agency creatives] gained a lot of trust in me, so I got pretty decent work from the start."
Growing up in Shelburne, Vt., Johnson was interested in technology and advertising. He went to Crew Cuts because "I heard it had a really good reputation." He worked as an assistant to Margulies and others for four years before moving to MacKenzie Cutler, New York, where he became an editor. After four years, he came back to Crew Cuts as a partner, opening the company’s San Francisco office.
"I learned most of my comedy techniques from Chuck Willis [partner/editor at Crew Cuts] and Ian MacKenzie [of MacKenzie Cutler]," he notes. "Ian is an incredible comedy editor. I mostly specialize in comedy; once you start down that road, those are the boards you get."
Margulies recently cut Federal Express’ "Oz" directed by Joe Pytka of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA for BBDO New York. She is currently cutting a few Pepsi spots that will air during the Academy Awards. Johnson’s latest credits include "Tennis" and "Supermarket," a pair of spots for Social net.com, directed by Marc Greenfield of Santa Monica-based Stiefel & Company out of Blazing Paradigm, San Francisco. He is currently cutting a new E*Trade spot called "Beach," which was directed by Frank Todaro of bicoastal/international @radical.media.
"I prefer working on comedy spots that have some story and some sort of character development," observes Margulies, "because I think it’s a challenge to create a character in a short period of time." Johnson adds: "I like all kinds of comedy—dark, wacky, subtle, and smart. I like the turnover [in commercials], and working on different projects from month to month."
—Tom Soter
Tom Muldoon
To get rid of a pesky fly, most people would use a flyswatter. The Lexus driver—at least the one in "Fly"—takes a more reckless approach to pest control, accelerating, slamming on the brakes, and swerving wildly in order to eject the offending bug. The spot’s editor, Tom Muldoon, president of Nomad Editing Company, Santa Monica, treated the comic standoff between man and insect as a war within a car. The experience turned out to be valuable on his next assignment: cutting Gone in 60 Seconds, a movie about car thieves directed by Dominic Sena of Propaganda Films.
Some of Muldoon’s commercial work appears on the reels of two nominees for the DGA award. Muldoon was the principal editor on "Fly," directed by Rocky Morton via Team One Advertising. He also helped Jim Hutchins, one of his partners at Nomad, edit Cracker Jack’s "Sizes," directed by Joe Public—a.k.a. Adam Cameron and Simon Cole—of bicoastal Headquarters via GS&P. Joe Public received its nomination on the basis of "Sizes"; Snapple’s "Sponsor," out of Deutsch, New York; "Truck Driver" for Dreyer’s Ice Cream out of GS&P; Amazon.com’s "Two Minutes" via Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), San Francisco; adidas’ "El Duque Dance" for Leagas Delaney, San Francisco; and "Fire 2" for Churchs Chicken, out of Cliff Freeman and Partners.
Muldoon says he didn’t rely on the storyboards created by the agency. "How could we? The nature of working with flies—and those were real flies—is unpredictable. They couldn’t be sure of how it would come together." The job was made easier, he says, by Morton’s skill in using different lenses to capture the bug’s ordeal. "It was very clever the way he conceived it. Rocky and I cut one version with a lot more fly POV shots, but we realized it actually looked funnier when you could see the fly buzzing around inside the car."
Muldoon won’t take any credit for the success of "Sizes." "I went up to San Francisco and worked with the Goodby creatives to finalize the spot, but it basically remained the cut that Jim had done," he explains.
A native of Grand Rapids, Mich., Muldoon got his start in film and video production when his older sister, Mary, was producing TV documentaries in San Francisco. "I was in junior college in Michigan, and Mary called and said ‘You might like this. Come on and give it a try,’" he recalls. He did, and quickly found work as a videotape editor at Varitel, San Francisco. While editing TV magazine shows and music videos, Muldoon met one of his future partners at Nomad, John Murray, who was also just starting out as an editor. Both moved to Los Angeles in the late ’80s to find freelance work.
In ’92, along with Mary and Jim Haygood, Muldoon and Murray founded Superior Assembly Editing Company, Santa Monica. After three years there, Muldoon and Murray—along with two of their assistant editors, Hutchins and Glenn Martin—decided to break away and form Nomad.
Around the same time, several of the directors Muldoon had worked with were moving into feature films. When Michael Bay of Propaganda directed The Rock, he asked Muldoon to cut the title sequence. He also worked for two months to help complete Bay’s next movie, Armageddon. Until Sena asked him to be the lead editor on Gone in Sixty Seconds, Muldoon had not edited an entire feature film. "It’s a lot of sustained work, especially if you are used to cutting commercials," he says. "With all the crossover between spots and films, this could certainly happen again. Directors get used to you, and if they like the way you handle their film, they tend to call you the next time."
After 12 months on a feature, Muldoon is ready to go back to spots. "Editing is editing, whether you’re cutting together a scene in a movie or a thirty-second spot. You live with the footage for a while; you get close to it. Then when someone new comes in—whether it’s an additional editor on the film, or the director, or the agency people working on their ad—they may look at it and say ‘Well, it’s neat-looking, but I don’t understand what’s happening.’ It’s always nice to have someone come in with an objective view."
Muldoon says that most of the acclaimed spots he’s worked on are "storytelling spots—and that’s something that the DGA likes, that it’s not all about the editing." For that reason, he and his colleagues at Nomad rarely submit their work for editing awards. As an example, he cites Levi’s "Elevator Fantasy" directed by Bay out of FCB. In the spot, two attractive and attracted strangers fantasize about their whirlwind romance, wedding, and blissful marriage, all within the span of a brief elevator ride. "When you see a spot like that, which tells a great story, people don’t necessarily notice the editing even though there may be twenty or thirty cuts in thirty seconds. But when Michael or another director I work with wins awards, that makes me feel great. I don’t want for work, and people in advertising know who I am, so having a trophy doesn’t mean that much."
—Justine Elias
Avi Oron
"My job and the director’s and the production company’s job was to get as close as possible to the Mitch Miller style," recalls editor Avi Oron of Amazon.com’s "Two Minutes," from FCB. "We had a lot of issues to take into account: the look of the spot, the camera moves, and whether to shoot on video or film. But other than the technical side of it, it was basically trying to keep it simple, simple, simple."
Oron, an editor at Cosmo Street East, New York, a sister company of Santa Monica-based Cosmo Street, is referring to one of the spots that earned Joe Public of Headquarters a DGA nomination. Oron suggested the FCB creatives and the directing team move away from shooting on film, and go for a video look in post. "It would have been almost impossible to get the real look they wanted in editing," explains Oron. "What they wound up doing was using real video cameras from the 1960s."
While Oron is happy about the DGA nomination, he considers the spot’s success to be more a testament to great creative concept rather than his editing skills. The ad, which hearkens back to the ’60s variety show Sing Along With Mitch Miller, features a choir of middle-aged men clad in V-neck sweaters singing a song about how they spent all of two minutes ordering a gift on Amazon.com.
After helping in the decision-making process on technical issues, Oron stepped out of the project until the shoot was completed. "I try not to be any more involved in the shoot than is necessary," he says. "If you’re too involved, you lose your fresh eye and your point of view regarding judging the dailies to find what’s there and what’s not there."
Once the footage was delivered, Oron assembled a rough cut by himself. "That’s one of my rules I never break," Oron says. "I have to have the first cut. I don’t even go over the script notes before I cut. If you read script notes, you’re reading what other people think about the dailies. By putting the first cut together and then going back to the script notes and the storyboards, I think you gain a better perspective on what footage works best. After that, I work with the agency and we go back and usually wind up having a boarded version as well. Then we take it from there."
It took just three days to cut "Two Minutes" and the other four spots in the package. Oron says the process was unusually collaborative. "Ordinarily, it’s very difficult receiving input from that many people, but in this case we cut all five spots in three days. It was an amazing process that I enjoyed very much."
Another director Oron enjoys working with is Noam Murro of Stiefel & Co., Santa Monica. Oron recently cut FreeAgent.com’s "Company Man" via Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, New York. It’s a bittersweet comic spot for an Internet site offering freelance and temporary job assignment postings. The ad is the story of a frustrated middle manager who watches the years go by, and sees his once promising career turn mediocre. Finally set free at a retirement party, the retiree walks out the door and drops dead.
"Company Man" is Oron’s idea of a perfect example of his main interest and strength—the ability to tell a story. "I had to tell the story with eleven thousand pictures," he says. "It’s not supposed to look like somebody went out and spent a fortune on production. It’s supposed to look like somebody was shooting pictures for fun. The challenge was not to try to make it sad, but to make it funny. I think we managed to achieve that."
While an infant, Oron emigrated with his parents from Casablanca, Morocco, to Israel, and spent his childhood watching his father work as a DP on features and TV commercials. After graduating from Vitzzo France, Tel Aviv, Israel, with a degree in graphic design, Oron became a DP working on both commercials and features. Over time he found that he preferred the editing process to being a DP, and made the switch. "The creative process in editing is more interesting than being a DP," he says. "Most of the spots I’ve been involved with tell little stories—life situations, little things that happen in one place."
Oron moved to New York in ’89. After bouncing around for a while, he opened LOB (Oron won’t say what that stands for, only that it’s an inside joke), before closing last year to reopen as Cosmo Street East. The partnership came about after Oron worked out of Cosmo Street’s Southern California site several times. "I liked the people, the [company] philosophy, and the way they worked, so we decided to throw in together." 4
