By Robert Goldrich
LOS ANGELES --For editor Tad Dennis, a prime lesson learned from his ongoing experience on Fear the Walking Dead (AMC) has simply been, “No matter what genre you’re working in, it’s all about the characters. Even in the horror genre, in the midst of heavy visual effects, what really has to be working to connect with an audience is the character arc. It’s all about characters and story.”
Taking that lesson to heart has served Dennis in good stead on the series. He has cut multiple episodes of Fear The Walking Dead, with the finale of season 2 thrusting him into the awards season conversation. Though it didn’t yield an Emmy editing nomination, the finale has been widely lauded. “The story coalesced and characters came more into their own in the finale–while keying up what would be happening in season 3,” he assessed.
Dennis is grateful to have gotten the opportunity to work on the show, noting that he has always been drawn to the horror genre. Helping him get the gig was his working relationship with Fear the Walking Dead director and co-executive producer Adam Davidson. The two had collaborated earlier on the NBC series Parenthood. “When Fear the Walking Dead was picked up as a series, Adam reached out to me,” recalled Dennis. “It’s been a great experience, very gratifying, and creatively challenging.”
Among the challenges is the perennial element of time. “Most of our episodes come in really long,” said Dennis. “Paring the time down while not losing the integrity of the episode is always the challenge.”
Inspiring compatriots
Making his job easier, though, is the caliber of his colleagues on the show. “The writers do a marvelous job, providing interesting points of view. And getting to work with composer Paul Aslinger on the series has been very exciting," said Dennis. "What he creates is so interesting, something that you don’t normally hear in terms of music on television.”
Thus far for Fear the Walking Dead, Dennis has to his credit a pair of episodes in season one, five in season two, and he’s in the throes of eventually cutting five in season three.
Dennis’ body of work as an editor is extensive–among the highlights being work on Parenthood, WGN’s Manhattan and of course, Fear the Walking Dead. Once he wraps his current season commitment on the latter, Dennis is slated to take on the hour-long dramatic series Rise. The midseason NBC show centers on a passionate theater teacher under whom the high school drama department and its students come to life, helping to lift an entire town.
Editing became Dennis’ calling in film school, though that wasn’t his original intent. “I wanted initially to become a director,” he related. “But I found myself holing up in the Avid area hours upon hours. I loved being a filmmaker in front of a computer monitor. It’s the intersection of music and filmmaking–and that’s what drew me deeply into editing.”
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More