Ben Winter, an assistant editor formerly at Red Car Chicago, won the 2013 AICE Chicago Camp Kuleshov trailer editing Grand Prize with his entry, “Planet of Rocks.” The trailer, promoting a non-existent nature series on the Discovery Channel that studies the fascinating world of rocks, was culled from several Kevin Bacon films, among them The River Wild and Tremors. Winners were announced last night at a party and awards show held in the Volcano Room at the Bottom Lounge in Chicago.
Camp Kuleshov is the annual competition for assistant editors, assistant audio engineers and, for the first time this year, assistant designers. It challenges them, as well as non-assistant staff of AICE member companies (who compete in the Tent City category), to create unique trailers for “original new films” which can be either movie mash-ups or new genres. Assistant audio engineers were asked to create sound designs for Hollow Man and the assistant designers to create a title sequence for the 2013 Chicago Camp Kuleshov competition.
The theme for this year’s competition–which was dubbed “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”–called on assistants to work with footage from four films starring actor Kevin Bacon: Footloose, Death Sentence, Tremors and The River Wild. Multiple winners and honorable mentions this year went to work from the editorial companies Hootenanny, which won Grand Prizes in the Tent City category for editorial and in the Design category, along with Red Car, the Whitehouse and Beast. Additional winners and honorable mentions went to entries from Cutters, Flavor, Optimus and Earhole.
First Runner Up in the Editorial category went to assistant editor Spencer Sachs of Beast for his trailer titled “Blockbuster 6,” while Second Runner Up kudos went to assistant editor Travis Hockswender of the Whitehouse for “Homeward Bound: The River Runs Through It.” Earning Honorable Mention for their entries were assistants Caleb Hepler, also of the Whitehouse, for “Milk: the High School Years,” and Aaron Kiser of Cutters for “The Saved.”
In the Tent City category for editorial, the Grand Prize went to Kelsey Moher of Hootenanny for her comic take on Bacon’s science fiction thriller Tremors, which became the comic love story “Valentine & Graboid.” Moher’s win was notable for the fact that she works at the company in client service. Honorable Mention for Tent City editorial entries went to Patrick Wong, formerly a production assistant at Red Car, for “The Floor is Lava;” Michael Asmundson, a runner at Beast, for “The Flatulent Man;” and Colin Santangelo, an intern at Hootenanny, for “Footfellas.”
For the Audio-Sound Design category, assistant sound designers were tasked with creating an original sound design sequence for the Bacon sci-fi thriller Hollow Man. The Grand Prize went to assistant audio engineer Ricardo Mondragon of Earhole for his campy sound design and audio mix–in Spanish, with English subtitles, no less–for “Hollow Man.”
The Chicago chapter of AICE introduced a new category, Design, for the 2013 Camp Kuleshov competition. The brief called for assistant designers to create an original opening title sequence that incorporated clips from all of the films used in the competition, as well as the Camp Kuleshov logo and the title of this year’s contest, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
The Design Grand Prize went to Smoke assistant Eddie Loera, also with Hootenanny. Honorable Mentions went to Tyler Nelson, a designer at Optimus, and Elliot Nevills, a finish assistant at Flavor.
Sponsoring the 2013 Camp Kuleshov awards presentation, and providing many of the prizes, was Key Code Media.
For all winners, visit the Camp Kuleshov page on the AICE website here.
Oscar Nominees Delve Into The Art Of Editing At ACE Session
You couldn’t miss Sean Baker at this past Sunday’s Oscar ceremony where he won for Best Picture, Directing, Original Screenplay and Editing on the strength of Anora. However, earlier that weekend he was in transit from the Cesar Awards in Paris and thus couldn’t attend the American Cinema Editors (ACE) 25th annual panel of Academy Award-nominated film editors held at the Regal LA Live Auditorium on Saturday (3/1) in Los Angeles. While the eventual Oscar winner in the editing category was missed by those who turned out for the ACE “Invisible Art, Visible Artists” session, three of Baker’s fellow nominees were on hand--Dávid Jancsó, HSE for The Brutalist; Nick Emerson for Conclave; and Myron Kerstein, ACE for Wicked. Additionally, Juliette Welfling, who couldn’t appear in person due to the Cesar Awards, was present via an earlier recorded video interview to discuss her work on Emilia Pérez. The interview was conducted by ACE president and editor Sabrina Plisco, ACE who also moderated the live panel discussion. Kerstein said that he was the beneficiary of brilliant and generous collaborators, citing, among others, director Jon M. Chu, cinematographer Alice Brooks, and visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. The editor added it always helps to have stellar acting performances, noting that hearing Cynthia Erivo, for example, sing live was a revelation. Kerstein recalled meeting Chu some eight years ago on a “blind Skype date” and it was an instant “bromance”--which began on Crazy Rich Asians, and then continued on such projects as the streaming series Home Before Dark and the feature In The Heights. Kerstein observed that Chu is expert in providing collaborators with... Read More