Catégories
ACE Eddie Award Nominations 2020
Catégorie : Articles
A Historical moment for Editors Everywhere
By: Annie Jean, CCE
Three years ago, after participating in Paris’ Editors Film festival Les Monteurs s’affichent, held by the French association Les Monteurs Associés, I came back with a dream. During the spring of 2016, Quebec editors Myriam Poirier CCE, René Roberge, and I went to Paris to present a film about poet Gaston Miron, and the contact with the French Association created a big spark in our minds: It would be so fantastic to connect the various Editors’ Associations in the world, and create a kind of “International” (joking around on the theme of the Socialist International… “Editors of all countries, unite”…etc.).
We were laughing then, thinking it would be great… but also… maybe an unreachable goal. But a few months ago, I came back to this idea in one of our Montreal’s editors meetings… I felt more than ever that it was important to widen our horizon and try to be in contact with editors from abroad.
So, I began to search for other associations and got in contact, amongst them, with a Brazilian Association from Sāo Paolo. I also decided to have a Skype around this idea with Mathilde Muyard, member of Les Monteurs associés in France (we had met in 2016).
On my laptop screen, I could see Mathilde’s face with a delicate smile on it, and she said,
Annie, we are trying to do this exact thing with some European Colleagues!
Mathilde Muyard
member of Les Monteurs associés in France
I couldn’t believe it. She immediately connected me with Dietmar Kraus, one of the German Organizers of a new event, The International Film Editors Forum (IFEF), created last year, in Cologne, Germany. In October 2018, for the first time in the history of our craft, 32 editors from 13 countries gathered in the same place to share ideas and maybe, a common project.
After this encounter, they parted with a goal for the coming year: to establish a base for a Federation of Film Editors Associations, and they decided they would meet again in the fall of 2019. Last summer, after a long Skype with Dietmar Kraus, I understood that I had no choice: I had to be present to this 2nd International Film Editors Forum!
And I come back from this meeting with great enthusiasm and much hope. Organized in parallel with the FILM PLUS Festival in Cologne, Germany, the oldest film festival dedicated to the art of editing, the second IFEF was held during the last weekend of October.
This time, we were 40 editors representing associations from 20 countries. The aim of the encounter was to reflect together on the theme of “Communication and Visibility” and learn about what the different associations offer to their membership.
We also exchanged about the “dreams” for the future, and how we can benefit from better communications internationally.
It's difficult to describe how impressive it was to be there, in a room, with editors from countries as diverse as Turkey, the UK, Germany, Norway, Australia, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Argentina, Finland, France, the USA and others. I can say the strongest feeling I sensed was one of absolute solidarity and sharing. It was also interesting to feel how editors can form a real community, and to realize how much we can connect so easily, just like if we had known each other for so long. We felt no gap at all. Since our preoccupations, our love for our craft and the desire to promote it are the same, it was very natural to exchange and bring ideas in a completely open way.
Annie Jean, CCE
MEMBER OF THE CANADIAN CINEMA EDITORS
Each participant brought up some of the achievements and challenges of his own association. The goal of this brainstorm was to be exposed to new ideas, share the good results and inspire each other. The discussion also gave us an opportunity to talk about the challenges our associations face and opened a door to eventually compare similar situations. As a member of the Canadian Cinema Editors, I talked about our CCE Awards as a great achievement, our Master classes, the CCE EditCon and I also pointed out our Podcast (many were very curious about it and asked for the link).
I also mentioned the challenges the CCE faces, being an association covering a large territory, and a diversity of regions. Most of the countries that were represented at the IFEF, except the USA, are smaller nations with production mostly concentrated in one or two cities. On the other hand, a country like Argentina faces the same kinds of challenges we face here in Canada. I also brought to attention the question of the two languages the CCE must face, a situation very similar to Belgium where they have Flemish and Walloon members as well.
The discussion in small groups was often very animated, each participant giving examples that can resonate with others’ experiences. It was not a collection of “exposés” but rather a very lively discussion where each one wanted to add his own experience’s examples. The only critic I would make is that we would’ve needed more time. We were almost sad to come to the end of our exchanges, as we had so much to share and to compare.
So, it was suggested that next year, they plan a longer Forum… But after all this brainstorming, it became very clear for everybody that a federation of all the associations could reinforce the work that each association already does in its country.
In some cases, as in Belgium or Spain, they have just very recently organized their own National Association of Editors and it’s important that they’d be inspired by older associations.
Also, as part of the weekend, there was an International Panel, open to the general public, on the global interaction of film editor communities. The panel guests were Oscar nominee Tatiana S. Riegel ACE from the USA, Job ter Burg from the Netherlands, Mercedes Oliveira from Argentina and Alexander Berner from Germany.
This year, the guest country of the Festival for the International Day was the United States, with an evening to celebrate the work of Oscar nominee Tim Squyres ACE.
The film The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997) was presented to a large public. The projection was followed by an interesting Q&A with Tim Squyres, about his work with Ang Lee over the years, but also about his work in general and his experience cutting 3D films.
The International Film Editors Forum day ended with a very emotional moment as representatives of Editors Associations from 12 countries signed the founding document, giving birth to the future Association of Associations: TEMPO.
Annie Jean, CCE
member of the Canadian Cinema Editors, Canada
To be honest, I really felt I was witnessing a historical moment for our craft. Here are the first 12 countries that have already joined TEMPO on October 27, 2019: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Argentina, Austria, Denmark, France and Hungary.
TEMPO will be an umbrella organization whose prime goal will be to federate the many associations of editors in the world. The organization now exists legally, the website is on its way, but obviously much remains to be done. From now on it’s collaboration between all the members that will enrich the process.
The idea being that, from the 12 founding members, it will grow and extend to many, many associations.
Some of the general goals of TEMPO are: to create a platform for the different editors’ associations in the world (and their membership) to connect and share, to be a one-stop pole where editors can find information about other associations and their achievements, to strengthen the standing of our profession in the film industry, to lift public awareness of our profession, to set international standards for working conditions, to benefit from each other’s experiences on running our organizations, to inspire each other to support and educate our members on creative, social and legal matters.
Catégories
DGC Award Winners 2019
DGC Award Winners 2019
Congratulations to our CCE members who won a DGC Award over the weekend!
BEST PICTURE EDITING – FEATURE FILM
Lara Johnston
Mouthpiece
BEST PICTURE EDITING – DRAMATIC SERIES
Wendy Hallam Martin, CCE
The Handmaid’s Tale, Episode 201, June
BEST PICTURE EDITING – COMEDY OR FAMILY SERIES
Michelle Szemberg
Northern Rescue, Episode 101, Qué Sera
BEST SOUND EDITING – COMEDY OR FAMILY SERIES
Janice Ierulli (and 7 others)
Northern Rescue, Episode 109, Wake Up
FIN Atlantic Film Festival - Best Editing Award 2019
The CCE were a proud sponsor for the FIN Atlantic Film Festival. We sponsored the Best Atlantic Editor Award.
The award was presented to Andrew MacCormack for his work on GUN KILLERS. Congratulations!
Andrew MacCormack is a freelance filmmaker available for hire as director, editor or director of photography. He has directed, shot or edited projects for organizations including The CBC, Discovery HD, National Geographic and The National Film Board of Canada.
Andrew has shot on four continents and his work has been broadcast worldwide. He wrote, directed and edited the series “Cubicle to the Cage” in which he received a Canadian Screen Award nomination. His short film “Here and Away” (PBS USA) won multiple audience awards and played on Air Canada flights worldwide.
He edited the acclaimed documentaries, “The Man of a Thousands Songs” (TIFF 2010), “Silas” (TIFF 2017, Exec Prod. Leonardo DiCaprio) and “Gun Runners” (Netflix 2017).
He was the cinematographer and editor of the documentary “Hand.Line.Cod” (TIFF & Berlinale 2016). He was also the cinematographer on the film “Danny” and edited the documentary, “Bad Coyote” – Both films were nominated for Canadian Screen Awards.
He most recently wrote and directed the documentary “Sickboy” which was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award and won best documentary at the Screen Nova Scotia awards.
Andrew is proudly from Prince Edward Island and is now based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia where he lives with his wife Julie and two sons, Miles and Dominic.
How long have you been an editor for?
Professionally for 13 years.
What genres have you worked on?
I’ve worked on basically everything under the sun! But have specialized in working on documentaries.
What has been an interesting/favourite project so far?
I feel super fortunate to earn a living making films, so I’m grateful for them all. But my last documentary that I directed, “Sickboy,” was maybe my favorite because it was the result of 12 years of learning every day, then putting all those lessons in to practice to create a great film that our whole team was proud of and has affected a lot of people in a positive way.
What are you currently working on?
At this very moment, I’m editing a documentary series called “Ocean School” for the National Film Board. Why did you decide to become an editor? I decided to become an editor because I wanted to cut my first documentary and was very curious about the process. But after the first few years of cutting, I realized I maybe had a knack for it. I always felt super comfortable cutting, even when I sucked at it, haha! I just love the power you have to control the emotion of a story. I have the utmost respect for every discipline in filmmaking, but I feel like the edit is where the film is really made, especially in documentary.
I just really feel at home in the edit suite.
CCE Winner for LA Edit Fest Raffle - Nick Wong
If I could summarize my experience at this year’s EditFest in a few words, it would be; amazing, educational and inspiring!
I would like to thank the CCE for this wonderful opportunity and Alison for taking care of the travel arrangements.
The hotel was conveniently located across a 24-hour grocery store and a great breakfast place (there was always a line-up there!). It was also in walking distance of Warner Bros Studios – so for future winners of Editfest, plan your visit accordingly. And best of all, the hotel provided a free shuttle that would take you anywhere within 3 miles, including the Disney studios where the event took place.
I arrived at the Walt Disney studios at 9 am at Riverside gate. I immediately recognized the current animation building across the street, the one shaped like Mickey’s hat from the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Cool! Continuing through the Disney lot, I walked past some of the soundstages and the “Cutting” building, but when I reached the check-in and registration area, I realized that I was right in front of the original animation building! Having grown up with the old animated films, I was overcome with nostalgia.
This was where Cinderella, Bambi et Peter Pan were drawn, where Tim Burton and John Lasseter worked as young animators, and, during the shaky times of Disney animation in the 80’s, where the animators had to vacate to make room for the emerging live-action division.
Today, the halls of the building are decorated with conceptual artwork and background paintings to commemorate some of their most famous hand-drawn animated films. Outside, refreshments were served, and attendees mingled a bit before we were called into the historic main theatre for the first presentation.
It took me a while, but I eventually realized I was sitting right behind CCE president, Stephen Philipson! We got to chat for a while until we saw Paul Day looking for a seat and called him over. It was nice to catch up a little before the presentation started.
PANEL #1
Our first panel was called “From the Cutting Room to the Red Carpet” and included panelists, Heather Capps (Portlandia), Nena Erb (Insecure), Robert Fisher Jr. (Into the Spider-Verse), Eric Kissack (The Good Place) and Cindy Mollo (Ozark), where each of them showed clips of their work and then talked about the process behind their work.
If you want to know more about the panelists, I’ve scanned the program as a pdf. Robert Fisher Jr showed two clips from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. The first was the apartment scene where Uncle Aaron teaches Miles Morales some moves to win a girl over – the “shoulder touch”. It’s a sweet and funny bonding scene between the two characters.
The second was a montage where Miles Morales becomes Spiderman in his universe and leaps off a high-rise building.
Being a fan of the movie, I loved hearing the behind-the-scenes stories of how these scenes evolved. As it turns out, the initial cut of the apartment scene was cut fairly conventionally, using only the single CU coverage for the character’s lines. When that version was screened, the producers realized that it wasn’t getting a laugh from the audience. Robert found that the simple solution was to give the scene a little bit of breath by cutting to a wide two-shot in the middle of the exchange.
Nick Wong
ASSOCIATE MEMBER OF THE CANADIAN CINEMA EDITORS
And what can I say? It works, and I laugh every time I watch the scene. Next, Robert explained that the montage clip was originally scripted to be very linear, following Miles on the subway platform, going up the stairs and then seeing him on the rooftop but when the producers saw it, they felt it wasn’t working and that it was lacking something. They couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but asked Robert if there was anything he could do. The result is an energetic montage that jumps back and forth through time. When combined with the music and stunning visuals, you get something that is truly memorable.
PANEL #2
The next panel, “Reality VS. Scripted Editing: Demystifying the Difference” was probably my favourite of the whole day. It was very casual and interactive, and I loved the chemistry and witty banter that the panelists had with each other (Jamie Nelsen was hilarious!). I was also very interested in the discussion because of the common misconception that if you work in scripted, you can’t do reality and vice versa.
The presentation started with a screening of two clips. The first was from the reality series, Naked and Afraid, and follows two nude survivalists as they set up their tent and are met with a torrential downpour and flood in the middle of the night.
The second clip is an elaborate space battle sequence between the crew of The Orville and the Kaylon
The panelists then asked us what’s similar about the two clips? Answers included; they both create tension, both are telling a story through the characters POV, one person shouted “VFX budget!” (re blurring private parts in Naked & Afraid), which got a big laugh. Then we were asked, what’s different about the two scenes? One person shouted “Wardrobe!” (it might have been the same person). There were a few serious answers before the panelists finally stopped us and revealed it was a trick question.
Nick Wong
member of the Canadian Cinema Editors, Canada
The answer is: nothing. There is nothing different about the way those two clips were cut. Tom Costantino, who edited The Orville, went on to explain that original script for the sequence was two minutes and had three crashes. The final cut was seven minutes and had 11 crashes and he had to fabricate a lot of moments by creatively reusing reaction shots from different angles, a skill he learned from cutting reality and looking for any bit of usable footage. All the panelists shared incredible insight about working in both genres and really made the whole discussion relatable.
One of the audience questions regarding doing producer notes was, “Have you ever had to lock a cut that you didn’t like?” Tom’s answer was, “Yes, I call that Thursday,” which got a big laugh. Molly Shock (Naked and Afraid) shared her thoughts on this and said that if out of 1000 cuts, and there are 100 cuts you don’t like, you still have 900 cuts that you do like. That put things in a positive perspective.
Lunch was served in the cafeteria and I got a chance to talk to a few of the attendees. It was interesting to hear from a diverse group of editors and assistants in various stages of their careers from all over the U.S. One editor had just moved to L.A. a week ago from Atlanta to start a new job the Monday after EditFest!
PANEL #3
The next panel was called “Inside the Cutting Room with Bobbie O’Steen: A Conversation with Joe Walker, ACE”. I remember hearing Joe Walker speak at DGC’s Visionaries at TIFF last year, so I was excited to see him again. During the discussion, they showed some of his work on Hunger et 12 Years of Slave, but the most interesting was when they screened a progression reel of a scene from Blade Runner 2049. The scene is where Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling fight in a futuristic cabaret theatre:
We first saw a rough animatic of the scene with stiff CG models of K and Deckard. Then we saw an assembly of the live footage with roughly temped in hologram images – this got a laugh from the audience because of the crudeness of the comp. Joe Walker even joked that he was expert at temping in vfx.
But the interesting thing was the scene was quite different from the final. There were a lot more holograms and the music played constantly throughout the scene.
Joe Walker explained that the problem with the earlier version was that it felt too much like a spectacle and it didn’t match the tone of the movie. They decided to go with a different approach and in the end, built tension with silence.
They also showed a before and after progression for a scene from Widows. It was a dramatic scene with Viola Davis and Cynthia Erivo in a car with about a page of dialogue. The final sequence had absolutely no dialogue. Instead, the two characters sat in silence and exchanged a heartfelt look before Cynthia Erivo’s character exits. It was extremely effective and told the same story. The day ended with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails served right outside the main theatre. I got to chat more with Paul Day and Stephen Philipson, and fellow CCE members Christine Armstrong, Ben Allan and Gloria Tong. With more American productions making their way up north, it was great to see Canadian editors represented at events such as EditFest.
Thanks again to the CCE for making this happen! To future winners, remember to soak it all in, talk to as many people as you can, and you’ll have a blast!
Catégories
DGC Awards Nominations 2019
CCE members nominated for DGC Awards 2019
Simone Smith
Firecrackers
Lara Johnston
Mouthpiece
Cam McLauchlin
Clifton Hill
Stephen Roque
Mary Kills People, Episode 305, Wolf, Meet Henhouse
Jean Coulombe, CCE
Mary Kills People, Episode 304, Switzerland Has Trees
Lisa Grootenboer, CCE
Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey
Wendy Hallam Martin, CCE
The Handmaid’s Tale, Episode 201, June
Lisa Grootenboer, CCE
Anne with an E, Episode 207, Memory Has as Many Moods as the Temper
Stephen Roque
The Expanse, Episode 313, Abaddon’s Gate
Thorben Bieger, CCE
Pure, Episode 206, Wedding
Nick Hector, CCE
Prey
Trevor Ambrose, CCE
Killing Patient Zero
Eamonn O’Connor (plus 1 other editor)
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
Drew MacLeod
Letterkenny, Episode 501, We Don’t Fight at Weddings
John Nicholls, CCE
Little Dog, Episode 201, Round Eight
Michelle Szemberg
Northern Rescue, Episode 101, Qué Sera
Catégories
CCE member wins Prix Gémeaux
Fantasia Film Festival Best Editing Winner 2019
Our Sympathies to the Appleby Family
Special Effect supervisor Warren Appleby tragically lost his life July 18th, while prepping and testing an effect for the Toronto short series Titans.
Warren is the nephew of editor and 2012 CCE Lifetime Achievement winner the late George Appleby, CCE.
He was a father, husband, son, brother, friend, IATSE873 board member, and ACME FX partner – a highly respected member of the Toronto film industry; he will be sadly missed.
Our deepest condolences go out to the Appleby family.
Catégories
Emmy Nominations 2019
Emmy Nominations 2019
Congratulations to our CCE members who have been nominated for an Emmy!
Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series
Wendy Hallam Martin, CCE
The Handmaid’s Tale: The Word Outstanding
Congratulations to our CCE members who have been nominated for an Emmy!
Véronique Barbe, CCE & Justin Lachance, CCE (plus 3 other editors)
Sharp Objects: Fix
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