Is editing a growing profession? How does its economic outlook stack up against other professions? Here’s what the U.S. BLS says.

Job Outlook

The BLS expects that the number of film editing jobs to increase by 12% from 2008-2018. This projected rate is slightly greater than average for all careers during this period. However, BLS finds that “competition is keen” as so many people want to enter the profession. Tell us something we didn’t know! Here’s the official table:

Where are the jobs?

Current answer: 75% of us work in television (on nontheatrical projects).

Future answer: In 2010 a Forrester study found that for the first time, people in U.S. divided their screen equally between TV and the computer.  So the ‘Net should bring in more work – webisodes here we (continue to) come!

Let the predictions flow! Let Joy know what you’re seeing and what you think will happen. And good luck to us all!

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Didn’t come out the way I voted but I was happy with the winners (see below) in the editing category I voted in (Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries or a Movie) – whom I scored #2 (out of five). I thought the premiere Sherlock Holmes episode, “A Study in Pink” exemplified modern editing and updated the cerebral, acerbic, aspergian Holmes fittingly, as opposed the Downey film series which turns him into just another action detective (I love Robert Downey’s acting and have read all the Holmes’ stories multiple times but couldn’t get past the film trailers).

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes in

“A Study in Pink” ©2011 Hartswood Films, BBC

Productions, & Masterpiece Theatre. All Rights

Reserved.

Too bad the rest of the BBC series didn’t live it up to the premiere. I’ll be talking about its editing in the online course I’m presenting next month: “Inglourious Editors: The State of Editors and Editing” on October 13, 6-8:30 p.m. PST. (Click link for more info and to register. I’d love to have you there.) In the meantime, watch it – it’s worth your time for the editing alone.

Kudos to the all the Emmy winners and nominees as well as all the editors who toil in TV land – you cut more in less time and often do wondrous, ground breaking work – we “out of the closet TV viewers” appreciate your work.

Here’s the official list:
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 63rd Annual Creative Emmy Awards

Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Miniseries or a Movie
Sarah Flack, A.C.E., Editor HBO
Robert Pulcini, Editor
Cinema Verite

Outstanding Picture Editing for a Comedy Series (Single or Multi-Camera)
Sue Federman, Edited By CBS
How I Met Your Mother
Subway Wars

Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series
Sidney Wolinsky, A.C.E., Editor HBO
Boardwalk Empire
Boardwalk Empire (Pilot)

Outstanding Short-Form Picture Editing
Matt O’connor, Editor ESPN
Anthony Marchegiano, Editor
The 2010 Espy Awards
Images Piece

Outstanding Picture Editing for a Special (Single or Multi-Camera)
Michael Polito, Editor HBO
Bill Deronde, Editor
Kevin O’dea, Editor
Katie Hetland, Editor
Lady Gaga Presents The Monster Ball Tour:
At Madison Square Garden

Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming
Lewis Erskine, Edited By
Aljernon Tunsil, Edited By PBS
Freedom Riders

Outstanding Picture Editing for Reality Programming
Josh Earl, Supervising Editor, Discovery Channel
Kelly Coskran, Supervising Editor
Alex Durham, Editor
Deadliest Catch
Redemption Day

admin Awards, Editor’s role, Television

Susan Perla, CBS news editor, reported on her 16-hour days following the obliteration of the World Trade Center:

“The images that I could not air were pretty awful. I do think about some of the footage and it disturbs me. I hope that as I work with people, I can bring humanness to any aspect of a news story. There are times when I feel we are vultures, looking for scraps. Then there are times when I finish up and look at the work and it makes me proud of a day’s work or a package cut well. It might make an impact or force someone to think about an issue.”

On the tenth anniversary of this world-changing event, I think we’re all re-viewing the burning images, commemorating the lost lives, and contemplating what they all mean.

At first we didn’t know what to call it. Nine-one-one?  Nine-eleven? The latter stuck, too close to the chain store in nomenclature for me. We learned many more words: Kabul, Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, Iraq, Afghanistan, IED, Freedom Fries, Abu Ghraib, Blackwater, rendition, waterboarding, insurgency, terrorism. And those were just a few of the words applied to horrors beyond our imagination aboard. At home, we learned the tragedy of words such as foreclosure, red, blue, PTSD, recession, unemployment, homelessness.

I’ve been reading articles, pondering the last ten years, and like most of us, trying to make sense of it. I am saddened and sickened by our nation’s inability to heal itself and its increasing the hatred of our country abroad with our aggressive, astronomically costly wars. An article in the September 12 issue of The New Yorker focuses on the fracturing of our country over the wars, the economy, the meaning of 9/11 itself, and who the enemy and what the real problems and issues are. The article contends that we now lack a common narrative of the last ten year’s worth of events, due to the divergence of our leaders and the callous blindness of the Bush administration.

I don’t usually write politically here but after ten years, with our country and countrymen and women, especially returning soldiers, in terrible, ever-worsening shape, I am sick and sad. Perhaps as editors – as writers with sound and image – we can, like Susan Perla remarked, bring humanness to our projects. God knows the world needs it.

To end on a contemplative, memorial note, here’s a video doc that consists of an interview with the architect of the water memorial in NYC to those who died in the towers which opens to the public 9/12/2011. I see the water as leading to the void. Please, let’s reach out across the divides and firmly put our nation on a path that is true to all those founding beliefs of liberty, happiness, equality, etc. that we so cherish.

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Here are a few more riffs on bad editing from an anonymous editor who watched the 197 episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000), a comedy series from Minnesota’s twin cities that ran from 1988-1999 mostly on Comedy Central and is now available on DVD.

The editor’s comments are on the first line in purple as he (I’m assuming) watches the episode. The second line references the character’s name and the episode title. See August 3rd post to hear from the editor and for his first set of riffs.

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There have been a lot of worthwhile courses and seminars to announce lately. Here’s another one I recommend and which I’ve attended a couple of times. If you want to understand what worklife is like for editors on reality and fiction TV shows and you’re in the LA area, go! Details below. In previous years I heard editors from Breaking Bad, Grey Gardens, 24, and Top Chef among others.
It’s free! And there’s always a Q & A session at the end. The whole thing is very low key – come as you are – no need to dress up.

Date: Saturday, August 27 • 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Location
American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre
1328 Montana Avenue at 14th Street
Santa Monica, CA

More info = Official announcement
For the fifth consecutive year, we are proud to present this unique seminar that focuses on the art of editing. Prime Cuts is a premiere event where the editors from top television shows discuss their work.

Don’t miss this insider-only discussion with nominated editors from some of this year’s Primetime Emmy® shows.

Moderated by Shawn Ryan
Creator and EP of The Shield, Ride-Along on Fox.
EP on Terriers, The Unit and Lie To Me.

No reservations will be taken. Seating is on a first-come first served basis so arrive early to guarantee admission!
Note: It’s been held in different LA venues and I’ve never seen the event fill up; the Aero is a good sized theatre. So bring people who don’t understand editing or what you do but love TV shows and/or you!

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I picked movies and mini-series for my judging category for the upcoming 2011 Emmy’s. This is the most time-consuming category to judge since you’re required to watch the entire show but I wanted to see Mildred Pierce and a few other shows that I’d missed. I’ll blog about the show I chose for best editing and why I voted for it in the future but for now, I’d like to riff about titles and credits as I viewed some outstanding ones.

What’s in a title and opening credit?

The opening title and credits can do much more than display a show’s name, players, producers, director, and crew. If created thoughtfully, they serve as an introduction to a movie, kind of like a welcoming committee, greeting you and pulling you in. If created artistically, opening (head) credits can add even more to a picture and stand out on their own. Often, combined with music, they set an emotional tone to the movie, a pace, and an expectation of the type of content to follow i.e. nail-biting thriller, fast-paced comedy, reflective drama, etc.

Credits can be fun (remember the animated ones in the Pink Panther series) or weave in the show’s theme (like Breaking Bad’s periodic table of elements) or thrilling, (like those set to Bernard Hermann’s taut music in North by Northwest) and much more.  Here’s a unique example from Too Big To Fail, one of the Emmy-nominated shows I judged, which inserted the credits into Wall Street’s electronic ticker tape and boards.

Title designers and credits

There are many famous self-described “type geeks” who live and breathe graphics (GFX) and title design. One of them, Kyle Cooper, title designer on Rango, Tron: Legacy, Ironman, and Spider-Man 2, explains, “Type is like actors to me. It takes on characteristics of its own. When I was younger, I used to pick a word from the dictionary and then try to design it so that I could make the word do what it meant…”

Many filmmakers believe credits shouldn’t stand apart from the movie but should blend in and be a part of the story’s exposition. Susan Bradley, title designer on Wall-E, Up, The Motorcycle Diaries, Ratatouille, and An Inconvenient Truth observes that titles, “can do very much or very little; but really shine when they live within the story and reflect an important quality driven by your director.”

Credits and story

Additionally, credits can clue the audience into the film’s plot, location, time period, style, and characters. The split screen credits at the start of 127 Hours give insights into the film’s risk-taking hero as he determinedly drives through the night to escape the city and set off on his fateful desert hike.

Head credit from 127 Hours.

End credits are usually more utilitarian. Networks routinely cram them to one side of the TV screen to make room for promos, a practiced referred to as the “squeeze and tease.” But sometimes they can be entertaining and extend the movie such as those tailing Ratatouille or Spider-Man 2.

Tail credit from Spider-Man 2.

Just plain credits

Budget, as with any factor in a film, plays a role in determining how fancy credits will be. Some directors stick to plain credits, even though they could pay for more: Think Woody Allen’s standard white on black credits.

So think about credits the next time you place them in a show you’re editing or view them on tube and screen and clue Joy in on your conclusions.

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These are thanks to an anonymous editor who watched all the 197 episodes Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), a comedy series from Minnesota’s twin cities that ran from 1988-1999 mostly on Comedy Central and is now available on DVD.

The editor’s comments are on the first line in purple as he (I’m assuming) watches the episode. The second line references the character’s name and the episode title. The editor writes,“As a film editor I feel it is my duty to list here all the MST3K bad editing riffs.”

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, Fun & games, Television

Following up on the last post on constructing reality, here’s a terrific piece from the UK. Journalist and comedy writer Charlie Brooker hosts “Screenswipe” a weekly broadcast where he looks at TV subjects from an incisively knowing and humorous perch. In the video on editing reality TV below, toward the end he also unwittingly provides a modern proof of the Kuleshov experiment. If you don’t know about Kuleshov, read after the video and view the video of the actual experiment.

Kuleshov and the Juxtaposition of Shots

Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov was a scientist and founder of the Moscow School of Cinema in 1919, the world’s oldest film school. Russian cinema came of age with the 1917 revolution.  Steeped in Marxism and supported by the state, it was also influenced by the plight of the economy after the revolution which caused a scarcity of film and film equipment. Kuleshov made use of leftover film of a popular White Russian actor who had fled the revolution for France to put together a scene and create the basis of his famous experiment.

He began the scene with a shot of a bowl of soup. To it, he spliced a close-up of the actor.  Then he added a shot of a young girl. Again he cut to a close-up the actor. The last edit he made was to a dead woman in a coffin before ending on the actor. Here’s what purports to be the video of Kuleshov’s experiment; the girl is a woman so this is suspicious but it gives you the idea:

Viewer reaction to Kuleshov’s scene

The audience made a connection between each pair of cuts.  They told Kuleshov that the man was hungry when he saw the soup. They believed that the girl was his daughter whom he was delighted to see and that the woman in the casket was his mother for whom he was grieving.

The trick

Kuleshov filmed the shots of the soup, girl, and dead woman at different times in different locations. For the cutaways of the actor he reproduced the same shot for the same length several times. The experiment proved what we all know now; that shots edited together affect each other: The audience makes a connection across the joining of the shots and read different emotions into each reaction shot of the actor even though he was reacting exactly the same way each time. The Soviets aligned this effect of the juxtaposition of shots with Marxist theory and built their cinematic theories on it. Since then this juxtaposing has received a host of other names such as collision editing and relational editing.

What are your experiences juxtaposing shots?

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, History/research, Television

I grazed this subject when I wrote up my interview of reality editor Adam Coleite last August. Today I’ll sink my teeth into the controversy around Frankenbite a.k.a. Frankenbyte editing that’s providing another reason to snap at reality shows.

What’s in a Frankenbite?

I would define it as two or more dialogue lines or parts of lines from an interviewee pieced together to tell the story on a reality TV program. Editor Lisa Hendricks, in her guest article on Diana Weynand’s’s blog defines it as “…different sound bites pieced together to create a storyline or dialogue that was never intended by the speaker.” Expanding on Hendricks in his article “’Frankenbytes’ and the integrity of your edit,” writer-filmmaker Edward J. Delaney opines, “The term is relatively new, and mainly comes out of the great oxymoron of the last decade – “Reality” shows, which are conceived, cast, choreographed and cut until even a shred of reality is gone.”

Barbara Nicolosi, a writer on four reality shows, blogs about how and why Frankenbites are created. “Let’s say a vegetarian isn’t “vegetarian-enough.” Or a minority isn’t “sassy enough.” Or a Christian isn’t “born again-y.” The story department simply tells the editors that they need a franken-byte—a sound byte pieced together from hundreds of hours of interviews. Hidden under B-roll footage, the editors can create a sentence that never came out of the person’s mouth.”

Controversy

The darker definitions expose the controversy: When an editor manipulates an interviewee’s utterance into something unintended, unsaid, or worse, the editor has indeed made a monster of reality. While there is no Hippocratic oath of filmmaking, the editor has also most certainly crossed an ethical line. Nicolosi and others worry that this will spread to other non-fiction forms, namely documentary. I agree. Don’t confabulate stories. You sell out the material, your interviewees, your profession, and yourself. If you’ve been pressured to do this, let Joy know.

What’s kosher?

Cheating dialogue is nothing new for editors. We do it reflexively on all genres of fiction and non-fiction shows. Not all reality editors cross the ethical line. Coleite told me that “tons of cheating goes on,” in reality show editing. And explained this occurs “Because you’re paying attention to the veracity and continuity of the story.”

The late, great sound supervisor Kay Rose once told me that the sound editor on Some Like it Hot pieced Marilyn Monroe’s ukulele performance together syllable by syllable to make it sing. (Notice how much of the song is played on her back).

What have your experiences been? Let Joy know.

Comic ending

For his first movie, Woody Allen famously fabricated a whole movie out of falsely dubbed words to make What’s up Tiger Lily? Allen explains the set-up and lets the movie do the rest of the talking:

admin Editing practices, Editor’s role, Television

The editing world took a giant leap forward this week, according to Apple and many FCP gurus, with the launch of FCP X. There are many great places to learn about this new software: Larry Jordan’s site where you can read about it and download a tutorial,  Phil Hodgett’s site where you can take in its features and issues, and Weynands’ training’s site where you can sign up for a class on it . While the info’s sinking in and you’re waiting for your class or download, here’s a quick, cheap fun way to get and overview of the X’s new features.

admin Editing practices, Fun & games, Technical & process, Television