You’ve got to grab people,’ says Leo Zaharatos, a Toronto-based editor. ‘You can’t lie in this medium, you can’t hide.’

It’s a good thing that the more typical career change for an editor is to become a director; if they became film critics, they would be ruthless.

‘You absorb it (film structure),’ says Zaharatos, a commercial editor who began cutting in 1989. ‘You know what works, what doesn’t work, you know what shots you need, you know pacing, tempo, drama, suspenseyou can’t help but absorb it.’

According to Zaharatos, direction entails a whole extra set of skills – you have to be watching everything at once, whereas editors deal with one element only. ‘We’re very focused here, we’re working with film, it’s a very small universe.’

And within that small universe, there is a fairly separate world in which a handful of superstar commercial cutters reign. You keep spotting the same names at the commercial awards shows. At last year’s Bessies, editor Andy Attalai, a 22-year spot-cutting veteran who is with Toronto’s Chameleon Film – Video, worked on winning spots. Over the years, Attalai estimates the projects he has worked on number ‘in the thousands.’

In Toronto, Canada’s spot capital, the local commercial production directory lists 17 editing operations. Of these, about five top shops, whose combined staffs number over 30, are considered to house the upper echelons of creative commercial cutting talent.

Zaharatos is also with Chameleon, which opened in 1990. Post and production veteran Ross Briggs runs the show, which is home to editors Allan Mestel and Wendy Linton as well.

Zaharatos, a Toronto native and a York University film grad, chose the commercial world as his career focus because it offered the most opportunity to quickly get his hands on the calibre of work he was after, and for the continuity it offered, preferring to work steadily rather than in spurts. The constant creative interchange was another attraction, the chance to work with a lot of different people and on a lot of different equipment. ‘Editing is so technologically based now, you have to stay on top of things.’

Zaharatos also reasoned it would be a faster ride to the top working in the realm of the 30-second format than on the long-format side of the biz. It’s tougher as a neophyte to get someone to entrust a movie to you. Another advantage of the quick turnaround time – foreign commercials can be finished in Canada, giving commercial editors greater potential for work.

Don’t stick around

The feature and series production folks coming from the U.S. to catch the cheaper dollar by shooting in Canada are not as likely to stick around for the long editing process, whereas ‘commercials can be finished in a day or two.’

As to the volume of work and the opportunities offered for developing new talent, Zaharatos says even the few intervening years since he got into the business have made it more difficult for the craft pool to grow. ‘It’s tough to break in, but it is possible,’ he says. ‘There’s always opportunities heremaybe not as much.’

Challenging work

Zaharatos believes that despite the recession and big-budget spot exodus, there is still enough challenging top-grade commercial work here to allow that craft pool significant scope to hone their editing expertise.

Compared to some production fields, such as the camera department, Zaharatos says one can learn to use editing equipment relatively quickly, but ‘putting shots together with meaning, that’s what takes the time.’

The average learning curve from neophyte to competent is a couple of years. Videotape and non-linear technology has speeded up the hands-on learning process, but ‘you still have to learn the language of telling a story with pictures,’ he says.

Influences

tv commercials traditionally absorb a lot of their style elements from other media – especially tv, film and video. Often what comes out of the hopper is a ‘craze.’ Perhaps the most pervasive was the music-clip-inspired quick-cut phase of the ’80s.

As to what story-telling style is currently in vogue in the commercial world, surprisingly, Zaharatos says none. ‘I’m seeing different things, people being true to themselvesuniqueness.’

His reel bears witness to that sentiment. Perhaps the only recurring theme in the work is a somewhat quirky sensibility. There’s the ibm spots where the computer guy tries to tackle various occupations while experts in lassoing, rowing, etc., try to master the computer. Invariably, the ibmer loses the challenge. And those great Cineplex ‘quiet in the theater’ spots are on the reel, ‘Barton Fink’ and ‘Actress,’ as well as commercials for Dupont, Nyquil, Tavist-D and Budweiser.

While the work on his reel runs to pure film without a lot of effects, on the tools side of the craft equation, Zaharatos says the post-production technology in Canada is on par with the other biggies, New York and l.a. As is the editing talent that exists here, despite that fact that due to economy of scale, U.S. editors have the advantage of cutting their teeth on proportionately larger-budget jobs.

‘This is a nation that is very in tune with that medium, we grew up with it, we know all the advancements that are going on. We’re a very hip place in terms of that, which allows us to be at the forefront of what’s going on in the industry.’

Growth sector

He believes production is a future growth sector. ‘Features, commercials and series work is all going to get bigger. This is a communications society and you need the people to construct whatever needs to be communicated. And I think Canada, because it is a very modern country with an incredible infrastructure, is in a good position to take advantage of these opportunities. Things work here, and there are very few places around the world where that exists now.’

‘We can take advantage of all the good stuff that is here and keep on going.’