In this report Playback looks at the state of the union for editors, getting the opinion of tried and true talent on creativity, technology and where do they go from here? (See story this page.) We also talked to a couple of the growing shops, Productions Modulations (below) and Solar Audio (p. 32) to see how they’re functioning in a growing and changing field. And last but not least, we profile three up-and-comers who are making names for themselves early in the game. (See pages 24, 25 and 28.)

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Wherein a handful of those experienced in the business and art of editing discuss the challenges of delivering a top-of-the-line service, assuming a greater role in the post process, predicting which technological investments will facilitate creativity and determining their future role in post while still telling a good story.

Bob Kennedy and Mary Beth Odell of Flashcut, Barry Farrell of Smash Editorial, David Baxter of Panic & Bob, Andy Attalai of Chameleon, and Denis Papillon of Montage Metaphore contributed perspective on the unique challenges faced in creative editing in terms of changing markets, technology, creative styles and the time/ money crunch.

Many of the comments touched on similar issues, particularly the challenges of staying on top technologically, incredibly tight timelines and their potential effect on the end product, and the importance for the Canadian industry to expand its horizons.

The feedback was distinctly unwhiny and touched on a willingness to work within universally tight budgets to do good work – and a recognition of how much potential exists to produce good work here if the industry lets itself.

Bob Kennedy & Mary Beth Odell

In the discussion of the creative editor’s lot in the commercial universe Kennedy says with effects-intensive jobs, where the effects house is essentially the production house, the editor’s role as an objective third party observer, determining what is really working and what perhaps isn’t is key to ‘get the best of what each of them is capable of.’

Kennedy, an editor for close to 20 years and Odell, Flashcut gm, say the year has been extraordinarily busy with Canadian work. One challenge, says Kennedy, is matching technology and project. ‘You don’t want to go into overkill but you need to have the right match of budget and tools,’ he says. ‘It can be tricky; you have to be a bit of a mindreader sometimes.’

The role of editor as technological facilitator also means that the editor is involved in more of what happens throughout the post process.

‘In addition to the traditional role of the editor in pacing and providing an objective eye for the agency and director, now it’s almost like the editor is the conductor of the post process,’ says Odell. ‘It’s very important a project has someone who is really an expert in terms of what you want to achieve creatively and what machines and people are the right grouping to get the best finish for the project.’

Kennedy also cites the increasing in-house capabilities of the editing shop in compositing and 3D effects. Changing technology provides opportunities, he says, but the digital process and the quickening pace thereof can also incur costs on a project, financially and creatively. Kennedy estimates about 60% of his jobs are revised after the sheduled final online.

‘I think this is because things are moving so fast that the people working on the job, especially clients, can’t digest what they are forced to approve so rapidly,’ he says. ‘There are hidden costs of pushing things through so fast and one is the lost opportunity of having the best piece of communication you can.’

Scheduling was a major issue brought forward by Kennedy. ‘Working to schedules that change continually and trying to find available time is a big challenge,’ says Kennedy. He and Odell cite the continual challenge of accommodating revisions after final edits are completed, particularly for a busy shop where there is no leeway to work with between jobs.

Given that agencies face such a wide array of demo reels, Odell says there has been a very literal means employed in choosing among them, where specific styles of spots corresponding directly to the job in question are sought. Odell says reels should be viewed with an eye to breadth and creative abilities and reels only present a representative look at a body of work.

Barry Farrell

‘The most pressing challenge to me is being able to compete in a global market,’ says Farrell.

Farrell originally worked as an editor on feature film and tv projects but as the commercial world began leading the video post technology way, he moved toward spot editing. Farrell now works on commercials and long-form projects, and edited Deepa Mehta’s recently released Fire.

Farrell acknowledges the wealth of creative talent in the Canadian market but says with the impending establishment of fiber optic connections and increased u.s. and global editing opportunities the current fact of life is that an editor often has to have established himself with some solid u.s. work.

‘The only way you can have a competitive reel in North America is to have a lot of high-end u.s. work on it,’ he says. ‘I found that when I first started working in the u.s. they didn’t really care much how good a Canadian reel was.

Smash opened a Burbank, California-based shop to establish further proximity to the u.s. spot market and Farrell says about 80% of his reel is comprised of u.s. spots, which he regards with mixed feelings. ‘I think the talent here (in Toronto) is as good as anywhere in the world, that’s why I still live here,’ he says. ‘But I don’t think we’ve utilized our talent base and nurtured it enough for us to be competitive.’

Farrell cites the greater willingness of the u.s. industry to take risks in every stage of the process, an m.o. that could successfully be employed more often here.

‘I believe in the Canadian market and industry but I find greater acceptance south of the border. With their market being broader they tend to take more risks. They will look for a certain style for a project and choose someone who will really make a spot work rather than who they are comfortable with.’

Stylistically, Farrell says judicious use of any technique by a good editor can add to a spot but technique crazes like the heavy use of flash frames can be a crutch and can interfere with the integrity of the creative. ‘If you’re using flash frames for effect you’re tricking the audience and the creative process. The style should reflect what the creativity wants, not the other way around. My job is not to interject my personality on the film; it’s to allow the personality of the film to live.’

Farrell points to a recent campaign he edited for Helix Health Care through Baltimore agency Eisner & Associates, directed by Neil Abramson. The doctor-focused spots used close-up shots and an almost documentary-style approach and were what Farrell calls slow-moving but with lots of energy. Farrell also points to other recent spots including a Lupus psa out of Saatchi & Saatchi New York with Floria Sigismondi which were creatively rewarding but also examples of successful risk taking.

‘I’d like to see people take more chances,’ he says, pointing to ex-professor Marshall McLuhan’s quote to the effect that what is experimental today will become commonplace tomorrow. ‘I know it’s easy to say but if everyone did it, it would become expected. It would give it more of an edge and help creative people really sell the idea they think is best. The unknown creates something that might otherwise never be found,’ he says. ‘I respect people’s relationships but I also respect people who will step outside of it to accomplish something different.’

Farrell says the next challenge for Smash is to gain additional Canadian-based work. ‘I would love to replace some of my u.s. work with equal or better Canadian work. It’s a tough market to break into because it’s a narrower field. I think it would help if we broadened that base.’

Andy Attalai

Over the course of his 20 years in the industry, Attalai has put himself to almost every production task, including directing and producing before forming Chameleon seven years ago and says the primary business and creative challenge now is time pressure.

‘We’re being asked to do an awful lot in a big hurry,’ says Attalai. ‘Creatively that can be a drawback because quite frequently if you can sleep on a cut you can maybe look at it with a fresh eye the next day. We seldom get the luxury to play with something now and see what comes out of it.’

The other main pressure is budgetary, he says, with the cost of keeping up with the increasing demands for technology. ‘There is a lot of great gear out there and people know of it and want to use it,’ he says. ‘But frequently it’s not reflected in the budget.’ Attalai acknowledges that the money crunch is felt across the board and agencies are facing their own pressures to deliver more for less, but the concept of ‘fix it in post’ has ballooned and the process increasingly relies on post capabilities. ‘Everyone knows that post is out there to create visual value; people rely on it and don’t always take into account how much it costs.’

To enhance the process, Attalai says early consultation would oil the creative machine. As edit shops are called upon for more and faster solutions, the whole sphere of influence of the creative editor potentially grows. ‘As our equipment gets more sophisticated we are able to be more creative at the initial stages of post,’ he says. ‘That enables us to come up with interesting approaches right here rather than going to another stage before you discover what you can do with the material.’

Attalai says editing, like camera work and other production processes, can come under the influence of ‘fashionable ideas,’ but that he adheres to a strong storytelling approach. ‘If you fall prey to fashion you can go out of fashion just as quickly,’ he says. ‘The challenge for editors is to apply leading edge approaches to enhance storytelling.’

David Baxter

Baxter moved from projectionist to assistant and editor before launching Panic & Bob in early 1996 and says the biggest challenge is working within tight budget and time constraints while delivering an expanding array of technical and creative solutions.

‘As offline editors I find we’re doing a lot of the preliminary work for special effects jobs within our parameters before it even gets to that final stage,’ he says. Baxter points to a recent job for the Pan American Games through Palmer Jarvis that consisted of technically involved scenes of giant people seemingly moving through the Winnipeg cityscape.

‘The challenge is to show people as much as possible in the preliminary, less expensive offline stage,’ he says, which for this project involved compositing green screen shots, matte painting to integrate people in scenes and sending material to set to ensure the shoot captured all the necessary elements.

‘The offline left little to the imagination, which is such a positive thing now for clients – they can get a clear picture of what a scene will look like,’ he says. ‘We find more of that is necessary in the offline stage.’

On that note, Baxter says the editorial shop must be technologically prepared to fulfill that expanding role. Baxter also cites scheduling as a major challenge. ‘We’re trying to be creative and bring everything we can to a project within that ever shrinking time frame.’ While there are projects with more robust budgets, Baxter says financial constraints are fairly typical, but points out that what he would like to see is more risk taking on behalf of agencies.

‘I think things in Canada can be a little safe sometimes,’ he says. ‘I would like to see more risks taken even if it means sometimes working around a low budget; people are willing to work around things if it means doing great work.’

While Baxter, like many others in the field, reported a very busy year, with forecasts of less original Canadian commercial production down the road, he says a long-term goal of his shop will be to look increasingly outward. ‘The idea for us is to become as global as we can,’ he says.

A continuation of the merging of offline and online is likely in the future, says Baxter, which will also mean a bigger role for the creative editor at all stages of the post process.

Baxter says stylistically, more editing techniques, old and new, are being used in spots. ‘I find that the storytelling type of spot rather than a technique-heavy or design heavy (spot) is still where the craft lies in editing.’

Denis Papillon

Papillon, a veteran editor and partner with Montage Metaphore in Montreal, says the advent of computerized non-linear systems has pushed off-line editors to extend their knowledge. Now he says the creative cutter must be aware of on-line options including cgi-style units such as the Henry and Flame. And if the creative editor may not be doing the on-line, he says, they must, at least, know how.

Papillon says the predominant trend for tv commercials in this market has been the fast, jump and/or flash cut approach, a style essentially derived from tv services like MusiquePlus and MuchMusic. And while the jump cut style puts content over form – as content becomes as homogeneous as it is blurred – he says there’s a developing return to ‘more classic storytelling,’ a spot style here referred to as ‘dramatic vignettes.’

Recent spots edited by Papillon on an AVID 8000 at Metaphore include The Milk Producers for Cinelande (through agency pnmd), St. Hubert for Figaro Film International (Saint-Jacques Vallee Young et Rubicam) and iga for Figaro (Publicis bcp).

Editing is one of the rare phases of production where time permits ‘one to use the maximum of one’s possibilities.’ Spots are typically shot over one day, produced under all orders of constraints. ‘The editing room is a peaceful, calm place where we can make decisions, and they are final.’

Ironically, because multiple versions can be cut so quickly in a digital editing suite, creating a richness of choice, making a decision can itself become a problem, Papillon says.

‘It’s sometimes very hard for an agency to commit themselves. That’s why you (the editor) have to give your point of view. That’s important even if the editor doesn’t have the final say.’

Papillon works on tv series as well as commercials. tv assignments include The Hunger and Hiroshima, both edited for Montreal’s Telescene Film Group.

A 25-year veteran of the business, Papillon won an A.C.E. Eddy Award for his work on Hiroshima, coproduced with the Japanese and broadcast in the u.s. on Showtime.

Metaphore was set up in 1992 and has five fully-equipped AVID suites, including two AVID 8000 suites. The house is owned by Papillon, president Stephane LeStage and technical director Pierre Guerin, who is currently in London, Eng. working on the latest James Bond film.