If you were to look at the credits for this year’s Bessies finalist spots, you would see that post-production house Panic & Bob edited more than its fair share. If you looked even closer, you’d see that while none of these was cut by anybody in a Panic nor by a guy called Bob, several were handled by p&b senior editor Michelle Czukar.

Czukar joined the p&b roster three years ago on the ides of March. Despite this foreboding, she enjoys her work environment to this day.

‘I love working here!’ she gushes. ‘There’s a great support system. You see what other people have done and say ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ or ‘How’d you do that?’ and they show you. I think it just keeps everything creative and keeps everyone trying harder.’

Two of the nominated spots she cut were for a Vaseline Intensive Care campaign helmed by Jolly Roger director John Mastromonaco for Ammirati Puris Lintas.

In one, ‘Table Manners.’ a waiter at an Italian ristorante crawls under a crowded table to clean up a water spill and inadvertently brushes up against a woman’s leg. Her skin is so soft that he continues to rub her leg until he gets her companion’s foot in his face.

Coming from a background of editing fast-paced music videos, Czukar realizes there is always an urge to ‘get cuttier and cuttier as you sit with [a spot], because you get so used to how quickly things go along.’

But for most commercials, especially those as cinematic in style as ‘Table Manners,’ she says, ‘[Audiences] can handle things like that better with pacing – slow and then a build. If it’s intense all the way, you might lose the true message of what you’re trying to get across.’

Czukar submits that her p&b editing cohorts David Baxter, Andy Ames and David Hicks (whom she affectionately calls ‘Hicksy’), do more spots in a comedy vein than she does. Curiously, she has not seen Hicksy’s work on the Bessie-nominated Eggo Pancakes ‘Family Breakfast’ ad, directed by Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire for Leo Burnett.

‘I’ve heard of it,’ she insists. ‘Sometimes we’re all working so much that you don’t know what the other editors have done if you don’t have a chance to watch tv.’

Although there are two televisions in Czukar’s home – a satellite-equipped set upstairs for her husband, cinematographer Sean Valentini, and one downstairs where she watches Canadian shows, she explains, ‘I watch The Weather Network, so I guess a lot of stuff doesn’t really play on that.’