To film editor Jeff Warren, it’s all in the relationships. Warren, a 30-year industry veteran based out of Toronto, says his big break was hooking up with director Sturla Gunnarsson back in 1984.

The pair got together to work on the National Film Board documentary Final Offer, which followed the negotiation process of Bob White and the Canadian branch of the United Auto Workers union. In the course of the shoot, the Canuck contingent split from the u.s. organization, subsequently forming the Canadian Auto Workers. The filmmakers felt fortunate to have their cameras rolling throughout this dramatic development in Canadian union history.

‘We had amazing access on the gm plant floor in Oshawa and in the negotiating rooms of the union and even of gm,’ Warren recalls. ‘You could never get access like that today. It was one of those situations where everything fell into place and we happened to be there at the right time.’

Warren estimates 120,000 feet of 16mm film was shot for Final Offer, 90% of which was in the can before he came on board. He remembers being intimidated by the task ahead.

‘It took one month for Sturla and I to screen the dailies – that’s going nine to five every day, five days a week – and then we had to cut the film!’ he recollects. ‘We had a first cut that was 10 hours long, and then it became apparent what was working and what wasn’t. It was pretty easy to whittle stuff down. We had a lot we knew would never play, because it was too ‘inside’ and too much in union-speak for audiences to understand.’

Final Offer went on to win many awards, including Genies, Best of the Fest at the Banff Television Festival and the Prix Italia international documentary award. Its success led to many future collaborations between Warren and Gunnarsson, including the feature Such a Long Journey, which won Warren a Genie, and the tv movie The Diary of Evelyn Lau, for which he received a Gemini. He won another Gemini for the short-lived cbc series 9B, as well as two Hot Docs awards, for Blockade and Tough Assignment.

And he will have to dust off his tuxedo for the Geminis again this year, as he is nominated for best picture editing in a dramatic program or series for his work on The Sheldon Kennedy Story. He also cut Dead Aviators, which is up for best tv movie or dramatic miniseries.

Warren recently worked on Gunnarsson’s Scorn, a feature that premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Scorn recounts the true b.c. story of a deluded male high school student who recruits a couple of buddies to murder his mother and grandmother for an inheritance.

Gunnarsson has called on Warren’s services yet again for the forthcoming Rare Birds, to be filmed in Newfoundland starting this month. The film is a comedy about a down-and-out gourmet restaurateur who, along with his wacky neighbor, designs a scheme to reverse his fortunes.

Warren sees creative allegiances such as the one he shares with Gunnarsson all across the industry.

‘If you have a really good experience with somebody you work with, you tend to keep going back,’ he explains. ‘It’s good, but it cuts me off from other directors with whom I would really like to work if they’re with only one editor all the time. By the same token, it works to my advantage as well.’

From docs to features

Warren trained as a stills photographer, saying he ‘stumbled’ into film. He entered into an apprenticeship at Hobel-Leiterman, a now-defunct production company, starting as a deliverer, and moving up the ranks to assistant editor and editor. He worked on the documentary series Here Come the 70’s, which ran on ctv in the early part of that decade, and as a freelancer did more work for the nfb, as well as for the cbc and many independents.

Lately he has focused exclusively on drama, although he retains a soft spot for documentaries.

‘I think [the documentary is] a really great art form and it’s very exciting from an editing point of view,’ he says. ‘You’re going in with a much more blank page than you are with drama, and the editor is more critical in finding the story and making it work. The problem is I also like drama, and good feature documentaries generally take a long time to do – they could tie you up for six months or so.’

Warren explains that the most important criteria in accepting any kind of project is the director.

‘If I think the director has a lot going for them and I read the script and it’s kind of marginal, I can overlook that because I have confidence the director is going to do whatever he or she can with it.’

Colleen Murphy [Shoemaker] is one of those directors Warren has confidence in. He cut her most recent film, Desire, which made its North American debut at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The editor professes his fondness for the film, a dark thriller about a young male lounge singer who has an affair with an elementary school teacher, yet he offers a disclaimer.

‘It’s not an easy film to watch. It’s not graphically violent, but it sometimes deals with things people have trouble with. But it seemed to be well-received at the festival, and it was selected to open the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival.’

Working in both theatrical film and tv, Warren has observed different roles for the director in the post-production process.

‘On feature films, usually it’s the director’s picture,’ he explains. ‘Every cut is the ‘director’s cut’ unless the picture is in trouble and the producers feel the need to step in and take the director off it. In television there are more producers and programmers. The director is more of a hired gun who gets the pictures and gets a first cut done and that’s it – then the producers want to put their mark on it. It’s often not a very productive way to go, because usually the person who knows the most about the film is the person who directed it.’

Warren likes to talk to the director as much as possible prior to cutting, especially when the two haven’t worked together before. When he’s working with a longtime collaborator such as Gunnarsson, however, there is less need for talk.

‘Generally he just leaves me to put the film together as I see it should go together,’ Warren says. ‘He likes to take a week or two off after shooting and then come in when it’s all together, which becomes our starting point.’

Warren believes flexibility is one of the keys to success in the cutting room.

‘You have to remain open,’ he says, ‘and that applies not only to the editor but to the director as well. If either Sturla or I suggest something the other thinks is a ridiculous idea, we try it anyway. Some things I think shouldn’t work end up taking you into an area you never envisioned. One of the great things about the technology today is that you can try things very quickly and easily and see the results.’

The technology Warren has been turning to of late – and preferably at the Tattersall Casablanca facility – is the Avid Film Composer editing system. It wasn’t always the case – he once worked exclusively on a Lightworks system. Montreal-based Lightworks seemed to drop off the radar for a while, but Warren is aware of the company’s recent comeback bid. He believes it will have some catching up to do to match the capabilities of the Avid, but he credits the Lightworks systems as always having been the most user-friendly.

If there is one improvement Warren would like to see on all the systems, it’s working with bigger screens and better picture quality.

‘I would love to have a screen in my cutting room that is five feet by three feet and good quality, because cutting a feature on a tv monitor, you always have to keep aware that you’re not cutting for tv – it’s a different experience when it goes on the big screen.’

Warren believes almost anything can be accomplished in post-

production these days, and is encouraged to see different editing styles finding their way onto screens. As a standout he cites The Limey, the 1999 Hollywood crime thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and edited by Sarah Flack, whose technique of cross-cutting among various time frames paid homage to the 1967 cult film Point Blank.

‘When I come across films like that I just want to shake the hands of the people who did them,’ he enthuses. ‘In The Limey, they were doing things in the editing that shouldn’t work, but it just took it to a whole different space. A film doesn’t have to be innovative in editing to be successful, but it is exciting when you see people breaking new ground.’ *