As most will attest, it’s a poor workman who blames his tools, a maxim that stands up just as well in the world of post-production as in any other domain. Now that nonlinear editing systems are the norm for commercial, television and feature film editing, editors have had a chance to turn a critical eye on the tools and their role in the performance of an editor, the process and end result.

Ask any editor about the benefits of nonlinear editing on a system like Avid or Lightworks and they’ll likely wax enthusiastic about its ease of use and the emancipation it allows from the physical drudgery of the editing process.

There are different schools of thought regarding which system is superior. Many swear by Avid’s sophistication, support and array of accessible visual effects. Others, like Bob Kennedy, president of Flashcut Editing, which uses predominantly Lightworks hardware, say Lightworks has a better interface for strictly editing, with components similar to a Steenbeck’s, making it more conducive to logging marathon hours.

But the process itself is the subject of the most hearty endorsement and debate.

Speed is the word most frequently used in conjunction with nonlinear editing. But while time waits for no editor and the tangible benefits of saving the precious commodity are easily demonstrable, what of the deliberate, circumspect method that was a necessary part of traditional film editing?

There are editors who feel that a film, like a fine wine or a hot pie, needs time to sit, and that projects can now be completed faster than a mere brain can properly consider the decisions made and the merit of the resultant product.

The process has inarguably opened up vast windows of opportunity for projects like television documentaries, increasing their ease of packaging, and editors who work in the medium resoundingly acknowledge the speed of nonlinear editing.

Peter Starr, producer/editor at the National Film Board, says he very quickly got over the initial feeling of detachment – not being able to ‘touch film’ – that accompanied his first foray into nonlinear editing when he saw how quickly and effectively he could work.

In the last year he has assembled three television series for Showcase and Discovery Channel; a total of about 50 one-hour shows that in most cases had to be cut together in broadcast format and presented within a month or two. ‘I need the expedience the process gives me to hit these deadlines,’ says Starr.

Jerry McIntosh, editor at CBC Newsworld, counts himself as a fan and cites the possibility of doing quality work quickly and within the constraints of lower budget productions.

‘As productions become more sophisticated, viewers expect more and more,’ says McIntosh. ‘You are now able to communicate more complex information than with previous editing facilities. You could do it before but it was expensive and took a long time to provide.’

McIntosh says virtually all of the film projects appearing on Newsworld in the past year have been edited on a nonlinear system. He adds that Gil Cardinal’s Spirit and Intent was shot in one week and was on the air the next. ‘That’s phenomenal speed to turn around a 45-minute documentary,’ says McIntosh. ‘He wouldn’t have considered doing it if he weren’t able to use a nonlinear editing system.’

The nfb also farms out its films and footage to Smash Editorial for quick and cost-efficient packaging. Smash has an array of nonlinear editing hardware, including an Avid Media Composer 8000, and editors Barry Farrell (Camilla) and Denis Takacs are not afraid to use it.

‘It took us three weeks to do a 13-part repack of the nfb’s archival films with openings, graphics and audio,’ says Takacs. ‘They love it because they couldn’t get their series done fast enough any other way.’

Smash works with the nfb’s English marketing department on on-air promos and trailers, and delivers cost-effective, broadcast-quality product without leaving their ever-so-hip offices.

‘We’ve got a 52-gigabyte drive, which gives us six and a half hours of online quality, which means broadcast quality,’ says Takacs. ‘Once you’ve done your offline, color corrected your footage, added proper titles and effects, drop it back in an Avid and you’re done. All you’re doing is stepping up the image to broadcast quality and you can kick out a tape and send it off to a tv station and it’s done.’

High-end Avid systems also allow jumping between a number of different programs, thereby providing a wider array of extras and options to enhance the end product without the expense of going to an effects option like a Henry or Hal, which can add significantly to post expenditures.

For good measure, Takacs throws in the extra added benefit of nonlinear editing: it’s environmentally friendly, doing away with vast amounts of film, chemicals and paper traditionally used in the editing process.

Plus, ‘you don’t have to sit around and let your footage get stale and have creatives start second guessing it,’ he says.

Yet having people ‘second guessing’ things is a healthy part of the process, according to some editors.

Rudy Buttignol, commissioning editor for documentaries for tvontario, says the doc format is one which does well with a bit of mental chaw time, something he says is not compatible with the time constraints associated with some nonlinear editing systems.

‘There is a period, primarily in documentary filmmaking, required for reflection,’ says Buttignol. ‘That period has become shortened because of the expense and limited storage capacity of some nonlinear editing systems. It doesn’t leave room for putting your feet up and thinking. The time it takes to think up a good idea hasn’t changed, and the expense of the system has really pushed that process through.’

Ron Sanders, who is currently working on David Cronenberg’s Crash, began editing on an Avid system this spring after a long period of investigating the process and the hardware options available. He has high praise for the creativity and relief from tedium that a nonlinear editing system can deliver.

But time constraints are an issue, he says, and are imposed not by budgetary concerns but by expectation: ‘Producers expect everything to be done fast. The schedules were bad before and are now getting truly difficult. Producers think it’s magic and everything can be done in two weeks.’

Viewpost’s Greg West, who is editing 100 hours of raw footage into a documentary about media coverage of the Paul Bernardo trial for Newsworld’s Rough Cuts doc series, says he tries to educate clients about judicious scheduling. ‘It’s a misconception that (nonlinear editing) saves time. You still need the time you originally had to create and to increase the quality of the product,’ says West.

Flashcut’s Kennedy says nonlinear has improved the general standard of editing. He also says that in the commercial editing process, any new technology has a ‘two- to three-month grace period where it makes your life easier’ before schedules are tightened up commensurate to the capabilities of the machine, but not necessarily to the capabilities of the brains involved.

‘We’re doing more revisions to finished commercials than we used to,’ says Kennedy. ‘Clients often can’t weigh decisions as quickly as they’re being forced to. When they finally see the commercial, they realize that they haven’t lived with it long enough to take everything into consideration. So we’re making expensive changes after the fact rather than spending more time deliberating at the rough-cut stage.’

Jeff Warren, who has been editing for 25 years, says for television work, ‘there’s no other way to go,’ but there are specific concerns related to feature film editing on nonlinear systems.

Because printing and screening an additional print of dailies is an expensive amenity usually reserved for larger films, Warren says working on a lower budget film eliminates the possibility of viewing dailies on the big screen, which can alter the editing decisions made.

‘You view things differently on a big screen than on a tv-sized monitor,’ says Warren. ‘I cut things differently for tv – I tend to get into close-ups a little sooner or not linger on wide shots. If you see the rough cut on a big screen and a shot works well in that format, you might stay with it longer.’

Warren also cites the lack of rumination time as a drawback to the process. ‘The physical aspect of editing film meant that you could let things sink in and live with a scene for a while. You were making final changes and working on structure, and meanwhile you and the director were thinking of other possibilities; the time was built into the mechanics of the process. Now decisions are made quickly; you can make 10 changes in 10 minutes. I think sometimes that films suffer from that.’

While Warren is a proponent and successful user of nonlinear technology (The Diary of Evelyn Lau, for which he won a Gemini, was his first project on this system), he says he would hesitate if given the option to edit a feature film on a nonlinear system versus traditional methods. ‘There’s something to be said for cutting on film and taking your time,’ he says.

Starr says that the standard optical effects like fades, dissolves, and layering that would previously have taken countless hours and dollars can now be accomplished immediately, and with corollary savings, but his caveat in this regard is that less is more.

Starr says overuse of the readily available accessories can be cloying and result in the ‘video wallpaper’ or ‘kitsch’ sometimes found in music video or special effects-oriented work.

‘There are so many effects you can plug into – it can be very pretentious,’ he says. ‘In documentaries, the best visual is the one you’re working with. If you fool around with it too much it takes away from the power of the film.’

Smash’s Farrell has no truck with those who express misgivings about the process and is quick to dismiss detractors as technophobes. Farrell says the process gives you more free time to think rather than do manual labor. ‘Traditional editing is cutting,’ he says. ‘You can be a cutter or an editor. I prefer to be an editor.’

Professionals who have worked in or near nonlinear editing systems are unanimous in their recognition of its intrinsic merit as a tool and that a tool can neither be the making nor the undoing of a competent editor. The dominant sentiment is that the most effective editing system is the one that has to get up and visit the washroom. ‘Like anything, it’s not the equipment, it’s the person,’ says Sanders.

Farrell asserts that an editor is more so in a nonlinear environment because that editor is free. ‘People are afraid of freedom,’ he adds.