The Making of a Motion Picture Editor. Thomas A. Ohanian
beginning of my career the critical response to the movies I edited was pretty good. I made the mistake of thinking ‘Oh, everything I work on is going to be great’ and I was too young to appreciate how difficult it was to get to that level. There are people who work for decades in this industry and try to achieve that level of recognition and here I was, this young guy who basically was not schooled but acting on instinct.
TO: What is it about your profession that you like the most?
RC: I get to work with such creative minds and visionary spirits. I’m just amazed that I get to be in the same room and exchange ideas with smart people. Arguing with Milos Forman. Listening to Marcia Lucas or George Lucas talk about their theory of cutting.
TO: And each film is a new experience.
RC: A new experience and the goals are different for the story and the film. This is why I value having worked with so many different directors. I get so many different views on life and I love that aspect of my career. I get paid to do this, so I feel ‘How much better can this be to get paid to do what I love?’ And I feel very, very lucky
Jim Clark
London, England
Partial Credits: Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake, Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang), The World Is Not Enough, The Jackal, This Boy's Life, The Mission, The Killing Fields, Marathon Man, Charade, The Innocents.
It was difficult for Jim to speak on the phone and easier to respond via email. Relive the suspense of The Jackal, Marathon Man, the sheer delight of Charade. In Jim’s words, “You have to invest a lot of your soul in the work.”
TO: Jim, you are an Academy Award and BAFTA recipient for Best Editing for your work on The Killing Fields. Are there films that you edited that did not get the attention they deserved?
JC: Day Of The Locust is a film that was buried due to commercial failure and has a lot of visual riches within it.
TO: You edited The World Is Not Enough. Is there a different form of pressure you feel when you are editing a film that has a significant legacy—such as the James Bond films?
JC: The James Bond films are made within the confines of an ever-developing formula born of enormous financial success. One always feels a pressure with any film but with Bond there were so many precedents to adhere to.
TO: Did you ever feel that there were scenes that you had so much difficulty with that you had to leave them until the time was right for you to work on them?
JC: I've always tried to deal with difficult scenes as they come up but sometimes one is overwhelmed and the pressure you refer to in your previous question is a constant factor in putting a finished movie together. There were several scenes in This Boy's Life where I was constantly banging on to the director that they needed attention and it was he who put off dealing with them. In some instances scenes have to be reshot which, of course, is very expensive. We had to do this on The Mission and, in my opinion, never quite succeeded.
TO: Was editing The Killing Fields emotionally difficult for you or are you able to develop a distance between the material and yourself?
JC: Editing any movie is emotionally draining. You have to invest a lot of your soul in the work. The main problem with The Killing Fields was making the storyline coherent and in the early stages of shooting, getting enough coverage for the scenes. Of course on that film I also had to overcome a prejudice the director had against me as I was cutting in London while they were shooting on the other side of the world and David Puttnam had instructed me to say what I thought of the rushes coming back. It wasn’t until I went out there and met with Roland Joffe that he began seeing me as a collaborator rather than a threat.
TO: Who are some of the film editors you admire and why?
JC: Artie Schmidt, Michael Kahn, and Sam O'Steen. Each film is its own world and though I admire the work of many editors, we all have our failures and successes. We can only function if we’re given good material to work with.
TO: What advice would you give someone who wanted to be an editor?
JC: Study every aspect of film making as a good editor must pull all the elements, visual and audio, into a totality, which serves the story being told.
Anne V. Coates, ACE
Los Angeles, CA
Partial Credits: Fifty Shades of Grey, The Golden Compass, Unfaithful, Erin Brockovich, Out of Sight, In the Line of Fire, Chaplin, Raw Deal, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, The Elephant Man, The Eagle Has Landed, Murder on the Orient Express, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Becket, Lawrence of Arabia, The Pickwick Papers.
What do you say about an editor who has been working in motion pictures for over 70 years? Who, in every decade of her work, has made significant contributions to cinema? Sitting in her home for our interview, there are two awards that sit high atop a wooden shelf. The Oscar and BAFTA awards for Lawrence of Arabia. Gracious, patient, and terrifically funny.
TO: Anne, you are an Academy Award Best Editing recipient for Lawrence of Arabia. You have been recognized with a BAFTA Academy Fellowship and an ACE Career Achievement Award. For your contributions to the industry, you received an honorary Oscar 53 years after winning for Lawrence of Arabia. You were awarded the Office of the British Empire (O.B.E.) and have been an inspiration to filmmakers and editors around the world.
AC: Thank You.
TO: And while so much has been written about Lawrence of Arabia—deservedly so—I think Beckett is just incredible.
AC: I think it’s such a beautiful film.
TO: How did you get started on this journey?
AC: To begin with, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a horse race trainer. (Laughs) I began to go to the cinema. The school started taking us to see the classics—Jane Eyre and, particularly, Wuthering Heights which changed my whole life. Apart from falling in love with Laurence Oliver, it opened up a whole new concept to me of storytelling. I think we were reading it in school and it’s quite heavy going. And to suddenly see it there in pictures alive with real people!
TO: This is the William Wyler directed film.
AC: Yes, and I knew very little about films. So I started to look into ways of getting into the film industry. Now you think it would have been easy for me because my Uncle was Lord Rank.
TO: He headed up the Rank Organization, which owned film studios and theatres.
AC: Yes. I was very fond of him but he didn’t really want me going into the film industry. I had to convince him that I was not going into it for the glamour or the actors and that I really wanted to make films and tell stories. But he put me into religious films, which is why he got started in the business in the first place. He was very religious and taught Sunday School and thought film was a good way to get through to people. And he probably thought ‘That’ll damper her ardor!’ (Both Laugh) But it didn’t! And that’s the first time I saw 35mm film.
TO: What did they have you do at that time?
AC: I did all sorts of jobs. I was a P.A. I made the tea and the coffee, looked after people. I became quite a good projectionist. I did sound, repairing films.
TO: That was a great way to learn all the basics.
AC: I loved it. I really did. I