Foreword
My first “cut” as a fledgling editor was just that: I was given a roll of film and a pair of scissors and told to cut and paste the pieces of a travelogue together. Of course, the edges never matched. Luckily, I soon graduated to a splicer, but even then editing was a world away from today’s situation. I was working on an upright Moviola with 16 mm film, which had a tendency to shred, and a monitor image the size of a postcard.
I found editing a universe I loved to inhabit, but I wanted to learn the craft in depth. This was in the days before film schools were as omnipresent as Starbucks stores (which didn’t exist then). UCLA, USC, and NYU required four years for a bachelor’s degree or two for a master’s, and you had to spend your time studying the full span of film crafts. I could find no programs in the United States where I could study only editing.
What I wanted, what I needed then, was a complex editing course in a bottle. If only I’d had The Healthy Edit.
I worked hard and progressed as best I could, editing documentaries, industrials, and commercials, and, finally, a low-budget feature.
Then I had the good fortune to work as an apprentice on the classic movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (with Richard Chew editing). Later, in another chance to watch real pros at work, I was lucky enough to be an assistant on Apocalypse Now.
In those days an assistant often spent time in the editing room with the editor (and sometimes the director as well), finding trims or putting up rolls on the KEM. In today’s digital editing room, the editor rarely needs that kind of at-the-ready help, and the assistants are usually in another room doing digital housekeeping and maybe temp effects, so now it’s harder for them to see the editor’s working process or the director/editor dynamic.
Which is another instance where The Healthy Edit fills a need by offering the kind of voice and experience that editors used to provide in the editing room.
When I became a feature editor, I was lucky enough to work with certain directors on several films in a row: Robert M. Young, Sam Raimi, and Wayne Kramer. I also had several single-film experiences with other interesting directors. All with different styles, in film and personality.
Fortunately, every project I worked on interested me. I feel proud of all of them. Besides Beverly Hills Cop, The Mask, and Spider-Man, certain ones come to mind in particular: Triumph of the Spirit for its unflinching look at the Nazi death camps; American Me for a shocking view of Mexican Mafia gang life in prison; A Simple Plan, a chilling story wonderfully told by the actors and the director; and Running Scared, a pedal-to-the-metal adventure.
As varied and helpful to me as those experiences were, John Rosenberg offers something more. He culls from not only his own experience but that of numerous other editors, to provide a greater range of background than any one editor could pass on.
Most of my work consisted of editing features from start to finish, but I also did a doctoring pass on Monster, with Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning performance. The original film had been well edited, but I believe I was able to change enough things to take it to another level.
The ability to bolster a film’s health has imbued the film editor with special status throughout the history of the medium. There are tales of veteran editors whom studios retained on payroll, waiting in the wings to resuscitate troubled productions. My good friend John Rosenberg is one of them. He has been the health insurance policy on contract to independent film studios and summoned in to minister to major studio productions.
Yet this essential topic has remained untapped until now. John brings a unique perspective to the art of filmmaking in general and to editing specifically. An excellent communicator, he’s been a popular lecturer for many film programs. Students and professionals are fortunate to have this comprehensive volume full of valuable insights, reflections from other top professionals, and informative examples.
Editing often requires long hours and long work weeks, and it often places the editor in the crucible of strong wills and personalities. Things can go awry, minds fatigue, and tempers fray. It’s a fast-moving film world these days. All the old challenges of editing analog-style on film are still there, and they have been overlain with a raft of new complexities to perplex and confound the unprepared.
Read and absorb the Rx’s in this book, and both your films and your state of mind will be healthier for it.
Arthur Coburn
Los Angeles, California