Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1014407
35 Q3 2018 / CINEMONTAGE GVS: I was always cutting on flatbeds and then Mala Noche was on rewinds. Paranoid Park was the first nonlinear system I used, and that was Final Cut Pro. This film was on Avid. As long as I can figure out how to get to a frame and connect it to another frame, I'm good. It's not that hard. CM: What were some of the things that you either loved or struggled with in the jump from film to digital? GVS: When Curtiss Clayton was editing To Die For, in the next room to ours was Billy Crystal. He was directing Forget Paris [1995], and they were using a computer. It was the first time I had seen a filmmaker use [an Avid] to edit. [Forget Paris was edited by Kent Beyda, ACE, who changed from film to digital in the middle of post-production.] When I finally switched over, it was amazingly fast and convenient. Just to find a particular piece of film potentially used to take a couple hours. And now you can scroll through everything easily. CM: What's your philosophy on temp music? GVS: I was using the style that I had seen earlier when working with David on Promised Land where Billy Rich would sort the different temp cues by their duration, so if your scene was 25 seconds, he could find a cue that was 25 seconds long. DM: I actually didn't know that Billy was doing that. But you told me about it, Gus. I thought that was brilliant. So I would sort the bin column by duration. CM: What's your approach as you are looking at a blank timeline? GVS: I don't use a selects reel. Also, there are not that many individual takes. I don't select on the set. I just figure that we're going to use all of it. It's digital, so we're not trying to save money by printing fewer takes. The shooting schedule was so fast, I tended to only have a couple takes, if I could. I'm not used to selecting a take as we're shooting. Because it's so easy to match-frame now, you don't need to use a selects reel; you can find the same line from four different takes by match- framing. DM: For me, I start to build a mental framework of how the scene will play as I'm watching the dailies. After I've seen all the footage and made notes, I start piecing it together shot by shot, going back to the best bits I've noted. Once I've got the foundation built, I just keep refining it from there. CM: How are you organizing the bins so that you and Gus can best work when you start editing? DM: We have the project organized by scenes; each bin is in frame view. Our assistant editor Holly Sachi was on during dailies and she did a really great job of making sure everything was prepared and organized. The standard feature film organization David Marks.