Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1061972
41 Q4 2018 / CINEMONTAGE went on to study photography, video and theatre production. Then she attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. "I went to school thinking I was going to be a cinematographer," she recalls. "But as an undergrad, you can try all different jobs, and I quickly fell in love with the control and creativity in the editing room." Upon graduating NYU, Tesoro got a job right away at ABKCO Music & Records, a music publishing company. She started off as a video/film librarian and, three years later, was editing music promos. "I felt that even though it was a great job and I loved my co-workers, it wasn't what I thought I'd be doing," she admits. "New York City is a tight-knit community in terms of editing, and I was competing with very experienced people to cut shorts for free." Several Tisch friends had moved to Los Angeles and liked it, so she followed them in 2005. In addition to those friends, she had met editor Lora Hays, who introduced her to another editor, Paul Barnes, ACE. "I asked Paul about the ACE Internship Program and he introduced me to Marty Nicholson, who was a wealth of information," she recounts. "He told me I had to get into the Editors Guild, and to become an assistant first." She didn't get into the program, but Nicholson encouraged her to attend the Internship Program applicants workshop — and to join the Guild. "It was one of the first things I did in Los Angeles," Tesoro explains. There, she met an assistant editor who told her that the pilot he was working on was looking for a post-production PA. She applied for the job but instead became post coordinator on the pilot, In Justice (2006). "It was a great position to see how everything worked," she says. That show's associate producer Keri Young and ABC/Touchstone post-production executive Bruce Sandzimier tapped her for another pilot, Just a Phase (2006), her first assistant editing job, for editor Mallory Gottlieb. That pilot didn't get picked up but it led to another assistant editing job on another pilot, David Manson's Saved (2006), which went to series. "I did the series, and that's where I met editors Peter Frank, Lisa Bromwell and Michael Ruscio, and worked with them for the next five or six years," Tesoro relates, noting that, after Saved, she worked on Raines (2007) and then Swingtown (2008). It was on the last series where Tesoro made the leap from assistant to editor. "I did the pilot with editor Ron Rosen; it was directed by Alan Poul, who was the director/showrunner," she recalls. "When Ron left for another pilot, he told them that if they didn't bump me up to editor, he'd take me with him." CONTINUED FROM PAGE 38 On the Basis of Sex. Focus Features CONTINUED ON PAGE 141