Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/681807
32 CINEMONTAGE / Q2 2016 into her own career is the way Littleton interacts with everyone, "from the director on down to the PA; and I quote her all the time." For her part, Littleton, who recently finished HBO's All the Way, says she likes to hear her assistants' points of view. "I like them to contribute," she adds. "The very first critic of what I do is the assistant. If you want a friendly firing squad, you can always have one of my assistants. As far as editing concerns, no one owns all the ideas." "I would always stand behind and watch," Reitz says, recalling his days as a recordist for Dockendorf. "Then one day, he said, 'Sit down and mix a reel' and I did that." Murray says he mentors every time he has a new member on his crew. Both point out that, in some ways, younger people actually mentor them. "It's a new era," explains Reitz. "It's unbelievable what Pro Tools does these days; there is so much to learn." Murray points out that he started in film and made the adjustment to digital — "but I didn't have the proper training in computers, so I still need a really good assistant who is totally computer-trained." MENTORING AT A CROSSROADS Technology, budgets and deadlines have wrought big changes in the traditional mentoring process. "When we worked on film and were on a flatbed, you could include people much more easily than now," says Littleton. "The big thing that has changed in digital is that our jobs as editors and the assistants' jobs are quite different. It's not impossible to involve your assistants in the same way, but I miss having a more immediate channel on what it's like to edit. It's a big loss." "As an assistant, it's becoming more and more of a media manager's job and more distanced from the creative side," agrees Hallihan. "It's a completely different mindset than the creative flow of editing." Littleton and Churgin add that digital acquisition has led to much larger shooting ratios, which has impacted what goes on in the editorial suite. "If the shooting ratios used to be, say, 6:1, now they're 20:1 or beyond," Littleton stresses. "The assistants are spending all their time tracking numbers and not being involved in editing." Murray remembers starting off as an apprentice, then moving on after four years to become an assistant. "You had an eight-year learning process," he says. "We learned from the ground up. It was so rewarding to know that someone was replacing me. Now there aren't many jobs out there, there's Jeremy Peirson, left, and Dane Davis. Photo by Martin Cohen