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58 CINEMONTAGE / Q4 2016 Sane working hours was key for Weinberg. "I probably would not have had the opportunity to parent my kids in any way because most shows really do take 12 hours a day," offers Weinberg. "7th Heaven really was a blessing because I was able to comfortably balance the work and time spent with my kids so that I could actually be around to parent them." CREATIVE CHALLENGES AND KEEPING IT FRESH Job security and reasonable hours are key factors in the decision to stay on a show for the long haul, but editing one series can become monotonous. So how does one keep things fresh and continue to feel creatively challenged? For Stern, it always comes back to story. "You're really serving the story and the way it was directed," she says. Admittedly, 18 years is a long time to work on the same series, but Stern feels strongly that no two scenes are ever the same. "There's always something different; you're always judging performance, pace and how to make everything work," she explains. "Even as many times as I've done it, every scene is always a challenge." "I still find NCIS creatively challenging, and that's really important to me," adds Gontz, who has seen three different showrunners at the helm during his ongoing tenure. "When I come to work, I want to have fun being creative, and both the showrunners and directors have always given me carte blanche to do that," he says. Toberen wholeheartedly agrees, illustrating how longevity fosters creativity. "I think you can actually get more creative on a show when you're on it longer," she observes. "Because you are stable and you know everyone really well, you can push the boundaries." Additionally, in the 15 years ER was on the air, there were four different executive producers, which influenced the writing and the editing. "We never got bored because the storytelling changed with each executive producer," she explains. "It was like I had four different jobs during that time period, even though it was still ER." Ring Jacobson had a different experience. "The style of 7th Heaven mostly stayed the same," she says. "There was definitely a way that [executive producer and showrunner] Brenda Hampton wanted to see things, so you tried to make it exactly how she liked it — but still put in a little creativity here and there when you could. But for the most part, we settled into a rhythm and a lot of the times we had the same directors, which also kept everything going in a certain pattern." Weinberg adds that one of the most satisfying things about working on 7th Heaven was watching the young actors grow up over the course of 11 years. "That's kind of huge, and it inhabits your life," she offers. "I really lived with these characters and experienced their life cycles — and my own — simultaneously, which was unique and fortunate for a mother of growing children." WHEN THE SERIES ENDS If there is a downside to working on one series for such a long time, it's a shrinking network of contacts, the risk of being pigeonholed as an editor who only cuts a certain genre and, for some, a low-level anxiety of worrying about where — and when — the next job will be. In fact, some editors feel like they shouldn't stay on a show longer than four or five years because it will be the death knell for their resume. "Did I think it was going to be bad for my career?" speculates Weinberg as she reflects on her 11 years on 7th Heaven. "Yes, I felt that every year passed was another nail in the career coffin." By the time she got to the seventh and eighth seasons, she weighed the pros and cons of staying vs. leaving and decided to stick it out, figuring it was going to be just as hard to find work mid-stream as when the show ended. And why give up steady employment? Weinberg confides that job prospects were spotty for a while after the show ended, with Jacque Toberen. CONTINUED ON PAGE 63