Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/942009
28 CINEMONTAGE / Q1 2018 together, and we could talk about what we were doing." Dixon went on to edit Breaking Bad (2008-2013), Shameless (2011-present) and The Walking Dead (2010-present), among other shows. Knowing more about DeGraff 's own path to becoming an editor helps clarify why mentoring is so important to him today. New York-born and raised, he was a history major at the University of Rochester. After graduation, he was torn between law school and a career in film and television. A friend's mother worked at Paramount and found him an opening as an NBC page, and the decision was made. The page job led to an opening in the post- production department where DeGraff found work as an apprentice editor. "Once I was in the union, I got a job at Lorimar, which was inside a studio, on the old MGM lot [now Sony]," he recalls. "They had an army of editors, assistants and apprentices, all in film." That gig got him on the Editors Guild roster, and his first job as ACE editor Tom Benko's assistant on MacGyver (1985-1992). When Benko got the call to do the pilot for Star Trek: The Next Generation, he asked his assistant to join him there. Two seasons later, DeGraff recounts, he asked executive producer Rick Berman for a chance to edit an episode. "He said that if Tom was okay with it, so was he," recounts DeGraff, who then became an editor. For the next few years, DeGraff "bounced back and forth" between editing and assisting. Then he got on a Dick Wolf show, New York Undercover (1994-1999), which led to his stint on Law & Order. "That was the single most important happening in my career, outside of the initial editing credit on Star Trek," the editor attests. "Law & Order was critically acclaimed and it allowed me to reach out to other producers." After Law & Order, DeGraff considers his work on Netflix's Daredevil to be another big leap forward. "It was an extremely well-shot show that had a lot of very complex, challenging fight scenes," he continues. "When you meet a challenge like that, you grow." DeGraff notes that, in addition to his breakthrough projects, the craft of editing TV dramas has changed in the last 15 years with the increased amount of footage. "Single-camera is a misnomer," he says. "It's almost always multi- camera and, especially for cable and streaming shows, we're dealing with 50 minutes for the final product, as opposed to network, which is 42 minutes. That eight minutes is a lot. One- and-a-half hours of dailies became three or four. "Those editors who could handle the complexity thrived," he continues. "Everyone found their own way of how to really own the material and not get bogged down by it." Young assistants, he adds, aren't intimidated by the footage since they see their editors doing it on a daily basis. The increased footage had an unexpected impact. "When you're shooting multiple takes from several cameras, it puts a lot of weight on the editors to be the repository of knowledge about that footage," DeGraff stresses. "It made me eventually stop second-guessing what the directors or producers would want — not to ignore their vision, but I started to have confidence that if I could satisfy myself, I could satisfy everyone else." Throughout that period of time when DeGraff was getting his footing as an editor, he had no mentors. "A number of editors helped me by rehiring me, but I didn't have The Man in the High Castle. Amazon Studios