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49 Q3 2016 / CINEMONTAGE "Post-war Hollywood," which stretches the term; it ill- serves films made after 1960 to clump them together with the Hollywood movies produced immediately after the war. The book also defines 1968-1980 as "The Auteur Renaissance" and 1981-1999 as "The New Hollywood." There is nothing inherently wrong about this; however, once years are so finitely limited, such labels tend to stick. Film editors' careers cover many years — include many personal, artistic, economic and technical influences — and rise and fall regardless of the calendar. The primary research and emphasis on factual accuracy that most of the contributors bring make Editing and Special Visual Effects a worthwhile effort. The book's hundreds of notes include valuable, too seldomly consulted sources, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' oral histories with people such as former Editors Guild President Ralph Winters, ACE, editor of over 70 films and best known for his Oscar-winning work on Ben-Hur (1959); Margaret Booth, ACE; and Rudi Fehr, ACE (who each comment on the Warner Bros. and MGM practice of assigning editors to the set of first-time directors), among others. Articles from contemporary trade magazines are well referenced - "Film Editors Organizing Own Section in Academy," Film Daily, 1932; "The Butt Splicer: Editor's Aid or Gimmick," CinemaEditor, 1962; "The Return of Editdroid," Millimeter, 1994; and "Editors Spliced in Two: Rivalry Splits Biz into Avid, Final Pro Camps," Variety, 2011, are only a few examples. The Editors Guild itself appears in "The Auteur Renaissance" section, wherein critic Peter Rainer asks, "Do Film Critics Know What Editors Do?" in the January-February 1995 issue of Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter, the forerunner of CineMontage. The popular press is consulted as well; Paul Monticonne, in his essay covering 1928-1946, quotes a 1940 article in The Los Angeles Times, headlined "Lady Film Cutters: A Vanishing Profession," in which the Secretary of the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors (predecessor of the Editors Guild) comments, "Women cutters are resented by their male colleagues." It is unfortunately left to the book's reader to decide if the Secretary found this to be a good or a bad trend. Use of primary research sources and a historical perspective is a hallmark of Bordwell/Thompson's approach to cinema studies. This influence in Editing and Special Visual Effects makes it more relevant to working editors than previous books on film theory (Eisenstein excepted). While academic, the writing is for the most part logical, and pairing studies of picture editing with special visual effects seems particularly sensible within a historical overview. For instance, the magical appearances and disappearances of sprites and devils, seen in many early silent trick films, was accomplished by editing in the camera or with a substitution splice. The dissolves and superimpositions provided by optical printers were another way to make transitions, and even specialized montage sequences, à la Slavko Vorkapich, were sometimes regarded as special effects. The matchup of editing and effects holds up today when moviemakers at every level possess technology that allows them to create cuts, transitions and effects digitally. Unfortunately, some contributors offer generalizations that may make statistical sense, but go against industry experience. A major example of this is an extrapolation of Monticone's conclusions that leads the Keil and Whissel to state in their introduction that the complexities of shooting sound films "…meant that editing had to begin while production was still occurring so that a rough cut would be ready virtually as soon as filming was complete: One byproduct of this change in editing timelines was the elimination of the director as part of the editing process." A change in timelines, yes. Greater influence of studio heads and major producers on the edit, yes. The development of larger post departments with supervising editors who exerted levels of control, yes. But elimination of directors from the editing room, NO! The book also makes the claim that directors of this era had far less involvement in pre- production — a notion that might have surprised Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Welles. The Directors Guild of America fought for directorial control from its beginning in 1936, and at one point had invited picture editors to join its ranks (they declined). John Ford famously did not get involved in editing. He was CUT/PRINT Editing and Special Effects includes sources such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' oral history with Ralph E. Winters, left, shown with fellow editor John D. Dunning being presented with their Oscars for editing Ben- Hur (1959). Bison Archives CONTINUED ON PAGE 58