Features

To those who knew him best, film editor Philip Cahn, who was born June 18, 1894, in New York City, was not a rabble-rousing sort.

In a way, Ben Lewis, one of the three founding members of the Society of Motion Picture Film Editors (SMPFE) — now the Motion Picture Editors Guild — was the quintessential company man, working 45 of his 52 years in the cutting room at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

As soon as the MAY-JUN 12 issue of CineMontage — featuring “The 75 Best Edited Films” as selected by Editors Guild members — arrived in mailboxes, readers’ comments immediately ensued: Why was (insert title of your favorite film here) not included?

You Can’t Tell the Movies Without a Scorecard!

As the upcoming film Moneyball makes expressly clear, Baseball is a game of statistics––something rarely, if ever, touched on in any of the movies about the sport since the first Baseball movie arrived in 1898.

To hear Stuart Bass, ACE, talk about television editing, one might think he has an insouciant attitude towards his craft. “Editing comedy is a specific talent…it’s just difficult to say what that talent is,” he says glibly.

In the midst of a career in television, picture editors may think about how many years they’ve been on a show, but they may not stop to consider how many episodes of it they’ve cut.

Although assistant editors do embrace the chance to learn more, the question becomes: How much work is too much per assistant? Does bringing this extra work in-house mean that an extra assistant is required? And what does the assistant lose—mentoring time, for example—by taking on these extra tasks?

Allow me to introduce you to the post-production alchemy that produces the show that, according to Newsweek senior writer Andrew Romano, is “right now…the best program on TV, period.”