Assistant Editors -

Game-Changer: Moneyball’s Christopher Tellfesen

September 1, 2011

It’s more about a man’s journey and struggle against conventional wisdom than it is about Baseball,” says editor Christopher Tellefsen, A.C.E. The film he’s discussing is Moneyball, which opens September 23 through Columbia Pictures, and the man is Billy Beane, por- trayed by Brad Pitt. Based on Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book of the same name, it tells the story of Beane, a star high school athlete with a keen mind who played big league Baseball for five years, not particularly distinguishing himself. […]

UNION MADE: Following in Father’s Footsteps

November 1, 2011

I started editing quarter-inch reels of recorded audio sessions, then got bumped up to an assistant working with film on a Moviola. I was surprised by how much I liked it.

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Finding Moments of Humanity: The Instinctual Editing Style of John F. Burnett

September 1, 2012

Midway through George Cukor’s Rich and Famous (1981), there is a scene that, all by itself, encapsulates the witty banter that was the director’s signature. The heroine of the film, a celebrated writer played by Jacqueline Bisset, is in her room at the Algonquin Hotel, ostensibly to be interviewed by a young Rolling Stone journalist (Hart Bochner). […]

UNION MADE: History + Photography = Documentary Editing Career

September 1, 2013

I was fortunate to fall into picture editing. […]

Richard Halsey: 2014 ACE Career Achievement Award Honoree

March 1, 2014

Richard Halsey, A.C.E., lives by three rules: Be organized, listen to your intuition and always tell the truth. These are rules that the editor applies to his work, as well as to his life. Of course, Halsey says, it’s not always easy. […]

Robert C. Jones: 2014 ACE Career Achievement Award Honoree

March 1, 2014

Robert C. Jones grew up in the film industry; his father, Harmon Jones, was a feature film editor (Gentleman’s Agreement, Panic in the Streets, among others) and later TV director (Rawhide, Perry Mason and Death Valley Days). […]

UNION MADE: From the Art House to the Cutting Room

May 1, 2014

I was on the path of the confused college looking primarily for an interesting career and secondarily for a way to earn a living. My two goals never seemed to want to co-exist. […]

Guided by Creative References: Plummy Tucker

December 1, 2015

Plummy Tucker found the time to talk to CineMontage about her varied career, including her upcoming projects. […]

AE: Acrimony Over an Acronym

December 1, 2015

The first time I heard my assistant editor referred to as an “AE,” the hairs on my back went up! I felt it was disrespectful and unbecoming — but why? After all, we call production assistants PAs without offense, so why not call assistant editors AEs? Well, for starters, PAs fetch coffee and deliver scripts, whereas assistant editors perform highly skilled creative and technical work in an artistic craft. […]

The Awakening of ‘Anger’ 25 Years Later

December 1, 2015

This year, as part of its annual selection of fully restored classics, the 72nd International Venice Film Festival presented, along with Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), Akira Kurosawa’s Red Beard (1965) and Sergei Eisenstein’ Alexander Nevsky (1938), among others, Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger (1990) — the most recently made of all the dramatic features chosen. […]