E-NEWS
EDITION #034
November 2012
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Greetings Editing Colleagues, The ASE AGM was held last Sunday to announce the healthy state of our Guild.  This year we further expanded the National presence by two States, increased Membership numbers, staged outstanding events and forums, offered free training, broadened The Ellies Award Categories, cemented ties with our Sponsors and had a terrific wave of publicity for Editors and the art of editing.This strength is set to continue in 2013 with the majority of the Executive Committee returning, with some new faces, to generously offer their personal time and passion to promoting our vibrant community.  I am ever so grateful, as I'm sure you are too. The Annual Report and Financials can be viewed at this Member link:

http://www.screeneditors.com/ forums/showthread.php?t=2126

 Following the AGM was a wonderful celebration for the tenth anniversary of our first Accreditations - the Class of 2002.  Congratulations to these outstanding Editors.  The Victorian event ran same day and time.  See below for further news and photos.

The Queensland Branch of the ASE are assisting Griffith University in hosting a brilliant 3-day Editing Symposium in Brisbane, late November.  See attached flyer and ASE website for details.  Subsidised Registration Fees are offered to Full ASE Members, including discounted Accommodation for those interstate travellers.  Not to be missed!

Stay tuned for the announcement of the 2012 ASE Ellies Award Nominees, due out very soon!  Best wishes to those who entered across the ten Award Categories.  Our largest response by far.  Thank you very much to those who Judged too.

The ASE warmly welcomes two new Gold Sponsors, Twodogs.tv and Adobe, most recently.  You will have your opportunity to mingle and thank these fine folk at The Ellies next month, when they present their respective Award Categories. 

Remember, it really is a matter of "what can you do for your Guild?".

Please let us know what you'd like to contribute or make available to share.

Let's find great comfort in supporting each other.

Regards,

Jason Ballantine ASE

ASE President

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VICTORIAN UPDATE
 
Hello! Can you believe the ASE ten years ago began Accreditation? Out of
the ten, four can to be found in Victoria. Those lucky enough to come to Bar
Ampere had the rare privilege of chatting with Jill Bilcock ASE ACE, Denise
Haratzis ASE, Robeta Horslie ASE and Ken Sallows ASE. See the article and
photos below.
 
As a complete treat and finally to craft events this year, Victoria blitzed it with
the sellout event – Mental. It was a fabulous evening of laughs, information,
experiences in the edit suites and tips. If you missed it don’t despair. The
committee went all out with a three camera shoot so keep a look out for the
announcements of the podcast and Art of Guillotine web videos down the
track. You are sure to get something out of it. In the meantime check out the
article below.
 
ACCTA AFI voting for nominations are closing fast so don’t forget to vote!
There is an amazing variety of films up this year and it’s been awesome to
see them. Best of luck to all of you who have a chance of getting a nom nom.
Whether you do or not extraordinary work. Congratulations.
 
To Rob Buttery thank you! Rob has had to step down from the committee
due to family commitments. He will be missed. Rob has made his year on
the committee a great one running the art of comedy panel as well as being
incredibly excited about RSVPs and how we can get the word out to the wider
community. Thanks Rob you’re a champ!
 
And finally if you are coming to the Entertainment Biz expo on December 2^nd,
please come and seek the ASE Booth out and say hello. We’d love to see
you and have a chat about all things editing. Check out the info further down
in the newsletter.
 
Have a great November!
 
Cindy Clarkson
 
Victorian ASE Chair
 
 
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MEET THE MEMBER:
FRAYNE DYKE-WALKER

 

Frayne is currently waiting with everything crossed for a job to come off that she has been working on and off with the writer director for the past 18 months -  Five cameras shooting in Times Square, New York - three cameras in three locations in New Zealand - either Red Epic or Arri Alexa - no real script as such, just an idea and a tone - oodles and scwoodles of footage - and she's madly looking forward to finding the story amongst the real people that will populate the art film for a commercial client. 

I specialise in… editing tvcs, visual effects, comedy and real people stories - but will work for food!

My first break in the industry was… at New Zealand's public broadcaster - Due to start my first job in radio, an air conditioning break down meant I was shuffled off to tele for a week while the carpets dried out - 10 minutes in tele and I was hooked, and never went back to radio - although sound and music makes up 50% of what editors do.  

The highlights of my career so far… have been working in fabulous teams headed up by Jill Bilcock on 'Peter Pan', Marcus D'Arcy on 'Swimming Upstream' and Peter Whitmore at Winning Post (now The Editors).

I was inspired to join the ASE … because Margie Slarke was kind enough to invite me to.   Once there I met a very committed team: Andrea Lang, Jane St Vincent-Welch, Melanie Sandford and Henry Dangar to name a few.  Because editing can be a bit solitary it was fabulous to meet all these different people working in other areas of editing - but all with the same commitment, and with a variety of approaches.  It was a joy to be part of the team catering for many of the early events, a member on the 2nd accreditation committee, even harrassing my fellow tvc editors into joining the Guild. But after designing and cutting out by hand the film perfs for the set decoration at the first Accreditation Ceremony held at NIDA all those years ago I've left subsequent events to the experts.

The ASE is important… As a Guild of craftspeople - we afflicted with the editing addiction, need friendly faces to talk about the challenges of editing: technical, creative and the lack of time and budget creeping into the industry - and have it remain positive and helpful - not descend into the negative abyss.  Also for those amongst us who are terminally shy about marketing ourselves, it is great to have a guild that promotes the work of editors throughout the film and television industry, and in the wider community.

I'm also choosing this forum to publicise Movember coming up shortly - hence the Mo - Men's Health is just as important as women's health and editorial is not renown for having the healthiest of lifestyles! Find a team and support it, or start one yourself.

 

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MEET THE MEMBER:
Mark Perry
 

Mark Perry is one of the editors who seems to have been around forever and a day. Mark has forged an enviable career with feature credits such as Idiot Box, Mullett, Dirty Deeds and Prime Mover (all with Director David Caesar). Mark also has cut many of the best drama series including Rake, Wild Boys, East Of Everything and Farscape.

I knew I wanted to work in post when… I didn't really choose the cutting room, it chose me. I always wanted to be a director. I put my first short film together when  I was 17, on 16mm and all the original sound tapes were lost at the end of the shoot. I then had no choice but to put the film together mute and then track lay the whole thing. It worked! I thought, OK. I enjoyed putting it all together and so I used the short to apply for Film School. As there was no Directing course, I had to chose a craft. I chose editing.

My first break in the industry was… Work experience on a film called "Hoodwink" in 1980. I was 15.

I cut my first feature film "Green Keeping" with David Caesar  when I was 27, that was my first professional drama credit.

The thing I love most about editing is… Having finished an editors cut, piecing all the rushes together, then getting into the fine cut with a director, is the part of the process I enjoy the most theses days. When there is lots of trust and a truly collaborative atmosphere, it can be very exciting and satisfying.

The best tip I’ve got for aspiring editors is… The best tip is, its pretty obvious really, take ANY cutting opportunities that come you're way, keep practicing as much as you can, and watch as many movies as possible, and not JUST for the editing. Having a director that will stick by you will also open lots of doors.

If I wasn’t in postproduction I’d be…  A cabinet maker/carpenter, same job, different materials... Or a musician, a scuba diver, something to do with motor cycles……… maybe even a film director.

  

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MEET THE COMMITTEE:
Malgorzata Swierczak

Maz had decided on a career in the film industry when she was still in high school and an opportunity to co-edit a 52min documentary when she was in year ten, inspired her further to focus on post- production and seek a career as an editor. She spent her years at film school cutting any short film she could get her hands on and after graduation continued to work freelance as an editor. In recent years she began working as an assistant editor on independent Australian feature films and more recently on Australian Television Drama.

 

I knew I wanted to work in post when… I began cutting my own films and realised just how much a story can be shaped, manipulated and altered through the way it is cut.

My first break in the industry was… whilst at film school I had the opportunity to meet Bryan Singer at a university event. I created a short humorous dvd explaining who I was and that I would love to work on Superman Returns, which was in production in Sydney at the time. Through an incredible combination of his generosity, luck, the right timing and the fact that he enjoyed the dvd, I was offered a part time position as an assistant editor with the behind the scenes crew. It gave me an exciting insight into my first major production and had me completely hooked.

The thing I love most about editing is… being inspired by those I work with to take the edit in a direction that surprises me or that I didn’t at first see myself and the satisfaction of finding creative solutions to problems that at first appear to have no answer.

The best tip I’ve got for aspiring editors is…  seek out events where you can network with other people in the editing community and talk to everyone! Not only does it help keep you sane, but you never know what opportunities might come out of it.

If I wasn’t in postproduction I’d be… Wondering what to do with all my spare time.

 
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MEET OUR SPONSORS:
 
SPECTRUM FILMS

 

Just shy of its 50^th birthday, Spectrum Films is one of Australia’s most influential post production facilities. Committee member Deb Peart caught up with Managing Director Josh Pomeranz and General Manager Naomii Taylor, for the latest news from this editing institution.

Spectrum Films is currently a full house.  They are providing suites and/or gear for everything from major studio productions like The Great Gatsby, Wolverine and The Railway Man, local features like Kath & Kimderella, The Sapphires and Not Suitable For Children to a swag of television productions such as Packed to the Rafters, House Husbands and the soon to shoot Wentworth down in Melbourne.

You have to take your hat off to a post production facility that can keep people coming though the door in such lean times.  When Spectrum moved from Willoughby to Fox Studios in 1998, the aussie dollar was providing wonderful opportunities for our local film industry practitioners.  Today, with the dollar skyrocketing, big studio productions, which were once a mainstay for Spectrum, are few and far between.  “It’s very much a cyclical industry reliant on a lot of external factors, prior to Gatsby the entire industry was in distress. You have to diversify, you have to do docos, TV, Australian films, short films, multimedia” managing director Josh Pomeranz states. “You have to try and future proof the business, it’s still an unknown future. You have to be resilient. You just can’t rely on currency fluctuations to attract the larger productions coming here. There is lobbying to increase that location (tax) offset but if that stays were it is, who knows.”

“For us it’s a client service, we make sure that everyone is comfortable, its secure and everyone wants to come back. It’s almost 50 years and we want to uphold that standard,” Naomii adds. “We treat productions equally; it doesn’t matter if you are cutting a big feature film or a short film. You receive the same service and that’s across the board. “That service now stretches beyond providing just offline editing facilities. “We did the whole pipeline for Destination Flavour recently screened on SBS; transcoding, data integrity, offline, online grade and Andrew Plain (of in-house sound facility Huzzah Sound) mixed it,” Josh says “and technology has played into our hands a bit too. There are so many different formats that people shoot on. We get a lot of requests in regards to strategic pipe lines and data flows. That’s also why its good having that throughput from the bigger productions, we have to do so much R&D when we set them up that we can filter it down to the smaller budget productions.” Their staff back up this commitment to ensuring they stay on the cutting edge of emerging technologies; “We have that continuity of people working here. Mike Honey (Chief Technical Officer) has been here for 16 years, our technical service team including Charlie Gerrard has been here for 14. Rob Puru has been in the industry for 26 years, I’ve been here for 14.”

Aside from the need to diversify within the realms of post production, Josh and Spectrum are also become more involved in investing in the production side of film making.  “We are working with Thomas Mai and with the help of the Distribution Innovation Fund we received through Screen Australia, we are crowd funding ten films over the next two years. Thomas is driving that and they will cut here as a part of it.  We’ve also invested in projects like Sleeping Beauty, The Waiting City, Railway Man and The Sapphires. Back in the day, my father, Hans, even invested in My Brilliant Career and Newsfront”.

“We also sponsor a lot of film festivals,” Naomii adds, “as a part of that filmmakers are able to experience our facility and we get to nurture up and coming talent.”  There are also a large number of student interns that Spectrum take on each year, hailing from either Boston University or within Australia.  Through spending anything from 12 weeks to a semester assisting in the day to day running of the facility; ”they have gone on to work on productions like Wolverine, Packed to the Rafters and companies such as Animal Logic & Rising Sun. My assistant Kat started in the intern program,” Naomii continues, “it’s a springboard. That’s the essence of the industry. When I was coming through, the first and most important thing that I learnt was making contacts.”

By helping nurture new talent and open the doors for the next generation, Josh sums up the Spectrum experience as such; “That’s what Spectrum is, that community, that sense of having various productions in here and opportunities. I love it when the Spectrum café is full and you have different editors and directors on various productions talking to each other, and helping each other out. So don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and come and have a look around. Come and have a coffee, we go back a lot of years and would love to have a chat.”

For more info about the wonderful folks at Spectrum Films visit www.spectrumfilms.com.au

L-R:   Naomii Taylor, Mike Honey & Josh Pomeranz

 

 

Spectrum's famous cafe!

 MEET OUR SPONSORS:

2 DOGS TV

 

A very special welcome to one of our new sponsors, Twodogs.tv,  who join us just in time for the Ellies and will take on supporting one of our new award categories "Best Editing in a Documentary Series". Having serviced the Film and Television industry for over 7 years, 2 Dogs Post has recently decided to refresh its brand and is now relaunching as Twodogs.tv. "We still specialise in offering high quality post production services to editors, producers and production companies, but felt it was time for a change in the company logo and ID," Managing Director David Cole stated, "sponsoring the ASE for us is a way of saying thank you to the many editors who have worked here over the years and have continued to support us."

The ASE is proud to have Dave and his wonderful team on board and look forward to a wonderful year ahead.



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SPONSOR UPDATE:
 
AUTODESK EVENT


 

 
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SPONSOR UPDATE:
 
DIGISTOR EVENT
2D / 3D Integration Workshop

Full details are here...
http://www.digistor.com.au/Events/C4DCS6WorkflowWorkshopNov12.aspx

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EVENT REPORT:
 
Storm Surfers 3D – Toronto Film Festival

 
Editor of Storm Surfers 3D, Rod Balart had the joy of going to the Toronto FIlm Festival this year.  Here's his guide for would be travelers to the festival.....