"As a first time director/film maker, what kind of challenges did you face with editing the movie? I was just wondering because I'm interested in learning more about editing but there seems like there's just so much to learn and I feel a little bit overwhelmed!! I mean the most I can do is practice editing by making my own little videos on my computer... "

First a little editing Hewlett history…

I've been lucky enough to be around editing since the beginning of my career as an actor. I was always peering over my friends shoulders (usually with a large alcoholic drink) while they cut their films and we were always trying out new things on demo reels for my acting reel...and this was back when you needed access to huge old 1/2 inch video editing decks!

The first thing I did when I approached "A Dog's Breakfast" was ignore all of the technical stuff and start watching movies with an eye to just looking at the editing...a process that absolutely kills your movie watching experience...so do it with films you've already seen...the thing is it's the most practical way to see how the masters edit. I also read a great book called "In the Bink of an Eye" by Walter Murch who is one of the all-time classic editors.

First off I should be clear -I didn’t have to do any of the technical aspects of editing “A Dog’s Breakfast” my input was purely creative. We were lucky enough to get Jason Schneider to edit our film. He was an assistant editor on Stargate and he'd not had the opportunity to edit a full-length feature before and seemed eager to cut his teeth with this puppy.. When we first met Jason he gave us a couple of shorts that really worked in his favour. One was a fast-cutting "Movie Trailer" styled, fast cutting short film he'd worked on and the other was this very static dark comedy short, that actually had very little actual cutting in it. So, he was obviously talented, but I also really liked his personality. The reality is you're going to spend weeks in a dark little room with this person! Personality is a huge part of the decision when it comes to any part of the filmmaking process. Jason's technical skills are amazing, but his patience and sense of calm is contagious. I also really found his sense of humor invaluable throughout the editing process.

I had a very definite stylistic approach that I wanted to take with A Dog’s Breakfast. I really wanted our film to be "classical" and “old fashioned” in it’s editing. That said, the first thing I did was walk away and let Jason have a cut. I just told him to do his own edit of the film. I gave him nothing, virtually no guidance at all (other than the script, of course!). I just let him do whatever he wanted. I really felt it was important to see the film through someone else's eyes. Plus, he was doing us such a big favor by editing the film. I wanted him to have his own "Editors cut". Once Jason had finished his cut we went through the film together and whittled it down to the final product. Jason was amazing, he added elements that I would never have thought of and really helped shape the final product by bringing his own unique sense of humor to the film.

Credit where credit is due!

Mars was also a huge help in the editing process. I knew that sooner or later we could run into problems while we were editing and we had no way to do re-shoots. I didn't want to get caught with my pants down (well, not Off-camera anyway ;-) I shot tons of footage of Mars in just about every scene we had. When things weren't working in the editing of a scene Mars was the perfect "hinge" shot to get me from one take to another. Not that he needs more ego-boosting!

Learning the technical sch-tuff!

I think the key to anyone wanting to get into editing is to just do it! Shooting and editing your own projects sounds like the perfect way to do achieve that in a low-pressure environment. Obviously you need to know how to use the tools and that can be intimidating. The problem with approaching any new technical skill is that you tend to look at the whole, when the reality is you learn the skills you need by breaking the subject down into bite sized chunks. Once you start that it'll seem much less daunting. Whenever I wanted to learn something I'd start with some kind of "Idiots guide", usually something much simpler than I needed. The advantage to this approach was that it made me feel confident. Once you've got through the beginners guide, you know you've got the basics. From there you can dive into the more technical stuff. On the software front, Avid seems to be the industry standard, but honestly I think Avid's about to be usurped by Apple's Final Cut Pro. If you can get yourself a copy of that (I know that many schools have educational editions that are MUCH cheaper) and work through the tutorials you'll be sailing! Some people aren't good at the self-paced learning and might do better taking a course to get up to speed. The advantage with that is that you'll be rubbing shoulders with like-minded people. Like Word or Excel, you don't have to know how to do everything the program can do, just the basics. It's like learning a language - you can listen to tapes and take classes and read books, but the only way to ingrain the actual language is to be forced to speak it on a daily basis. Once you've got the core skills, I'd highly recommend offering your services to people. Marketing yourself is going to be a big part of having a career as an editor, why not dive in now? Perhaps you could do actor's demo reels for them? Maybe offer to edit some short films for friends? You can always post online and let people know what you're interested in doing. I'm sure you'll find yourself with plenty of projects to experiment with in no time at all!

Hope this helps!

Best of luck!

D!

Comments

Suggestion Written by A_Scott on 2007-07-12 00:22:04 I'm not sure where you're from, but it couldn't hurt to try and find something like Winnipeg's Video Pool (http://videopool.typepad.com/video_pool_home/) in your area. If you do happen to live anywhere close to Winnipeg, I did some training with Video Pool and I rave about it constantly. The educational co-ordinator, Jeff Erbach, is a guy who I actually had some training from at the NSI, and he's great... He has some interesting films too, if you like some of the more out there stuff. But I will warn you... from what I remember, his work is kinda... interesting? I'm not sure if the pool rotates their classes, because the one I was thinking of wasn't listed, but I remember them having a Final Cut Pro course (a couple of them, I think).

Written by spamco on 2007-07-01 03:59:56 As an editor, or at least a student who mostly did editing for her school's weekly tv show, I highly appreciate all the details you went into with this. I didn't think that I was the spectacular editor that my teacher & other folks said I was, as I was continually learning & had only first started the year before. I'm still learning (yay for shoddy WMM2!) & working on my "skill", & thinking about specializing in editing when I go to grad school. I edited my friend's english project...with WWM2. =[    As for what you said about Avid, I have yet to try it (but my teacher said she was gonna buy it for this year, too bad I'm not there anymore *shakes fist*), but for FCP, I absolutely loved it. Hopefully, if I get a MacBook Pro, I am for sure going to spend some of my free time editing & playing around with FCP Express (if anything, it's better than WWM2).

Nice post! Written by WolfenM on 2007-06-30 13:24:24 Wow, that was really awesome of you! One thing I've noticed in my years of interviewing, creative people rarely are willing to go into explanations of how things are done. They just sort of shrug and say they can't explain it, or they give a lot of technobabble, assuming that those asking already know a *lot* about it. What you wrote up there was very informative, clear-spoken, and interesting!

words of wisdom Written by Aten on 2007-06-29 23:31:35 Wow! Thank you. These essays, if you could call them that, are wonderful!    Editing has shown up a few times in my life, most prominently when I made my short documentary. I had several hours' worth of material (most of which was expendable, though) and I had to shear it down to a handful of minutes. Luckily I had help from a great team of pros, not to mention iMovie. I did just about everything for that film, from arranging interviews to writing questions to doing the "paper edit". Eventually I got business taken care of, but there are some bits that seem a little, dare I say it, choppy.     Editing became an issue again when this SGA video contest came up. I have yet to shoot my first entry, but I knew from the start that editing would be an issue. Again very lucky for me, a friend of mine is a whiz with Windows Movie Maker, so that takes care of that.

Written by MdGateFan on 2007-06-29 22:03:44 Thanks for the insights in how the film was put together. So where you one of those actors that always really wanted to direct?       While this might not relate to film making, I have to say I agree with the idea that when learning a new skill (or program) the best way is to just do it and work on simpler or smaller projects until you get a bit more confident in your skills. Particularly with something computer related...

wow Written by miza on 2007-06-29 21:38:05 wow i am always interested in how movies are done i am theatre student at arizona state university , this has always interested me

Written by Becky S. on 2007-06-29 10:40:52 Nice article David. Thank you for sharing. Sometime in the future you are going to get a lot of credit for getting people started in their careers (acting, editing, ect) and I'm just talking your fan base here. You may start more indy film makers (which I know you would love) than you know.

Written by Rebeccasaurus on 2007-06-29 09:52:48 Oooo nice one. I have only used Adobe Premier Pro at uni and am starting to use Final Cut Pro next semester so it should be good times hunched in front of the screen!

I Appreciate it all Message for David Written by nanook660 on 2007-06-29 09:30:51 All right my turn to speak. Now now get back here all of you no need to run. LOL    David, thank you soooo much for what you do. Thank you for the insight into your world, and your mind. No I am not being funny I am being seriously sincere here.     I appreciate this site and what David does. From this Blog, to his work on SGA and all the other projects he has done. I also appreciate him being so open and honest with us fans and for letting us be a part of it all.    Thank you David    HUGS

Avid v Final Cut Pro Written by MagicMeerkat on 2007-06-29 08:09:19 I use both of these, Avid at work and Final Cut Pro at home. I was trained on Avid and became pretty good at it, so I though picking up Final Cut from scratch would be a doddle. They're both editing systems, how hard could it be?! I was so wrong... However, with some persistence and those tutorials I figured it out and now I love it. So much more intuitive than Avid and much more user friendly. The other bonus is that unlike Avid with all its extra bobbins you can install it on pretty much any decent computer (I have a 2005 G5 mac with a bit of extra RAM to help things along) and start churning out pro level stuff at home.    I still use Avid at work, but it feels clunky compared to Final Cut Pro.    Oh god, listen to me anoraking.

Written by rosiewook on 2007-06-29 06:14:47 I once had the distinct pleasure of getting to tour Skywalker Ranch. Because George Lucas is so into editing (big surprise), he put a lot of thought into the editing facilities.    They have regular editing rooms, but the editors can send the footage over to one of the many sunlit rooms for when they're just watching their editing for overall flow. That way, they can get some sunlight. Nifty idea!

Great Interview! Written by ZoniDuck on 2007-06-29 04:54:26 I completely forgot to listen to the show live, but luckily they provide handy downloads in their archives! Yours can be found on this page if you wanted to pass the link along to everyone.    I really enjoyed your interview, but I have to tell you, David, not for nothin', but a pretty good chunk of those 10 million Stargate fans would like nothing better than an R-rated sexy romance. Just sayin'.

Written by Squonk on 2007-06-29 03:41:38 Wow, interesting and sound advice once again!    So basically, if you're making a film, make sure you have a dog....

Top Tips Written by Zerocool on 2007-06-29 03:28:23 Become a post production runner, earn next to nothing, make tea and coffee, get producers to buy your beer, answer phones, digitize material, work un-godly hours BUT you get to use the Avids for free and get some advise from top editors. LOL you will also require an understanding husband to support you to get your foot in the door That said, there are some great home editing packages now, they don't have to be fancy...don't be lured into the cheesy effects

Written by Crying on 2007-06-29 02:41:57 Just listened to that great interview!    Yes, keep the audience in mind when creating entertainment. It sounds so simple, yet goes over so many creators’ heads. Kudos to David and the ADB gang for keeping us in mind!    Can hardly wait to see ADB... Is it September yet?

:O Written by SheppardsonlyPie on 2007-06-29 02:40:50 Oh my word!! not only did i get and understand all of that and believe me i am the most untechnical person you'll ever meet but I do try, but never again can any of my friends say I say a lot in one sitting ever again :O lol. After reading this I don't think that caffiene high is going anywhere for quite sometime and having said all of this in one seemingly long sentence...... Wheres my coffee Can't wait until my movie is in my hands or I can download it. My curiousity is just killing me here..

Written by Jen the Fangirl on 2007-06-29 02:35:39 Oh my God, David! You just made Desi's life! *squee* She's the same Desi you spoke with at the Burbank con, on my phone! :D

Written by Glugory on 2007-06-29 01:26:07 I just wanted to say that editing doesn't take that much in the way of technical skills. My friends and I shot and edited together this in a couple of days:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm7C6uHiLZk    Obviously it took us longer than some because it was our first time editing anything at all, but within about an hour we had the basics pretty much down (and by basics I mean taking footage and putting it down on the timeline in a way that makes sense). We're all pretty technical though so it might take others longer.     I'm also making this post in a futile effort to get David to watch my crappy little video. *crosses his fingers*

Really looking forward to seeing ADB! Written by animallover on 2007-06-29 01:20:50 Thanks again for your always informative & entertaining posts! I really love reading them. They always seem to brighten up my day! Thanks heaps!

Editor's cut question... Written by Astrumporta on 2007-06-29 00:46:57 Wow, that was cool! Editing fascinates me in that it seems the director is giving so much creative power to another person... So when you turned Jason loose, did he have every take of every shot you filmed, or had you already chosen the takes you wanted or discarded the ones you knew you didn't?    Anyway, you rock, dude!

Bringing it to the little people... Written by Pandora on 2007-06-29 00:30:50 David,     Thank you for being a continual fountain of information and entertainment. In everyday lives we, your fans, have careers of our own and when we want insight deeper into our field of expertise we ask those with the experience and more often than not those people are willing to divulge their wisdom. For me, a person with a 9-5 job but also, as an aspiring actress I am constantly intrigued and appreciate the manner in which you present yourself to your fan base. You truly are someone to look up to and I will continue to support your efforts for as long as this little squirrel can.

Whats next on the agenda? Written by Pistol Pete on 2007-06-29 00:25:15 Actor, writer, director, editor, animal trainer,tenco buff on making a film. So the question I have is, what is next? I have seen you in drama as well as comdey. How about a Western? I can see it now, Mister Hewlett in his best Gary Cooper impression (sorry I do not know any Canadaian western stars). If ADB is as good as I think it will be, should be a snap. Time for an independent western again.

Getting it done Written by FilmStar3000 on 2007-06-29 00:23:43 How do you get it done on you own? As me and my writers yes I have a team of them for our know ideas my question how do you found the people to do it with you for free?

Great article! Written by watcher652 on 2007-06-29 00:07:58 I love these articles you write about getting the job done. I find reading about a topic so much more interesting when personal examples are given.     I'm looking forward to the Behind the Scenes extras on the ADB dvd. I always find those interesting. I don't think it takes away from the movie magic to know what goes on in making a movie. I find it increases my appreciation when I see all the work that goes into producing something made for my enjoyment.

Learning something new every day... Written by telpethoron on 2007-06-29 00:07:10 It's interesting to see the filmmaking process from the inside - you learn things about filmmaking (and films in general) that you really can't learn anywhere else. Thanks for giving all of us a glimpse into your acting world!

Written by darklock on 2007-06-29 00:02:02 You could put together a book of these gems and it would sell. How to go about the business of the business, from bottom to top, beginning to end, with your own particular brand of humour. The parts you haven't done, you can leave blank pages, or chapters, or make something up. Under 'Producer' you can put 'See Jane Run.' ;-)    Fun, thanks!

Written by Rally Killer on 2007-06-28 23:58:21 Your information blogs are pretty much made of win. They are really informative and interesting. I'd say that they accomplish what I think you hope they accomplish.

Check your medication Written by taywolf on 2007-06-28 23:27:36 So - Mars saved the day by sitting there and looking handsome.    Usually - when I start rambling on I have to get my Lithium levels checked!    Looking forward to seeing ADB.

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