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We’ve recently added DP and photographer Mark Forman as one of our regular columnists. We’re happy to have his insights on a variety of subjects from filming classic aircraft to trends in production.

But if you don’t know this about him already, over the years Mark has trained his camera on many aspects of the city that has been his home for many years.

To highlight his enthusiasm for a sometimes exasperating but always exhilarating New York City, Mark has launched a Kickstarter campaign “New York City from the Ground Up!”. In part, he’s said this about his proposed eBook and print project:

Whether on a job or just walking the streets, as a photographer I’ve always been obsessed with shooting the best possible images. In the last ten years, I’ve built that desire into a portfolio of tens of thousands of candid images from my home base of New York, garnering acclaim from my peers in motion picture production and still photography. The first project, which pulls from the best of these New York City images, is within a few months of being ready.

Photo credit: Mark Forman

From what we’ve seen, this looks like a great portrait in the making of a City we’re all a little crazy about. If you’d like to know more, here’s a link to Mark’s Kickstarter page.

(Image: Mark Forman ready for the streets of New York on the Forman Camera Bicycle. Photo Credit: Mark Forman)

NYC Production & Post News is happy to announce the coming debut of a regular weekly column by DP and photographer Mark Forman. Familiar to those in and around the New York production scene, Mark will be writing on the latest products and trends in digital video camera systems as well as HDSLRs.

AbelCine’s Mitch Gross explains the technology behind the new Arri Studio. Photo Credit: Mark Forman

An MFA graduate of the film program at NYU’s Tisch School, Mark has made a career as a DP, aerial photographer, and innovator of HD and camera gear for production. His patented Forman Camera Bicycle has won a rep as a versatile camera support for working on the tough streets of New York. Meanwhile, Mark’s early work on the use of HD for screening dailies as well as for presentation enabled him to offer support for and work with artists such as Allen Daviau ASC, Ellen Kuras ASC along with the director Robert Altman.

A member of SMPTE, SOC, and a Charter Member of The Digital Cinema Society, Mark was recently appointed to the SONY ICE Independent Certified Expert Team specializing in Cinematography.

Plan to check back for Mark’s debut column, coming the week of January 15th.

It was a rainy Thursday night in late October when I attended a screening and talk by the highly esteemed motion picture editor Tariq Anwar A.C.E. at the Florence Gould Hall Theater in Manhattan. With a long list of credits to his name, Mr. Anwar’s filmography includes well-known films such as The Madness of King George and American Beauty — which won the Oscar for best picture in 1999.

In addition to those films, tonight’s discussion would feature Tariq’s work on The Kings Speech, which took home the Oscar for Best Picture of 2010. He also received an Oscar nomination for best editing on the popular motion picture.

The well attended event of editors, students and others was presented by two parties. The first was Manhattan Edit Workshop which, aside from offering workshops, co-produce on the yearly EditFest New York with ACE, a two day event and celebration of all things editing. The second presenter was the collaborative editing technology company EditShare.

Before the discussion with Tariq Anwar began, James Richings, Managing Director of EditShare, took the opportunity to say a few salient words about Lightworks, the program that Mr. Anwar employed to edit tonight’s film. The Boston-based company brought the open source NLE to market over the past year.

Lightworks Anyone?

When it comes to editing software, several popular brands immediately come to mind such as Avid’s Media Composer, Adobe’s Premiere Pro and Apple’s Final Cut. There is another program you may be less familiar with, however. It’s called Lightworks and has been around for years, having been used on many projects including notable feature films. In fact, Anwar prefers using it to just about any other editor out there. He will, of course, use Avid should he take over a film that was started by someone else using that NLE; but on projects he begins, Lightworks is his tool of choice.

One thing that Anwar likes about it is that it employs a tactile control surface. He appreciates the exactness the control surface offers, especially for sound, noting that for him it’s a “more definitive way of cutting”.

Lightworks was actually one of the first NLEs on the market, launching in 1989. Although the product changed hands a number of times over the two decades since its introduction, it’s continued as a favorite for many editors. One reason: it features a fast, straightforward interface originally modeled after the simplicity of the Steenbeck flatbed film editor.

EditShare acquired Lightworks about two years ago while it languished under a company which had “no vision for the product”, according to Richings. Under EditShare’s stewardship, however, the company made an interesting decision, deciding to make the code base open source. The result? Some 2000 developers have already signed onto the project. Here is a surprising benefit for many editors: it’s entirely free. That’s right. Free. (For more information about the product, click here.)

For those wondering whether “free” is a viable business model, Richings said that EditShare will sell add-ons such as the Lightworks control surface as well as plug-ins to the program. The company is also selling support contracts, which, for a professional editor, is a must.

Next, Josh Apter, president of Manhattan Edit Workshop, sat down for his talk with Tariq Anwar. During the course of the evening, we watched three sequences from Anwar’s films. After each segment, Apter asked a few questions and then opened it up to the audience who had some probing queries of their own.

Beginnings

Tariq Anwar drifted into the film business as a driver while he was a young man in England. Amusingly, he thought he had arrived when he spotted well known celebrities at various film shoots. Little did he know that one day he would go on to edit films that would win Academy awards.

Eventually Tariq worked his way up to a 3rd Assistant Director, a job he characterized as somewhat akin to being the director’s bulldog, having the less enviable position of yelling at the staff when things went wrong. One day he walked into the cutting room and in his words found it “the most civilized place”. Reflecting on how times had changed, he noted that in those days English film editors wore suits and white gloves whereas today anything goes — at least as far as apparel is concerned.

Anwar soon gained crucial experience working on documentaries and TV shows at the BBC. It was there that he practiced his craft, learning to tell stories with film. He explained that his work on documentaries at the BBC taught him a “sense of drama”.

After his years at the BBC, Anwar began work as a freelance editor. He eventually became the editor of the Oscar-nominated feature The Madness of King George (1994), posted entirely on film as digital NLEs were still in their early, not-ready-for-prime-time era.

Editing Madness

According to Anwar, “wonderful performances by actors make editing look good”. This was readily apparent from the first clip we watched from The Madness of King George where the King of England, in the process of losing his mind, causes a hilarious and uproarious ruckus during a courtly affair. Of course, the fact that it was a period piece with its costumes, wigs and 18th Century fashions enhances the impact of the film.

Reflecting on the film business itself, Anwar likened the entire process of making a film somewhat like a King’s court due to its hierarchical nature. From his considerable experience working with directors, he commented that he has often found them to be more indecisive than one might expect.

Soon after The Madness of King George, the world of professional editing was finally starting to become revolutionized by digital technology. At first Anwar, like others in his profession, resisted the new tools. But soon he embraced it, quickly learning to appreciate the flexibility it would offer. “I love technology, especially Lightworks,” said Anwar.

Sound Doctrine

Sound is very important to Tariq, and the advent of a non-linear approach opened up new methods to work with it. Traditionally the editor’s ability to work with sound was limited when cutting with film. The locked visual edit was sent to a specialized sound editor to finish the mixing, as it was too much for the editor to do it himself. But today’s NLEs allow an editor to work with audio from the beginning, adding multiple tracks of audio, experimenting with different music selections and mixing it all together if he or she chooses. According to Anwar “you can end up with a full soundtrack” by the time the editing is finished.

In fact, Mr. Anwar’s selections for temp music often make it to the final cut. This was the case with the musical passages heard in The Kings Speech, many of which were chosen by Anwar.

Editing Beauty

When director Sam Mendes asked Tariq Anwar to cut American Beauty (1999), he happened to be finishing an edit on another film. However, Anwar quickly jumped on the project, which featured stars Annette Benning and Kevin Spacey. While Mendes was a noted stage director in Britain, the film was his debut feature. Anwar gives a lot of credit to him for how he handled the editing of the picture. “Sam is the kind of director that likes to sit next to you and get involved with the process,” Anwar stated.

While Anwar has a high regard for Mendes, having a director at your shoulder doesn’t always work out for the best. When asked about working with directors in general, he commented “It’s better when the director isn’t there”. Mr. Anwar also mentioned that he regularly uses the Internet to show busy directors his progress on the film.

In a related question, when someone asked him what he thought about directors who try to co-edit the film on their own laptops, Anwar was less than enthusiastic, citing a “question of authorship”. He also mentioned that theater directors tend not to overdrive the process and are “not as meddlesome”.

The sequence from American Beauty screened was where the main characters—played by Spacey and Benning—attend a basketball game to see their daughter perform her cheerleading routine. Initially reluctant to attend the game, Spacey’s attitude changes when he becomes transfixed by the beauty of one of the cheerleaders, a friend of his daughter’s. Eventually, everything fades away but the two of them. The viewer, in turn, becomes as lost as Spacey in his juvenile erotic fantasy.

During his comments on film, Anwar stated that the most important thing in editing was “pacing”. He also said that, in some ways, “the role of an editor is to redirect the film”.

Working with Directors

According to Anwar, the editor must be honest and courageous with the director. It seems, however, that not all directors take criticism well. He recalled a feature where he expressed his frank opinion of the material being handed to him by a novice director. After telling her he didn’t think her approach was working, Anwar was summarily relieved of his duties. Even though he brought great experience to the project, he “wasn’t being nurturing enough”.

Everyone had a good laugh, though, when we heard that the film went through five other editors after him. While it is common throughout the industry for editors to be hired and fired during the high pressure atmosphere of a feature project, Anwar has only had to walk out that door three times during his long career. “You can’t worry about getting fired for making comments,” Tariq noted.

Anwar said that as a director, Robert DeNiro was “brave and not afraid to take risks”. For the production of DeNiro’s The Good Shepherd, a trailer with a Lightworks setup was positioned near the set during shooting. He commented that most directors usually don’t like an actor entering the editing room. But for DeNiro, it was the reverse. The famed actor turned director wanted to show his actors cuts of their scene, pulling them into the trailer to play it out.

The Kings Speech

For the final sequence shown that evening, we returned to The Kings Speech. King George VI, father of the current Queen of England, was struggling through various strenuous exercises to overcome his stammering speech impediment. In the feature, this sequence is intercut with a scene of him giving a speech in an English factory.

At first, the exercise sequence was meant to appear on its own. The director, Tom Hooper, felt that the scene was not working however, but he wasn’t sure what to do with it. At Anwar’s suggestion, it was cut with the footage of the Factory which they were actually thinking of getting rid of. The resulting sequence cut from the combined scenes was spectacular.

Music is a crucial part of the editing process to Anwar. “The beginning of editing a film is boring” he said, “It gets more fun later when music is added. That’s when it comes alive,” he said. He certainly must have a feeling for how music works in a film: As noted before, many of the musical passages in The Kings Speech were chosen by Anwar.

Reflecting on what he thinks makes the role of the editor enjoyable, he observed that “hundreds of people are providing stuff for you to play with”.

— Dan Ochiva contributed to this article.

As we have mentioned, we’ll be doing an ongoing series of reviews and articles about Adobe Creative Suite (CS). Among other improvements in the recently upgraded software package–now in version 5.5–are Adobe Audition with its slick audio-for-video editing on both Mac OS and Windows platforms and the snappy speed improvements of the Mercury Playback Engine when compositing and editing, especially when paired with Nvidia Quadro cards.

If you ever speak with hands-on creative David Dessel, you’ll soon realize that he enjoys learning the latest hardware gear and software apps as much as he does using them to create his productions. Working out of his Manhattan-based boutique Metaphor Pictures, he produces commercials, Webisodes, music videos, and corporate videos with a client roster that includes Dell, Chevrolet, IBM, and The History Channel.

Besides directing, Dessel will often grab a camera to shoot; an early RED user, he’s also relied on DV cams, Betacams, various Panasonic gear and now DSLRs.

Dessel shoots with one of his favorite cameras, the RED One.

Like many small company owners, Dessel doesn’t only shoot but also posts much of his own work, which includes creating After Effects compositions. Until recently, he regularly used Final Cut Pro (FCP) as his NLE of choice.

He first used the CS4 version of Adobe Premiere Pro as it was one of the few NLEs to enable the mastering of Blu-ray discs. He became more impressed when he found the app could also edit RED footage natively. While intrigued, Dessel still went back to FCP, which he considered easier to work with for his day-to-day editing.

But by the time he saw a demo of CS 5, Dessel was ready to make big changes to his daily workflow. Already an accomplished Adobe After Effects user for over a decade, he appreciated the reworked interface in Premiere Pro CS 5 and its tight integration with AE.

“I’ve used After Effects and Final Cut together for quite some time,” says Dessel. “But this meant sending out (tracks from the FCP timeline) to After Effects to render out and then importing the file back in to Final Cut’s render bin to complete. If I had revisions to do I might end up spending 50-percent of my time just to handle input, output and rendering.”

Over the past half year, Dessel has shifted all of this editing and compositing to CS 5.5. “I didn’t plan on that, it just happened,” says Dessel. “But I now feel that I’ve probably doubled my productivity since I’m doing much less file management. It’s just more fun to do the creative work and lose the grunt work.”

Other aspects of the new software suite appeal to him. “Working with audio is very painless,” says Dessel. Depending upon a client’s budget, he will also mix audio on projects.

The overall processing speed improvements are key to keeping client’s happy. “Clients are happy things are happening really fast,” says Dessel. “I recently edited eight shots for a Google ad that I shot with a Canon 5D. I completed the whole edit within two hours. With everything running in real time, I had no render outs, nothing to slow me down, and that’s important with a client sitting next to me.”

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years. Being able to work without all the usual file management duties just makes it fun again.”

You can visit David Dessel’s site here.

Adobe’s page on Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium.

Craig McKay at EditFest Shortcuts. Photo credit: D. Ochiva

You don’t get very many chances to spend an evening screening and interviewing a distinguished editor whose work on movies including Reds and Silence of the Lambs makes him a living legend within the cinema community. (He’s a very modest guy to boot, so he’d never use that attribution.)

I had that chance a couple of weeks ago when I attended the first EditFest Shortcuts, an event co-sponsored by Manhattan Edit Workshop and the Editor’s Guild that included a one-on-one screening and Q&A dedicated to explicating an experienced editor’s career, in this case, Mr. McKay, who talks about lessons learned working with one of the best editors we’ve had: Dede Allen.

My article is now posted on the Editor’s Guild website. If you’d like to see how a major editing talent began, and learned to deal with a variety of challenges in his career, you can read more here.

Bryant Frazer of StudioDaily offers a short, informative take on Sean Dunne; the 28-year old Brooklyn-based documentary maker has been creating a series of sharply-shot portraits and other shorts that he posts on his web site and on Vimeo.

His first short “The Archive”–about record-collector Paul Mawhinney–took Dunne to the Sundance Film Festival and Silver Docs. You’ll also see promos he’s done for The History Channel and an ad or two. Dunne has a good sense for selecting the right characters and situations. Worth checking out.

I met the ebullient Norman Hollyn at the recent EditFest, the now annual collection of top feature and doc editors sharing their know-how. (There’s a West coast version that has been going on for a few more years. Info here on both.)

He’s an animated guy who seems to have a hand everywhere; an author and editor, he started his editing career in New York, but now runs the Editing Track at the USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.

This past week Hollyn launched a web site–2 Reel Guys– that takes on one of his pet peeves. “There are lots of web sites that will tell you every last thing you want to know about the latest video technology,” says Hollyn. “But I’ve found next to nothing on what should be a filmmaker’s real concern—how to convey story.”

Creating a Siskel & Ebert-like atmosphere is Hollyn’s partner and co-creator of the site, Larry Jordan, a well-known digital media trainer and lecturer.

Their idea? Create a series of free webcasts that push story to the front of attention, showing how technology can be put at the service of visual storytelling. They have 20 shows in the can now, with new ones set to go up every two weeks. Avid is the site’s sponsor.

The NLE maker has taken a beating in market share from the surge of younger users going for Apple’s Final Cut Pro, though the Tewksbury, Mass.-based company still claims the majority of feature film editors use their app.

Highly recommended.

It’s no secret. Solid, paying jobs in journalism (television or otherwise) are disappearing fast. So are jobs in video production, engineering and other facets of what was once termed “the television industry.”…Even if you get a job, the pay is much less than in an earlier era. The situation in the traditional TV industry, to put it lightly, is not very promising.

Frank Beacham, a long-time industry observer, continues to write his interesting, useful columns for the TV Technology site–that’s an excerpt above from the most recent one of April 28th. I wanted to quote a bit from this column because it starts to give a sense of Frank’s long term, far-reaching overview of the industry. You’ve yet to read his advice, generous and uplifting as ever.

I met Frank years ago on the press circuit and know him as a sharp, funny guy who still has the charm of an old Southern gentleman, which he is.

I also wanted to point out this particular column as it has some good, down-to-earth advice for anyone kicking around for new work; the column is inspiring enough that you might still feel there’s something out there for you, and figure some ways of getting there with his advice. While the observations about trends in video production and the Internet won’t surprise most any regular observers of the industry, it’s still helpful to have someone who can identify where, how, and what steps you might take to make a business in these turbulent times.

As to Frank’s monthly column? It’s just a good down home read on a regular basis. For the full Frank, don’t forget to check out his website.

Bobbie O’Steen’s interviews with top editors at the downtown 92nd Street Y–more properly known as 92YTribeca–are great evenings involving smart talk with a top editor and a screening of their film for a minor charge of $12.

Bobbie does these events as part of an ongoing series spun out of her popular editing craft book The Invisible Cut: How Editors Make Movie Magic. I covered a previous evening for the Motion Pictures Editors Guild magazine and had a lot of fun hearing what went on with the production and post on Altman’s Gosford Park.

Thursday’s event brought film editor John Gilroy, A.C.E. to screen and discuss the well-regarded George Cluny star’d Michael Clayton (2007), a film that includes a knockout performance by one of my faves, Tilda Swinton (she won an Oscar as best supporting actor for the role).

I’ll be covering this for the Editors Guild magazine, so check out the link to the online version which I’ll post as soon as it’s ready. If you haven’t seen the movie, get it from Netflix for two hours of a well-written script, great acting, fantastic cinematography courtesy of Robert Elswit, and yes, a well-edited adult entertainment.

I don’t know how familiar you are with NYC life–Channel 25–the flagship station of NYC Media. It’s very watchable, especially since Mayor Bloomberg and spark plug Katherine Oliver (also known as NYC Media President and General Manager) greatly revamped what was, up until the complete makeover in the Mayor’s first term, a gloomy, had-something-to-do-with-CUNY property.

(The city station is a bit bigger than just a TV net, as it’s the “official TV, radio and online network of the City of New York”.)

If you haven’t tuned into any of the shows that have become hits (Kelly Choi’s Eat Out New York draws responses that seem to veer between “love her” to “worse thing to happen to NYC food culture in some time”), you really aught to. For anyone considering what goes into good Web and info design when you have such a huge and sprawling creature like the NYC gov’t to deal with…well, you need to check out the website, as it’s some of the best design going.

Anyway, all this is to lead up to today’s announcement of the new television line-up on NYC life, which actually premieres on Monday, May 10. There’s a new approach to saving money when possible; the announcement claims that the new lineup won’t cost a thing. That’s right, NYC Media will now run 15 new series “valued at $4 million” and not dun you or me.

How’s that? And what’s the production angle here? Well, the city is saving money because of “partnerships” with established players (they’re getting some shows from networks including History, A&E, and WNBC-TV) as well as “accepting” series from indie producers and production companies looking for a platform for their series.

So if you are among those developing a series that might not immediately have a chance at making money but still have the moxie that could make it into something bigger, you could do worse than go with our own vibrant little cable network NYC life. The contact page for queries can be found here.