Last week I delivered a presentation on the Avid stand at BVE about developing a career as an editor, specifically an editor moving into drama. It’s a five stage plan, the first two stages taking around one or two years each, stage three, four and five could easily be a lifetime. If you want to [...]

Today I went to the BVE show at the ExCeL center in East London, a three day trade show for film and television people with a very heavy emphasis on tech and software. Avid asked me to present on their stand, which was quite an honour. And with the help of ace editor Eddie Hamilton, [...]

This editing masterclass from NAB 2012 with my good friend Eddie Hamilton, just went live. If you are working in features either as an editor, writer, director or producer, you will find this presentation an excellent 30 minute investment. Put the kettle on, switch off the phone and press play… If you enjoy it, you [...]

With 50 Kisses and editing the videos for the LSF going on simultaneously, we have several USB drives being moved around several Avid computers to handle the massive data throughput. Yesterday I got a drive problem I have had before – for some reason, Avid or Windows, or a combination of the two, lock access [...]

Last week I attended a test screening of a feature film at BAFTA and I thought I would share my thoughts on common editorial mistakes when close to locking picture. Common mistake number one… It doesn’t make sense (the elephant in the room that the film makers cannot see). Everyone who read the script, then [...]

Last week, film editing heavyweight Avid released their iPad app, Avid Studio, taking on Apple’s own iMovie app head on. I used iMovie last year for a family wedding video where I shot on my iPhone, edited on iPad and premiered for the family during the wedding dinner, blog post here. It was a real [...]

One question that always comes up at the Guerilla Film Makers Masterclass is which editing tool should I use? There is no straight answer to this, and we get into the detail in the masterclass, but this video above gives a great and indepth view into both Avid and FCPX systems. What should you consider [...]

If I had a second career, I suspect I would have been an editor. I learned very early on that editing is perhaps the most powerful tool in the film making process – that is of course after the freedom of imagination in the script process, the tyranny of budget and fallibility of human beings [...]