Let’s go back to the summer of 2004. This brings us to Los Angeles, California in USC’s Cinema production division. I decided to take a summer documentary course taught by Wendy Apple. It was a lot of fun, meeting students from all over the world, and I ended up with this video on a 6’7″ German surfer, The Alchemy Hour. It was definitely a video I created many years ago as its hopefully obvious.
I remember our professor mentioning how she was directing a documentary on editing. I’ve always had an interest in editing, ever since the beginning. From in-camera editing when I was probably 10 years old to being able to edit in high school in our TV production class, taught by the wonderful Mr. Profeta, a.k.a. Pro. I love editing. It’s magic, that simple. Why? Just by the choices you make when cutting, where you place various shots & audio, for how long… you have the control to create completely different worlds. I wish I could edit life!
Wendy Apple’s documentary on editing always stuck in the back of my mind, curious how I could watch it. Thanks to another student in the class, I recently found it! The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing can be bought or rented! It’s rather intriguing and enjoyable to hear directors, actors, and other successful people in the film industry talking about editing.
Believe it or not, in the early days editors were mostly women as cutting film could be compared to sewing. Today, as I’ve read here, only 18% of movie editors are women. I believe we were the last class at USC to be able to edit our 16mm black & white shorts using a flatbed. Quite the experience! It helps put things in perspective. Thank goodness for non-linear editing. I hope you can check out this documentary, I definitely recommend it.
In 2003 I decided to try & get my own radio show. At the time, University of Southern California’s radio waves did not exceed too far out of south central but we did have an online presence. Listeners could tune in from anywhere in the world via web. In order to have your own radio show it was a requirement to intern with one first. I chose the reggae guy at 11pm on Sundays. I even went to a reggae festival in San Diego to try and make up for my lack of knowledge on the genre. Not sure if anyone has been to a reggae festival inside a stadium in California, it was an aventure.