#56 How To Get An Editing Gig | John Quinn

Landing your first editing gig can be tricky, but there are a few ways you can stand out.

This week, John Quinn, editor, shares his tips on getting started as an editor in Hollywood. In this episode, he talks about working union vs. non-union, the benefits of having an agent, and tips on how to get into the industry.

John’s resume includes Windtalkers, The Chosen, and The Grudge 3.

Watch to learn how you can get started as an editor in Hollywood.

Key Points:

1:18 – Why get into editing
4:19 – Getting the job for Windtalkers
6:55 – SciFi Channel Movies
9:03 – Cutting horror films

Skip to: 10:27 Cutting The Chosen

14:28 – Why edit horror and faith-based films
18:50 – Comparing Union vs. Non-union
23:28 – Kappa Studios

Skip to: 25:42 Are agents helpful

32:27 – How to stand out as a beginner
36:10 – Favorite Gear
38:01 – When something goes wrong
49:39 – Creative vision different from the director

Skip to: 54:30 Best advice for cutting dialogue scene

54:30 – Best advice for cutting dialogue scene
55:55 – When to hire the sound house
58:24 – What would you tell your younger self
59:44 – The power of networking
62:08 – Getting fired

Links:

#39 Directorial Debut | Part 1 with Sydney Tooley
Kappa Studios
Christian Film Finishing Fund
Art Of The Cut
John’s IMDB

Imdb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1016173/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_3
Imdb pro: https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm1016173?s=44c01ee1-69e0-05e2-7b0c-ebc15a136c4c&site_preference=normal
Youtube: https://youtu.be/5WKLD6vTeho
Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnquinneditor/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnsquinn/
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/JohnQuinn/

The Chosen:
https://watch.angelstudios.com/thechosen

Transcript:

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What do I wish? Uh, I had known before coming out here, I wish I would’ve known that, you know, once you get your foot in the door and then, and then once you get your second job, it’s it, it it’s going to happen. You’re con you are gonna continue to work. You shouldn’t stress out about not working ever again.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to the practical filmmaker. An educational podcast brought to you by the filmmaker Institute and sun’s screen film festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts in the steps they took to find their success today on today’s show editor, John Quinn talks win talkers, horror, and Jesus from his last 20 years of experience, as an editor for Blumhouse Netflix, and now the chosen find the full transcripts and more@thepracticalfilmmaker.com. I’m your host, Ty to Mustgrave. And today we have the John Quinn who has over 20 years of television and feature editing experience and horror action and war films like win talkers projects for Hulu and Tim Robbins. He now finds himself as the editor for the largest crowdfunded media project in history, the chosen welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Thank you. It’s an editor to be here. It’s uh, I’ve I’ve seen some of the guests you’ve had, and I’m, I’m like, wow. She wants me to be part of these people. It’s a, it’s amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
You know, I’m stoked because like, I, I’m pretty sure we’ve only had one other editor on here. We always like to dive into roles that we don’t necessarily hear a lot from. So how did you get where you are now? Why, why editing?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Why editing? Well, when I was fifth or sixth grade, the fan family got a video camera and I immediately started making stupid movies with my friends and I was doing in camera editing. So there, there was no actual editing. Once I made a, a film with my best friend and he played two different characters. And instead of shooting everything on one side and then shooting everything on the other side, he would do costume changes. I’d have him say he, his first couple lines, I would hit stop. Then he would put the other costume on and turn it around. It wasn’t until I took TV broadcasting in high school that I discovered editing and just fell in love with it. So I knew that’s what I wanna do. Went to film school in Chicago. I went to Columbia college, Chicago, and about six months before I moved out to California, I got my hands on the west coast, alumni directory.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Like this was before Facebook, my space, whatever, you know, there was no social media. It wasn’t easy to track down people and contact them. So I got the west coast alumni. I found an assistant editor who had come and spoken to my college. And so I, I tracked him down and chatted online. And he said, when you come out here, we’ll do lunch. And that’s what we did. We did lunch. His name’s Philip Bartel. You can look him up. He’s a editor. Now we met up for lunch. And then one week later he got a phone call saying, Hey, uh, we’re looking for a post-production assistant. Do you know anybody? And he said, well, I just had lunch with this guy. Uh, here’s his info and bam, you know, one day on this movie, which was a Robert Altman film called DRT the women. I was a huge Robert Altman fan. I couldn’t believe that was happening. So this your

Speaker 2 (02:54):
First gig that’s this

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Is my gig. That was my first gig. Now mind you, it sounds like, it sounds like I moved out to California and I had lunch as soon as I got out there and I got high. No, I had seven or eight job interviews before laying in that gig. I received two rejection letters, which I kept, I still have a rejection letter from trailer park, the, uh, premier trailer, you know, movie trailer, company. Mm-hmm so, yeah, I had been out there for, for about two months when, when that happened and I couldn’t believe it was happening one week on that became a month. And then it became the entire film. And I saw my name on the big screen and the end credits when the movie came out in October of 2000 and it was just, it was mind blowing. Yeah, it was mind blowing. So that’s, that’s, that’s how I got my foot in the door. Mm-hmm

Speaker 2 (03:37):
mm-hmm , you know, and then went from,

Speaker 1 (03:41):
So after, uh, that movie wrapped DRT the women, I went back to home to Chicago for a month. I went back for two weddings. So I stayed for a whole month. And while I was in Chicago, now I didn’t have anything lined up. I had no idea what was gonna happen next. Yes. And I had a panic attack. At one point, I was watching Chicago Cubs games. I understand that. And I had a panic attack. I’ve never had a panic attack. It really, you do think you’re having a heart attack. And I was in my early twenties. Here’s one thing I wanna tell young people is that once you get your foot in the door, once you have that first gig, that is when you want to meet people. That is the best time to network. Because what I did was I was working on Dr.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
T in the women and, uh, the Robert Altman film. And I contacted this person who was working at MGM post production, who was, who was in that alumni directory. I’d reached out to her before I moved out to California. So I reached out to her again and said, Hey, I’m, I’m down the street from you. I didn’t know you’re at MGM. I’m here in Santa Monica. And so she called me one day after I got back, maybe a couple weeks into being back. And she said, Hey, there’s this John w world war II movie. And they need a postproduction assistant. Are you interested? I’m like, are you kidding me? When she told me this on the phone, I was looking up at a movie poster of John W’s the killer, which is like his Hong Kong action masterpiece. I couldn’t believe I’m looking at a poster with John w film and I’m getting the call to work on a John w film. Oh gosh. And so I, I worked on that for a year and a half as a post-production assistant, which meant I was getting lunch is for people getting coffee, picking up film that was back in the film days. Okay. And I saw, I saw a lot of interesting things go down on that film. It was crazy, cuz that was huge

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Div divulge.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
That was a huge movie. It was over 100, 150 million. And

Speaker 2 (05:21):
This is winds talkers. By the way, this

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Is, this is win talkers. And I think enough time is ELAP that I can just say what I saw the, the director delivered his director’s cut to the studio and it was three hours long. And the studio said, no, you, we are not gonna put out a three hour movie, cut the movie down. And so what they did is they brought in a huge big time, fix it. Guy editor named Tom Roth. Tom is working in one room, cutting the movie down as he sees fit. Meanwhile, the director is working with his editor, cutting the movie down the way he sees fit. So they present both cuts to the studio and the studio went with the shorter one. The one that Tom Ralph did, the, the, the editor that they hired, they went with his cut. Tom had just been hired only to do this recut.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
He was not hired to like stay on John woos editor, the director’s editor. He was livid that they didn’t go with the, their cut and he quit the movie. He quit and walked away. He was not fired. He, he quit. He was very insulted just up. And, and so, yeah. And so Tom got on the phone with his agent. He’s like, no, I did not sign up to like stay on. And so he made a lot of big time demands, big time money in the studio, Matt, you know, gave it to him. Dang and that’s and then so it was,

Speaker 3 (06:38):
And that’s what you see.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
That’s what, yeah. And so that’s, that was the cut, you know, and it was crazy to see an editor. The director was asking the editor, can we do this? Can we do that? I mean, Tom kind of had, was, was above the director. It was wild after wind talkers. Finally I found a gig through an, an there a, a guy gone to the same college as me who was working on a sci-fi channel movies. This was before shark NATO. This is, they were actually shooting these, but, but they were still sci-fi channel movies. They, these were the Saturday night movies of the week. This was a studio that provided product to them. They shot their movies in Bulgaria and they edited the films in America. And so I came in as the assistant editor, I was paid barely more than what unemployment gave out the office PA was making more money than me as the assistant editor.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
What? Yeah, I made more, I think I, I did make more money as a PA , but I didn’t know how to get hired as an assistant editor. Yeah. Anywhere else. Yeah. I loved editing so much. I really just wanted the fastest path to become an editor as possible. Of course. And when this, when this opportunity presented itself, I was like, well, okay, cool. A bunch of stuff. Maybe I can move up. And that’s what happened after about a year and a half, they were always working on about four to six movies a year and they, and they was a staff position. I’m sure most of your listeners know every job out here is freelancers. Rarely. Do you get a staff position in the film street? Yeah. Yeah. This was great. It was a, I mean, even though the pay sucked, it was a staff position.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
So one editor left and they were trying to figure out who they’re gonna hire to be an editor. And the post supervisor said, well, how about John? And they, and the owner said, well, no, he, he, how do we know if he can edit? And the post supervisor had seen, I had cut a lot of gag scenes. Uh, I would take scenes from films. We were working on and create, like there was an alien film and I made a short film and I made the film about these two aliens that were like in love with each other and said it to romantic music. And it, they were, there was nothing like that in the film. You know, I put, I put it, I put it to the song, the look of love . And so I had done enough gag scenes. I created something outta nothing.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
And so the, that was good enough for the post supervisor to say, right, give it, give it to John. Right. And I continued editing there and I edited every other movie that came through there. I was ne I was just constantly editing for a good four or five years. And they did only sci-fi channel stuff. But I had an amazing opportunity that came through when they partnered with Sam Ram’s company, ghost host pictures to do some straight to video horror film, sequels mm-hmm and I loved horror. And so I got to cut the grudge three. I got to cut boogieman three boogieman three was the first movie that, that was the first one that I did for Sam Ram’s company. Okay. Okay. And I remember thinking, you know, this is just a straight to video horror film. I just, I don’t know. I imagined that drag’s gonna come in and, you know, we’ll, we’ll work on it together, but we’re gonna kind of make fun of it.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
We’re not gonna take it that seriously, but it was really, really interesting to see how, and I mean, in a good way, how seriously he took the main character’s storyline and the performances and the drama of it all, you know, he, wasn’t making it in a way that we looked down on the audience and I, that really kind of changed my perspective on yeah. What it’s like to work on horror films. Interesting. And, and from then on out, that’s, that’s the way I approach, I I’ve never worked on anything where I thought, oh, these are for bottom feeder, mind people that just watch crap, you know? Yeah. No, I, I I’ve always taken it. I’m not a very serious person, but you know, I, I take it seriously, the storyline and, and everything and everything I’ve done. Mm-hmm yeah. So I got to cut the grudge three, which is, you know, has some iconic imagery know with the main character and the son, the ghost girl and the, and the ghost son.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
So horror and the chosen like that, that seems like such an interesting dichotomy. How did that one come about?

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Okay. So the chosen, how the chosen came about? Well, after the grudge three, I started cutting many more horror films over the years. And, and in fact, I wound up meeting the show runner for the chosen. My last project was a horror film called tale hood two mm-hmm . All right. And so there’s this post-production facility in Burbank called CAPA studios. Mm-hmm and CAPA only does faith in family films. Actually, they had just, they, they made that move about five or six years ago. They used to do everything. Okay. I mean, I mean, this place recorded the audio commentary for last house on the left. You know, they recorded the audio commentaries for lost, like, you know, and they, you know, they did other films and such, but then they, they closed their doors to anything but faith and family films. So I had gotten the receptionist, the job there at CAPA studios.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
And so I was just coming by just to say hello, I was set to start cutting a crew Christmas movie there also, but the footage wasn’t ready. And so I’m not even in the, the, the hallway for more than a minute, when all of a sudden the owner, the company, Paul calls me up and he goes, Hey, Johnny, how you doing? I’m like, hi, Paul. And he starts, he starts to speak. And I’m like, Paul I’m here. He’s like, what do you mean here? And I’m like, I’m here in the hallway. He’s like, get in here. . And so he tells me about this TV show called the, the show is in the director is here. He’s looking for an editor, sit around, watch this short film. He made the Christmas thing, this Christmas short, and I’ll, you know, I’ll introduce you to, cause I think you might be a good fit.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
I watch the short I’m there in the hallway. Dallas comes walking up the stairs. I stalked him on Facebook. I knew what he looked like. I saw, we had mutual friends and he comes up the stairs and I go, hi, are you Dallas Jenkins? And he says, why? Yes I am. And I said, hi, I’m John Quinn thinking, okay. Paul must have told, told him, told Dallas about me. And he says, Dallas says, John Quinn, John Quinn. He breaks out his phone. He looks it scrolls down. And he tells me, your agent submitted you for my TV show two hours ago. he op he clicks on the resume and he says tales from the hood too. Huh. And I’m like, yeah, you know, what are you gonna do? And, and so, so the, the chosen, by the way, I, for those that don’t know, the chosen is the first multi-season in television show about Jesus and the disciples. It’s mainly about the disciples. It’s mainly about you see what their lives were like before they met Jesus and what their lives were like after Jesus. Yeah. And I, I never thought in a million years that working on horror films would be a plus to working on a TV show about Jesus. Yeah. But Dallas Jenkins is a very unique creative individual and it was a plus having worked on horror films mainly because the first episode of season one had an exorcism scene.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Mm that’s right.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah. Yeah. It had an exorcism scene. Yeah. And to him, that was a plus another thing that I didn’t know at the time, but it was a plus in his head was that he feels that horror film people like horror film fans, they, they they’re movie geeks and that’s what he wanted. And so we sat there at the conference table for two hours just talking shot. I told my wife, I’m like about, I’m about to go meet with this director. I’ll text you when I’m out. And I mean, two hours go by and she doesn’t hear from me. And, and it was great. It was, it was fantastic. I mean, we talked about, we didn’t talk about other faith films. Really? The walking dead is something that came up mm-hmm that was referenced. And yeah. He talked about one, flew was a Cuckoo’s nest. It was a film that had a huge impact on him. And it was fantastic. And then a couple weeks later, you know, got the offer.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
I, I feel as artists and filmmakers, it starts with like a seed of passion, you know, like you cutting those gag reels, kind, that kind of a thing like, and that really connects with some aspect of the gig, the people, the gadget to genre or the money like commercial . Yeah. Um, like in, in a lot of Christian filmmaking, like the chosen, it’s the message, you know, that you connect with like, however, there’s the flip side as a freelancer or sole proprietor. That part of us is somewhat forced to be a lot more disconnected with the work because it’s work it’s bread. Right. And again, I’m so fascinated with these two genres that you’re so strong in that seem at such opposite ends. Like I’m, I’m curious what that common aspect is, or like what parts of horror that you connect with and what parts of the chosen that you connect with.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
I think the best horror films, if you think about it, the best ones usually are great dramatic films. You could probably remove the horror element and it’s still a compelling story, you know, depending on the film mm-hmm , but some of them, you know, cuz usually there’s more going on. It’s not just the horror aspect of something that’s going on in a character’s life. Mm-hmm what, what I love about horror films is because that’s, it’s really displays the power of editing. You know, creating suspense, suspense is created in the edit, how long you hold on a shot and how long you don’t hold on a shot. How long you hold on a shot before you release attention. Right. Mm-hmm great. Horror. Usually we’ll have some comic relief. We’ll have some, some stuff that relieves tension. And so that’s, that’s what I love. It’s like just getting to play in the sandbox of so many different elements of sound effects and music.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
And I think that’s one of the things I just, I, I love about horror. You know, mm-hmm, , there’s nothing better than watching something that you’ve worked on and watching it with an audience and seeing them act, whether it’s laughing, jumping, screaming, or, or crying mm-hmm oh, when, when, when you’re sitting next to someone that’s watched something you’ve done and they’re crying, that’s it is amazing. I connect with the characters, some of them, Matthew, in particular, if you watch the show, Matthew, the tax collector is portrayed as someone that’s on the spectrum. Mm-hmm , who’s socially awkward. and he’s a germophobe. I don’t think I’m on the spectrum. Maybe I am. Cuz I remember years that films come out and stuff like that, my wife hates playing movie trivia with me. I love cutting dialogue scenes. I love drama and cutting people talking.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Mm. And obviously the chosen has, has a lot of that. Mm-hmm in season one, there’s a scene between Jesus and Nicodemus. And I wanna say at least eight minutes long, if not, mm-hmm more and it’s very compelling people mm-hmm are very compelled and that’s some of people’s favorite scene in season one. Yeah. And, and I love that if you think about it, it was really a great transition from horror into KA show about Jesus. The fact that there is this exorcism scene mm-hmm the first cut of theism scene in the chosen. Yeah. Was very, was cut like hardcore horror film when she was possessed. I brought in that low and rumble, you know, that you’ll hear like, it’s like, you know, it’s typical of like Paranal activity whenever there’s a ghost. Yeah. Thing about to happen. So I I’ve amped up the low and rumble.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
I used tent music. I used the score from exorcism of Emily Rose when lith spoke she’s possessed. Right by demons. When li spoke, I altered her voice to, it sounded just like something out of evil, dead too. Like it’s the same. Like it sounded just like the SIM similar audio effect when she spoke. Oh. And, and also when she’s moving screaming, like she’s kind of contorting her body a little bit. We put in sound effects of bone breaking, like little bone cracks. Oh it was so gnarly. Yeah. And it was long too. Like, you know, it was kind of long and I held on some shots here and there. Um, and then, and then D saw that he was like, no, no, no, no. Pull it back. Needs to be a little bit more realistic.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Still a good balance though. I think

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then there was a demonic in season two, there was a scene with the demo and, and I cut that like a, like a horror film mm-hmm and what I mean by that is, I, I don’t know who coined it, but there’s like the three D’s when it comes to horror, dark distant, dangerous. And I took that to heart actually just in my mindset as I cut the, the demonic scene in season two mm-hmm so that I kept the, the, the demonic guy and, you know, distant. And didn’t always show him in my original cut, you know, mm-hmm, tried to show him like maybe from a distance. And when I did go show him in a closeup, I went with dangerous. What was the most revolting, scary footage on him when I would go to the closeups on him. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So some of it still remains, but we did a lot of re cutting, you know? Ah,

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Well I’m mean as, as wide of a spectrum as that is, there’s also a wide spectrum. I think that, like, I feel like you’ve worked on a, a, a wide spectrum on budgets as well, because like, you know, you have the low budget, high grossing, suitably non-union genre yep. Of horror to high budget feature in commercial filmmaking. I mean, let’s talk about that for a bit. mean you’ve had experience across television documentary and features union, and non-union, I’d love to hear a comparison of rates that newcomers could expect.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Okay. Well, I’ll, I’ll tell you that this wasn’t something that was offered to me, but I know someone that recently was offered $2,500. Hmm. For the entire edit of a movie, is that horrible? Isn’t that horrible? I told this person, she’s someone that I’m kind of mentoring. I told her your time is so much better spent just doing other things. , you know, that that’s just a nightmare, a movie that is that low of BU of a budget. It’s not gonna go anywhere. It’s not played a film festival. It’s not gonna do anything for your career. It’s it’s, you know, this person probably is not gonna go anywhere if they’re offering that. But I haven’t worked on anything that has a, has had a, a huge budget, but I would say things are reasonable. If you look at the chosen. Yes. I mean, chosen season three, each episode, I think it’s budgeted at like 2.8 million.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
And that’s definitely, this is like the biggest budgeted thing I’ve ever worked on. Uh, yeah, but I’ve definitely worked on things that are like 200,000, $300,000. I did edit a documentary for $5,000 flat rate, but it was a passion project for me. So that was fine. That was fine. If you look at my IMDB, it’s like, oh my gosh, this guy is just worked, worked, worked, worked work. But there was a dry spell once I had a dry spell. I mean, I always dry spells coming. I mean, definitely, but the longest dry spell I ever had was probably nine, 10 months. This film came along and me and the director got along great. I loved the story. He had done the first cut. And then when they told me what the rate was, I was so insulted. It was barely more than, than unemployment. And I didn’t respond for three days.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
And then I called him and I said, okay, sure. Because there was nothing. Yeah, there nothing, there was nothing else going on. And by the way, the unemployment, um, insurance that you get is $450. So it wasn’t much more than $450 a week, but there was nothing else happening that was the smallest amount of money I’d ever been paid to edit. But what’s funny is at the time that was the same year that I got paid. My next gig, I got paid the most amount of money that I’d ever been paid to edit at the time. I would say generally speaking, low budget stuff, the stuff that I, that is that I’ve come across. And the rates that I’ve been told has been about like the, the lowest usually is about a thousand dollars a week. Mm-hmm , that’s kind of what I’m seeing. Okay.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Thousand dollars a week. I think your audience members that are just getting started, I think they should expect for a feature to get paid about. I know this sounds horrible. It’s a horrible rate, but it’s, but like, you know, $800 a week, mm-hmm, maybe even $600 a week, you know, if some low budget film’s gonna take a chance and someone that doesn’t have any experience mm-hmm , I’m sorry. But I think that’s what you were gonna expect to be paid $600. $800. Yeah. Yeah. You know, maybe 1000, but if you don’t really have the credits to prove it, mm-hmm, , that’s probably what you’re looking at

Speaker 2 (21:41):
And about how many weeks would that amount to be if it was like a feature or, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Well, I think with these low budget movies, what I’ve seen tend to be, and, and mind you also, I, I, you know, I I’ve, I’ve been offered some lifetime movies that I haven’t didn’t take, but I’ve seen the schedules be about seven weeks, eight weeks, which is crazy. Okay. Usually for the low budget movies that I do, it’s usually around 10 weeks. That seems to be the norm. Okay.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
All

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Right. And, and, you know, and I’m cutting on day one of them shooting. Okay. So I’ve seen I’ve, you know, that’s what I’ve seen 10 weeks.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
So for these low budgets, there’s also sometimes a matter of points as well. Have you, have you ever been offered points in exchange for an edit? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
Uh, I, I, I did receive an email from a post supervisor about a movie that, you know, I was kind of up for, this was a long time ago and they said, oh, we’re not paying anybody, but we’re offering points and all that stuff. I talked to a producer friend of mine who set me straight and it’s like, you’re never gonna see any money if you’re gonna, if they’re, if anybody’s ever offering you points, just understand that you’re, you’re not gonna see the money. You’re never gonna see that money. People offering points. That seems like to be the new thing instead of Def payment, I think deferred payment. I think people finally woke up and, and realized, oh, I’m never gonna see a deferred payment. And so now they’re, they’re offering points, but I don’t see, I don’t think, I don’t think you’ll ever get paid. Any of that. What happened was I, my producer sent me straight and explained the whole points thing. And then when I responded to the post supervisor and said, okay, so will I get paid in know, is this based on the sale of the movie? Or is this based on the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Yeah. And I never heard from them again.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Ah, of course, you

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Know, which is fine, which is fine. You know, my, I just feel like if you can’t afford to make a movie, don’t make a movie, you know?

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so right regarding those low budget films, um, you mentioned this, let’s talk about CAPA

Speaker 1 (23:31):
They’re they’re doing things like the chosen, which are really have really big budgets. Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Well this is the finishing

Speaker 1 (23:37):
House considering. Yeah. This is the finishing house. Yes. Okay. Right, right. So what’s great about CAPA is that everything is in the house. Post-production wise the it’s a one stop shop instead of having to go to all different, different places to do ADR or color or sound mix everything’s there. They got, they got, uh, I believe they can do Foley there. They have, they have a place to record ADR. They do VFX, they do online coloring and they do sound mixing and they have cutting rooms there mm-hmm and it’s pretty archable. I mean, like there was a documentary that they were doing the sound mix and they realized it would be better if we could record some narration and put this in the film. And they just, they left the mixing stage and they went, you know, walked, you know, probably 20 feet and went to an ADR booth and the guy recorded the narration and boo, they sent it back to the mix.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
It was pretty amazing. It could all happen that one stop shop, but yeah, but they’ve also do, you know, smaller budgeted films as well, you know, but like I said, mainly faith and family and they’re, they’re walking the walk and talking the talk. I mean, I, I was going to maybe do a horror film with Tom Holland. Who’s the writer director of the original flight night and child’s plate. And, and so I, I wanted to cut it at CAPA mm-hmm I said to the owner, Hey, there’s this horror film. Could we rent some space? You? And he’s like, Nope. , I’m like, but you you’ve got this space and nobody’s using it. This is like money at, at no, he, he said, no, I, I think that’s really awesome. You know? Wow. So one thing that’s really cool about CAPA is they have this Christian film finishing fund that is a nonprofit that people are donating to smaller Christian films, faith films that don’t have the budget to finish the film. And no, that, that happens so many times where they just mm-hmm run outta money. Cause it’s all spent on production. Yeah. And so CAPA comes in and they have this, like I said, they have this nonprofit that helps these smaller films bring their film, the finish line, you know, with color and mix and got it

Speaker 2 (25:29):
And everything. Yeah. Yeah. We, we can put a, we can put a link to that in the show notes. Definitely. But that’s for yeah. CAPA studios slash C FFF Christian film fun there. Okay. So we’re gonna switch gears just a little bit like this. One’s actually a listener question for those newcomers. And there are a couple of newcomer questions too. Those who are looking at agents, are they worth it? How did you go about finding one negotiating rates? All of that fun.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Oh, awesome. Okay, cool. So about agents, by the way, I didn’t really know much about agents at all until recently, almost everybody that I know does that, that has an agent does not think positively about it. An agent, Hey, here’s the most negative thing about an agent. So they take 10% of your income when you work, when you’re, when you edit a film, regardless of whether you found the job that they up,

Speaker 2 (26:16):
What?

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yes. This, this is for everybody cinematographers editors. Yeah. Yeah. They take 10% of everything. And if you look at my IMDP, I mean, I’ve, I’ve been with my agent for about five years and yeah. I mean, there’s been a lot of yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
wow.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Uh, and yeah, basically what happens is that, that the check goes to them and then they take out their 10%. So I’m probably one of the few people that will speak very positively about having an agent. Hmm. I, I love having an agent. So let, let me talk about let’s first talk about how I got to have an agent. So I added to this movie where it was a civil rights era. Aroy mm-hmm and the director did not want me to be the editor, but the network had gotten my resume and everything, and they’re like, we want John Quinn be the editor. He had somebody else, but that that’s somebody else didn’t have as much experience. Gotcha. I was forced on him and he was a really nice guy. And I thought I would never work with him again, flash forward, like a year and a half later, he called me up and we did a horror film mythology.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
We’ve now I’ve worked together four or five times when we’re friends mm-hmm , but that was the cut at CAPA. So the owner noticed that I proved myself. He knew that the director didn’t want me and I did a great job. And so he recommended me when Aisha Tyler was doing her feature film debut, which is a film called access, which was shot on seven days. It was shot in seven days and all takes place in the car. So I did that project. I went from that it immediately onto a YouTube premium series, Blumhouse televisions, first television show called 12, the end of the days, it was a Christmas horror anthology series. Okay.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
And I wound up meeting up for breakfast. I met up with someone who was one of the heads of post-production at ABC television. Okay. And I made show because it was Blumhouse. I kind of made it sound maybe a little bigger than it was. I, I did not say, oh, it’s gonna be on YouTube. You know, this is before Cobra, Kai, which really made YouTube premium what it was. Yeah. But I did talk about being a BL house television. So it kind of sound like a big deal and it kind of was. And so he said, do you have an agent? I said, I don’t. And so he kind of me on agents and he sent my information on to three different agents. Hmm. I met with two of them. And what he told me is that when you meet with them, remember they work for you.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
You are interviewing them. When I sat and met with the agents that I wound up going with one of the first things they said, when we sat down and met, one of the agents said, you know, something along the lines of, you may have not heard too many good things about agents or something along those lines. Or, or maybe you haven’t heard, maybe you heard some good things and bad things. And I replied actually, I’ve never heard a good thing about an agent. , I’ve never heard one positive thing about having an agent, but anyways, but I, I signed with them and the reason, and I went with them is because an agent seems like it’s like, they’re like a gatekeeper. You know what I mean? They, they have their finger on the pulse of what’s happening. And mm-hmm, , I, I’m just not the type of person.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
If I saw a movie that was in pre-production that I really wanted to do, I, I just can’t, I don’t even know how to go about doing it. And I just can’t promote myself like that. I, I, I just don’t feel like I have an enemy that just reached out to the line producer and say, Hey, I’m, I’m John Quinn. And I’d love to edit this movie. I don’t know. So it’s so great to have them. Mm-hmm I used to stress out between gigs. Like I’m never gonna work again, but there’s something about having these people in your corner to, to back you up and to get your name out there. Mm-hmm and they did. Yeah. Yeah. I have a friend who’s a post supervisor over at Lionsgate television and he called me up and he said, Hey, I just wanna let you know, your agent submitted you for this TV show. I just wanna let you know, your agent is doing right by you and, and submitting you.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Wow. When I signed with them at five years ago, what kind of happened the way I see it is that moving forward, I feel like 90% of the reason I’ve gotten the job is cuz of me. And 10% of the reason I got the job is cuz of that. So I, I got this movie for Blumhouse called thriller and yes, yes. I had done this, uh, sizzle reel for a television series directed by John Singleton. I worked with John Singleton, one of the producers on there. I met him and we kind of clicked. And then he brought me into interview for his slash room movie called thriller. Now I’ll never know how much it meant that when I sat there in the interview and sent and put a piece of paper with my agent’s letterhead, you know, on it, I’ll never know how much that had to do with them, like hiring me.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
But I think it maybe had 10% to do with it. You know? It gives interesting for me, it gives me legitimacy. It means, yeah, I have somebody, I have a group of people or I have an age. I have someone that believes in me Uhhuh . So right now, at this moment in time, I don’t mind giving them 10% because like I said, I’ll never know mm-hmm I think they had 10% of me getting the chosen because like I said, they had ity yeah. For the chosen. Yeah. So, and to the show runners eyes. Oh wow. This guy’s legit. It’s hard to get an agent I’ve I’ve known people that have at a, I did low budget films and they can’t get a meeting. Hmm. Um, it, it, obviously it helped that this person at ABC television presented me. Yeah. Look, the thing is, is that if you do get a credit, that is a big credit mm-hmm , you know, or if you are hired to do a movie or something, a big movie.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah. It’ll be really easy for you to find an agent that way, but it’s really hard to get an agent when you don’t have the credits. Yeah. You know, I, I was very fortunate that I had this, you know, this guy who was just very kind to present me to the, the agents, you know, what I said to them is I said, look, I just need someone to get me into the room. I do really good at job interviews. And I said, I think my biggest problem is that look at my credits, nobody has heard these movies. Nobody’s seen this stuff, but the owner of the company of the agency, she said, yes, but look at the people you’ve worked with mm-hmm , you know? Yep. People know the people that you’ve worked with mm-hmm and they came up with a great way to present my resume that included the cast, certain members of the cast. It was a really interesting resume. I’d never thought of doing something like that.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So talking about those beginners and getting those credits, what is some small detail that you would look for in a beginner? That would be an automatic you’re definitely coming out again.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
So one of the things I look for is I want them to be a techie cause I’m not a techie. So that’s a techy, someone that can do visual effects cuz I’m bad at doing visual effects. So mm-hmm, someone that knows after effects or something like that. Got it. That’s that’s, that’s a big plus for me. Yeah. Someone that is like amazing an organization. One thing I can’t stand is when I ask an assistant editor to do something and they don’t do it and don’t tell I’ve had that experience before mm-hmm oh, it’s horrible. Yeah. and I also can’t stand when they clearly misunderstand something. I said, yeah. And they don’t ask a question, you know what I mean? There’s nothing worse than, than doing, you know, eight hours of work and, and doing it wrong when they could have done like 30 minutes and then showed me.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
So I, I mean that some of that’s on me, anytime there’s a big project, I will make the assistant editor like do a little bit and then show it to me. So I used to teach at Columbia college, Hollywood and I was working in open house and they gave me a TA. And so all he was basically was gonna do was just, you know, basically turn on, you know, the keynote for me and just little things. So I could just walk around and, and I could tell that he knew his stuff with avid and then there was this no budget, web series came up and I hired him to be my assistant editor on this and he killed it. He did such a great job that when the chosen came along, the chosen was not what it is today. The chosen season one, it was a low budget thing. Mm-hmm . And so, because it was this low a thing, I felt like we could take a chance on this young man. Yeah. Who had never been an assistant editor on a, on a TV series before. Okay. And he would turn out to be one of the best assistant editors I’ve ever had. Wow.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
I think one of the reasons he’s great is cuz he he’s a techie, but he does things before I ask him to do them. He does things that at, I don’t even, he does, he does things that I don’t even realize I need to have done. You know what I mean? He does these things that are just like, oh wow, that’s a great idea. I like,

Speaker 2 (34:30):
What’s one of those things.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
One of the things he does is he will make little notes. If he needs to tell me something like there’s more footage coming in tomorrow or, or you know, anything he needs to tell me about a particular scene he puts like, I think he creates a Photoshop, a little title card that’s that I can see in the bin clearly any little notes that he wants to tell me.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Okay. You know? Okay. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, yeah. You know, B roll coming tomorrow or ah, you know, uh, uh, second half of this scene is actually in this scene bin or

Speaker 2 (35:01):
So. Okay.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Like, so that he did, because, because if he tells me when the scene bin comes in, if he tells me this information, I’m gonna forget it because yeah. Oh yeah. I might not, you know, I got so much going on. I might not look at this for his until tomorrow or the day after. So it’s, it’s, it’s incredible. I, I think it’s because I’m sure he is done well because he is done editing. I think he also thinks like what will be mm-hmm beneficial to John. Yeah. Um, and I think, and I, I do think he learned a lot from a book called art of the cut, ah, art, the cut by Steven Hall fish. I cannot recommend that book enough. Wow. It’s broken down chapter by chapter different aspects of, of editing. Mm-hmm , there’s a great chapter on organization and you can read about 50 different editors chiming in about, you know, how they like their stuff organized. And so him and I both looked to that book to, we’re always, we’re always trying to, I’m always trying to learn and trying to make things better. And so is he, and so, you know, to make things better, more efficient, faster.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Nice, nice. So , I might be asking the wrong person then if you’re, if you, if you say that you’re not a techie, but I we’re gonna ask about some of the tools of your trade about particularly your favorite old piece of gear or gadget or, you know, a software. What have you, what’s like an old, reliable or a resource and what’s a new gadget that revolutionizes, how you work

Speaker 1 (36:18):
For me. The thing I have to have on every show is a magic mouse who I, I love my magic mouse. This thing is amazing. If anyone in your own is an editor and they’ve never used this, what I love is that when you go to the left or right, if you’re, if you’re in your timeline, if to, to, to go left or right, you just, you know, go like this, you know, I don’t know. I love that. I have a folder full of old lobby cards and movie posters, you know, it’s all JPEGs and everything. Yeah. And I make that my wallpaper and I have it changed every 30 to 60 minutes. Hmm. And I also make it my screensaver and it’s films that I’ve, I’ve loved and watched. And it’s kind of inspiring to see these, you know, just be reminded of why you’re doing what you do, why you’re lucky to be doing what you’re doing.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
And, and also what’s really awesome is that if you’re working, collaborating with a director or other people in the room, these things will come up and they’ll see them and they will spark, you know, interesting conversations. Yeah. Uh, I had done one TV show where this post supervisor was in way over his head and nobody got along with him, including me. There was a great moment though, when a lobby card from alien came up, you know, and that sparked a conversation, just chatting about, you know, alien for like 15 minutes. And it was really nice. So, you know, that’s not really a gadget, but that’s something that I do on every show. And it is fun to, like I said, I think my favorite thing is when somebody’s in the room and it sparks conversation.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
About, you know, the films that we’ve loved.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, like not getting along with the post supervisor, not getting along with people. I love the stories of when things go wrong and what you did to fix it or grow from it.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Oh my gosh. Okay. So when things go wrong, okay. There’s, there’s so many things that have happened or things go wrong. A lot of it’s under, outta my control, but one, one particular thing though, and this, this changed the way I approach what an editor’s cut is on every show ever since I’ve gotten this gig, because I had done this zombie movie that had like 12 producers that were very involved. And because I handled that very well, one of those producers brought me onto, um, their next action film. And I was so excited because I had not really cut much action. And, uh, I was just excited to have that type of stuff on my, on my reel. And there were two directors. One, one was the, the main director and the other was a co-director and he had written the script. And so I went to set and I met them and we chatted a little bit.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Then I’m off, you know, cutting doing my editors, cut, just left my own devices. I, I felt, I understood the tone based on my conversation with the directors. And so it came time to watch the editors cut. And usually with the editors cut, what happens? It’s just you and the director. But for some reason, producers were there, there were two producers, the director, and we sat down and we’re watching it. And we’re about 20, 30 minutes in and the director leans forward and hits the space bar and stops the movie. And he says, I’m sorry, I, I just can’t watch anymore of this. And the producer who brought me on said, yeah, John I’m really disappointed. Oh.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
And I just, oh, it, it was so crushy and I was like, oh no. And then the director says, no, no, no, no, no, it’s not John’s fault. I was so busy directing that. I just, you know, I was just so busy with so many other things. I thought the script was in a better place. It’s the script. The script is the problem. Now here’s the thing. My understanding for an editor’s cut is that every scene is in there every bit of line of dialogue. It’s, it’s just everything. Cause my feeling was everybody read the screenplay, the producers, the director, mm-hmm everybody agreed to this script. So that should be the, for, that should be the editor’s cut is I, usually I look at it as the writer’s cut. That’s the way I look at it. Okay. You know, but it seemed like their understanding was that their feeling was, you know, John will do his thing and you know, if, if a scene doesn’t work or, you know, whatever, he’ll, he’ll remove stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
But I, that’s not the way I saw it. Yeah. Luckily though, the director was so cool. He did not like fault me for the problems of, of the movie,

Speaker 2 (40:43):
You know, but like from then on, were you able to say like, yeah, I, I kept everything in there, but I didn’t know that you wanted me to remove stuff. I will because I would’ve removed X, Y, Z.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It all out great. In the end, every time I’ve been hired, now I a conversation with the director and I say, what is the editor cut to you? Mm-hmm is it exactly as what’s written the script? Or do you want me to do it the way I see fit? You know, I have that conversation. I think it’s a really important conversation. Mm-hmm , uh, it’s almost as important as discussing what the tone of the film is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
So that was, that was, that was, that was horrible. You wanna hear a couple more?

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
So there’s this assistant editor who was put, you know, many times in these low budget films, the assistant editor is hired before the editor mm-hmm . And so this, that was the case with this one assistant editor. And he told me, oh, Hey, you know, you’re gonna edit this on this PC, this, it has 150 gigs of Ram and you can edit 4k. And I’m like, I don’t believe you. We can’t edit 4k. He’s like, no, you can. And so I went over there and I played with it. And then I started working with that footage. And about a week or two in this machine started slowing down. It was crashing. Uh, this assistant editor was lazy. He just didn’t want to down do all the work of down, converting the footage from 4k down to 10 P I, I, I, over the years, I have, since I’ve had conversations with post supervisors and other people asking, do you edit 4k? Everybody has always said, no, we never edit 4k. Yeah. Yeah. So never, never edit 4k, but this was a situation where I relied on my, an editor to be the techie who knows more than I do, but turned out, I knew more than he did, which was no, we never edit in 4k. It was horrible. Yeah. It, it, it, yeah, that was horrible. Yeah. So

Speaker 2 (42:28):
, so don’t do that.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Don’t, don’t do that. Don’t do, don’t do that.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
No,

Speaker 1 (42:33):
I don’t have any regrets, but you know, I did a couple movies where, you know, gosh, you know, I was paid $5,000 and, and I was promised another 5,000 in deferred payment. Never saw any of that. You know, that was a long time ago. That was a long time ago. So I wanna say those things went wrong, but you know, you live, you learn, but you know what, at the same time, it’s like I needed for my real, you know, I mean, or credits, you

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Know? And like, sometimes that, that is valuable, you know, like, especially when you’re first starting out some of these projects that, you know, play pay beans or nothing, but oh, it looks great. It looks great to have been a part of a project that looks, you know, of that caliber or a project of that caliber doesn’t matter what you were doing

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Absolut. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, that movie that paid me very, very little when I was on the, you know, when I had my dry spell, that movie went on to play at film festivals and win at film festivals. And it was, I think it was one of the first ones that I got to put on my resume, you know, winner of this, you know, this award at this film festival. Mm-hmm , that is, that is a great feeling when you finally get to do something like that, you

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Know? Yeah. Yeah. I’ve always heard that any free projects, all of those projects are connected to money somehow, you know, like mm-hmm, , they are connected to furthering either, you know, like your network or, you know, your skills or what have you somehow well placed free projects are connected to money.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
This one gal that I’m sort of mentoring. She took this short film that I was gonna edit and she took it because I was the editor of it and she’s done editing, you know, but she was willing to take a backseat and be assistant editor work with me and, and the, the pay was horrible and all that. But what came out of it was I’ve been offered some editing gigs where I’ve been unavailable and I’ve recommended her. She wound up editing this big thing for Netflix and it paid pretty well. And, and that, that happened because I vouched for her. Mm-hmm if you’re getting started or if you’re starting a new career path, mm-hmm, , you know, if you’re stuck in reality television, by the way, uh, reality television,

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Oh, editing

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Pays a lot of money. Really is a lot of money. Sometimes it pays more than union. What, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
How does that figure?

Speaker 1 (44:43):
I, I don’t know. I think because they know it it’s a lot of work. Yeah. I, I don’t know the rates. I don’t know the rates per se, but I just, I know, like when I heard about rates and reality television, I, I remember looking at the minimum. That’s another thing about the union, um, is that there is a minimum that they have to pay you under different, you know, under a certain contract, independent. If it’s a, if it’s a, a union independent contract, I think the minimum that they have to pay editors is like a little bit over 3,700 a week.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
Well, pretty, pretty sweet. I

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Think’s pretty sweet. And so non-union reality television

Speaker 1 (45:18):
And, and it goes up and it goes up every year. Yeah. But, but I think television, I think, but I think reality television can get paid dang more than that.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Dang.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
You know? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
That’s

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Insane. Yeah. But, but then, but then you’re, but then you’re stuck cutting reality television, you know, of the best pieces of advice. One of the best pieces advice I’d ever heard was from the director of shoot him up. His, his advice to young people is to start where you wanna end up. So if you wanna be working on big Marvel movies, well, then don’t go working for, you know, a, a post-production house that does commercials. If you wanna work in reality television. Well, don’t go trying to take a job, working, you know, doing videos at Buzzfeed, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. Actually, no, that wouldn’t be a bad idea, but anyways, if I had wanted to work on big mainstream movies, it probably wasn’t the best thing for me to go start at a place that making low budget sci-fi channel movies, because what happened was I was working on B movies, sci-fi channel movies.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
So the people that I worked with, that’s what they did, you know? And so I’ve been stuck in that BMO world for a very long time. Yeah. You know, and not getting paid a whole lot of money. Yeah. But that’s, but that’s where I started, you know, and I don’t regret any of it. I’ve loved almost everybody I’ve worked with. Yeah. And I don’t regret anything one thing that’s been great about working on smaller budgeted films is that if, if my kid has something happening, I’m not gonna miss it. You know, because you’re not paying me to, you’re not paying me enough money to miss something that might, you know, you know, something that, you know, my kid is involved in and I’m, I’m not killing myself. I’m not working on weekends. There are some at big time editors who have died in their fifties and sixties. And I, I swear, I bet you it’s because of the stress

Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Um, of working

Speaker 2 (47:03):
On’s, that’s insane, big,

Speaker 1 (47:04):
Huge movies.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
That’s why, I mean, I mean, and I get it too. I mean, you know, we’ve, we, we talk a lot about balance on this podcast every now and again, we, you know, we, we touch on, you know, being able, able to step back and take a break and you know how a lot of the times the industry isn’t necessarily conducive to a well-balanced life.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
no, it, it really isn’t. It really isn’t. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
You,

Speaker 1 (47:27):
When I work on the chosen, I rarely ever put in more than 10 hours a day, very rare. You know, I tend to put nine, 10 hours a day and I don’t work weekends, you know? So I, I am able to see my family. I am able to have dinner with my family. I’m able to not miss anything that my kid does. One thing that’s great is that my wife totally understands people that don’t work in the film industry. They don’t understand it cuz kind of suck. It’s really hard to plan vacations. It, yeah, it really is. You know, those summer vacations with the family, it really is. Cuz you just, you don’t know if you’re gonna be working. You don’t know if you’re gonna have the money to be able to afford to go on vacation. Mm-hmm you know, mm-hmm , it’s, what’s great about ER, when you’re working in SCU, what’s great.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Is that I can come and go as I please, if I, if I duck out early a couple days, that week within a couple days, you know the following week or, or, you know, I’ll, I’ll work later to catch up, you know, mm-hmm nobody’s like standing over my shoulder demanding to see cuts during the enters cut. Yeah. Then when I’m in director’s cut mode, my wife understands that I am just at the beg and call of the director. I’m gonna go as late as they want to go. I that’s one thing I, I never ever call it a night. I always wait for my, my director to say, okay, let’s you know, let’s call an I, okay, I’m go. You know, I, I wait for them. Cause to me, to me, the best form of networking is when you’re working. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
You know, best, especially in the trenches.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
Yeah. Best way of networking is when you have a job and you just bust your ass, cuz people will notice that you are working very hard. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. People, people will take notice no matter what you’re doing and always be on time. Cause somebody will notice when I was teaching film, editing some of my former students, I always called them my, a students. I would tell my a students, you know, look, when you graduate, look me up, I’ll see what I can do to help connect you, blah, blah, blah. And it was never the people who were the best editors. It was always the people that showed up on time for class and gave it their all. I mean, some of them were really good editors, but I mean, there were a couple really good editors that I never said, Hey, look me up when you graduate. Because when you recommend someone that’s an extension of who you are. Oh yeah, you are vouching. Oh yeah. you are vouching for someone. You are vouching for these people and, and that stuff will reflect and look bad on you. So I only vouch for people that, you know, I know will make me look good.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
You were talking about not leaving before the, the director. And I was curious, um, especially because we, this is one of our listener questions. If you have a listener question, you can ask us it’s at practical filmmaker as an editor. How often does your creative vision differ from the directors? And what do you do when that happens? And like, especially in these late night editing situations, like I know that sometimes there can be butting of heads, so yeah. What do you do in that situ

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Look, I’m there to do what the director wants. Okay. But at the same time you don’t wanna be a pushover. Yeah. So in the, in, in those instances where we’ve had different visions, I I, of course I do it. I do whatever they want. And as I’m doing it right, as I’m making the moves to do what they want, I’ll tell them while I’m making the moves. I’ll I’ll tell them while I’ll, I don’t think that’s gonna work. I here’s the reason why I don’t think it works. This is why I did what I did. And bam, I’ll be honest if I think it, what we’ve done is not better. The reason you gotta do whatever the director wants, this is something I got from Sam Ram is that you gotta try everything because you never know, like there’s a thing that I did. Number one, there’s what I did.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Number two is what the director wants. Mm-hmm but then by doing what the director wants, there might be a third option that suddenly is, you know, a Genesis of what we did of what, what happened from number two mm-hmm , you know, if you really believe in what you did and if you be sneaky, sometimes what happens is after the director’s cut the producers, come in the director, isn’t there and and you could, you know, you, hopefully you’re a pack rat. Hopefully you keep all your cuts. There’s been instances where I’ve shown the producers, uh, you know, oh, you don’t like that scene here. What do you think of this? oh, I love that. That’s great. Okay. You know but it’s, it’s very rare. It’s very rare that I’ve ever really, really butt heads and really disagree. Yeah. You know, I, I just, I still speak my mind. Yeah. And I continue to speak my mind.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
I, I have seen those instances where editors kind of become that awkward middleman because the director and the producers don’t wanna talk. So they’re kind of talking through the editor, be like, and if the director came back in the room and saw those scenes changed again.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Oh yeah. And they’re gonna, yeah. And if the director’s gonna come back, they’re gonna totally know that you took your editor’s cut and show it to the producer and they liked that. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And then kinda in trouble with the, the director, I think for me, number one, my loyalties to the film or, or, or series, and then number two, my loyalty is to whoever hired me. I, I, I don’t ever feel like, oh, I’m gonna, I gotta win my way just to win my way. It’s all about what whatever’s best for the film. I edited a movie called tale from hood three from executive producers, spike Lee, and is directed by rusty Coniff and Darren Scott. And if you watch tale, hood three, I think it’s the second or third segment. It takes place in a bunker mm-hmm . And I did jump cuts throughout the entire thing.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
There were these little they’re a little crazy, these jump cuts mm-hmm and the director never saw it as, as being cut this certain way. Mm-hmm but he loved it. He totally loved it. and I was totally prepared to cut it regularly. You know, in fact, I had done that. I mean, I cut it the way, you know, without any crazy cutting mm-hmm and then I did, you know, then I did my thing. Yeah. And I, and, and you, and if you didn’t like it fine, you gotta remember that every second that goes by that you’re not changing something. Every second that goes by that the director’s telling you not to change something that, that that’s them telling you 24 times a second. I like this. I like what you did. Wow. That that’s what you should focus. If you are a little insecure and your feelings are getting hurt, you gotta think every second that goes by that there’s nothing is being changed. Well, you know, that that’s the director’s way of saying, oh, good to

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Dang.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
You know, dang.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
That’s what found, I mean, like, I mean, that’s a huge thing for artists too, you know, a lot of like that positive feedback that is not given. I mean, that’s, that’s a lot to that. That’s awesome.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
oh, you’re oh, and you’re gonna, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Here’s you know what? So I had done this one movie, this horror film where, I mean, I was not getting paid overtime. I was working till 10, 11. O’clock, 1130 at night, maybe later. Mm horrible hours. So stressful. Yeah. And the director left and it was a night where he really should have said, thanks, man. Good job or something. Yeah. He didn’t say, thank you. And I was so on the verge of saying something nasty to him. Yeah. But I, but I kept it inside. I kept it to myself. And then flash forward, three years later, that person asked me to be the editor on something that he was working on, which was my first union show. Wow. I was able to join the union because of this director. And this director brought me on because I kept my mouth shut. He never really paid compliments or anything. You know,

Speaker 2 (54:22):
His compliment was the callback,

Speaker 1 (54:23):
His compliment. Yeah. His compliment was the callback. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
You know?

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah. So our next question is the best advice that you’ve heard for cutting dialogue scenes. You had mentioned before that your favorite was dialogue scenes.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Some people call it a line by line. Some people call it a dialogue string out or a string out. Okay. Okay. So basically what it is is it’s every line of dialogue from every angle and every take and a timeline. Okay. So say it’s Tanya saying, Hey John, how are you? You know, I have the editor put every angle and every performance, every take and it’s, and it’s Tanya 12, 14 different times saying, Hey John, how are you? Hey, John, how are you? Hey, John, how are you? Yeah. And then, and then in the timeline, then it’s the next line? It’s my response. Oh, I’m doing fine. Oh, I’m doing, you know, it’s me saying, oh, I’m doing fine. It’s every take mm-hmm. And so what I do is I, you know, the, the, the AE does that. And then I go back and I just, I Frankenstein it.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
That’s how I choose which performance I’m going use it really. I really go line by line, review all them each line at a time. That’s how I do. I don’t use scripts, sync. I, I don’t use scripts, sync. That’s what I do. It’s very time can for the assistant editor. not for me. Yes. Not for me. Yes. And so I choose what is the best performance mm-hmm and then, and then, so my very first cut it’s, it’s just, here’s this person talking and then here’s this, that person talking mm-hmm and then I go back to the beginning and now I’m imagining who would I be looking at if I, I were in the room watching these people talk mm-hmm and that’s it.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah. You know,

Speaker 2 (55:54):
So our, our last listener question is when to hire the Soundhouse and like why you would hire them either earlier or later.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Well, okay. So this is something that happened on a 12 deadly days at BL house television series that I was on mm-hmm okay. What happens many times is in my experience, which is usually like low budget stuff. Right. Post-production sound is usually hired pretty late in the game. Sometimes it’s not even hired until you’ve locked a picture or close to it. Right. Okay. What was great about 12 deadly days is they already knew who the Soundhouse was. This is why you should hire the Soundhouse early on. Hmm. So instead of us using sound effects from our sound library, from our own personal sound libraries, we would ask the sound library, Hey, we need a sound effect of this. We would have a list mm-hmm and then they would send us these killer sound because sound houses have way better sound effects than anything you have in your own personal sound library.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Yeah. And so what’s great about that is that the sounds that you put in will probably be the ones that wind up in the final product. So what’s great about that is that the director and the producers, they’re not gonna love fall in love with your temp sound effects that you’re putting in. Mm. They they’re gonna fall in love with the actual sound effects that are gonna be used in the final part. Yes. Right. And, and, and if you want to push it even further, I, I thought this was a great idea. What I started doing was I would read the scripts of the episodes before they even started shooting them. And I would type up a list sound effects before even seeing the footage and send that to the post house so that they had an ample amount of time yeah. To gather up these killer sound effects.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Yeah. And what’s awesome about that is that then you get those sound effects from the post house. Then you put that into your own personal sound library. So it’s an awesome way to get some killer sound effects. That’s amazing. So it’s not a gadget, that’s another recommendation. It’s not a gadget, but I do recommend of course having, uh, external drives and, and any place that you go grab sound libraries, you might be working with an editor, an assistant editor, a sound house that has a sound library. Mm-hmm, grab all that stuff. I worked with a director who had worked at a trailer house and he had a drive full of all these trailer house sound effects. You know, he left a drive there one night and I just grabbed it all and put it onto my own drive. And I use that stuff to this day. And that was 14 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I recommend that. Well, yeah, I, I do recommend get the post house hired, use the sound effects that they have.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Nice. And the question that I wrap up with every single time, what question should I have asked you?

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Oh man, man, I should have known this. Cuz you’ve asked this. What would I tell my, maybe what would you tell your younger self? Hmm. Maybe what would you tell your younger self? What do you wish someone had told you?

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Before you got into the, before you got into the industry, well, what is the worst thing to have happened to you working in the, working in the industry, all both of

Speaker 2 (58:45):
How did you

Speaker 1 (58:46):
And how, and how did, and how did you get past that? How did you get over it?

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Yeah. You know? Yeah. All right. Can we answer those questions?

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Oh gosh. Uh, yeah, sure. Um,

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Yeah. What do you wish?

Speaker 1 (58:55):
Okay. What do I wish? Uh, I had known before coming out here, I wish I would’ve known that, you know, once you get your foot in the door and then, and then once you get your second job, it’s it, it it’s going to happen. You’re con you are gonna continue to work. You shouldn’t stress out about not working ever again. Mm-hmm that it is gonna work out. I don’t have any regrets, but man, I, that would’ve been some pretty cool advice to have heard about start where you wanna end up mm-hmm yeah. You know, cuz cuz in the nineties, in the nineties, I remember thinking, oh man, if I could edit, I, I, I would be happy editing anything. I would be happy editing these trashy erotic thrillers, you know, that Sally Kirkland was in like, I I’d be happy editing anything. Mm-hmm you know, and, and that’s what happened.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
I wound up editing, you know, B movies, but I don’t. Yeah. I don’t regret. I love that. So yeah. I think I also, maybe would’ve told myself, Hey, it’s okay to become friends with other editors, you know, because cuz the editor’s Guild has these mixers. They used to have these. They, they, they have these mixers when there’s not a pandemic going on mm-hmm . And so I remember a while back thinking, why am I gonna go to these mixers and become friends with other editors? These are my competition, but are not your competition. It’s the way so many editors get jobs is from other being recommended by other editors. Hmm mm-hmm you know, I mean that’s how any, anytime I have to turn down a job, I go above and beyond to recommend friends of mine that I can vouch for. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Um, because cuz number one, I, I do wanna help people. I do wanna connect people and number two, I feel bad at anytime I have to turn down a job. I, it it’s, that is stressful. Actually. Nobody really talks about that. About how stressful it is when you have to turn down a job or choose between two, two jobs. Mm-hmm I know young people do don’t want hear about that. Mm-hmm they think, oh whoa, oh, oh, you know, wo is you, you have to choose between two jobs, but it it’s, it’s a, it’s gonna be, it can be stressful. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
So, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
And when you recommend people, you’re, you’re also becoming an asset, you know, like even though you’re not being their editor, you’re still an asset to that particular production. And so they’re gonna value that as well.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know if it’s karma or, or what, but I, I spend a lot of my time being social and I spent a lot of my time trying to connect other people. I don’t know. I just, it’s just a good thing to do. And I think it, it really that energy that you put out, it, it, it comes back to you and it will come back to you. I think one thing that you need to know young people need to know is that, you know, these friendships and relationships you’re making. Cause I think a lot of people think, uh, going networking is going to bars and social events and giving out your, your, your, your business card. Yeah. But I’ve never gotten a gig from handing out my business card. The, the, the way gigs come about is from, uh, uh, friendships and relationships and being recommended by people.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I know people always say, oh, you know, the only way to get ahead in this business is all about who, you know, but it’s like, if you suck at your job, you’re bad at getting just coffee and donuts for people like mm-hmm, , nobody’s gonna wanna know you mm-hmm , you know, it, it is about who, you know, but yeah, but people only wanna know you if you’re a good person and you kick ass at your job. Yeah. You know, so networking is really relationship building. Mm-hmm that, you know, that’s what it is. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So that’s, that’s networking to me.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
So now what is the worst thing that happened to you?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
The worst thing that ever happened to me was I was on a TV show where we were fired from the show we were on it for six weeks. Oh, dang. What happened was what happened was the, and I can’t believe I’m telling this cuz like, honestly, it’s like, you know, you should not, you probably don’t wanna tell people that you’ve been fired. You know, like, oh my gosh. But one thing that nobody prepares you for is like, what do you do when you get fired? Like how do you get over that? It’s like a breakup. Yeah. You know, I mean, the rug was pulled from under us. What happened was the, the director, the showrun of the series came in and it was like a tone meeting. I think, I think we’re supposed to talk about tone or something. Okay. He came in, he went into HR, edit bases and watched the edit and you know, and we asked him, you know, give us some feedback mm-hmm gave, he didn’t gave no feedback. He was like, okay. He leaves. And like two weeks later we were, we were let go. And we were never told why.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
We were never told why. And, and, and, and I love the fact that, you know, I had just bought a car, you know? Oh, I think, and I, I could be wrong. That, that leads to my, maybe that was the beginning of my dry spell too, that 10 month dry spell. Cause you know what happens? You know, what happens is you, you start telling people, oh, I’m working. I’m gonna be busy D until, you know, for the next 4, 5, 6 months. Uh, and then what happens to your mental state is that every time you start a job, you begin thinking, well, at any moment, this can happen again. I think it’s, I think it’s just like, uh, a, a relationship, you know, if you have a bad, you know, breakup, or you have an experience, you know, uh, a boyfriend or girlfriend, you know, if you get dumped, whatever, you, you, you get your heart broken. I think you, you go into that mindset. You think about the heartache from what happened last time. I mean, so what happened? I think, you know, one of the next case I had was doing this comedy central pilot or Tim Robbins, Tim Robbins, executive producer. And I remember, yeah. I was like, at any moment, you know? Yeah. It’s it’s gonna happen, but it never, it happened. It only happened that it only happened that one time.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Well, that’s good. It’s not like a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s just, you get caught in a feedback, like a feedback loop

Speaker 1 (04:08):
You. But at the same time, I think it’s, I mean, you know, I’m not the only person too. You could,

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Oh, So many stories

Speaker 1 (04:17):
And so many editors and so many editors too are, are just let go. You know what happened is like, if a movie sucks, if a movie’s in trouble, a test screening, doesn’t go, well, mm-hmm, , they’ll never fire the director. They’ll never fire the director. They’ll fire the editor. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Scapegoat.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah. Yeah, totally. That totally happens. Yeah. So I I’m sure that I’m not the only editor who goes into, uh, projects thinking well at any moment, you know, I mean, if you’ve never worked with the people before. Yeah. I mean, at any moment, you know, they could cut, you lose a little bit. I wish I’d known about that. And then on a personal level, in 2010, I got diagnosed with a, a autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis, which is not normal old people, arthritis. It’s an autoimmune disease that attacks healthy joints. Oh my gosh. So what happened was I felt like editor editor. So it felt like, you know, my thumb was jammed. Wasn’t jammed. My knuckles felt like they were bruised. Eventually it felt like I was walking on broken bones in the morning. My knees hurt. It’s like, I became a 90 year old man overnight.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
So this is like my public service announcement to people. If you, if you get pain in your joints and it’s on both sides of your body, then it’s probably rheumatoid arthritis and you should get to a rheumatologist as soon as possible. I was taking blood tests and, and the blood said that I did not have this disease, but when I finally got to see a rheumatologist, you felt my joints. He was like, oh yeah. And then it became a matter of just getting on the right medication, right. Cocktail of medication. Mm-hmm to put, get it under control mm-hmm . But for the first few years, it was scary because, you know, I had read the medication and the disease can make you tired and slow you down. So I was very nervous about working these 10, 12 hour days, will I be able to hack it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
And I haven’t had any problems, nothing slowed me down, anything once I got on the right cocktail medication. Nice. But, but that, but the pain I was in, it was, it was two months. But at the same time, when you’re going through it, you don’t know how long this pain’s gonna last. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. But I, you know, one of the reasons, one of the ways I was get able to get through it though, was I, I, you know, my child, I had a child nine months prior. And so she was the reason why I just, you know, kept on going and didn’t become this didn’t even come close to become this bitter, you know, angry person. Yeah. So, but anyways, that’s that those are the two worst things that have happened to me. You know,

Speaker 2 (06:33):
John, this has been amazing. This has been such a fascinating conversation. How do people find you or follow your

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Work? They can find me on Facebook. So if anybody wants to message me, you can message me that way.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Nice. Nice. Well, thank you so much for sharing your insight. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Thanks for having me on this is awesome.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
If you enjoyed this interview, follow us right here and on Instagram, ask us questions and check out more episodes@thepracticalfilmcare.com be well, and God bless. We’ll see you next time on the practical filmmaker.

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