Video Editing at NCSA, a Vlog

Here’s a

video editing

tale from my third book, Waiting for Elizabeth.

In 2002 my oldest friend Bob Collins was head of the Cinematography Department at North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Each year at Christmas break select students, in collaboration with several faculty members, would participate in a special production. That year the script was an excerpt from a screenplay Bob had written entitled Smitty, a Texas coming-of-age story. The approximately ten minute scene would be directed by Richard Clabaugh and the Director of Photography (DP) was Arledge Armenaki, both faculty members. The rest of the crew was made up of advanced students and the cast was also a mix of kids and teachers. I was invited to serve as guest editor. This was a big deal for me. Bob had been an award winning editor as well as a three time Emmy winning DP and his asking me to be the editor was a high honor.

Until this trip I held a very dim view of film schools as places for privileged kids to spend Daddy’s money. Not so at NCSA. When I walked on to the very professional looking barroom set there was no indication that I wasn’t on a New York or LA shoot. The only way I could tell the faculty from the students was the obvious age difference.

The entire faculty were all old pros of the same sort as Bob and me. These people were hands-on filmmakers not theorists and they were passing their knowledge on to the next generation. I was very much at home in this company.

Here are a few clips from my cut.

Editing with an expert, professional director was a new adventure for me. Until Smitty I had either edited on my own or with clients who didn’t know much if anything about the process. It was reassuring to me that we agreed about most of what I was doing and when we disagreed the discussion was often heated but never angry or hostile and we usually ended up with a cut that was better than either of our original ideas. Actually, two cuts; one for Richard and my version.

Many more stories of video editing, production and directing will be found in Waiting for Elizabeth.

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