Yesterday I attended the 7th Annual Prime Cuts
panel, put on by American Cinema Editors and the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences. The panel is made up of
currently Emmy-nominated editors discussing their craft with moderator Shawn
Ryan (creator of The Shield).
Among the panelists this year was Lisa P. Trulli, who is nominated for
editing the hit reality series “Project Runway.” Her answer to this first question was the highlight of the
entire panel for me.
SR: Let’s move
on to our next nominee, Lisa, who is nominated for Project Runway. Reading your pre-interview stuff, you
said something that I really appreciated, because a lot of times when I talk to
editors who work in the reality and competition space, they tend to have
aspirations to do movies or scripted; you talk about how much you love the
genre. Talk about why you love
editing the genre.
LISA: Well, yeah, sometimes reality gets a little bad rap,
but as an editor, it’s the most amazing place to work. You have complete control. And I literally have had shows where
they put me in a room and say, “Six weeks later, you need to come up with a
show.” And it’s really fun. It’s a great way to craft stories and
develop characters, and it’s a very broad approach. Like, I’m listening to these beautiful, nuanced things that
the feature world has—I don’t have that.
I don’t have a beautiful, crafted, composed shot. These guys are running, gunning, moving
and we’re lucky if we get anything on film. We’re racing all the time, so we cannot depend on a
beautiful visual to tell our story.
We have to use every trick in the book and I really love doing that.
