Monday, September 16, 2013

7th Annual Prime Cuts panel


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.