ACE presented the 22nd Invisible Art / Visible Artists event to celebrate this year’s Oscar-nominated editors at the Regal Sherman Oaks Theater on March 26, the day before the 94th Academy Awards. “Oh my god, we’re here.

This is crazy!” Myron Kerstein, ACE – an Oscar nominee and Eddie winner with Andrew Weisblum, ACE, for tick, tick…Boom! – exclaimed to a packed theater filled with ACE members, Motion Picture Editors Guild (MPEG) members, assistant editors, students and film lovers. Given a past year full of pandemic challenges, remote work and an Oscar controversy where the editing category (among seven others) were not presented live, this event that celebrates the work of editors and brings awareness to the craft was even more significant.

“We’re here to celebrate these great editors and their great work, but it’s impossible to not mention the elephant in the room,” said ACE President Kevin Tent, ACE, as he kicked off the show. “This is me speaking, not ACE officially, but here [are] just three words: hurtful, insulting and short-sighted.

It’s hard to imagine how the Academy’s leadership can expect thesame passion and commitment from its many members across its many branches who now feel betrayed and disrespected. They may be surprised by the lingering effects of their actions.At minimum, they have some serious bridge building to do,”Tent lamented. But the room quickly roared in applause as Tent rallied the audience to what is truly important. “We’re here to celebrate these guys [the nominees] and their amazing editing – so forget it!”

For the first time, this free-to-attend event produced by Erin Flannery and ACE executive director Jenni McCormick offered a unique opportunity for this year’s Oscar-nominated editors to discuss their films and careers to both an in-person audience and a virtual audience through a livestream. The panel’s traditional question & answer format was hosted by Academy Award-winning editor and past ACE president Alan Heim, ACE, who has moderated the event for many years. “If ACE had a ‘Knightdom,’ [Sir] Alan Heim would be the first.”

Heim began the panel by asking all the nominees how they got their start in the business. “I started out in New York City carrying cans of negative and work prints for commercials,” said nominee Hank Corwin, ACE, who edited Don’t Look Up. He worked his way up in the industry “through a series of comedic moments.… There was this lovely professional assistant who was afraid of the dark. We were syncing the dailies at the time and he begged me to stay. So I said, if you teach me to sync dailies, I’ll stay.”

Tick, tick…Boom!’s Weisblum began his career in New York in the early ’90s. He assisted for a decade and began cutting indies that he hoped would premiere at Sundance, but they never did. “I knew at a certain point I had to make some choices. If I was going to be a successful editor, I had to eventually cut something that someone might see.” Weisblum did his research and discovered that Zoe Cassavetes was making a film in New York called Broken English. After nailing the interview with Cassavetes, the company wouldn’t accept him for the job because he “didn’t have any credits.” So he got up the nerve to ask director Darren Aronofsky, who he was collaborating with as a VFX editor, to recommend him for the job – it worked.

Each nominee shared a clip from their film. Dune editor Joe Walker, ACE, who would go on to win the Oscar the next day, showed a table scene between Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and Lady Jessica Atreides (Rebecca Ferguson) from early in the film. “Weirdly this is a scene that never changed, but everything else in the film did,” Walker explained. “This is a tremendous compliment as an editor when you find a director who isn’t gonna dick with things for the sake of it.” In the scene, it wasn’t originally planned to use atmospheric shots of the room or cut to what Chalamet’s character is thinking about.

“I’m attracted to time loops … it’s an ingredient we get to play with as editors that no one else gets to play with.” Walker went on to break down one of the techniques for time loops. “I’ve got a simple trick that has got me onto this seat here. If you have a shot of someone looking very intensely and then you cut to something, it looks like they are thinking about it.”

King Richard editor Pamela Martin, ACE, who won an Eddie for the film, chose a scene of a young Venus Williams winning a tennis match and the challenge of making these sporting events exciting to watch. Heim remarked, “That was very exciting. The score and the cutting was almost like a car chase.” Martin noted, “Well, we did previs shots for the tennis scenes to figure out the camera language. I had cut another tennis movie years before called Battle of the Sexes, which is about a worldwide televised match that was shot with classic TV coverage.

That wasn’t going to work for this because these were not televised events.… I had to cut it like an action sequence because it didn’t have [commentator] voices telling us how we are feeling, you had to feel it with what was happening.” There was a strong sense of camaraderie among all the nominees as they asked each other questions and complimented each other’s work. At one point Kerstein interjected, “Can I just add something.… Hank and Joe, you’re the masters of intercutting.

And for an editor that is the closest thing to spirituality that I have ever experienced.” Kerstein had his own challenges with some intercut scenes in tick, tick…Boom! and emphasized the importance of screening your film. “We were learning all through this process. Why they didn’t like a character. Why they were confused by something. And every time we did these little tweaks it got a little bit better.… It might be controversial to say, but I’m a big fan of screening the hell out of your film, previewing and collecting data. I’m making a film for the audience.”

Peter Sciberras, editor of The Power of the Dog, talked about the rewarding experience of working with director Jane Campion (who went on to win the Oscar for directing the next day) and using your gut. “A lot of it is relying on that first feeling you had when you heard it and saw it. Trust your instinct that it’s there. Sometimes things get better. When you get those setpiece scenes right, you have to trust you got it. Otherwise, youcan ruin it if you keep carving [away] at it.”

One question from the audience struck a reflective chord from the panelists – Do you ever revisit the films you cut and if so, what feelings arise? Martin talked about revisiting the final performance scene she had cut from Little Miss Sunshine several years later. “I was by myself and I hadn’t seen the movie in many years. I started crying watching the scene. First of all, I just had a love for those characters so that came flooding back and I just had a baby when I had made that movie. It was a difficult time for me to cut the movie and it was so instrumental in changing my career trajectory. I had this big emotional reaction because it brought back not only how I felt about the characters in the movie, but what was going on in my own life.”

As the event ended with the nominees heading off to the annual MPEG-hosted luncheon and the bustle of editing colleagues and bright-eyed future editors enthusiastically pouring into the lobby, the simple prophetic words of moderator “Sir” Alan Heim, ACE, rang true: “We as editors will continue to fight this [Academy decision] … We all know what an editor does and I trust we have enormous respect for what we do, and what these people [the 2022 Oscar-nominated editors] have done.”ACE would like to thank Platinum Sponsor Blackmagic Design, Gold Sponsors Adobe and MPEG, Silver Sponsor NAB Show – and all of the sponsors who helped make this event possible.

“Getting here, I’ve had a blast. But my kids, they didn’t really have a choice in the matter. They had to come along for the ride, like it or not. There were a lot of sad farewells in airports, there was a lot of having to listen to a worm surfacing over and over again while doing your coursework.

So you may not know it, but the words ‘Oscar-nominated,’ can be used, in the hands of a skilled 17- year-old, as an insult. My daughter once said to me in an argument, ‘Well it’s all very well for you, Oscar-nominated Joe Walker.’

So, thank you to the Academy for this upgrade – I need all the help I can get.
Nell, Rose, Anoushka, I love you with all my heart! Thank you Mary Parent, thank you Legendary, Warner, thank you to my team, and above all else, thank you Denis: Merci du fond du coeur! This is a tribute to you.”