Call it perhaps pre-award or intra-award giddiness, but it was all in good fun, as people gathered at the Kodak Atrium on Santa Monica Boulevard, on the Thursday before the American Cinema Editors Eddie Awards were handed out.The digs, on Kodak’s “lot,” were a reminder of a time when the film business was actually driven by, well, film, instead of digits, and when editors actually “cut” movies, as opposed to plying their art with Avid or Apple Final Cut Pro, etc.The only real business of the evening was to introduce all the nominees prior to the big event a couple of evenings afterwards. There were no speeches, or anything, just mini-statues handed out to by ACE president Alan Heim, to note the simple achievement of being nominated.ACE Interns and Student Competition nominees were also there. Lynarion Hubbard, for example, a nominee from AFI, mentioned how she first really noticed how a film was put together—edited—when she saw Eve’s Bayou while still in middle school. Also on hand was Steven Worsley, the first ever international intern, who’d been going to school at Luton University in the UK.Edward Ornelas, a first-time nominee for a Grey’s Anatomy episode, had the unfortunate experience of seeing his statue tumble to the floor before it was handed to him, and break in two. He was promised an immediate replacement.One nominated TV editor swapped observations with a colleague on rights clearances for music in episodics; sometimes you have the music for broadcast, but not for DVDs, and when the shows are collected on disc, different tunes have to be layered in to the mix. Editors can be kept busy this way long after a show airs. And even in an atmosphere as informal as the ACE Eddie reception, it’s still possible to learn something new.
Written by Mark London Williams
