The Film Editing Room Handbook Review

On 'How to Tame the Chaos of the Editing Room', the Film Editing Room Handbook is probably the best resource book out there, with the most current info on technologies as well as social media on its 4th edition print. As a lone-wolf editor who worked mostly by himself until hired by a big media company in NYC, I wish that I had picked up this book when I started my career path in editing few years ago.

Yes, I read my share of editing books and manuals, but no one really told me that the very first step into the editing career is NOT editing! Fortunately, Digital Cinema Revolution began when I graduated my film school, and Digital Editing Revolution soon followed with Final Cut Pro which enabled me and countless others to edit independently. Although I did learn Avid at my film school, along with awesome Quantel systems, Final Cut Pro is where all the low-budget, independent film and video works were for a novice editor like myself. Final Cut Pro is very flexible system and working independently meant that I can edit and work in my own way, without having a proper work-flow to interact with others, except for few graphic designers or sound engineers to clean up audio.

Once I got enough credits under my belt and moved up to work on narrative films, I quickly learned that taming the whole post production process is completely different work from editing an actual movie/video. Sure Avid & Final Cut Pro made the process a lot simple, but you still have to organize hours of footage and growing number of sequences, not to mention other elements that go into completing a movie.

This book does NOT teach you how to edit, nor teach you secrets of Avid or Final Cut Pro. The book is strictly technical manual for assistant editors to work in an edit suite, or at a post house, working on the entire post production process to the final cut of a film. I knew 75% of the materials in the book because of years of my experience in the post production industry, nevertheless it provided me with invaluable insights and I can heartily endorse for any aspiring editor who wants to get the foot in the door. I found the "Getting the Job" section at the end helpful as well as the Glossary part, which should be memorized before a job interview.

The post production world is moving rapidly as more and more new digital technologies are introduced to the market. Traditional apprenticeships in edit rooms have more or less diminished due to specialized professions in the post process, and the assistant editors of these days & ages are no longer aspiring editors, but more of a profession on its own right. If you been looking to break into the post production industry or embarking on the editing process for your independent project, this book will be an invaluable guide to your endeavors.

George Lucas's Blockbusting

George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success is something completely out of left field, yet totally appropriate for a film geek like Mr. Lucas.

Starwars.com has more Inside George Lucas's Blockbusting.

"By setting successful films against each decade's major motion picture industry developments, George Lucas wanted to show that what has transformed the movie business is not the result of any individual film, but rather the result of technological advances and changes in production, distribution, marketing, and exhibition as well as changes in the social, political, and economic climate."

"Sound designer extraordinaire Randy Thom contributed an item when I needed some last minute text on technology for the 1960s chapter. Were it not for the CIA, who used the miniature recorders made by the Swiss company Nagra in their foreign spying operations, the larger portable Nagra recording system, used by filmmakers to more easily record sound on location, might never have been affordable to manufacture. Without these portable sound recording devices and smaller cameras, movies like Easy Rider might never have been made."

"Discovering, for example, that Walt Disney was the first to use Technicolor in commercial films and bet everything on his vision that a full-length, full-color animated movie based on the Grimm Brothers fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would work in the 1930s, made me realize anew the difference one person can make to an entire industry."

The book also got a great blog.