TV Editors roundtable: ‘The Bear,’ ‘Mrs. Davis,’ ‘Poker Face,’ ‘Shrinking,’ ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Ted Lasso’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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“Even as a kid, I was always impressed with writing, and I think I learned quickly that editing is very much writing with picture and sound instead of words on a page,” says “Ted Lasso” editor A.J. Catoline about what helped make him decide that editing was going to be his career path. “Then when I went to USC, I saw my first Avid (editing machine), and it blew my mind. It was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is a game-changer.’ I also had a lot of great mentors who that I met in the post-production world and they encouraged me to stick with it and to tell stories.” We spoke to Catoline as part of Gold Derby’s “Meet the Experts” TV Editors panel along with Joanna Naugle (“The Bear”), Philip Fowler (“Mrs. Davis”), Bob Ducsay (“Poker Face”), James Renfroe (“Shrinking”) and Dean Zimmerman (“Stranger Things”). Watch our revealing roundtable discussion above and click on each name to view their solo chat.
Renfroe wasn’t even aware that editing was a real career. But then I started working as a projectionist in college and fell in love with cutting the film, even though I found after coming out (to Los Angeles) that no one cuts film. But the job feeds multiple parts of my interest. I like the storytelling part. I love that it’s on computers even though I’m terrible at other parts of computers. That part came pretty easily. I just remember one time spending the day doing it and it didn’t feel like I’d been working.” Naugle’s earliest memory of loving the editing process came when she was a kid messing around with her parents’ VHS camera. “I remember doing little tricks of like, oh, if you press ‘Record’ and then ‘Stop’ and then ‘Record’ again, someone will disappear. So that’s the earliest memory I have of the power of magical editing. But then I was lucky enough to go to NYU for film school and take a 16 mm film class and actually cut and tape. It was just such a literal thing, that if you take this and put it next to this, what emotion you can elicit.”
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Zimmerman was fortunate enough to learn at the feet of his father Don Zimmerman, an editor for more than 50 years. “I think he’s probably one of the best in the world,” Dean Zimmerman says. “I was lucky to see my dad at the studio, being in the cutting room. What made me want to actually follow in his footsteps was going to the premiere of “Rocky III” in 1982 when I was 13 years old and bawling my eyes out at the end. It started this kind of obsessive every night questionnaire about what he did and how he did it. It just led me to, that’s what I want to do.” Fowler’s interest in editing grew out of his being a movie buff growing up in Wyoming – especially “The Mummy Returns.” “I came back from seeing it and declared to them, ‘This is the best movie I’ve ever seen,” he recalls. “Now anytime I say I saw a good movie, they’ll ask, ‘But is it as good as ‘The Mummy Returns’?”
Ducsay admits that he had no idea what he wanted to do while attending film school at USC. A director? A cinematographer? Then he discovered editing, which appealed to two sides of my brain. I discovered the power of editing and what it could do, what it allowed you to do to create character and to tell a story. I found it incredibly difficult dealing dealing with the mechanical process of film, but persevered long enough to hang in there for electronic editing, which I think just really opened up all the possibilities for me. I really locked in.”
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