|
Annie Collins uncut* (The special extended Onfilm website dance remix. First published in Onfilm, Ocotber 2004.) A chat via email with editor Annie Collins about her career, with a particular focus on her work on 'Return of the King' as assembly editor, one of an editorial team that numbered 14 at its strongest. Nick Grant
What first prompted your interest in the screen industry? I was in my third year of a graphic design course at Wellington Polytech - we had to make a small film as part of visual communication and the tutor was Pat Cox. When I graduated, Pat said I should consider editing, and I didn't have any other plans at that stage so I said, "Where do I train?" He suggested the usual suspects - TVNZ, Pacific Films and the Film Unit - none of whom wanted to know me, so he said he'd train me if I could keep myself alive (he was just setting up the first independent editing service in the country, so didn't have any income to pay me wages). I worked three other jobs while I trained with him. It was about three months before I knew enough for him to charge me out, and I remember very clearly the profits from my first paid job - 6.47 split three ways between Pat, Nadoo Ballantine-Scott and myself... So I was probably the first completely independently trained editor in the country (it was 1976 when I started). Pat trained me in all aspects of editing. He has what I can only describe as an ongoing love affair with film, and his attitude towards film is probably the most valuable thing I picked up from him. He is fastidious in detail, and knew his craft inside out - pre-production, production, post-production. I got a wonderful all-round training: learnt to camera assist, change mags, carry tripods up mountains, pull focus, production manage, poke microphones at things, do client liaison, lab liaison, foley, complete post production supervision... Despite all the groundwork I did in other areas, though, there was never any question for me that it was the editing bench where I belonged. I didn't want to direct, or be on location - the most boring place in the world, I always thought - I just wanted to be in that room sitting quietly with the film, puzzling my way through how to make it work. Didn't matter whether it was sound editing or picture editing - just so long as I was at the bench. But the first screen industry gig was those early retail commercials with Nadoo Ballantine-Scott. I'd also done some work on Chris Short's first film - there were so many things that you did for nothing just to have the feel of film running through your fingers and the smell of it as you took it out of the can. I'd been working for Pat a bit less than a year, and Ian John came to town. He mentioned to Pat he needed someone to lay FX trax for 'Sleeping Dogs' and Pat just said without blinking an eye, "Oh I have someone here. Annie can do that." Well, yes, I'd laid a few tracks on some commercials, I knew the principles, but I had no idea what I was in for. However, in good Kiwi tradition I went up to Auckland for a couple of months and learnt on the job. Ian gave me a system and the job got done. I used some of my pay to get me across to the mix in Sydney, so that I could see what happened with my trax and where the problems were. Everything was a huge learning curve, including Roger Donaldson taking one look at my mixing charts for Reel 9 (the air battle) and saying, "This is unmixable, you'll have to do it again and have it ready for the plane tomorrow." That was a tough lesson but I'm terribly pleased I got it. Leaving aside 'ROTK' for now, what are some of the jobs you're most proud of and why? • 'Sleeping Dogs' - FX editor. First big one, no precedents, it was quite a prophetic film for the conditions in NZ just two years later. • 'The Bridge' (Mangere Bridge dispute) - editor, snd & pic. First time I was let loose on a film and allowed to search inside the footage for the feeling of the events. • 'Patu!' (Springbok Tour) - editor, snd & pic. This was possibly the most important documentary footage shot in this country in the hands of an extraordinary director. She not only taught me a different way of looking at footage and the importance of documentary to a nation, I also had to look at who and what I am in this country in order to handle this footage. • 'Mana Waka' - editor. For the same director as 'Patu!', it involved working with archival footage, which increased my knowledge of the spiritual dimension of moving images. Film has a way of controlling its own destiny and with some films you have to be very clear about your own motives before you sit down to handle particular images. • 'Erin's Exiled Daughters' - editor. A 36 minute doco by a particularly intuitive director - the experience of working with her and seeing her find her way with exquisite delicacy through her family's immigrant history was a joy for me and it remains one of my most favourite films. There was an intellectual discipline at work that I try never to work without now. • 'Scarfies' - editor. It was such a blast from start to finish. A director bouncing with energy and ideas and a straight-down-the-line producer - they were lovely to work with and my head kept being pushed, which was great. • 'Family Saga' - editor. A homemade feature that's been screened privately only once but which I think is one of the most important documentaries made - simply because it shows without comment and with quiet honesty an ordinary NZ family coping with living in this country over a period of four years. In 50 or 100 years time when someone wants to look at who we were and how we lived, they won't go to the Archive and take out 'Lord Of The Rings' - they'll look at 'Family Saga'. If I were to look at my CV I'm sure there'd be heaps of other films I'd say, "Oh yes, and so-and-so was great for this reason, and that one was wonderful for that reason." I think the main thing I feel about the films I've worked on is I've learnt something from, and got involved with, each one, because I could never leave my heart at the door. How do you view the editor's role in the production process? I often find myself making the distinction between documentary and drama editing. In doco I don't think the editor has a role in the production process - involve the editor early and you end up with boring, safe footage that doesn't have a lot to do with documenting anything. I don't care if the footage looks like a heap of shit technically - so long as whoever is making the film has approached their subject with some humility and intelligence, there's going to be a film in there. The editor's job is to find it. In drama it's still debatable how much the editor should be involved early on. There are a few pointers they can give from experience about character and story problems or perhaps length, but generally I find myself pulling further and further back from early involvement because I don't want to muck around with the director's head. Their vision may be completely off the wall and, if it is, it shouldn't be watered down by a "wise", "experienced" head. What do you bring to the role of editor, in terms of your personal sensibility? Hmmmmm. Commitment to the subject; some humility; some arrogance (I'm not afraid to fight anyone if I think the subject should be fought for); always curiosity now. I'm curious about making things work differently on the bench, curious about what's in a director's head, curious about what's inside the footage. It's more often what's not said that gives you the information - if you're listening. What type/s of project are you generally attracted to and why? I'm always attracted to documentary that seeks to analyse injustice or social conditions or explores why people push themselves beyond the normal parameters. I'm especially attracted to projects that are pushing ahead without money because funders are too afraid to fund them, or broadcasters too pig-headed and lacking in vision to broadcast them - it's usually a sure sign that the subject is a good one and I itch to get my fingers on it. What attracted you to the 'LOTR' trilogy? That blasted curiosity. I was intrigued to find out how on earth the editors were going to keep track of it. What systems were going to be put in place? It had to be different from any other feature shot here and I really wanted to find out how they would do it. How did you score the gig and what did your role/s on the trilogy involve? I seemed to keep finding back doors to go through. One thing was certain: nobody was going to be hiring Annie Collins as one of the three editors. I rang Jamie Selkirk to see if there was some sort of assisting job I could do. I got a call back saying his animatics editor was leaving and they still had two animatics to complete - about three months work. I thought that was great, it would get me near the systems for three months and that's what I wanted. Then Mike Horton (editor on Film 2) needed an operator just as I was completing the animatics. So I put my hand up for that because I'd been waiting for a long time to operate for Mike - I had a lot to learn from him, being his operator is the only way to get that knowledge, and here was the best footage in the world. So I moved straight onto that, beginning in 2000 as the shoot was underway. By May 2000 it was very apparent to Jamie that he couldn't work on Film 3 and fulfil his enormous duties as producer and post production producer, not to mention co-owner of the companies involved while the shoot was on. He needed an assembly editor - an over-qualified assistant or an under-qualified editor… After discussion with Mike ("You'd be mad if you didn't do it!") I found a wonderful replacement operator for him and moved onto assembling Film 3. And that's where I stayed until January 2004, assembling alone to begin with, then cutting with Jamie when the shoot finished, then operating for Jamie when Peter Jackson moved on to editing Film3. Of course, you can't keep cutting the same film for three years, even if it is one of the Rings epics, and so I did some other stuff as well. This included promos, dialogue counts for Gollum and Treebeard animation, bits and pieces of outside dramas and docos that fitted around the down time (I'd go off the payroll for a few weeks and then step back in), and helping a lot with conforming the print for screenings. Just numbers of small tasks that needed to be done on a project as big as this - people needed footage for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of forms. It was an extraordinary time. What was the most rewarding aspect of working on the trilogy, particularly 'Return Of The King'? I thought quite a bit about this, and it has to be working with that great team of people, and especially with Jamie, over such a long period of time - the co-support and the respect engendered for other people's skills. I've spent an enormous amount of my career working completely alone, so working in such a large team was very different - learning to harness myself to the team and receiving unreserved support from the 'backroom' were things I appreciated enormously. The most challenging aspect? The greatest challenge for me was lasting the course - I don't think it mattered who you were or what you did on that production, it took more than any of us could have imagined at the beginning, pushing us all beyond our boundaries and making us pass limits we didn't think we could pass. I think it was the audaciousness of it - it was such a Kiwi thing to attempt, there was no way any of us would let Peter fail! As you've been acting as something of an international Avid emissary, having used their system for 'ROTK', it would obviously be remiss of me not to ask how the equipment enabled the editing process…? The whole question of what editing system you would use for such a project is really a non-question: in 1999 no other system but Avid could handle the scale of it. We were lucky they'd just brought out the Unity system, which allowed multi access to the media, because with all three films cutting at the one time and media being swapped between films - as well as editing many promos and using media for electronic games requests etc - it would have been a complete nightmare without Avid. We ended up with somewhere round four million feet of print, and about 5.5 terabytes of memory on a five-year-old system and it still held up. The computers got pretty grumpy towards the end, because we had so much hanging off them in local drives and extra bits and pieces, but we still made it. There wasn't another system capable of handling the volume and the amount of flexibility we required to service all our needs - and I believe there still isn't, despite the exponential development in some of the other systems available. Now, when you replied via email to my initial request for an interview you said you were in Mongolia, having made "a small detour" after a major trade conference in Beijing for Avid and prior to flying to Boston to speak at the 'Rings' exhibition (on Avid's behalf once again). So, Mongolia? What gives? Business or pleasure? Ah yes, Mongolia. It all goes back to 1979 when I cut two docos on Rewi Alley in China, which Leon Narbey shot, and there was this wonderful footage in Mongolia that stayed in my head ever since then. I vowed I'd get to Mongolia if I ever had the chance, so you would have to blame Leon Narbey's beautiful eye for my detour. It wasn't strictly business, but I'm not sure one could call a trip to Mongolia "pleasure" either. I went to North Gobi, rode a camel, stayed in a ger, looked at the northern night sky filled with brilliant stars... The people were great - rough, tough and if they had fences there they would have invented #8 wire before we did. Once you finish with the speaking engagements, what's next for you? A bit of teaching for Whetu Fala in Christchurch, finishing off a corporate training film, beginning a feature doco on a woman in India, and who knows after that??? I've had enquires from old acquaintances asking if I'm available or am I too famous now? Well, I may be sitting in a hotel in Boston writing this and preparing for a bunch of speaking engagements, but I'm still just Annie Collins and what I like most is editing and where I like being is New Zealand. What advice do you have for people starting out in the industry who want to be an editor? Start editing. Find someone with a little film they want cut and start editing. You learn more on jobs you don't get paid for than on jobs you do. And nobody can teach you how to edit - you can learn keyboard and computer skills, but that's not editing. Editing is something that happens between you and the footage. What's the best editing tip you've ever received? Well, this is the hardest question of all. I've been racking my brain. I haven't received 'best tips', but somewhere in the back of my mind I think about breathing. Did someone say it to me or was it one of the things I discovered? I don't know now. What I do know is films have to breathe just the same as humans have to breathe. And if you want to know what I mean by that, just think of all the different ways we have of breathing.... Anything else you'd like to add? The chance to work with people of Peter's and Fran's and Jamie's intellect and skill was wonderful. Tough. And bloody wonderful. © Copyright Onfilm magazine, October 2004 www.onfilm.co.nz |