Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker

by Steve Hamilton | Published February 3, 2007

Choosing Projects

Choosing projects is kind of harrowing because editing a feature is a huge time commitment (six months to a year). I try to take on projects with people that I like spending time with and whom I feel can help me learn or grow. It has to be something that’s going to stretch my boundaries as an editor and as a person.

Advice For New Directors

Make sure that you record good production audio and don’t assume that you will be able to fix your sound problems later. Unless you have an unlimited amount of money, you’re going to run out in the end. You may not be able to fix it and something else will get compromised.

Cutting Commercials

I had the great pleasure of editing Atom Egoyan’s first (and I believe only) television commercial. It turned out to be remarkably like a 60-second Atom Egoyan film. To compress that amount of narrative into 60 seconds while retaining the stylistic integrity of Atom’s filmmaking was extremely challenging and strangely satisfying.

Sound Editing

A filmmaker once told me about a short film that he submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, which they rejected. The following year, he resubmitted and they accepted it, lauding him for “tightening the film up.” He had done nothing more than finish the sound and mix it. He had made no picture changes whatsoever.

Steenbeck vs. AVID

An AVID is just a Steenbeck manifested in the digital ether. It’s only a tool, so a bad cut is still going to be bad whether made on film or on a digitized picture. Conversely, digital audio loaded directly from your production recordings sounds significantly better than mag stock that you’ve cut, spliced and dragged across the sound heads of a Steenbeck for months on end. The soundtracks of many low-budget films have improved far more thanks to the AVID than the actual picture edits have.

Digital Video Technology and Creative Freedom

Last summer I got up early one morning and shot the destruction of Brooklyn’s Maspeth Towers with my DV camera. By 9:30 a.m., I had written and recorded a narrative about the experience and edited together a four-minute short film on my AVID. I brought a tape of it to a dinner party that night and showed it to a small group, which included the director of the Nantucket Film Festival. He wanted it for the festival on the spot. I like owning the means of production, being able to create whatever images, sounds and films I want, when I want. Creative freedom at last.

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