The culmination of a twelve year odyssey, The Three Stooges is a testament to the tenacity of co-directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly. But despite the antic chaos that unfolds on screen, editor Sam Seig reports that the production itself was smooth sailing. “This was a completely buttoned-down shoot. The Farrelly Brothers polished every scene for a tight but realistic three-month shooting schedule... It took years to bring this film to the screen, but it was worth the wait. Bobby and Peter crossed every ‘T’ and poked every ‘eye’ in pre-pro. They were ready for action.”

From Academy Award-winning moviemaker Andrew Stanton comes John Carter, a sweeping action-adventure set based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many moviemakers, past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars, where he reluctantly becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

With t-minus four days until the Oscars, awards season is nearing its official end, and last weekend's glut of awards announcements—with the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE), Cinema Audio Society (CAS), American Cinema Editors (ACE) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) all announcing their winners—brings us ever closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.

To be fair, some great films came out before the advent of sound cinema. Still, when the link between sound and image was formed by the coming of the first "talkies," the art of moviemaking made a mad dash to achieve levels silent features could only dream of. A tribute to the value of sound can be seen at many major awards ceremonies in the form of a Best Sound Editing award... but when it comes to something as important as sound, a dedicated awards ceremony is well-deserved. That's where the Motion Pictures Sound Editors (MPSE) comes in.

With all the buzz resulting from the Producers, Directors and Writers Guilds of America announcing the nominees for their respective awards, you might have missed yesterday’s announcement of the nominees for the Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards. Steven Spielberg’s performance capture epic The Adventures of Tintin was the most honored film, receiving six nominations. Among the live-action films to be honored, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon came out on top with five nominations each.

In Andrew Haigh's Weekend, the chance meeting between Russell and Glen isn't intended by either of them to lead to anything more than a one night stand. But over the next 48 hours, as they share their personal histories, beliefs and aspirations, a strong emotional connection develops between the two of them. The relationship between the two men, however brief in length, is one that will have a profound impact on both of them long after they've gone their separate ways. The fact that the romantic and sexual relationship that forms the heart of Weekend is between two men is garnering the film a lot of attention—though the fact that it's an excellent film is helping quite a bit more.

Defying Deletion: The Fight Over Iraq’s Nineveh Plains portrays the struggle of the Assyrian race since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Assyrians are part of Iraq’s surviving indigenous population, but they are being persecuted and pushed to the brink of extinction. The emotionally-charged story told in Defying Deletion is an important one because of how this injustice has gone largely unreported by the mainstream media. Assyrians have faced persecution in Iraq—largely as a result of their Christianity—for generations, but in my documentary short Defying Deletion, I chose to focus on on post-Saddam Iraq, because the acuity of the current persecution threatens the very survival of the Assyrians as a people.

There are constantly new innovations in the art of editing. In today’s fast-paced industry, it is essential to have the latest in editing news available on one Website, which is exactly the service that Art of the Guillotine provides. “AOTG aggregates, organizes and disseminates information for film editors,” says AOTG founder Gordon Burkell. To make things even more convenient, the site has recently launched an app that allows editors to access this information on the go.

Louis Cioffi, ACE, has found “Dexter” to be an enthralling assignment for the past four seasons. An award-winning editor for his work on the highly acclaimed series, Cioffi joined “Dexter” in 2007. Cioffi has worked extensively in network, cable and features and is currently working on independent film, Hidden Moon. Createasphere shared a recent interview with Cioffi about what it's like to cut the award-winning series.

In the Six-Week Workshop at Manhattan Edit Workshop, students learn the art and theory of editing with the help of the school's Artists in Residence program, which brings in working editors to screen and discuss their work, sharing the lessons they've learned throughout their careers. This summer, Manhattan Edit Workshop welcomed Harry Keramidas, editor of all three Back to the Future films, to share the lessons he's learned throughout his career.

Before becoming one of the most successful family film directors working today (with such box office successes as Big Momma’s House, Scooby-Doo and Beverly Hills Chihuahua under his belt), Raja Gosnell worked for… Robert Altman? It’s true, Gosnell began his film career working as an assistant editor on several of Altman's films before becoming Chris Columbus’ editor-of-choice, cutting classic family comedies like Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire.

The accomplishments of an editor can be both mysterious and underappreciated, and nowhere is this more evident than among the editors at Pixar Studios. I discovered their special role in the animation process when I visited Ken Schretzmann at Pixar shortly after he won an Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film in Animation for Toy Story 3. He then became the focus of my panel at EditFest NY; and after all our discussions I now realize how fully Pixar uses the editor’s talents, one of many brilliant strategies that has led to the studio’s extraordinary success.

Directors are revered, actors are put on a pedestals, screenwriters are praised, but editors--the ones responsible for putting together what we actually see on-screen--get very little credit for the large artistic role they play in the moviemaking process. At EditFest NY, created and run by American Cinema Editors (ACE), editors and their craft are celebrated and studied. MM spoke with Jenni McCormick of ACE and Josh Apter, founder of Manhattan Edit Workshop (which co-produces the event), about this year's EditFest NY.

Imagine you’re a Manhattan copywriter who’s sick of the advertising game and longing to return to his first love: Moviemaking. So you quit your job and move out to the mountains of Pennsylvania to clear your head and work on screenplays and spec spots for your reel. While rediscovering trees and fresh air, you cross paths with a flamboyant, Grammy-nominated Pennsylvania polka entertainer named Jan Lewan. Next thing you know, he comps you tickets to his over-the-top show at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and approaches you with the idea of writing his life story.

Editing a narrative feature is difficult enough. The logistics of it have the potential to be frustrating--the clips aren't labelled well enough, so you can't find that one shot you really like, and when you do find it, you can't use it because Character A's hair isn't the same as in the rest of the scene. There's a dinner scene where Character B's eyeline is off, but you can't cut it because then the rhythm gets thrown off and Character B's confession to Character C in the third act makes no sense whatsoever. By the end of dealing with all the footage you have to, somehow, end up with a movie. Well, imagine editing a movie with no script, a movie where you didn't even know what sort of footage you'd be getting because it's all user-submitted. And that footage? Imagine there being 4,500 hours of it. Those were some of the challenges faced by Joe Walker, editor of Life in a Day.

At last night’s Academy Awards, indies were king. Seven of the major awards, including Best Picture, were won by independent films; in the last 30 years, a non-studio film has received the Best Picture Oscar 19 times.

The American Cinema Editors’ 61st Annual Eddie Awards were held at the Beverly Hilton on Saturday, February 19th. As the ACE credo states, the Eddies honor those who have “advanced the art and science of the editing profession.” So which of these talented and innovative editors took home an Eddie?

American Cinema Editors (ACE) and Manhattan Edit Workshop had the inspired idea to create a series called Short Cuts in order to “get that EditFest feeling all year long.” The intention in both cases was the same: To create a deeper understanding of the editor’s invisible art by having master film editors discuss and screen their work for film students, editors and enthusiasts. But instead of having panels of editors for an entire weekend, Short Cuts would focus on one esteemed editor and take place in one evening.

Winners of the 2011 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards were announced yesterday, with very few surprises. The night's big winner was The King's Speech, which won seven awards, including those for Best Film and Best British Film, plus acting awards for Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter. The British historical costume drama has been picking up steam heading towards Oscar night, focusing much awards speculation away from The Social Network, which was previously considered the frontrunner.

Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter are having a good year. Their work editing David Fincher’s The Social Network garnered them both Oscar and Eddie nominations.

Anne McCabe has edited comedies (Greg Mottola’s Adventureland) and dramas (Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace), but with Matthew Chapman's The Ledge, debuting at Sundance, she has made her move into the thriller genre.

One of the most highly anticipated movies this year at Sundance, Cedar Rapids is the comic story of a naive insurance agent (Ed Helms), who gets more than he bargained for when he’s sent to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to represent his company at an insurance convention. Directed by Miguel Arteta (Youth in Revolt; The Good Girl), produced by Alexander Payne (Sideways) and featuring a surefire supporting cast that includes John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Stephen Root, Sigourney Weaver, Alia Shawkat and Rob Corddry, Cedar Rapids has all the makings of a comedy classic.

The nominees for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards were announced this morning—shortly thereafter followed the inevitable discussion of who was unjustly snubbed. Among those who didn't receive their expected nominations are Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter) and Mila Kunis (Black Swan). Also snubbed was Christopher Nolan, who received nominations for writing and co-producing Inception, but not for directing it. He also missed out on a directing nod for 2008's The Dark Knight; did he kick Academy President Tom Sherak's dog or something?

The American Cinema Editors (ACE) have announced the nominees for the 61st Annual Eddie Awards, which honor the year's best editing work in film and TV. All five of the films nominated in the Dramatic Film category are considered serious awards contenders, and it's a good bet that one of the films nominated will receive the Oscar for Best Picture next month.

Say you're an indie director who needs some footage of fireworks.You probably don't have the time and money to go out and film that yourself. That's where stock footage companies come in.

One of the most buzzed-about releases of the holiday movie season, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as a couple coping with the death of their young son.

In this 45-minute panel discussion, moderated by Bruce Carse, music composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are joined by sound re-recording mixer, supervising sound editor Ren Klyce to discuss their work on David Fincher's The Social Network.

Dede Allen and Sam O’Steen never met, but at one point they were both in cutting rooms at the same time overlooking Times Square; and they were both working on films that would change the landscape of editing forever: Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate.

In the Fall 2010 issue of MovieMaker, Jerome Henry Rudes writes on the efforts of Sanda Schulberg to restore Nuremberg: Its Lessons for Today. Stuart Schulberg's 1948 documentary on the post-World War II war crimes trial at Nuremberg was not screened in the United States for over 60 years following its completion.

Now in theaters and available on Amazon Video On Demand, the new documentary 11/4/08 takes a unique approach in capturing the historic 2008 election day, on which Barack Obama was elected President. The film is a shining example of a fascinating new genre: A user-generated, participatory documentary. Director Jeff Deutchman asked a wide range of moviemakers—from up-and-coming talent to established indie auteurs like Henry Joost (Catfish), Margaret Brown (The Order of Myths) and Joe Swanberg (Alexander the Last)—to record their experiences of 11/4/08.

Karen Schmeer, an editor and frequent collaborator of documentarian Errol Morris, was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident on January 29th, 2010. The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship has been established by Schmeer's friends and colleagues to honor her memory and provide opportunities for aspiring film editors.

I recently moderated my third panel for EditFest, and although this one had only one panelist, it was enough for a feast, because that panelist was the very gifted and gracious Alan Heim.

The latest movie to jump aboard the ever-popular 3-D train, Resident Evil: Afterlife boasts the claim of being the first film completely shot and edited in 3-D.

Three major new releases competed for the top spot at the box office this past weekend; between The Expendables, Eat Pray Love and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, who would receive the honors?

MM's pick of 25 essential apps for moviemakers who want to further their films “on the go.”