Posted by Paul Devlin
This is the first music video I edited professionally.
It was cut at National Video Industries, a big, chaotic, post-production house that sprawled over several floors in a narrow building on 17th Street in New York City. Sometimes the video tape machines I was controlling were two floors below me, and I had to call down to get tapes changed (or run down the steps to do it myself when they got too busy).
I freelanced there as an online editor, and took a couple jobs that were beyond my skill level. When you’re in the driver’s seat editing, with a client behind you paying top dollar per hour and you get caught in a technical situation you can’t handle, it’s like an actor forgetting his or her lines onstage. Then it’s all about recovery. If you can persevere after those experiences, you’re bound to succeed.
This piece was cut old school: off-lined on 3/4 inch tape with burned in timecode, the Edit Decision List (EDL) copied by hand by an assistant, and then online conformed in the big rooms on 1” tape. Being able to do both the offline and online edits made me popular with the music video clients at NVI.
Big thanks to the director, Bruno Artero, who was nice enough to give a newcomer a chance.