Award-winning editor works in solitude
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Dec 18/00) - Fade to black. Credits roll. Producer, director, writer...but have you ever noticed the editor?
Unless you're in the business, it's likely that you've clicked off the TV by the time Gary Milligan's name pops up.
Hunched over the keyboard of his computer, Milligan chops and arranges, cuts and re-arranges, finesses and smooths footage to create a cohesive, visually pleasing film.
He can reduce 70 hours of footage into 28 minutes that tell the story. If he does the job right, and colleagues like filmmaker Terry Woolf sing his praises, Milligan is invisible to the average viewer.
A life-long Yellowknifer, Milligan attended what is now Emily Carr College in Vancouver, just after meeting Carol, his future wife, in Yellowknife.
The couple eventually returned to settle here. In 1995, after many years of working for the GNWT, Milligan Mediaworks was formed. He has since worked on countless productions and won awards, including a Gemini, with Woolf, for the 1988 documentary They Look a Lot Like Us: A China Oddesy.
His two latest editing efforts are Sila Alangotok: The Weather is Changing, also with Woolf, and Trapline to Finish Line.
He works alone, in the lower level of the family home, which houses a full post-production facility.
"Yes, it's a lonely job," he jokes, pouting.
"I actually prefer to work alone. I do work better alone, I think. It just gives me a chance to immerse myself and focus and be consumed by this stuff."
After more than 20 years much of the work of meshing disjointed images and smoothing transitions between segments is instinctive.
"Generally, I like to think that the picture should be able to tell the story. I find in some cases, there tends to be way too much dialogue and explanations of what you're seeing on the screen. Sometimes it just seems redundant to have a narrator tell you what it is that you're seeing."
Producers do arrive with everything perfectly planned and laid out, but not often.
"I wouldn't consider that editing; that would be just pushing the buttons. But I've been fortunate enough that I've been given a certain amount of freedom. And through consultation, if there's a dispute, we can generally work it out and come to some kind of compromise."
Milligan says that a producer or director is only as good as the people they hire.
"That's what, to me, makes a good producer - knowing who to hire to make them look good."
Which explains why the same people tend to work together on different projects. Creative bonds are formed, similar visions shared.
Milligan says that a lot of people don't realize the full impact of an editor's job on the final product.
"You can have great looking pictures, great sound, great script - but if the editor isn't playing the same tune, it can turn out to be a lousy finished product. And it can work the other way, too. You can have mediocre pictures, mediocre original material to work from, but a good editor can spin straw into gold.
"I don't consider my job finished until a person says, 'That's good.' There are first drafts, second drafts and third drafts, like in anything. And that's the beauty of doing things on a computer nowadays."
Milligan entered the world of video when the technology was new.
"Before computers came along, you needed one machine to play original tape and another machine to copy selected scenes," explained Milligan.
"And then if you want to have a dissolve, for instance, you needed two source tapes, so you can dissolve between them and record it onto the master tape. So you need another box over here, and another controller to control three machines. It can start to be a big beast that feeds on itself."
Now if a segment needs to be removed from a portion of video that already been edited, it's as easy as a click here and a click there.
"It's the same as writing on a typewriter or using a word processor. If you reached the end of your page and decided the second paragraph had to be taken out, you had to rewrite the whole page."
The change in attitude toward video is no less than the advances in the technology. It is no longer film's weak cousin.
"I think video production is becoming more accepted. Everybody refers to video as film now. I don't put 'cameraman' on my card now, I put 'videographer.'"
