With the Travel Channel and Oprah Winfrey on his resume, along with a roster of films that include Courageous and War Room, Steve Hullfish is among the most prolific film and television editors since the mid-1980s. He is also an author who has taken time to share insights into his profession. His latest book, Art of the Cut, features interviews with some of the leading colleagues in his field, including Margaret Sixel (Mad Max: Fury Road), Tom Cross (La La Land), Stephen Mirrione (The Revenant) and Joe Walker (12 Years a Slave).
“I really love editing. I have—from the start—been a producer and director as well, but I realize my strengths and weaknesses and my strength is really my ability to shape a story in the edit room,” Hullfish says.
Hullfish has written five previous books on editing and post-production, but Art of the Cut is the first one intended for a general audience of movie lovers. “If you don’t understand editing, you really don’t understand anything about the movies,” he explains. “As many, many directors have stated: the film is made in the edit room. There are a ton of really fascinating stories about how your favorite films were shaped in the edit room that would shock most non-editors.”
With Art of the Cut, Hullfish hopes to raise the level of public appreciation for his field. “Even things like the performances of the actors are shaped in very concrete ways by the editor. Every pause, every reaction, every glance, the building of emotion in a scene, is all done by the editor,” he says. “It’s a position that requires an enormous breadth of skills in order to perform well—an understanding of psychology, of story, of acting, technical abilities to run the softwear, social skills to assuage fears and doubts in the director, so many things go into editing a film.”
Hullfish will give a presentation at 5:30 p.m., May 24 at Brenner Brewing Company, 706 S. 5th St. The event is sponsored by Milwaukee Creative Media Professionals. Reservations are required. To RSVP, register at www.mkecmp.com.
