Orly Danon ASE ASE Mentorship Programme
Mentorship can take place in various ways. Casual conversations at Sundowner events, asking a more experienced mate to watch your work and comment, are just some ways to help your fellow Editors. Here at the ASE we run a Mentorship Programme, which matches full members with experienced Editors throughout Australia who volunteer their time and knowledge to help our members with any advice they may be seeking. This programme has been a great success and many successful matches have been made.
I’ve also had many Editors tell me that they ‘mentor’ people all the time when they are working, be it with their Assistants, Assembly Editors, or Junior Editors, in a more informal way. This year, Queensland Editor John Unwin (Muster Dogs, Miriam Margolyes: Impossibly Australian, The Swap), has turned this into a more formal process: he’s made it his mission to mentor his Assistant / Assembly Editor, Nick Whelan, during the edit of Muster Dogs Season 3. John spoke to the ASE Mentorship Programme with his thoughts on how he was going to do this.
Nick is going to be given the opportunity to cut several scenes to fine cut level for the new season under the guidance of Lead Editor and Producer, John Unwin. The goal is for Nick to be able to graduate to editing from assisting by the end of the year. Nick worked on Muster Dogs Season 2 as an Assistant / Assembly Editor, so he is already familiar with the style and format of the show. In Season 2, he also had the opportunity to cut several scenes for social media.
(supplied photo: John Unwin)
John Unwin is the Editor for 3 x 1 hour episodes of the 6 episode series. He will be giving Nick one scene out of each of his episodes to cut on his own. John and Nick will have a weekly check in, where they will watch the scene that Nick has cut together, and John will provide detailed feedback. Nick will take the feedback on board, and they will regroup to watch again and refine until the scene is right.
The post production will take place from February to August, so how’s it going so far?
John Unwin says:
“I’ve been lucky enough to have Nick as an Assistant Editor on several projects over the last couple of years and have found him to be a constant source of enthusiasm and positivity. No matter the deadline or demands of the job, his eagerness to help the edit team has been a massive asset, and so, when he expressed an interest in learning the craft himself, I suggested we work together on a few scenes for Muster Dogs Season 3 and see where that takes us over the next 12 months. His skillset as an Editor has already grown so much this year, and not surprisingly, his enthusiastic approach remains unchanged. He’s going to be a really talented Editor.”
(supplied photo: Nick Whelan)
Nick Whelan says:
“I've been in the industry for 14 years now. I started out as a sound recordist and eventually started to find work as a data wrangler and Assembly Editor for Black Fella Films. I really enjoyed this work, but I only really felt like an Assistant / Assembly Editor when I learnt Avid 2+ years ago in Brisbane. Ideally, I would love to edit documentary films.
John is a fantastic Editor and a patient and understanding mentor. From working with him for the past 2+ years we've developed a great working relationship and friendship. I've seen the natural way he edits and aspire to be as fluid, intuitive and playful as he is with editing. This obviously comes with a great deal of experience, but it is really great to be able to edit something, even just one 5 minute scene, from the ground up and have him offer feedback at every level. In the scene I've edited so far, John gave me the reins and let me discover the moments I thought would be best. It was really nice for me to use my natural intuition and then work from there. And when our fantastic post producer, Lauren, scripted the scene, it was pretty much 80% accurate to what I had assembled from John's advice!
I still have a lot to learn but it's so nice to have someone such as John trust you to find the right story that needs to be told. I have a lot of gratitude to John as well as the other Editors on the past seasons of Muster Dogs, and to the production company. And to the ASE’s Mentorship Program for facilitating such an important program!
Muster Dogs is produced for the ABC by Ambience Entertainment. It is being edited on DaVinci Resolve.
We’d love to hear and help facilitate more ‘real world’ mentorship stories, so please email us to tell us your process!