I have walked the halls of Hollywood, both dark and cluttered with film reels and bright and glittering with Emmys, Clios, and Oscars, and feel dedicated to passing on my experience to all who seek to open cutting room doors.

For me it all started in a small drive-in theatre in Santa Rosa, California - to paraphrase Ted Baxter from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I got a job as a cashier at StarVue Motor Movies but was more interested in the projection booth. There I learned base and emulsion, cement and tape splicing, and other 35mm basics. Eventually my union brothers and the town's theatre managers were persuaded to let a woman in the booth and the union. This meant I got to run Rocky, Star Wars, and Saturday Night Fever for months and take location assignments doing grip, electrical, and craft service work. Much film through projector and two Bachelor of Arts degrees later, I headed for Hollywood and began slipping through studio gates.

My first Hollywood job was as an assistant at a sound studio where I transferred 500 tiger growls from ¼" to 35mm on my first day. It was a good place to meet editors and led to my first assistant editor job in what I dubbed the “syncing pool” on the television show That’s Incredible. (I'm still friends with several other pool members, some of whom helped on my book.) From there it has been a whirlwind of jobs and trips to the unemployment office.

I have edited comedies, dramas, documentaries, features, corporate videos, and promos, and cut on every type of medium: film, tape, and digital. Nominated twice for a Cable ACE award for editing a comedy series, I am a member of the Editors Peer Group of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences and annually enjoy judging the Emmy and College TV awards.

I have taught editing at Loyola Marymount University and California State Universities at Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Northridge, and have trained hundreds of professionals, independent filmmakers, professors, and students to operate digital editing equipment. Currently I am developing courses for Video Symphony, a nationally accredited career school in Burbank, California.

I have also written a handful of feature screenplays, one of which is optioned and another of which won the Scriptwriters Networks’ Producers Outreach Program contest and may yet be coming to a theatre near you. The writing has made me a better editor and vice versa.

I hope you read and enjoy my book, but mostly I hope it helps you realize your filmmaking visions. Feel free to let me know.

Click here to buy the book
Contact me at: info@gaelchandler.com

to top