In “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “X-Men: The Last Stand” and other feature films, Mark Goldblatt said his editing was “part of the nuts and bolts.”
On Friday evening, the Hollywood film editor explored the role of editing in a lecture to more than 100 students in the College of Communication building.
Goldblatt said that editing is a crucial skill for various jobs in filmmaking.
“It’s very important no matter what you want to be. If you want to be a director, you have to know about editing,” he said.
Goldblatt showed clips from “Starship Troopers” and “Terminator” to explain how his editing created certain effects. He broke down some of the clips to explain techniques he used and challenges he faced when compiling scenes.
“Editing has to become second nature to you, it’s like an extension of your body, if you will, it’s your pallet,” Golblatt said.
“I loved his point that, in editing, you make the movie equal more than the sum of all the shots,” said COM freshman David Imani.
He also recalled his experiences with directors James Cameron and Michael Bay. Goldblatt called Cameron a “hard task master” and said he found Cameron to be a great guy, but not for the “weaker minded,” he said.
While their first worked together on “Terminator,” Goldblatt and Cameron didn’t work closely with each other until their following films, where Cameron spent a lot more time in the editing room, the editor said.
“He’s totally a technical guy and he loves to master all the technology so he knows how far he can take it. He’ll write something or conceive of something and the software might not actually exist to do it at the time that he thinks of it, but they spend years making it,” Goldblatt said.
Emalie El-Fakih, a freshman in COM, said she thought Goldblatt gave students insight into the inner workings of filmmaking
“I really appreciated his energy, you could tell he really wanted to be there and help aspiring film students,” she said. “One of the most interesting things I took away from the lecture was how editors work with other departments to complete a film.”
COM freshman Quinn Rodriguez said Goldblatt had a higher level of legitimacy because of his extensive experience and success as an editor in movies everyone had seen, despite not having an undergraduate film degree.
“It was interesting hearing his story, since he didn’t major in film at his original college. It was cool to see how he made it work without a film degree.” Rodriguez said.
“I liked how humble the guy was and how informative he was,” Imani said. “And it was really cool watching some of the scenes he edited and listen to his commentary about how they shot it and how it all came together.”
“It’s who you are; it’s what you bring to the table in terms of your total life experience. That’s like art. It’s fun, and it’s really cool, and how you instinctually react to the material.” Goldblatt said.
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