The Art of Being Industrious: Dody Dorn ACE on Cutting Fury

Creative COW by Kylee Wall

Film editor Dody Dorn, ACE, is best known for her work on films like Memento, Kingdom of Heaven, and End of Watch, collaborating with such directors as Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, and David Ayer. Her latest film directed by Ayer, Fury, involved 16 Avids across two continents, with 1.3 million feet of film shot over 69 production days.

In a "fast and furious" post process that included adding to the editorial crew after post had already begun, Dody (along with editor Jay Cassidy, ACE) and the team effectively ran a 24-hour editing room between London and Los Angeles, preparing dailies in LA and emailing bins overnight for use in Media Composer.

Dody noted, "We also used the AMA [Avid Media Access] file creation to deal with the video tap, which I sometimes used for preliminary edits if I was waiting for the dailies. There was a 3-5 day turnaround for dailies. If the director wanted to see an edited scene immediately or the production needed an assembled reference clip, having the tap ingested for me to cut in the interim became invaluable."

While Avid's stable environment and solid media management played a major role in finishing Fury, Dody brings with her a lifetime of editorial experience capped with an industrious, can-do attitude. After working her way through various jobs in the film and television industry, she landed in the edit room by accident ? and never looked back.

After time spent as an assistant film editor, she made a lateral move to sound where she spent a decade as foley, dialogue and supervising sound editor (and won a Golden Reel for sound editing on The Abyss) before returning to being a film editor in the early 1990s. I talked to Dody about the challenges of working on Fury, and about the insight she's gained about the craft and business of post-production over the years. read more...