A Montage of Memories From an Editing Career

 Hello everyone. Thank you for listening to us on media and monuments. I'm your host for this episode? Um, Tara Jabari and I am speaking with Ken Zeke, an Emmy award winning editor who started in Hollywood and moved to New Zealand and has been an editor.

Several decades, we'll get into that and actually full disclosure. He was my boss and my mentor when I lived in New Zealand for a year to, uh, assist him on his show that turned into more of a web series Baha on air. So without further ado, please welcome Ken Zeke. Ken, thank you for joining.

Well, it's a pleasure. , it's a pleasure. And it's amazing all this technical connection we're having you and. You were north America and me in New Zealand

exactly. I was gonna clarify for people if they were yep. And the time difference. Isn't so bad. It's 6:00 PM for me now. And it's 10:00 AM for you. So it worked out was great.  could you first explain, like when did you get started and how did you become an editor in the first.

Well, I started in,  Hollywood after university and after being in the coast guard for six months. I went to CBS television in Hollywood and fortunately got a job.  there was several people interviewing for just the mail room at these beautiful CBS headquarters. And so I was just delivering mail to executive offices and stuff.

But the thing that was great about CBS is like many,  companies they promote within,  give, you know, first chance to people that work for the.  and, uh, I got into the film department, at CBS, which, but  again, it's like starting,  At the bottom of a rung of a ladder. And it's, it was like just packaging film.

I'm sending a 16 millimeter films of TV shows around the country, but then there was an opening in the promo department.  and I hadn't yet worked with any film university. It was just early days for television. We're going way, way back. And, I,  got a job editing promos, like.  watch Hogan's heroes Friday night, and then you show cut some sequences from that particular episode together.

And that was the first chance of editing. And my gosh, I, I just, it was just a miracle taking two isolated pieces of film, cutting it together and, and,  having a message of, of telling a story, you know, or being part of the story. So that was my first taste of editing and. Fell in love with it, basically,

Yeah. And what year was this?

we're talking about 19 62.

1962. And you, so you started in the mail room and were you ever in other departments before you started editing?

no. Fortunately, um, Basically my life I felt has been guided, you know, as a Baha, I feel like it's divine guidance because everything was leading to where I am today, you know, and my a lot I'm, I'm on YouTube now with my TV series and getting lots of views on that. So I just felt all these openings, um, at CBS enabled me to, uh, join the film editor's union.

In fact, you have to, if you handle film at, in those days in Hollywood, you had to join the union, which is a great door opening opener for you. If you're gonna get a career in that. So I was a member of the union and once I was doing the promos and after I had a few years that were required for, um, the, the union, you have to have four years before you become an assistant editor in the studio.

So it, it takes you eight years really to become a full-fledged

wow.

editor, which is you're an, you're an apprentice. And then you're an assistant editor and then you're an editor. So fortunately I was in the union and going through that whole process, which led me to my first editing job, um, was, uh, Hogan's heroes.

Which now of course is still going after the 50, some years or something. Uh, we have an una comedy channel here in New Zealand. Um, and so my first break was, was, uh, going from assistant editor to editing on Hogan's heroes and the editor. That was my mentor. And I was assisting was Michael Kahn. Now any Spielberg movie that you see, the editor is always.

Always Michael Khan. He did, et, he's done all of, uh, Spielberg's greatest movies and it's of course, Spielberg is still turning out films. He must be near 80 in the late eighties, cuz I'm in my early eighties, but Michael Kahn has always been S Spielberg's editor. And he was my first teacher, my first mentor in editing.

He left Hogan's heroes as the editor and uh, turned it over to me. The first, um, the first season they usually had, uh, back in those days, a television season would be about 22 to 24 episodes. And that first year I edited 17 by first year of editing 17 episodes of Hogan heroes. So I was quite, it became quite an accomplished editor for TV, um, and, and, and edited, uh, quite a few TV pilots.

So my reputation, uh, really grew, but I was basically a comedy, a comedy film editor. It was hard, hard to make a transition to editing scripted drama, um, because the, the, the producer would always say, well, what are your credits?

And you'd say, I edited Hogan's heroes and such and such comedy series. I worked on the Waltons for a while. Some people may know the names of these series, but, but I hadn't done drama editing for the first several years. And then,  I got editing on a, a two hour tele feature called medical story.

that is the episode and the editing I did, which won the Emmy award.

Oh,

It was really ahead of its time, because back in those days, a medical series would have just one star won actor and it was a, a series. And so the whole episode would revolve around Dr. Kil there or. Can't think of some of these other doctor shows, but this was kind of the first medical show of its type.

But so it, it turned into episodic  like, okay, this episode might have a love affair between a nurse and a doctor. And then there's another storyline going with a child where have having cancer. And then there's an automobile accident patient. Um, So it was the first time that there was this kind of multi-level, um, five, five or six stories going at the same time. And I think that's what sort of won the, uh, won the Emmy, cuz it was very unique editing and very successful editing the way we, so two hour I edited one hour and another editor edited the other hour.

And that was, that was like your introduction to editing drama.

That's right. That was a, you know, medical drama series. Well, it was just two it's it's tele feature.

and did you start learning what you liked? More drama comedy? What the difference was as an.

I really enjoyed. Comedy  because, you know, as an editor, you get to see whatever episode or whatever movie you're working on, you see it over and over and over again. You know, the editor is the first person and the first crew member to actually see the movie because we're, you know, we're squirreled away,  in a room and cutting all the bits and pieces together.

Cuz as you know, a film is shot out of continu.

right.

the opening scene at the hospital, um, exterior. And then the last scene of the movie is the exterior again, but they, they shoot those two scenes on the same day. And  so the editor puts all these bits and pieces together makes the movie flow and transitions work and, and, uh, you follow a script of what kind of coverage you have and, uh, I enjoyed it so much, obviously.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it's sort of love at, for sight when you were doing the promos and then just stuck with.

it really was.

 when you were in the mail room to doing promos and things like that, you felt like  you were meant to be an editor. And then what led you to leave America and move to New Zealand and work as an editor?

 the main reason, um, I wasn't, I, I quite frankly, was not happy with what of United States being in the, were going way back, you know, the Vietnamese war, what we were doing in Vietnam, what we were doing in Korea. Um, so I wasn't a good us citizen in that respect in every other respect I loved America.

Hm.

Uh, so I always had, even during those times when they were drafting or conscripting what they call a New Zealand script, getting drafted into the military, I was tempted to try to do anything, to avoid being drafted. And because at that same time I was career building, you know, in H. I didn't wanna go serve four years in the army.

Um, especially in a war that I wouldn't be happy with. 

So, so any of those steps of working in the mail room, getting into the film, and then I look back at that as, as. um, divinely, ordained, transformations basically, which led me ultimately to make the, the decision, um, to come to New Zealand 

it seems so random of why New Zealand

Yeah.

and this was in the seventies.

 we came to New Zealand in 1982  I heard about New Zealand it was this funny story. Um, a friend of ours, came back from a trip to New Zealand and he attended. A 1977 international conference in New Zealand. And he came back and he was raving about this New Zealand, you know, and quite frankly, with my limited American New York education, New Zealand is that Canada, new founder, new Z land, where is New Zealand? He said, no, it's in the Southern hemisphere. It's way down here, Australia. And I. I asked him, is it connected to Australia with a bridge? No, he says there's a whole Tasmania sea between New Zealand and Australia. So I had nothing knew nothing about it, but what it, it got me excited because Mary and I had been praying about how we could serve and if we could serve in another.

Country, um, all the better, cuz I, I was sick of LA in the smog in Hollywood and the film industry in Hollywood is great, you know, but there's,  like a lot of your film people listening, you know, there's a lot of egos in the industry and uh, and uh, so I was just, so I was looking to serve my faith and also looking for a better way. a better way to raise, raise my three children, because like I said, LA was full of smog, full of traffic, um, even drugs, drugs in schools and stuff like that. And I needed, when we heard about New Zealand in this wholesome, wholesome society, we thought. let's do it. Let's pull up the roots in America, which is a huge step, as you can imagine.

Cuz I left, I left the film industry too, and you know that my reputation as a, um, as an Emmy award, um, editor came to New Zealand and uh, 19, uh, 80, what was it? 1981. And um,  immediately got into a real small film industry here in New Zealand

Yeah.

for a country of 4 million people. It was really small,

And, and you see it as an.

as an editor.

Yeah, my first job, uh, when I was in the, in New Zealand was actually in Australia. Um, for 20th century Fox film called, um, Wells, Gilbert and Sullivan, takeoff,

Mm-hmm

it called? The pirate movie had Christie McNichols in it. These were TV movie stars. And, um, so here I was in New Zealand editing an American film and it was filmed in Australia, but I was earning Yankee dollars, which was really nice

nice.

for their editing features, It actually opened up my career and it went from television in Hollywood to, um, feature film editing, and then documentary editing

Mm-hmm.

commercials, uh, you know, all kinds of editing being in the small film community. Okay.

And so we got a very brief explanation of your 40, 50 years of working as an editor, but now I also wanted to discuss things that will. From your experience that other editors and other filmmakers should keep in mind to help editors. So what can, some things like directors, actors,  can do to help editors?

Like how can they think of that? Um, and what do they do that sometimes hurt an editor's job or hinder the, the job of an editor?

Well, I think the main thing that you keep in mind when you're hired to do a movie and it's, and it has a director and producers and stuff, um, it to keep in mind that you're editing the film for the director. Uh, or, and, you know, for the film team and put the producers. Um, so that, that's the first thing in your mind, but you don't have to necessarily sometimes go by, um, a scripted scene as that when you put it in a first cut, so called the editor gets, like I said, the first, first chance looking at the whole movie. Um, but  you're pretty much editing for your director because the director has the knowledge of the film that he shoots or she shoots and, uh, uh, you put it together, but you might have other thoughts away. A transition might go from scene a to scene B or something like that, but you don't do that one.

And if the script's not calling for it, but when you're showing it to your director, you say this might work. why don't we look at that? And they says fine. Um, just last, last night or a couple nights ago, um, Peter Jackson, who did all these monumental

Mm.

movies and things like that just won five Emmys or his, his production of the Beatles, just one, five Emmys.

Um, But the editor, uh, I, in fact, something in really interesting, I'll probably get off the track here, but I wouldn't wanna be a editor for Peter Jackson because he, he sits in the back of the editing room and he is always over your shoulder and he's always wanting to do this or that, you know, so I can, I, I wouldn't prefer working that way.

I prefer. During that first cut by myself. The film is finished. The director comes in when I have it in the first cut. You look at it. Um, you pass ideas back and forth. How you can make it better drop this sequence, drop this dialogue and some of the, um, so the demands of the editor, if you drop some dialogue in the scene, how do you make it look smooth that there's no dialogue missing or something?

So there's lots of tricks editors have and, um, And so, you know, knowledge of those is what helps you in your, in your career. But a lot of that's just natural way of, of  your creative force, your knowledge of how, um, drama should be done or comedy should be done.

and do you feel like you have a specific style or process that you really like? So you, you explained you like having, you know, you've given me all the footage, let me do the first cut. Let me do my thing. Can you go a little bit more about that?

Yeah. So you do your first cut. Um, and you usually, you know, you're editing a feature film and a TV series you're editing as it's being filmed. So you get. Just miscellaneous scenes that you cut together as the film is being shot. And then. Like I said, we, we cut it together to be a, the movie that it's supposed to be.

So we show it to the director and the, and uh, in most cases, and  you and your director work it together and then show it to the producers. In some situations, the producers have some influence. I mean, obviously the executive producer own. The project, you know, and, uh, so, um, and a lot of times there's a conflict between producers and the director. In fact, that first film that I edited in, Australia, it was,  two weeks before the camera was a role that the director and the editor walked off the film. And,  they were in desperate straits and they called me in New Zealand and I edited this feature film. That was my first feature. But anyway, um, so it it's a process.

That's pretty much, uh, standard the way I'm explaining it. There might be some variation.  like I said, there might be a conflict between maybe even the writer, but. At that time, the writers at the mercy of the director and  the editor putting it all together. the beauty of film is it's a collective art form, you know, it's when you look at, and when you look at end credits, you, you see from a big film, you can see 200 names. Of creative people make up, uh, set, design music, acting, editing, acting,  and that's, uh, a very special, art form, you know, you think of an Artis D just. Or she just takes their palette and the canvas and goes up, up on a mountain and, and paints this beautiful scape seascape or mountain scape or something.

 but with film, it's collective art form, you know, and that's, that's beautiful. That's why movies move us so much because of all the elements, the music, the acting of photography, and.

 I remember you would tell me like the editor is pretty much the last part. You know, that brings all of those elements together from the costuming to the lighting, to the acting, to the writing, everything, and then the editors, the final touch.

Yeah. The, well, what we do is once it's, it's locked, what we say locked, this is the way it's gonna be. Cuz the directors now happy producers are happy. Um, the music, uh, composer comes in, um, you show the film, you know, as the editor, you're still with this film and you show the film to the composer. The composer goes away.

To compose the music and then records the music for the movie. And then there's sound editors on a big film. There's sound editors.  this is a category that you see in the Oscars and the Emmys, the sound editing,

mm-hmm

um, you, uh, you, you don't work with them. You sort of turn everything over to them and let them do, let them put their artistic, uh, creativity into the film.

And then, um, It's pulled all together in a mixing sound, stage music, the final, you know, blending the music and the sound and the dialogue production sounds, sound effects. Everything is then pulled together to make a beautiful soundtrack. Um, so the editors with, I, you know, in most cases, right to the end of the. In fact, it might be after all of the soundtrack is put together, then the pictures in those days, they don't have a negative film anymore. It's all done digital and stuff like that. But in those days you had, you know, uh, cut the negative is cut for the picture. And then you, you go to the film lab and there's color grading, uh, to make sure all the, the feel and the look of each cut and each scene. Works really well. And so, like I say, it's just so much creativity goes into filmmaking with a documentary. You know, you worked with me on my TV series, Baha Baha on air. Well, basically you, I, I would go like to Samoa to a film conference or a youth conference, and then you went along to. Was it Samoa where'd you go to?

Uh,

Uh, I think I went to Vanuatu with.

that's right. We went to Havana Watu so, um, uh, it was me and, and you and Nick, I, another young film filmmaker to be,  and we,  brought back the documentary. so that was a film crew of three people, you know,

in park.

which. Beautiful, but, but there's the whole package. The editor, uh, is the director and you know, I'm the director and you have the editors, you, you and other youth and stuff over the years worked with me and you learned how to edit.

You've put it in a first cut. You show it to me as the director producer or whatever, and, uh, you know, work on making it a final product that works. Well, the difference one big difference too, between television and feature films is time

Mm.

because television shows have to be cut to a certain length. Like it's a, if it's a half hour movie, half hour show, well, generally it's loaded with commercials and you might have 28, 26 minutes of actual film production.

And the rest of the time, the four minutes is. Is for TV commercials, et cetera. Whereas feature films. Well nowadays they make feature films hours long,

Right, but it's like continuous.

I can't sit that long. Um, but the used to be the old method was the old code was, uh, 90 minutes for a movie. 

And what are some  editors or films or television that you. Are  a fan of and impressed by that you might wanna share.

I recently saw the Elvis Presley movie, a movie made feature film. Um, Which was a great film. It has what I really appreciate when I go to the movies, it has all the great production values. The editing is great. The photography is great. The acting is great. The, uh, sound and music is great, you know? Um, and it goes back to what I was talking about earlier.

This collective art form and a movie like this Elvis movie, it was well acted and. Uh, wonderfully directed and Tom Hanks was fantastic as Elvis's, uh, manager. Uh, and of course I, another story is Elvis Presley. It was a part of my movie career because, um, I added a, um, a feature film, a documentary feature film on Elvis pres. called Elvis on tour. This was way back in Hollywood, 1972.  it was a movie that,  it was actually, well, the way it was filmed Elvis and his manager gave permission for this film company to. Well, I think they had six or nine, 16 millimeter cameras filming these concerts. So it, it was a concert feature film, and it, you know, it, it filmed in  major cities like Cleveland, uh, Memphis, Tennessee, uh, St.

Louis. It was like a seven city tour. And, uh, this company had the, the cameras and they were, they were allowed to film backstage before Elvis went on. And when he came back and they filmed the concert with multiple cameras, that'd be maybe two or three cameras on Elvis wide and medium close, and a camera on the backup singers. camera on the orchestra and two cameras in the audience. So it was a monumental editing job because we filmed all these concerts. So we would have, um, five love me, tender  songs to edit, and then you ain't nothing but a hound dog, five of those. Another little interesting story in this is one of, I was the supervising editor.

Okay. So I did a lot of the editing of the music sequences, and then I finished it off with, with the sound and the color grading and all of that, but we had four other editors on it because it was such a massive editing job. And one of the editors was Marty Scorsese.

Oh

And this is, this is really interesting.

I tell you, Tara, I got a thousand stories here. you should do a, you should do a five parter on me

Yes.

Marty just starting with his directing career, but he was an editor at the time he did a fine job on this Elvis movie. Um, he did a lot of the montages, you know, between. Concerts cities and the concerts they did in cities and traveling on the airplanes and the, all of the backstage stuff.

He did some of that. And, um,  and the interesting thing was that the, the editing was done in this big warehouse because we needed five editors editing suites, basically to set everybody up and get them. So all day long, there was, I mean, we're really going back where there was just like one phone system, one receptionist, and the phone calls were coming in for the various editors and the crew and whatever.

And so all day long, you hear Marty Scotti phone, Marty Scotti telephone. He was not only editing, but he was producing one of his early films. But, uh, but that picture. Uh, it was an MGM production. They distributed it and it was, it won a golden globe award as best feature documentary, 1972.

Wow.

do you have any advice or things that you hope aspiring editors should consider now?

 I guess it's just the basic. You have to have a large degree of ambition and you follow, um, if you wanna be an editor, you look at, what does it take? You know? Uh, and it, it varies obviously from. Different types of editing, you know, documentary editing or feature films, uh, in minor feature films or major studio feature films.

 It's but you gotta have the ambition. You gotta have, you gotta have, uh, the stick to it, this stick to

Right. Yeah.

of, uh, wanting, you know, if this is the career you want, well, you, you know, that's what you seek and what you work towards.

um, well, thank you, Ken. Those were really what I wanted to concentrate on. Is there anything that, uh, you wanna add that we didn't talk.

No other than, you know, wishing anybody that pursues a career in media. Um, because it's an exciting industry. As, as people know, it's just, uh, a lot of times it's very adventurous. Uh, you make and meet the most creative people. You know, that can be around in the world. Um, so it, it is just because it is so exciting and so creative, you know, you just wanna stick to it and do the,  obviously you wanna do your best  

So thank you for coming,  on media and monuments. And who knows? Maybe one day we can have another one just of your stories from over the years.

 I thank, YouTube