On Evolving Techniques, New Demands on the Offline Edit, and Living in the Moment

AICE Award-winning New York-based editor Dan Maloney has joined Deluxe's Beast New York. Formerly of Cut + Run, Spotwelders, and The Whitehouse, Maloney has worked with a range of directors including Speck/Gordon, the Perlorian Brothers, Phil Morrison, Bennett Miller, and Stacy Wall. Among his recent projects are the Gillette spot "Audience" (pictured, top) and a forthcoming Nowness documentary short directed by James Casey. Check out his work at Beast's website, then read our Q&A, below.

Q: What are you working on today?

A: Snickers for BBDO.

Q: How's business in the New York market?

A: The New York market has been quite healthy the past few years — hopefully it’ll stay that way!  

Q: What have been the biggest recent changes in how you do your job?

A: This has been going on for a while now, but the bar keeps rising: clients expect to see something as close to final in an offline world. Assistant editors can help with a lot of the fit and finish, but editors these days have to stay up on their compositing skills and design tools.

Q: Do you have any favored plug-ins, effects or other techniques in the NLE?

A: Nothing fancy. On my audio timeline, I often make EQ adjustments to help specific elements in the mix cut through when things get crowded. I also use basic reverb when necessary to help match wild audio to an environment for dialogue replacement. I’m always looking for time-savers — while I’m a bit late to the party I was just introduced to the [Red Giant] Magic Bullet third-party plugins, which can save you on time spent vignetting supers or just generally adjusting the grade on the dailies.

Q: What's something you've seen, heard or read lately that inspired you creatively?

A: I’m obviously not an actor, but I heard something recently about the teachings of Viola Spolin, the theater teacher. Hearing how her methods thought actors to live in the moment and find a direct connection with the person they’re playing against stuck with me. I don’t want to get too heady, but when cutting dialogue for short films or longer projects, that’s always the moment that you’re looking for.