Stumbling into the non-linear editing world
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
by Anthony Mills
|
|
 Turning his back for a moment to the high-tech screens on which he edits sound for short films and documentaries using cutting-edge software, Lebanon’s Darkside production house sound editor Vartan Avakian recalls the days when you actually had to physically cut tape to edit sound. “Before Avid [software] we had to cut reel,” he says. “It was very manual. You simply took the reel and by slowly listening to it, marked the places you wanted to cut. Then you took a pair of scissors, cut, and then taped the pieces together. You couldn’t preview anything. With non-linear, software editing, I can try things, and then if it doesn’t work, try something else. It’s also easy to cut out breathing sounds. You can actually see the wave form on the computer screen, whereas with magnetic tape you see nothing.”
Avakian stumbled into the field almost by accident. He was studying communications arts at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in 1998, when the department purchased a non-linear Avid audio editing system. “No one knew how to work with it,” Avakian remembers. “We were waiting for a guy to come to explain it to us. I was curious and began reading the manual. Then I started playing with the software. And by the end of the semester I had a pretty strong grasp of it. The Avid guy never came.”
Avakian was then asked to train LAU radio students in using the software. “That’s how I started in the non-linear editing world,” he chuckles.
Avakian joined Darkside, after a stint at Lebanon’s Future TV and New TV.
“There are many openings in the production business, from video clips, to advertisements, to documentaries,” he says. “There are a lot of Arab satellite TV stations that need programs. So there are a lot of openings in this business.”
Asked if it is difficult to keep up with evolving software, he says: “Of course it’s changing a lot but they basically all follow the same rules. They have the same logic or more or less the same interface.” Today, in addition to working on the production house’s documentaries and films, Avakian works on his own short films. That’s what’s keeping him in the business – and at Darkside.
“I am blessed,” he says. “I work as an editor, but I am also able to do my own short films. They give me the facilities and the equipment. Maybe that is why I love what I do. Maybe if I was just limited to one craft things would get boring.”
|
