Editing for Directors: A Guide for Creative Collaboration

Gael Chandler spent over three decades in Los Angeles editing comedies, dramas, documentaries, features, corporate videos, and promos. She cut on every medium: film, tape, and digital, and trained hundreds of professionals, professors, independent filmmakers, and students to operate digital editing equipment. Chandler worked on The New Leave It to Beaver, the first show to edit on Ediflex, a groundbreaking nonlinear editing system, and was nominated two years in a row for a Cable ACE award for Best Editing of a Comedy Series. As a member of the Editors Peer Group of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, she judged the Emmys and student contests for years. The author also taught classes on editing history, theory, and practice to college students at Loyola Marymount University and California State Universities at Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Northridge. Chandler wrote two editions of Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video (2004 and 2012) and Film Editing: Great Cuts Every Filmmaker and Movie Lover Must Know (2009). In 2010 she retired to northern California and wrote Chronicles of Old San Francisco: Exploring the Historic City by the Bay (2014) and cofounded PictureYourBook to produce book trailers and enhanced eBooks. She continues to be an aspiring playwright and screenplay writer and to teach at her local media center.