TD: “Flashback Television produces a wide variety of programmes, but the sort of films that I produce personally are mostly history documentaries. Inevitably, your story is going to be absolutely paramount and it’s absolutely vital to have a good strong editor. I hear all too often of people putting a lot of time and effort into choosing the cameraman, thinking about what the look of the film is going to be, only to leave thinking about documentary editing to the very end of the production. Because editing happens at the end of the whole process, people can see it simply as putting everything together.  I’ve never ever seen editing like that. Many years ago, I was briefly an assistant film editor at BBC Bristol. A short career! It didn’t progress to becoming a proper editor. This was in the days when assistant editors had to spend years in apprenticeship and I went on to do other things. But I’ve always thought, from the very early days of my professional career, that documentary editing isn’t just the last process in the long chain of production. It’s absolutely integral to the way of thinking about putting images together and telling stories.

You need an editor for a very long period of time. In creative terms, the editor has the longest commitment, second only to the director, on any production. I can’t believe that some producers or some production companies leave the booking of the editor ‘til the last minute, because that person plays such an important role. Here at Flashback, we’ve got all sorts of examples of where the editor has made a real contribution to the creative process. I’m not one who believes in the auteur approach to film making. I believe everything we do is collaborative, is teamwork and in that team I would still place the director as the most important single person, but the editor is a very good second.”

SB: Do you mean that you would actually get an editor involved at the scripting stage?

TD: “At Flashback we have two staff editors and a number of freelance editors on rolling contracts. Certainly the staff editors do get involved in the early parts of the film-making process. They usually attend production meetings; they will sometimes go out on shoots. Very often the editor will say ‘Don’t forget to do this’ or ‘Make sure that you shoot that. If we edit it this way we need this shot’, which is very good. Sometimes it’s very helpful for the editor too. They can think ’Oh, why did they do it like this? Now it’s my responsibility to sort it all out.’ If they go on the shoot, they can see some of the issues that arose on location. They feel a little bit differently when the material comes back to the cutting room. With freelance editors, that’s much more difficult to do however, but if you have booked your editor well in advance it’s beneficial all round.”