1986


HARD TO HANDLE

PICTURE EDITOR
(Additional editing)





In January 1986, Bob Dylan performed a series of concerts in Australia.
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers accompanied him.

These concerts were filmed by seven of the (arguably) best camera operators in the country.

The film editor John Scott was responsible for establishing the complex cutting-room system necessary to deal with the 100,000 feet of 35mm film coming from seven cameras.


The film was cut on seven interlocked 35mm Steenbecks. The editor sat in the middle of the room, controlling all seven Steenbecks from one master Steenbeck. When you saw something you liked on one of the Steenbeck screens, you stopped all of the machines and marked the shot you wanted with a grease-proof pencil. Your assistant would then extract the marked-up shots after you had made a complete pass through the song. You would then refine the edit by putting your edited version on one of the machines along with another six rolls. This way you could make a progressive consideration of all of the material.

I came onto the film at the fine cut stage. It was my job to cut the remaining songs that hadn’t been considered at the beginning of the project, complete the film to answer print stage, and supervise the videotape compilation of the final versions.

Five out of the nine songs I cut were included in the final version.
Best of all I got to take the video masters to Los Angeles for the final compiling and audio sweetening, and I got to meet Bob Dylan.

Director of Photography, Don McAlpine.
Director, Gillian Armstrong.
Producer, Greg Ricketson.
Anglo Street Films and Dog Boy Productions
co-production.
Long form music video.
Two-track discrete stereo.
35 mm
70 minutes.