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Jochen Donauer answers.

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What does your job excactly contain?

To edit finished raw material/single scenes until all this becomes a new film or a new sketch which gains much more comedy and brilliance additionally to the awesome skrip by cutting rhythm and timing.

What do you have to do there?

• To capture raw material on magnetic tape (e.g. DV, HDV or Digi-Beta) in the editing computer so it can be saved in the PC (e.g. as mpg files).
• To make a cough cut. Here the shot material just hangs roughly together so I can check out the general structure of this sketch or film at first. Is anything missing? If yes was it already shot and just not put in already?
• To make a finely cut. The material gets cut for TV, at least depending the story.
• If effects and animations are required (Beam effect, bumblebee spaceship, artificial worlds etc) so that real movie scenes are mixed with them the necessary, cut material is given to our FX men (e.g. Felix, Erik) who develope the finished effect out of it. When the guys from the FX department finished their work the finished FX sequence gets edited.

Usually our soundmen (Nico, Flo) are responsible for all the audio. This means that when the finely cut is done the audio department gets the material to put sound on the complete story. However, „Complete“ can also mean an episode that lasts 10 minutes - not a long version of 50 minutes. An exception is whenever there is as clip sequence (a sequence cut to music with a lot of creative space depending on design) the music‘s already chosen while the cut and edited with the material.

• When the soundmen finished their work video and audio get „matched“ by the cutter until there‘s the final product complete with video and audio.
• Deciding the look: With the help of special software I can improve the look of film material or generally put a certain optical character on it. How should my episode look like? Dazzling colourful? Desaturated? In a certain colour? Do I want to make it look old and used? Should it look cinematic? These and other questions lead to the material‘s final look.
• The final product (picture with effects, animations, look and naturally audio with sounds and music) in digital form is ready to be played. This happens mainly in the TV‘s standard format, digi-beta, a magnetic tape.
  

Done. Any questions?

How did you get this occupation?

My parents discovered my certain talent to cut films. When I was six years old I spent my life with cutting my father‘s holiday movies on Super8. When I was eleven my parents sent me to the„First German Cutting-Internat“ in order to improve my talent. Back then it was a quite unknown internat boarding school in Lüneburger Heide, however which already was entered by prestigious lecturers from all over the globe.

By taking part in permanent exchange programs of my boarding school with film schools from Hollywood I was tought in eight years the procedure, tricks and ruses of the „big boys“ from the USA. As a „first assistent editing engineer“ I was allowed to work for famous cinema productions from Hollywood. After all as a nineteen year old I was celebratory given the „Hollywood Editing Award“ in platin, the most beautiful award in my collection until today I think. Since I was 23 I worked as a lecturer with permanent stays in Sidney, Bangkok, Paris, Berlin and Hollywood in order to improve my knowledge and to suck up new knowledge. I think I was in Cannes when I received a call from Tommy Krappweis who promised me the pie in the sky. I immediately agreed and since then I‘m at the bummfilm...

...by the way: everything I just said was a lie. The truth is that I studied lectureship. I have no idea why I‘m here. I wanna get out of this place. Help.

What do you cut?

„Great things“, Chili TV, specials (Robin Hood, Berndi Broter, Bumblebee, Rock the Bread), KIKA XL, Tom‘s Test, Schöneberger Show, Coffee Shop, sketches from the „Friday Night News“, Joint he Club, Hella and Dirk, pilotes, demos, video clips, trailers, and and and and ...

How shall we imagine you cutting a movie?

I sit in a room, mostly wearing pants, forget to drink too often (Well, I should. It‘s important. At least three liters per day. I always forget it. However I eat four times too much) and I look in three different screens. Whenever Norm comes in we scream very, very loudly (for example: LLLaaaaaaa-ck-agg-agg-ckaaaaallliiiiiaaaa!), whenever Briegel comes in we talk in dialect he reminds me in his unique way of something that I have forgotten once again. Sometimes I and Briegel scream very loudly as well.

Yeah. That‘s how you can imagine it.