Editor Jesse Dixon: How I Got Started in the Industry

I didn’t always want to be an editor. I loved film and the moving image, but I was put off by the big crews and the “art by committee” feel of it all. Like many artsy teens, I thought I was a revolutionary artist with something profound to say, so I did a fine art degree.

Three years later, I graduated broke, back at my parents’ house in a small town in rural England, with no idea what to do next. The art world looked like a terrible way to make a living. I’d made short films during my degree and realised I enjoyed editing, mostly because it let me muck about on computers for hours, but also because it was a way to combine everything I liked: music, images and storytelling.

As luck would have it, someone in my small town ran a tiny corporate video company out of a barn. They needed an editor and, as probably the only person in the area who knew how to use Final Cut, I got the job. It taught me a lot, not just about how to cut, but about how to take a note. After a year editing corporate videos, I thought I was ready for the big league and set off to conquer London. Six months later, the only thing conquered was my overdraft. I had to accept that if I wanted in, I’d have to start at the bottom.

So I became a runner in Soho post houses, palaces of post filled with offline suites, audio rooms, VFX teams and finishing bays that looked like spaceships. I was serving teas, fetching lunches and sprinting DigiBeta tapes across London, but it was exciting to be involved. I worked my way up from tea boy to tape op in the machine room, where I learned the technical side of the craft: all the cables, codecs and late-night error messages. Outside work, I grabbed whatever scraps I could: no-budget music videos and unpaid short films, eventually stitching them into a reel good enough to land me my first real editing job.

It was cutting news for an experimental network called Current TV. Owned by Al Gore, it aimed to give young people a platform through short documentaries mixed with an early social media-style website. It was at the dawn of the social network: Myspace was king, Facebook and Instagram were just arriving, and everyone was wondering how the internet and TV could mix.

My job was turning whatever was trending online into TV news. Every hour, a new story had to be cut and exported straight to the server. It felt less like editing and more like playing Tetris at speed, with the added thrill of knowing that if I dropped the wrong block, it would air live. It was chaotic but groundbreaking; we were one of the first to put tweets onscreen in news packages. Inventiveness, creativity and taking risks were championed. 

Eventually, the channel realised it needed longer programmes to be able to get ratings, so I joined a tiny internal team making longer documentaries. It was like a filmmaking youth club: we pitched ideas, got a few greenlit each quarter, and got on and made them. We were terrible at scheduling and would never set ourselves realistic targets in the edit, so finishing often meant working until 2 a.m. for weeks on end. But it was fun and made me fall in love with long-form documentary.

Some of the long-form documentaries Jesse has gone on to work on.

I stayed at Current for five years, until it shut down, and I bounced around various projects in a similar space. Vice and BBC3 all tried to capture that young online audience on television with varying degrees of success. It had been a great place to start out. I had cut hours upon hours of television, learned how to make something from nothing, and how to make something cheap look expensive.

Since then, I’ve moved into bigger, more grown-up documentaries, but I’ve tried to keep some of the playful irreverence from those early youth films in my editing. Over the years, I’ve realised editing is about half technical skill, half managing relationships. You need to know how to cut, of course, but you also need to work with directors, execs and producers while keeping your sense of humour intact. Nobody wants to work with a grumpy ideologue, no matter how talented. If you want a career in editing, be the person people actually want to spend months locked in a tiny room with. Taking notes on the chin, even the bad ones, and trying to answer them with a smile and creative energy is what gets you asked back.

 

About Jesse Dixon

Jesse Dixon is a documentary editor with many years of experience crafting bold, cinematic, and character-driven stories. He began his career making innovative documentaries for a youth audience across Al Gore’s pioneering TV network Current TV, online platform VICE and youth channel BBC Three. Since then, he’s worked with some of the UK’s top production companies, editing a wide range of projects including archive-based documentaries, big-budget adventure series, observational documentaries, specialist factual and current affairs. Jesse’s films have featured on most of the UK’s broadcasters, including the BBC, Channel 4, and ITV, as well as major international streamers including Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV+.

 

How I Got Started in the Industry is a guest blog series from the Directors and Editors Guild of Aotearoa New Zealand (DEGANZ). Our members reflect on how they made their way into assistant editing, editing, and directing—with no two stories the same. They offer advice for those starting out. Get in touch with admin@deganz.co.nz if you’re a member and would like to share your story.

 

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The Pursuit of Passion

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Last night I participated in the first of three sessions of the NZFC-supported Animation Matchmaking Series, put together by ourselves, the Visual Effects Guild and the Writers Guild.

One hundred and ten people turned out for the evening. Part of the event was for NZFC to talk about the He Kauahi Catalyst Fund and how it can be accessed for animation projects. Filmmakers also heard about how to put their best foot forward for both Catalyst and feature film development and production funding. The other part of the evening was dedicated to producers Fiona Copland and Angela Cudd speaking to their experiences of the animation projects they have worked on and are working on. The questions to all speakers were numerous. And humorous were some of the asides going on in the Chat.

What was reemphasised for me at the event was the absolute passion and thirst filmmakers have to make films. This is both a boon and a bane of our industry.

Without that absolute commitment, films don’t get made. It’s just so hard to do. And we see different expressions of it. From 48hours, which is about to start soon, to short filmmaking, microbudget features and beyond.

The film industry here and globally can’t survive without new generations of filmmakers willing to give their all to get their films made. And very few of them will be lucky enough to go on to have a career in filmmaking. 

What filmmakers sacrifice can be worth it. But they often give up a lot.

Getting paid a fee for one. Or letting go of the IP they laboured over for weeks, months, years, and not getting properly financially rewarded for it. Then there’s their health: the stress. The emotional, psychological and or physical toll. The list goes on. It all mounts up.

Nearly all of us—me included—enter into this maelstrom of highs and lows in the hope that we will be one of the ones that crosses the finish line of this creative marathon. But none of us escape unscathed. That’s why safeguards are important.

ScreenSafe is one of them, from education and making it safer on set to providing support when it’s needed. There are now intimacy coordinators and mental health first aiders running courses and providing input, and assistance when screen workers need help with issues.

On a bigger picture scale, the Screen Industry Workers Act (SIWA) is a safeguard, too. It’s there to set baselines for terms, conditions and rates of pay to help prevent exploitation and make our industry work in a more professional manner, as do most other countries with well-developed screen sectors. This is why having collective agreements in place is so important for both above and below-the-line workers.

Passion can then rule in a safer screen environment for everyone.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

 

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A Kōrero with Colourist Damian McDonnell

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DEGANZ’s Izzi Hoskyn sat down with award-winning Colourist Damian McDonnell to take a peek behind the curtain of the craft of colour grading.

Damian has over twenty years’ experience as a colourist and editor in both Hollywood and Aotearoa. He began his career as an assistant colourist on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Return of the King. From there, he worked as a colourist at Laser Pacific and Technicolour Hollywood in LA for six years, working on blockbusters such as Life of Pi, TRON Legacy, and multiple Avengers films. When he returned to Aotearoa, he worked at Park Road Post for eight years, having a hand in various projects and taking on the role of on-set colourist and supervising colourist for Mortal Engines. His recent work includes Ti West’s X and Pearl and Taika Waititi’s Our Flag Means Death and Time Bandits. In 2024, Damian won the prestigious Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) award for ‘Outstanding Colour Grading – Live Action Episode or Non-Theatrical Feature’ for his work on Time Bandits.

In this first iteration of our new blog series, A Kōrero With…, Izzi and Damian discuss a colourist’s role and how the colour grade is the final piece of the puzzle on a project, taking it to the next level.

Izzi: In fairly simple terms, what does a colourist do? 

Damian: A colourist’s intent, at its most simple, is to put the filmmaker’s vision on screen. So whatever the director’s or cinematographer’s intent is, I help them achieve that look.

Izzi: Who else in the production do you work closely with?

Damian: When working with clients, the most important relationship is with whoever makes the creative calls in the room. Sometimes there are a lot of people in the suite, sometimes there’s just a director or a cinematographer. Whoever it is, that relationship is paramount. When a client gets to know you and how you work, then it becomes a fun environment and one where they can just trust you to work.

Izzi: And on the more technical side, you’re working closely with an online editor?

Damian: Yeah, the technical relationship with an online editor is also very important. Their main function is to translate the timeline into the grading system. There’s crossover with what they and a colourist do, so it’s important to work out what areas you each cover. That can be things like stabilisation or basic effects like paint-outs.

The online editor that I work with at the moment is a guy called Antonis who lives in Greece. He onlines for me overnight, and then I wake up in the morning, have a chat with him, and get underway. He’s a creative editor, but he’s also technically very, very good. And so we’ve got a great working relationship; it’s very efficient. And we use the time difference to our advantage.

Some of the productions Damian has colour graded.

Izzi: What’s your creative process in the role, and what do you bring to each project? 

Damian: Every film is different when you grade it. I don’t like to say I’m a certain type of colourist, because I’m responding to the demands of the client. I believe you can grade creatively for any genre or any type of film. I’ve worked on everything from tiny budget films to some of the biggest blockbusters in the world. But I approach them all roughly the same.

Firstly, you watch the film, do a continuity pass, and spot any issues. Then you do a creative pass. And then I do what I call a windows pass or a secondary pass where you start isolating various parts of the image. But at that stage, you’re improving the film bit by bit. I like to work on the whole film rather than get bogged down in tiny details at the start and leave that towards the end.

Left: Damian at work / Right: Damian’s suite while working on Kirsty Cameron’s ‘The Garden Room’

Izzi: Do you feel that you can bring your expertise in colour into the conversation from the get-go or do you leave it up to the director or DOP to first bring their thoughts forward?

Damian: It depends on the relationship with the clients. But I always think that people are hiring me for my artistic ability, not just my technical ability.

I like to put my point of view forward, but ultimately, I always understand that these aren’t my images. These are the director’s or cinematographer’s images and I’m there to help them achieve their look. But it’s best when it’s collaborative. 

And I like to make it an enjoyable experience. You’re at the end of a very long road when you get to the colour grading suite, and it’s the last stage before your film is distributed for everyone to see. I like to try and take that stress away from the final delivery and so people can finally see their film in its completion.

Izzi: It’s like the last piece of the puzzle. You can finally step back and see it all as one cohesive work.

Damian: I’m gonna steal that. It’s a really great stage of the process; it’s really fun.

Izzi: What has been a career high for you?

Damian: There have been a few!

My very first film was The Two Towers, and that’s how I learnt to colour grade. Digital intermediate (DI) was a new process, so there was no manual for the software and initially no one to teach me. I literally sat down, pushed buttons, and wrote down what it did. It was such an exciting time being part of something that you knew was going to be an important film.

More recently, I worked with Ti West on X and Pearl, which were shot in Wanganui. They were shot on the same camera three weeks apart, same main actress, same location, but they looked wildly different. Which mostly comes down to the grade. Ti wanted X to look like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Pearl was meant to emulate the Technicolour 3-strip look, and our reference was The Wizard of Oz. So our starting point was similar, but the end products were very different. I’m very proud of those two films. And I think it’s a good example of what you can do as a colourist. You can really bring a strong creative look to a film.

Side-by-side comparison of the colour grade of ‘X’ (left) and ‘Pearl’ (right).

Last year, I won an HPA award for colour grading the TV series Time Bandits. There aren’t many colour grading awards around. It’s an overlooked profession, so it was really nice to be there. I was sitting next to Dave Cole, who taught me to colour grade, and he won for his film. So that was a particular highlight, both of us being in LA and both winning awards.

Izzi: Congrats! That’s a massive achievement.

Damian: It was neat working on Time Bandits. Every time the characters went through a portal, it had to look quite different from the previous world that they’d been in. And so creatively, I was always being pushed to create more and more looks. As a colourist, it was kind of a dream job in that way. It was difficult because we were working on ten episodes at the same time, but it was an exceptionally fun show to work on.

Damian accepting his HPA Award for Outstanding Colour Grading for ‘Time Bandits’

Izzi: What’s something you wish collaborators knew when working with a colourist? 

Damian: One of the most important things a collaborator should know is the importance of being decisive. Colourists can develop and put forward looks, but if you change your mind a lot, you waste a lot of time redoing work.

By that, I mean, you never really finish a film, you just run out of time. So using your time wisely, even though that sounds boring, is really important. I always work out a schedule of targets for my passes so I know how long to spend on each one. Being able to make decisions upfront helps a lot.

The other thing is allowing me time to do something. It’s not a magic button. So, knowing that if I say it’s going to take a certain amount of time to do something, it’s going to take that amount of time.

Izzi: In terms of being decisive from the beginning, what can directors do to prepare for that?

Damian: It helps when people come along with a preconceived idea of what they want. I will often ask people to bring in their lookbooks if they want and try to use their ideas as a starting point. But being open to other ideas is great and fun. And they might be surprised by what I can do and what I bring to it.

Izzi: There’s that artistic touch to it. The colour grade is one of the parts of the film where it can elevate your film and take it to the next level. 

Damian: I think that you touched on something important.

It probably took me like three or four years before I felt comfortable being a colourist. It’s not just a technical skill; it’s a creative skill. And that’s what draws me to it. It’s sort of a merging of the two, but it is a discipline that you really have to learn, and it takes practice. There’s a lot more to it than just knowing how to use the software.

A good colourist can really add an amazing amount of value to a project, especially on low-budget films. It can take it from looking like a sitcom to looking like a piece of cinema.

Izzi: Thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge of colour grading. It was super insightful and can hopefully prompt our members to seek out a strong colour grade in their own projects.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

 

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Round Two

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The Copyright Act Review is back on, with a proposed Stage 1 set of proposals being finessed for feedback.

Although we lobbied long and hard on behalf of directors in the previous review started in 2017, the whole review was ultimately put in the too hard basket in 2020 by the government. COVID didn’t help.

DEGANZ has been seeking shared copyright for directors with producers since 2005.

The NZ Copyright Act says that the author and therefore the copyright holder is “in the case of a sound recording or film, the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the making of the recording or film are undertaken.”

The default interpretation of this has long been that it is the producer who does this, therby making them the author, and thus the copyright holder.

Our position though is that the Director is the creative decision maker in a process of artistic collaboration who takes final responsibility for the aesthetic cohesion and artistic integrity of the work. One of the elements the Director uses to create the final work is the screenplay. The other underlying elements include the actors’ performances, cinematography, the production design, the wardrobe and makeup, the editing, the musical score, the sound design, etc. These are underlying works that contribute to the film through the talent of the Director.

Just as the writer is the “author” of the screenplay, and the composer is the “author” of the musical score, the Director is an “author” of the film or audiovisual work.

What has prompted the government to put the Copyright Act back on the table is the major transformation brought about by the digital age, and the scary beast that is AI. As well, it has obligations to address certain copyright requirements that were put in place with both the recent UK and EU Free Trade Ageements (FTAs).

As part of the representations we made on behalf of directors as the FTAs with Europe and the UK were being negotiated, we highlighted:

  • In the UK, their copyright act stipulates that the producer and the principal director are joint copyright shareholders of the film.
  • In the EU, an EU council directive requires all European member states to recognise the principal director of a film or audio-visual work as an author—and therefore first owner of copyright of that work.
  • In more than 37 other territories around the world, the director is the primary copyright holder in the work.

As directors are already recognised as authors with moral rights over their work under the NZ Copyright Act, you’d think it was a no brainer for government to accept that the economic rights conferred by copyright would go to directors, too. But no, that logic has proven one step too far for our beaurocrats and ministers to get their heads around since we started way back when.

We are back at it in this stage of the review, though. Even though it’s not on the government’s agenda at this point.

It’s a long hard row that we have to hoe until plain common sense sees through.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Cannes… One Mountain Too High

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The Cannes film festival is over for another year. And it’s another year where no New Zealand film got into Official Competition, Critics Week, Director’s Fortnight, or the short film competition.

The last NZ feature in Cannes was Cristine Jeff’s Rain 24 years ago, in 2001. Zia Mandviwalla’s Night Shift was the last short film in competition at Cannes in 2012.

Looking across the ditch to Australia, we can see that they have continuing success at Cannes with features. From 2001 – 2025 according to Screen Australia, the Aussies had 22 feature films at Cannes in either Official Competition, Critic’s Week or Director’s Fortnight. On the shorts side, they have been less successful with only 3 shorts chosen since 2012.

Of those 22 features according to IMDB Pro/Box Office Mojo numbers, it seems that for Australian theatrical:

  • 6 did not get a release
  • 3 earned less than NZ$500k
  • 2 earned less than NZ$1 mil.
  • 2 earned between NZ$1 – 2 mil.
  • 1 earned $2 – 3 mil.
  • 2 earned $3 – 4 mil.
  • 3 earned between NZ$4 – 5 mil.
  • 2 earned $6 – 8 mil.
  • 1 film releasing in June 2025 has no B.O. yet

It’s safe to say that those that did not get a release were strong arthouse films, while a good number of those with high box office returns were horror/thriller, with the others of various genres from drama to indigenous. So a pretty wide spread of films that achieved from no Australian box office success to great results.

A quick scan of two other countries with similar populations to NZ—Denmark and Ireland—reveals that Denmark has had five features in competition at Cannes since 2001, while Ireland has had six.

If we look more closely at the NZ films that have been selected at Cannes we see:

1982 The Scarecrow, Sam Pillsbury, Directors’ Fortnight

1984 Vigil, Vincent Ward, Official Competition

1987 Ngāti, Barry Barclay, International Critics’ Week

1988 The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, Vincent Ward, Official Competition

1993 The Piano, Jane Campion, Official Competition

1998 Memory & Desire, Niki Caro, International Critics’ Week

2001 Rain, Christine Jeffs, Directors’ Fortnight

 

So why don’t NZ features get into Cannes anymore?

Do we lack the auteur directorial talent? Is NZFC too risk averse when it comes to script development? Does a market and cast-driven approach spoil our chances? Are we lacking in boldness and originality? Are our films not good enough on an international filmmaking level?

It would seem that it’s a combination of a number of these things, according to a couple of very experienced film industry practitioners whose opinions I value.

We certainly are very capable at climbing mountains in this country. It just seems that the cinematic peak of Cannes proves difficult to scale for NZ films except for the very few, now quite some time ago.

But we live in hope.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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