When he was starting out as an editor, Brian Weister always used to watch old NPPA tapes to learn how the best journalists could draw emotion from dissolves and sound cues. Now, future journalists will be learning these things from him.
Weister, an editor at KMGH-TV in Denver, was named Editor of the Year today in NPPA’s Best of Television Photojournalism 2004 contest.
“I had always hoped that this was a point that I could get to in my career,” Weister said in a phone interview, “I really wanted to be among the best out there. And to finally be recognized as one of those individuals is really just unbelievable … To be chosen for this honor is probably about the best thing that’s ever happened to me professionally.”
By watching others’ work, Weister has developed a range of techniques he draws on to tell every story in the style it demands. “Sometimes I’ll be in the mood to cut something real fast,” he said, “with lots of one-frame edits, and sometimes I’ll be in the mood to do something real slow, with lots of slow dissolves. … Whatever is appropriate for the story is what you’ve got to do. And that’s why I’m really happy with the tape that won the Editor of the Year this year, because it had a little bit of everything on it.”
Weister said he’s fortunate to work in a newsroom that prizes excellent editing, although it wasn’t always that way at KMGH.
“When I first got here about four-and-a-half years ago,” he said, “there wasn’t a big emphasis on editing. Editors were just kind of the people that they gave the stories to, and they cut ’em, and that was the end of it.
“But I got here, along with a couple of other folks who helped changed things around, and editing has really become a priority here at KMGH. We have a lot of opportunities to do some really incredible work, and everybody around here knows they can hand anything off to us and we’ll do the best possible job with it. It’s a good feeling to know that we’re trusted with some of the great work that comes out of this place.”
The news station’s support for its editors is an increasing rarity in the field, Weister said. “I think the sad reality right now,” he said, “is that editors are going away. With all of the non-linear editing systems and servers that are coming in, I think that a lot of news directors expect that the producers, and the anchors, and the reporters should be able to basically cut their own stories at their desktop.”
With the loss of editors comes a loss of creativity, Weister said. The skills he’s learned by honing his craft over the years allow him to tell stories such as “She Is Callie.” Weister: “I think the sad reality right now is that editors are going away.”This clip, from the winning reel, tells the story of a girl who killed herself during her first year of college. “Her parents,” Weister said, “in reading through her diary, found out that she had been raped in the parents’ home.”
“It was a couple months in the making,” he said. “We had to keep pushing it back, and pushing it back, and going out and shooting more video, and trying to make it work.”
But eventually, Weister said, the story came together, in slow dissolves, beautiful photography, and stirring music.
“We get desensitized a lot of times,” Weister said, “to images of accidents and of horrible things happening to people. We really need to try to keep that human side of things, and it needs to affect us. Because if it doesn’t, what kind of people are we?”
