Film editor cuts path to Daytime Emmys
Vancouver’s Lisa Robison nominated for work on R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour
Film editors spend most of their time in the dark.
“We kind of feel like we’re ghosts, nobody sees us,” says Vancouver editor Lisa Robison. “Everybody talks about the writers and the directors [ but not the editors].”
This Sunday, though, Robison gets to step into the spotlight. The 48- yearold has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Single Camera Editing for her work on the “tween” horror series R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour.
Robison “was totally surprised” by the nomination, which she shares with another editor on the series, Charles Robichaud.
“I think like any nomination it’s a validation,” says Robison, who will be attending the ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. “There’s that old saying a script is written three times: once on paper, once on the set, and again in editing. So it’s a really nice nod.”
Robison is one of the behind- thescenes wizards who have flourished in the B. C. film industry. She started off in the camera department, but had to give it up after suffering a severe asthma attack on the set of Little Women in 1994 (“I basically died and saw the white light”).
She had to give up camera work, but her film editor brother Michael got her on as an assistant while he was cutting the pilot for Outer Limits. In 1998, she was working on Highlander: The Raven when the post- production supervisor Tracy Hillman asked if she’d like to try editing an episode.
“I said ‘ Oh God no, I can’t!’ But they gave me one to cut, which turned into three, which turned into eight episodes that season.”
Suddenly she was a film editor, working on TV series such as The L Word and Cold Squad, and movies such as My Life Without Me and Matty Hansen and The Invisibility Ray. In 2010 she started editing R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, which is on The Hub cable network in the U. S. ( Teletoon in Canada). What exactly does a film editor do? “We cut by performance,” she explains. “We try to find the best performance that tells the story, and the next performance, and the next performance. And the shots. A wide shot might say more than the close- up on a particular line of dialogue, or no lines of dialogue.
“It’s telling the story and getting the emotion through with pictures. That’s what we do. We put the assembly together on how we think the story should be best told.”
Unlike most editors, she never received any formal training in her craft. But she thinks that’s worked to her advantage.
“There’s an old saying, ‘ cut with your gut,’ and that’s what I do,” says Robison. “People go ‘ That’s kind of [ different], you’re not following the golden rules of editing.’ I am known because I think outside the box. Because I don’t know the rules, it’s easier for me to go ‘ Well, what if we just do this?’ ”