PETER HONESS, ACE
(Film Editor, Chamber of Secrets)

Peter Honess, the British-born film editor for the second Harry Potter movie, has been in cutting rooms for more than 35 years.

His editing career began at the United Kingdom facilities of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios. Honess' father, a studio manager at MGM, got him a job as a "gofer" at age 17. Even as an errand boy, he felt that editing was the career for him.

"I was fascinated by the fact that editors are the only people apart from the director and producer who stay on the film from the time it starts to when it's in the theaters," Honess told The Hollywood Reporter.

"I had lots of friends in other departments who always complained that they never saw their work through to any conclusion. An editor is able to see the whole project come to fruition."

To become a film editor in the UK, Honess had to endure a long apprencticeship, including as an assistant to a sound editor. His assignments included working as an assistant on The Dirty Dozen (1967), a World War II adventure with Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson.

He came to the United States in 1971 to serve a five-week job as an editor's assistant -- and ended up staying for seven years. During those months he cut together TV commercials, documentaries and low-budget movies. In the US, Honess rose from assistant to full editor.

Honess with the tools of the modern editor's trade, a computer-powered system.

His first Hollywood job as a full-fledged editor was It's Alive! (1974), a cult horror film about a couple that become parents of a monster baby.

When he returned to the UK, Honess got a rude awakening -- he was assigned to be an assistant editor again! Returning to America in the mid-1980s, he again had to become an apprentice and serve as a junior editor. He sharpened his craft over the next 15 years under two British editors -- Tony Gibbs (Tom Jones, Ronin) and Thelma Connell (Alfie, One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich).

Honess remembers studying Gibbs' work to truly understand the editor's craft and start doing the work for himself. "I made myself try and watch what Tony did," he said in an interview in the Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine.

"When he went home at night, I used to wind through his cuts on a synchronizer and see how he put things together. I don’t know if it happened to you, but the first time I edited -- not just putting bits and pieces of the film together for the editor, but actually cutting my own movie -- I found it quite terrifying, because suddenly you’re left to do the storytelling yourself."

As a mentor to editors himself, Honess believes that eventually they must think for themselves as they assemble film. He also believes the consumer is a very important factor in his final product.

"The audience is a very important factor in my work. I think about them constantly -- will they understand, can we frighten them, can we excite them? It’s actually not a bad idea for assistants to have that in mind when they first start working, and not try and impress their editor," Honess said.

L.A. Confidential, with James Cromwell, Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe.

Disney's The Kid, with Spencer Breslin and Bruce Willis

The Fast and the Furious, with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker

In 1984, Honess was assigned Memed My Hawk, a low-budget film directed by actor Peter Ustinov. Director John Irvin also helped his career along, hiring him to work on Champions (1983).

Honess has had partnerships with British director Fred Schepisi, editing Plenty (1985), with Meryl Streep; The Russia House (1990), with Sean Connery; Six Degrees of Separation (1993), with Will Smith; and Mr. Baseball (1992), with Tom Selleck.

Honess cites another English director, John Schlesinger, as an influence. He also did four films for him -- The Believers (1987), with Martin Sheen, Madame Sousatzka with Shirley MacLaine; Eye for an Eye, with Sally Field; and The Next Best Thing (2000), with Madonna and Rupert Everett.

He also enjoyed working with the Australian Russell Mulcahy, for whom he cut four movies, including Razorback (1984), about a killer wild pig; Highlander (1986), with Connery, and The Shadow (1994), with Alec Baldwin.

Mulcahy, a rock video director who had moved into feature films, kept him busy, brave and satsified on Highlander. This cult favorite featured Christopher Lambert as an immortal human from Scotland who must face other immortals in battle, and forges a friendship with a Spaniard, played by Connery. The big-budget movie often had four units filming every day, generating thousands of feet of film.

"They had one kid coding [recording film that had been shot] -- that's all he did for 14 or 15 hours a day," Honess recalled. "I said, 'What are all those rolls of film over there?' And he said, 'Those are the 76 rolls I haven't got to yet. That's your scene tomorrow.' It helped him control my panic and fear of film. If you're going to be intimidated by the 100,000 feet coming your way for a two-minute battle scene, then you're in the wrong business."

Honess also has edited Hollywood potboilers (Domestic Disturbance, with John Travolta), family flicks (Disney's The Kid, with Bruce Willis); and commercial smashes, such as The Fast and the Furious (2001), the hot rod drama with Vin Diesel.

The year 1997 was a big one for Honess, who received numerous kudos for his work on Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential. He was nominated for a Best Editing Oscar, as well the same honor by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the American Cinema Editors.

Because he has been working since the 1960s, Honess has seen editing progress from an editor actually cutting up portions of film and splicing them together and using a workhorse machine of the industry, the Moviola. Now, a rapid computer system called the Avid is widely used. Teaching assistants has become more difficult, because the machine does all the work.

In contrast, Honess learned much just by looking at how editors sliced up the film. "You knew, because you had to put the bloody stuff [film] away. And you learned by osmosis. Every time you put a piece of film away, you realized what he was using, and every time you pulled a trim out, you were part of the process that was going through the editor’s head."

Honess started using digital equipment in 1993, when Schepisi convinced him to try it. He did and had to be "kicked screaming into the electronic world."

He also works regularly with digital effects. He recalled one scene in The Fast and the Furious that was almost totally created with digital work. "The visual effects editors just present us with the shot so we can cut it in," Honess said in Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine. "I wouldn’t go near a visual effects film without one. They have to be able to listen to the editor, listen to the director and work with the visual effects houses. I’m a big admirer of the skills they have."

Honess is a member of the American Cinema Editors and Motion Picture Editors Guild.