When working as an assistant editor for Hybrid Edit, a California-based editing company, Charla Barker, a 2007 MFA School of Film alumna, contacted Maggie Chieffo, a Hybrid Edit colleague and friend who had connections to film director Michael Mann’s personal assistant.
The talent connection, along with Barker’s film chops, led her to become the assistant editor of the second season of Luck, an HBO series of which Mann was the executive producer.
But on March 15, the day of Barker’s going-away party with her Hybrid Edit colleagues, news broke that a third horse from the show’s set died, prompting HBO to cancel the series altogether.
Despite the setback, Barker was able to find a silver lining when Mann began production on a documentary mini-series Witness and needed editors.
“It’s all kind of a funny story when you look back on it,” Barker said, recalling the switch in her career when she became the assistant editor of Witness.
Witness, which begins Monday at 9 p.m. on HBO, is a four-part hour-long miniseries that follows photojournalists in Mexico, Libya, South Sudan and Brazil as they navigate violence and report issues such as drug trafficking, gang violence, corruption and ethnic warfare in the areas.
Each episode in the series will report on a different photojournalist in a different area.
Barker worked on the third and final episodes of the series, “South Sudan,” and “Rio,” respectively. As an assistant editor, she said she was able to focus on various aspects of post-production work for the show, which includes color-coding, overseeing the final stages, correcting technical problems and focusing on the storytelling among other jobs.
“It taught me so much about editing and about professional editing that I never knew before,” Barker said. “Also, it taught me so much about the issues at hand within these stories, including drug cartels and warfare, that I never knew before.”
Barker and her co-workers were also able to work directly with Mann, who is the executive producer of the show. Though executive producers typically do not have a big part in the filmmaking process, Barker said Mann and director David Frankham were very hands-on in the producing of the mini-series. During the editing, Mann was also working on the director’s cut of his film Ali.
Now back at work with Hybrid Edit working on commercials and other projects, Barker said she looks back on her time working on the show as eye-opening.
“It was a really cool experience, and it was an exciting way to explore this different style of editing,” Barker said.
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