Name: Gary Knight
Company: Final Cut
Job/Title: editor
First Video: The first video that I edited was for a UK death metal band called Cathedral (formerly Napalm Death). The track was "Midnight Mountain." It was directed by Jamie McBride, who was a friend of mine. This was his first video as well, so there was a massive learning curve. I cut it on a two-machine offline U-matic, which was considered state-of-the-art then. The video was assembled from a bunch of performance footage on VHS. We had to manipulate a lot of the images. Jamie also worked on the Quantel Harry to give it as much impact as possible. We had to hide the bad quality of the footage, so we used every effect the Harry could offer. It turned out very interesting. [Sorry Gary, I found the video on YouTube. It's awesome. In every way possible.]
Strangest Video: The strangest video that I cut was probably Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy," only for the reaction it got from people. Chris Cunningham was given creative freedom to do what he wanted with the
video, so naturally it involved a soul-eating demon in a discarded TV and creepy midget children. The video scares the crap out of you. People thought it was one of the freakiest videos they'd ever seen, even though it was meant to be more of a comedy. I remember my parents stopped by while I was editing Aphex with Chris. We showed them the cut and they were quite freaked. My mom actually cursed out loud.
Chris and I also worked on a Bjork video, "All is Full of Love," where she was a robot and basically makes love to herself. Nicely strange, eh? The video went on to win many awards. Actually, every video I've worked on with Chris has had a hint of strange.
What's Next: I just finished a video for Justin Timberlake, "What Goes Around ... Comes Around," with director Sam Bayer. And having recently re-located to L.A. from New York, I'm excited to forge new relationships with the directors and clients out here. Perhaps work on my first feature. Maybe cut a wedding video or two? It's always good to diversify.
