Picture-Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1916)

Frank E. Woods, head of D. G. Griffith's cutting department talking over a film with W. Christie Cabanne, one of the Griffith directors. The master producer considers Woods invaluable. THERE is one man in the moving-picture business who never is talked about very much, but who plays almost as important a role in the final evolution of the film play as the actors themselves, or the camera that takes the pictures. He costs the average company in the neighborhood of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars a month, but there is no objection — his real worth is well realized. Although few moving-picture companies are able to get along without one of these important gentlemen, he is generally tucked away in some remote corner of the studio, like a faithful servitor who knows too much to be allowed to roam at large. His little office is the last stopping place of the newborn film before it is given to the world. If a film play ever got out without passing through his hands, though beautifully acted and exquisitely photographed, it would appear about as intelligible on the screen as the hiero glyphics on a Babylonian water jug. Who is he? He is the film surgeon — known variously to his studio associates as film editor, trimmer, cut man, or film supervisor. Every moving-picture company employs a film surgeon — the head of the ''cutting" department. His visible implements of business are a pair of scissors and a can of cement glue. The rest of his stock in trade he^keeps under his hat ; it consists of a keen intelligence, an eye for the proper proportion of things, and an expert knowledge of what the public doesn't want. From eight o'clock in the morning until five-thirty in the evening, he runs miles of shiny film through his fingers, and every time his eagle eye comes across parts that he knows the public isn't going to want, he takes his scissors and cuts them out. That's his business — or, rather, his art. His amputations mount, in the average company, upward from thirty-five