A conversation with television editor, producer and director Seb Cunliffe (BSL)

Hi Seb! So, firstly can you introduce yourself to our readers?

Hi everyone, I’m Seb and I’m based in Bristol. I’m a TV editor and I produce and direct as well. I’m also a Deaf BSL user!

I first started working in TV back in 2009 when I did a little bit of presenting work. At the time the company Remark! saw potential in me and gave me some TV presenting opportunities to work on The Secret Lab ( a science programme for kids for the BSL Zone). That was my first taste of working on a TV set!

Then in 2011, I applied for a full time researcher role working for Remark! to work behind the camera, and ever since I’ve loved the industry, going on to work on many different programmes, and evolving my skillset.

Are you self taught or did you train somewhere?

It’s actually a bit of both! I first started dabbling in editing when I was working for See Hear back in 2015, at the time the team offered some in-house training. We went around to their Digital Village for one day and we were taught how to use Adobe Premiere.

From that point, I felt a great sense of freedom being able to edit my own footage. As I had directed most shoots, I was able to go straight into the logging room and start cutting, it was really easy because I knew my way around the footage because I’d just filmed it.

After that you couldn’t tear me away from the logging room, and by the time See Hear programmes were going into the edit, I had virtually cut almost the whole episode already! I realised I had a knack and a passion for editing.

Years later, I had the opportunity to learn how to cut using Avid, again this was via some in-house training. Now I am comfortable and experienced using both via my home edit suite.

As an editor you have worked on a number of well received documentaries – can you tell us about your most memorable or favourite productions you’ve worked on to date as an editor?

Two productions stand out to me, the first is ‘Ready to Drive?’ directed by Aimee Campbell-Nottage, for Drummer TV. It was her debut documentary so I felt under a lot of pressure to deliver and make sure that we did her work justice.

I really enjoyed this because Aimee was open to ideas on how we could reshuffle the footage to increase tension and emotional impact.

The other was ‘Coffee Morning Club’, produced by Mutt & Jeff Pictures Ltd. It was a real privilege to edit 3 episodes of this mockumentary and I was in tears laughing as I went through the footage!

It was refreshing trying to edit the footage in a raw, mockumentary style, trying to edit ‘badly’ sometimes or include ‘bad footage’ on purpose sometimes! The director Louis Neethling was open to ideas – with so many angles sometimes it was tricky to choose and sometimes ‘less is more. ‘

What would you say the unique challenges are as an editor who is deaf? How do you get around these?

Obviously the unique challenge being a Deaf editor is not being able to hear the footage, so what I tend to do is cut together an assembly with the sound turned off, just to focus on the content and the story.

Then when the assembly is ready, I’ll get a support worker (via Access to Work) to do a sound pass and flag up/ fix any sound issues. The support worker also support me with choosing and putting music on the timeline as well. Because if I was a hearing editor, I would be doing those things anyway, so I feel its important to deliver the same quality of product.

This does mean a bit of extra time at the end of the edit to iron out sound issues, but if this is scheduled in before the edit starts, then it’s all cool!

How do you feel about hearing non BSL editors working on deaf films? Can it work?

I would encourage hearing/non-BSL using editors to stay away from cutting deaf/ BSL films- if they possibly can.

Firstly, because they don’t know BSL, it means they will be working off transcripts/ voiced translations, which means they won’t be understanding the dialogue in ‘real time’. So there is a risk of cutting in the wrong place, because BSL has its own grammar and syntax and some places are better to cut than others.

They won’t know or have an intuitive / direct understanding of any dialogue and will also miss out on key facial expressions / inflections.

A Deaf director sitting in the edit can help minimise errors, but having a Deaf/BSL editor’s perspective would really help lift the film as well because they share a common cultural understanding.

Secondly, by taking the work, it takes the opportunity away from any Deaf editors who could otherwise have done a good job / or learned from the experience.

Would you say your experience in the media has generally been accessible to you?

I would say so yes, largely in thanks to Access to Work, I am really grateful for that and I think we are really lucky in the UK to have this, it is one of the leading examples in the world in terms of employment accessibility.

Do you think there is enough work for deaf editors?

I would say yes and no! Yes, there is quite a lot of work going around, but no, because companies are still using hearing/ non-BSL editors, and there aren’t enough new Deaf editors coming through. I would love to see apprenticeships/ courses specifically for young Deaf editors.

Have you worked mostly on mainstream or deaf-specific productions? Is there much of a difference between the two for you?

I’ve mostly worked on deaf-specific productions but the difference between mainstream productions and deaf productions is that with mainstream, you are able to cutaway from dialogue at any point so it’s a skill judging the right time to cut away, rather than staying on the speaker the whole time.

I am trying to encourage productions to experiment with cutting away from BSL dialogue and leaving subtitled dialogue on screen.

What would you love to do next?

I would love to cut more dramas and I would also love to cut a feature-length (1 hour) documentary.

Finally, do you have any advice for budding deaf editors?

Make sure you know how to use Premiere Pro or Avid in a basic form, Cut your own small films for fun, create your own showreels/ sizzle reels, use Instagram / Socials as an advertising platform, reach out to Deaf/ BSL productions and say you’d love some work experience!

Youtube is great for self-taught resources. If you really enjoy editing, your passion will shine through and you will just need to keep knocking on the door, opportunities will arrive eventually!