SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM

As an editor I have to include this one for the title alone…

Sadly Mark Zappia died December 22 2013 in Ventura, California at the age of 76. During a career that started in 1968 and spanned more than 40 years, Zappia edited more than a hundreds and hundreds of hours of television. Among the shows he had longstanding relationships with were All in the Family (95 episodes), Archie Bunker’s Place (97 episodes), Who’s the Boss (188 episodes), Home Improvement (203 episodes) and Eight Simple Rules (75 episodes).He was nominated for 18 Emmy’s, winning twice, and two CableACE awards. His first Emmy came in 1971 for Hee Haw and was CBS’ first win in that category. His second Emmy was for the 1980 special Christmas in the Holy Land.He helped pioneer numerous technical advances in his field, including aiding in the research and development of the multicam Avid Editing System. He was the first editor to use Avid to edit a multicam sitcom for an episode of Home Improvement.In his book he tells a nice tale of a liftime in post. A nice time capsule of how TV was made back when we needed to know about colour framing, sc-h phase and you couldn’t deliver a master unless you knew how to properly use a scope.