3 Sept 2015
by Shannon Olona on Aug 27, 2015
How do you edit with a bang? To find out, we turned to the award winning video editor, Peter Chakos, for answers.
Chakos acts as both editor and producer for the Emmy-winning comedy series, The Big Bang Theory. In 2007, he was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series for his work on the show.
As fans of the show, we were excited to jump right into the interview with Chakos.
NB: How did you get involved with video editing? And how did you make it into primetime TV?
PC: Well I started as a runner P.A. on a TV show called Cheers.
NB: Wait, you mean the show “Where everyone knows your name?”
PC: Yes and while I was there I slowly moved into the postproduction area. I wanted to learn more about the edit system, which at the time was called Laser Edit. They were showing film editors how to take the leap into the 90s.
While I was taking the [Laser Edit] class everyone kept asking me if I had ever edited before. By the second week I was helping teach the older guys who were transitioning from film.
A couple months later, I went into the Cheers edit bay on a Friday night. I cut an episode, for fun, just to see if I could do it. I handed it to our producer, Andy Ackerman and said, “Here take a look at this.” Ackerman came up to me a few days later and said, “I strongly believe you should become an editor.”
NB: What tools and software do you use? What specific NewBlueFX plugins are used for The Big Bang Theory? When and where do we see these in action?
I use Avid Media Composer. When I got involved with NewBlue we were doing a show that was a different kind of show for us. We were not really flashing back, but imagining “what ifs.” Like what if the guys had never met Sheldon. It was a Christmas episode and Sheldon was out of town.
I wanted to do something different with the transitions to get us out of these “what if” sequences. That’s when I began to look for some cool transitions. And I found NewBlue Motion Blur. In fact, that episode landed me my first Emmy nomination.