Life’s Abyss Then You Dive

By Joe Woo, Jr.

Before AVATAR - The Way of Water
There was THE ABYSS
A memoir about the making of a film using film in 1988. A unique perspective of the feature filmmaking process from a below the line collaborator. The movie was directed by James Cameron who would go on to win Oscars and broaden the filmgoing experience using digital 3D. The Abyss would win an Oscar for achievement in visual effects as well as push the envelope of underwater photography. Hopefully, the memoir would appeal to those who have become fans of the movie and would like to be informed about the difficulties in the making of the film as well as learning what the experience is to work with a visionary filmmaker at the height of his powers. Many crewmembers on The Abyss who have read an early draft have appreciated the accuracy and detail of the book. All have mentioned it was a walk into the past and the time when it took place. I hope the reader will agree with those crewmembers and enjoy the book as much as they did.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Woo, Jr
• Release date: Mar 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310454493

Joe Woo, Jr.

I'm Chinese-American. Born in Burbank, California in 1948. Attended U.C.L.A., graduated in 1971 with a degree in Political Science. Attended U.S.C. Cinema School in 1974-76. I worked for 35 years in motion pictures and t.v. as an editor, associate editor, visual effects editor, and assistant editor. I'm a retired member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild. My passion is watching movies, Tai-Chi, board surfing and playing sand volleyball. I've been a member of the San Onofre Surf Club for over 40 years. I've recently moved to Maui, Hawaii for my retirement. I've been a single man all of my life. Several girlfriends, but none able to tie me down. Family and friends are the loves of my life. And, what a life it has been.

Book preview

The year 1988. The digital era is on the cusp of becoming the next technological boom of the twentieth century. Two rival software computer companies, Apple and Microsoft, compete for the emerging home computer market. Computer tech-terminology is creeping into the lexicon of the times. Hardware and software as well as analog and digital are becoming frequently used words in business and finance. The times are a changing.

A non-industrial area south of San Francisco near Stanford University, Silicon Valley, becomes the home of computer geeks, digital startup companies and venture capitalists. Cellular phones are owned only by the few with the wealth and means to acquire them. A mobile cellular phone is the size of a shoe. A landline phone is still the primary instrument for communication of the masses. The worldwide web is a twinkle in the eye of Al Gore. The first email provider debuts to the public. Cable television is a viable and popular source of home entertainment and an inchoate threat to the networks. Televisions are still made with large bulky, video monitors. Big and flat screen t.v.’s are non-existent.

Television programs are one of the first mediums to adopt the use of non-linear editing using videotape instead of analog film editing.

Network television debuts the shows Wonder Years, America’s Most Wanted, China Beach, Roseanne, and Murphy Brown. The hit shows are Magnum P.I.. Cheers, Newhart, Miami Vice, The Cosby Show, Murder She Wrote, Golden Girls, L.A. Law, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The movie industry uses celluloid film for capturing the images of its theatrical released features. High definition digital cameras are still in the future. All theatrical releases are edited using film. The 1988 Oscar ceremony awards nine Oscars to The Last Emperor including Best Picture for 1987. Other box office hits of 1988 are Rainman, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Coming to America, Big, Twins, Die Hard, Cocktail, Midnight Run and Beetle Juice.

This is the zeitgeist of 1988 when I begin my memoir about working on The Abyss.

NOTE: I’ve written tech terms and film phrases in BOLD typeface for the reader who is unfamiliar with the film process and business. These terms and phrases can be found in the attached glossary for a quick and easy reference as needed.

July, 1988. I just finished my phone conversation with Joel Goodman who I convinced to hire me as the second assistant editor on the film, The Abyss. Joel was a New York editor who had gotten the job to edit James Cameron’s next film. Joel’s recent work included working with Sidney Lumet on The Morning After, which starred Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges. Cameron’s last two films were Terminator, and Aliens, the sequel to Alien. Both of these films were very successful and put Cameron on the A list of action directors. The Abyss was to be his second film for 20th Century Fox in a multi-picture deal. Despite being a studio project, the movie was slated as a non-union film with a budget of $30 million. Mind you, this is 1988 and mega-budget blockbusters hadn’t yet evolved. Still, the $30 million for a non-union film was unprecedented. In contrast, Tim Burton’s Batman was union budgeted around $60 or $70 million dollars that same year. Box office blockbusters were pulling in over $100 million at the time, which made any film at $30 million risky and very high profile.

Once hired by Joel, I exhaled a relieved, joyous sigh. I had done it. I’d made it to the top rung of the biz, and was going to work with another name director and talent. I paused to backtrack my path to this career moment.

I’ve always been fascinated by movies. As a youngster, I saw double feature matinees on weekends in North Hollywood, California. I worked during the weekends at my family’s Chinese take-out restaurant, and before the evening dinner rush happened, I was sent to the movie theatre. The double bill screenings were long enough to keep me occupied during the dinner hours, and out of my parents’ hair. The type of movies playing didn’t worry my folks––all that mattered was that the double bill was long enough for me to miss the dinner rush. I saw movies that most 8 or 9 nine year-olds rarely saw: Joan of Arc with Jean Seberg; William Faulkner’s The Long Hot Summer with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; The Three Faces of Eve with Joanne Woodward. I acquired an adult appreciation of movies even if I didn’t comprehend the drama and mature themes of the films.

My appreciation of movies didn’t diminish as I grew older––I continued to patronize theatres as I matured, and grew to fully understand the power of the visual medium.

In college during the sixties, I found myself searching for expression and a vocation. Then a family friend, Robin Clark, came to my rescue during a celebration at my family’s restaurant. He inquired about my career choices when I was nearing graduation. I replied that I was unsure, and hadn’t settled on anything. Robin asked if I had any interest in his profession, the film biz. I replied that I never considered it. He invited me to visit him at his office in Century City for lunch, and we could further talk about his work. I excitedly took the opportunity. Robin was working as a production manager on a Movie of the Week (MOW) production. At lunch with Robin, the seed was planted that I could actually have a career in movies.

After graduating from U.C.L.A., I took Robin’s advice and applied for the assistant director’s training program. The program weeded out the thousand applicants with an all day exam, and later, an interview process that whittled down the candidates. I didn’t make it past the test the first year I applied. The following year, I did make it to the interview process and got no further. After the interview, I knew that the training program wasn’t a match for me. I decided to take another tack to getting into the biz. I applied to the U.C.L.A. film school and discovered that once accepted, I would be on a waiting list for a year before enrolling. I decided that acceptance at my alma mater was iffy at best, because my grades were not stellar as an undergrad in political science––I had enjoyed my extra-curricular activities a bit too much, and was a C+ or B- student at best.

I decided to apply at U.S.C. I took the graduate record exam and scored so-so, which did not bode well for my admittance. My options were dwindling.

Then luck stepped in. The secretary of the film school dean, Deri Brewster, took a liking to me. Deri was of Chinese descent, and we had that in common. She knew few Asians applied or attended the film school at that time in the early 1970’s. I pleaded with her to allow me to make my case for admittance to her boss, Bernie Kantor. Deri said the dean had no time for a personal conference, but he would read any note that I would submit for consideration––with a wink, she promised that he would definitely get my note. I submitted a letter detailing that my upper class grades showed I had attained mainly B’s and A’s in my major and had a solid academic footing; I also explained that I hoped to become a filmmaker capable of educating as well as entertaining; I noted two films that had a profound affect on me during the sixties––Z and The Battle of Algiers––which made me an anti-war activist. I ended my note pleading for the opportunity to prove myself, and pursue my dream of becoming a filmmaker. Surprisingly, I got accepted.

I followed through on my film education with a festival winning film that I edited, and also a stint as a paid teacher’s assistant. Now, I needed to get a job.

Once again, I was fortunate to have friends aid me in my career. A former film school collaborator, Crew Chamberlain, got me a job substituting for him on a John Cassavetes film, Opening Night, as the boom operator. I was able to meet the editor, and got onto the post-production crew as the sound editor.

I had my first feature credit.

My second feature credit was assistant editor on John Carpenter’s The Fog. Another former classmate, Tommy Lee Wallace, got me on the post crew. Tommy co-edited The Fog with Charles Bornstein after co-editing Halloween together. It was Charles who taught me the basics about feature assistant editing (Charles was an assistant on Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind). Through The Fog, I met up with Donald Borchers an up and coming producer. Don got me on The Beastmaster and then Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion as the first assistant editor.

My career was on the way. But, I wasn’t in the union. I was working non-union, low, flat-rate projects. To get into the union, you needed a union job; of course, you couldn’t get a union job unless you were in the union––the paradoxical Catch 22. I rationalized that I was lucky to be working at a profession I loved. However, the ambition to work on union shows that had a higher profile wouldn’t go away. It became disheartening when others with less talent and experience had moved on to the union jobs, and bigger projects. And, they were being paid at twice the rate with benefits such as health insurance.

I hoped that I would be in the right place at the right time someday to get into the union, and get my foot in the door of upper tier filmmaking. Of course, I wasn’t alone in my aspirations to get into the union––a wealth of non-union working professionals had proliferated in the ‘80’s. The plethora of non-union talent made my access to the union very competitive, but there was a silver lining to having a large, non-union community as I would soon discover.

Robin Clark (who planted the movie-making seed in me) called on me to work on a non-union project, The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking. The editor was an expatriate American living in New Zealand that needed a stateside assistant. The movie was to be shot in Florida. Once hired, I would set up editorial as the first assistant. Pippi’s director, Ken Annakin, was a seasoned professional in his early seventies (in his heyday, Ken directed The Longest Day, Swiss Family Robinson, and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines).

Taking the job for Robin was payback for all his encouragement, and efforts to get me into the industry. Major payback. The job was challenging to say the least. Setting up editorial was difficult because of the logistics of my being in California and the editing space being in Florida; I needed to rent the editing equipment in Florida via phone and fax. I also needed to know how to operate dual system projection (picture and sound), which was set up on location. Fortunately, I was experienced in this area from my other films and was up to the task. In the end, post-production went well and Robin came out smelling like a rose for hiring me. Mission accomplished again. I had proven that I was worthy to be a union pro, despite not being one.

Robin had another project that was non-union on a Movie of the Week for television. I took it on, and it led to my getting in the union, finally. Most of the MOW production crew were union, and they were able to force the project to go union during the shooting. Since I was in post-production, I was told that the union agreement didn’t necessarily include me. I was upset and angry. Twelve years had passed since film school, and I was still on the outside looking in.

I decided to take things into my own hands. I felt non-union voices such as mine needed to be heard. I wrote a letter to the editors guild stating it was time they recognized the non-union talent that existed who were qualified and interested in becoming members. To increase the leverage of my proposal, the letter was going to be published in the trade papers, and would have the signatures of the disenfranchised workers. I was sure I could get hundreds of co-signers from my past and present co-workers.

The editors’ guild response was for me to hold off on publicizing my letter. My guild contact, Mark Tarnawsky, agreed that the time was right to change the rules for admission. In fact, the new president of the union was negotiating to open the doors for those qualified. In 1988, the union had become weak due to the Reagan administration’s anti-union stance, and had low membership due to its antiquated rules to maintain the status quo. Studio staff jobs, which the guild struggled to maintain, had gone away despite union efforts. A large group of workers who supported the union existed, but were locked out of membership. The new editors guild prez, Carol Littleton, believed that a union that represents the masses rather than the few would be stronger and more effective. Smart woman.

Mark convinced me to shelve my proposal for publication to avoid unwanted antagonism from the old guard opposed to change. I agreed, but only on a temporary basis just in case nothing happened. Mark appreciated my assent and asked about the particulars of my situation, which prompted my letter to the union. I explained my recent denial for membership. Surprisingly, Mark thought I had a valid case for admission to the union. He did some investigating and found that I been given incorrect info, and I did qualify for membership.

Hallelujah! I had cracked Catch 22. I paid my editors guild initiation fee and became a member. Now, I had to find a union job.

Robin was glad I was finally able to become a union member. And, he knew that I was more than just an assistant as well. I had edited a gag reel from outtakes and discarded footage on Pippi. It was shown at the last dailies (the screening of the prior day’s filming after a workprint has been delivered to editorial for synching and organizing) viewing in front of the whole crew to such acclaim that Ken, the director, asked that several edited scenes be shown as well, which is very rare. Most directors never show edited material to a crew because the possibility exists that disappointment occurs. A scene out of context can be criticized and scrutinized unfairly and create negative word of mouth. That’s the last thing any director wants to impart to his crew. But, the good will established with my gag reel induced Ken to keep the ball rolling with edited footage that produced a positive response from the crew. Robin knew I could edit and referred me to his agent, Susan Grant, who also handled editors.

Through Susan and her agency, I met Susanna Camejo, another agent who dealt with up and coming talent. Susanna’s boyfriend and the father of her child was also an assistant editor, Chris Koefoed. He had just been hired as the first assistant on The Abyss. Chris needed to find a second assistant in L.A. since post was to be done locally after production in South Carolina. Susanna thought I would be a good fit, despite the fact the job wasn’t an editor position. She felt the high-profile film would open other doors to editing jobs. I could see her point.

A few drawbacks did exist though: the film was non-union; the pay was lower than what I had been making as a first assistant; and, I would be on location for 4 months beginning sometime in August. The most demanding concession to me would be the ending of my summer, and surfing waves with my friends at San Onofre.

The scales of my life tipped overwhelmingly to taking the job; I always had next summer and its waves; I already waited 12 years for a union job so waiting another year wasn’t a big deal; and, money was not a priority and the work was. I made the decision to go for it and met with Chris.

Our meeting went well and he would recommend me to Joel Goodman, the editor, who would make the final decision about my hiring. Apparently, Joel had an assistant in New York that he was also considering. I needed to persuade Joel that I was the right man for the job over the New York assistant.

I waited anxiously for Joel’s phone call. He called and we talked about my faxed resume and experience on location. My Pippi experience with screening dailies bode well for me, because dailies would be projected by editorial in South Carolina. In the end, my dailies projection expertise swayed Joel to hire me. Finally, I had my first high profile, big-budgeted movie. I was stoked.

I had gotten over the hump and finally felt that I was now in the upper tier of the feature film world. I prepared my editing equipment for shipping to Gaffney, South Carolina and then gathered myself for a long-awaited opportunity. Life’s a Bitch Then You Die. Maybe not. Perhaps, Life’s Abyss Then You Dive.

GAFFNEY, SOUTH CAROLINA

Cameron in Pain

I had blown it! I was facing a bent-over James Cameron who was holding his gut in pain. No matter that the blow to Cameron’s gut wasn’t intentional, the fact was my hand had struck the director of The Abyss causing him to double-over. Other than Jim’s gasping from my blow to his mid-section, the room’s deafening silence pervaded the room. After a month on The Abyss, my job was going to end in this inglorious, avoidable incident. I had done the unthinkable––striking a director and injuring him. My thoughts raced––I searched for words that would appease the situation before me and keep me from being fired. All I came up with was a mumbled, panicked apology, knowing that would do little to fix my situation. Cameron slowly straightened up, grimaced and faced me…

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start back a month ago when I began my work on The Abyss…

AUGUST, 1988

WEEK ONE: PREPARATION

Editorial Unpacking and Setting-up

After several anxious weeks anticipating the beginning of work on The Abyss, my departure for Gaffney, North Carolina had arrived. The east coast location was where I would be spending the next four months working while the movie was being filmed. Editorial usually begins work with the first day of shooting to begin the process of assembling the film. The movie’s assembly would give feedback to the director, James Cameron, as to the progress of his vision of the movie. Most importantly, the feedback would affirm he had on film what he needed or what he needed to do to accomplish his vision. Few movies begin shooting without an editorial crew for this reason. The Abyss wouldn’t be an exception to this common filmmaking procedure.

On Thursday, I boarded the plane at LAX with my editing crew, Chris Koefoed, and Kelly Tartan, the apprentice editor. A few days earlier, Joel had flown down from New York where he lived. On our flight, we had bulkhead seats in the center of the plane and had plenty of legroom. Chris was a big guy well over 220 pounds and just under six feet. Kelly was around five-seven and average build. I’m six feet and around 170 so the added bulkhead legroom was welcome. Chris is African American. Kelly is white. And, I’m Asian. To describe us as an unlikely trio would be an understatement. We appeared to be the United Nations of editing crews. Despite these superficial differences, we shared a common bond: our mutual excitement and enthusiasm to be working on a high-profile project like The Abyss.

We arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina and a van from the production awaited us along with several other crewmembers––the Charlotte airport was the closest commercial airfield to Gaffney despite being in North Carolina. Gaffney is about an hour south and west of Charlotte. It was early evening when our flight got to the east coast with the time change. After loading our baggage, the van’s driver drove onto the interstate highway as the sun started to set.

Since darkness approached, there wasn’t much scenery to see. This was my second excursion to the east coast after Florida and Pippi’s film shoot. Both Chris and Kelly had never been to the Carolinas as well. We were strangers in a strange land.

Gaffney was a textile factory town of about 12,000 people at that time. It was mainly known as the peach capital of South Carolina with a notable landmark located just off the interstate––a towering water tank, which was called the "Peachoid". The tank was painted to resemble an elevated, enormous peach with a leaf and stem. The water tank had a major design flaw, however––the leaf on the giant peach wasn’t visible when approaching the water tower from the north. The resulting view from a distance appeared to be a colossal pair of buttocks with a giant butt crack. Strange no one ever corrected the oversight with the leaf.

The small town of Gaffney is notable for its sports and personages despite its size and rural ambience. The high school had several state championship football teams in its division. Gaylord Perry, the hall of fame pitcher, coached baseball at Limestone College during the time The Abyss was filmed. Andie MacDowell, the actress of Sex, Lies and Videotape fame, grew up in Gaffney. She was known as Rosie before she went to New York and began a modeling career.

Gaffney also had an unfinished nuclear power station, the Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant. Midway through construction, an earthquake fault was discovered right under the proposed nuclear plant. The plant was never completed and sold off lock, stock and barrel to the highest bidder for just $3 million. The new owner, Earl Owensby, had dreams of turning the property into a movie studio. The Abyss was Owensby’s maiden voyage into big-time Hollywood filmmaking.

After arriving at the Days Inn motel off the interstate in Gaffney, we discovered no restaurants to speak of in the hamlet other than fast food joints and coffee shops. There was only one Italian and one Chinese eatery open until eight. Without any transportation, we settled for the nearby Waffle House diner within walking distance of the Days Inn. The Waffle House served only a breakfast menu, but sufficed after eating only airline and airport food prior to our arrival in Gaffney.

After our meal, we settled into our motel for the night and rested before our first day of work on Friday. My Abyss journey had begun.

As per my daily routine, I awakened early to run 4 miles after doing a half-hour of slow Tai-Chi. My routine was my wakeup call. I don’t drink coffee, and the exercise had always given me an edge over my co-workers––I never had a caffeine hangover and I was able to be more focused and energetic without any stimulant such as caffeine. I jogged along the bypass road next to the interstate, and saw the Peachoid for the first time up close. I knew I was a stranger in a strange land.

At the appointed time, a production van picked up our editing crew, headed east from the motel through town on Floyd Baker Boulevard. We drove underneath the interstate overpass, past the nearby fast food joints that lined the main boulevard near the freeway. Gaffney wasn’t a destination town, but a truck stop between cities on the interstate. We passed some small businesses in the center of town with only a few stoplights slowing our progress. Before we knew it, Floyd Baker Blvd. narrowed into two lanes, and we were out of Gaffney into the town’s outskirts.

That morning the summer sun already had the temp into the mid 70’s. The forecast temp was going to be in the 90’s or above. On our drive, we noticed homes along the road were smallish and clumped together. Trampolines and above ground pools adorned many of the front yards as well as autos in disrepair. The further we drove from town, the fewer homes we saw.

Kudzu, a plant similar to ivy, dominated the roadside landscape amongst the trees lining the road. Our driver warned us that the cops liked to hang out along this part of the road and bust drivers for speeding. After fifteen minutes of driving, the kudzu finally ended and the view showed cleared land, which signaled we had reached out destination, Earl Owensby Studios.

The van turned left off the highway. We drove past an empty kiosk, underneath an archway that read Earl Owensby Studios. The two-lane road narrowed slightly into an unmarked private drive. The road went down into a valley toward a village of buildings a mile or so further on. Like the Peachoid by the motel, another imposing artifact stood out on the skyline near the village: a giant 175 ft. gantry crane was positioned adjacent to a concrete circular edifice. I recognized the circular building as a nuclear power plant from my many years surfing by the San Onofre Nuclear Station in California.

Amidst the village of buildings, the van drove into a sunken u-shaped docking area. A pair of two-story warehouses faced each other on two of the docks. The adjoining third dock between the warehouses housed a single level trailer/office complex. The sunken level parking area allowed semi-trucks to park their rear trailer doors at dock level; this allowed easy access to the warehouses for loading and unloading. And, if need be, ramped driveways existed at the ends of the docks for smaller vehicle access to the warehouses. We soon learned that these warehouses had been modified to function as sound stages for sets as well as offices.

Directly in front of our parked van were the production offices in the trailer/office complex. We climbed the steps onto the dock, entered the pre-fabricated building. Inside the offices, the production coordinator, Laura Greenlee, greeted us, handed out contact and crew lists as well as info about Gaffney, and maps of the area. Amongst the paperwork was a production memo informing us that beginning on Monday, breakfast would be served from 6 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.––the crew call was at 6:30, which allowed the shooting crew a half hour to get breakfast before starting work. Lunch would be served at 12:30 for the shooting crew, everyone else would eat at 1p.m.––the 12:30 lunchtime facilitated the shooting crew getting their food quickly without being impeded by others (construction, art, and editing departments to name a few) not on the strict shooting schedule. Of course the meal hours were subject to change if the shooting crew didn’t adhere to the proscribed start time of 6:30 due to a later crew call. This would occur when the crew would work past the scheduled 12-hour day and the mandated turnaround of eight hours off before beginning the next day. Unfortunately, the turnaround factor would be the norm rather than the exception for The Abyss shooting crew.

We moved from Greenlee’s office to the accountant, Vince Heileson, and his crew of three, who were located next door. The size of the production crew necessitated additional accountants to handle the 200 person plus payroll and ongoing bills the production created. Vince handed us our startup paperwork, deal memos and timecards. Bob Gordon, another accountant, doled out our per diem cash. We got $25 per day on location one week in advance.

A catering truck was parked outside of the production offices in an adjacent warehouse, and provided our breakfast. Rows upon rows of banquet tables and chairs were permanently set up for feeding up to 100 people at a time. After eating, a production assistant led us to our editing home for the next four months.

We walked over to one of the adjacent warehouses. The building’s walls were made of corrugated steel, which weren’t insulated––without insulation during hot weather, the building would bake like an oven; during cold weather, the building would be an icebox. Fortunately for us the editing rooms were on the second floor, which had some air conditioning as a relief to the oppressive heat. Production had rejected these offices, opted for the more comfortable pre-fabricated trailer/offices that were insulated with central air and heating.

After climbing stairs to the second level, we saw our editing equipment had arrived and stored just outside of our offices on an open landing. We went through double doors into a large open space. The open space was carpeted, and had weight lifting equipment and stationary bicycles––this was a makeshift gym for the actors. At the back of this room, a single door on the right opened to our editing rooms. Entering our offices, we found Joel Goodman, his wife Mary and Amos, his six year-old son. Mary and Amos were leaving and would return later for lunch. Joel wore glasses, and was just under six feet and fairly slim with a small paunch. He had been very successful as a commercial editor with his own company early in his career, and had transitioned to feature films. His wife and son would be visiting for a week before returning to New York where Amos would be attending school.

Joel showed us the layout of the rooms. A large common area was in the center of two rows of two rooms. On one side, two rooms were of equal size––these rooms were to be Joel’s and Chris’. Opposite Joel and Chris’ rooms were another two rooms, but of unequal size. The smaller room next to the entrance was for Miller Drake, the visual effect (vfx) editor. He had already arrived before us and had set up his room with a Moviola (a vertical film editing machine), editing bench and film racks. He was up and running. The larger room next to Miller’s was for Kelly and myself.

Joel continued his tour of the second floor leading us out of the editing area back through the actors’ workout area. We followed him through two double doors adjacent to the workout area to the projection room and projectors for screening dailies. Larry––the tech from Boston Light & Sound who had set up the projectors––would brief us that afternoon on operating the equipment. He was still tweaking the system for projecting our super 35mm shooting format––super 35mm was a new widescreen format that few if any film had used at that time; The Abyss would be my first exposure to the format.

In the projection booth, we looked through the projection portholes into the screening room below, and saw James Cameron amongst the actors in a meeting. Ed Harris, Michael Biehn and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio were recognizable. Joel pointed out Cameron who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Cameron had longish blond hair with a light beard and medium build. He was tall, around six-foot two in height.

Joel was anxious to unpack and set up his own editing room, which was our first priority. We went to the second floor landing where our editing equipment had been placed, began unpacking his editing equipment. The heat was noticeable outside of the cooler editing offices. We unpacked, moved his six-plate Steenbeck flatbed (a horizontal film editing machine) and two Moviolas (upright editing machines) to Joel’s room––the flatbed editing device was ideal for reviewing at high speed assembled film; the Moviolas were used for the assembly of the film shot by shot. I left Chris to assist Joel with the room’s setup. Kelly and I continued to unpack the remaining equipment, which included a rented Kem eight-plate flatbed and another upright Moviola for the assistant’s use. Unlike other women I had worked with, Kelly didn’t shirk away from the lifting and moving of the equipment.

We spent the morning setting up our rooms. I had worked extensively with Kem flatbeds and had a working knowledge of assembling and disassembling Kems, so that task was mine. I found my toolbox and other equipment amongst the shipping boxes, began setting up the Kem in Chris’s room while Kelly unpacked all the other supplies.

We had gotten film tests, framing leader (leader refers to the run-up film that precedes/leads the desired picture to be viewed), and corresponding camera reports from Laura Greenlee, the production coordinator. The tests are done prior to shooting to check out the cameras for any problems. All the test film and framing leader (film shot using the film-shoot cameras displaying the correct image parameters desired when projected or viewed) showed that the cameras were okay. Joel used the tests and framing leader to adjust his Steenbeck’s picture head for the super 35 format. Since Joel owned his Steenbeck flatbed, he was very familiar with its setup, and needed little assistance from anyone else.

The morning passed quickly when Mary and Amos returned for lunch. We went downstairs to the catering truck, had our meal outside in the oppressive heat, which was slightly reduced by a light breeze and the shade provided by the warehouse roof of the dining area. An added irritant besides the heat was the fly population that made our lunches somewhat rushed (with cold weather, the flies disappeared, but the chilling cold wouldn’t improve our outdoor dining experience either). The dining area was adjacent to the production offices in a large warehouse. Later, this area would also double as a set location for exterior scenes to be shot aboard a ship.

After lunch, we returned to our cooler editing rooms, and met Miller Drake. Miller had worked with Cameron at New World Pictures, and had maintained a comfortable working relationship with him, which got him onto The Abyss.

Miller was slight and bespectacled. He was close in age to Joel, Chris and myself, which was around forty. As it turned out, I was the oldest of the editing crew.

Kelly and I returned to moving the racks and editing benches to our editing space. I