In order to find out exactly what triggers editorial inspiration, we decided to ask 17 editors to come up with their top 10 influences. The results turned out to be more revealing than a Rorschach test, and infinitely more illuminating. Apart from some obvious choices - like New York City - it represents a weird and wonderful array culled from the trim bin of memory, from speed chess to Hitchcock to chaos theory. Here they are, in no particular order:

Gary Knight
Senior Editor
Final Cut, NY/LA/London

1. Dad has been extremely influential because he made me get off my ass, go out there and really explore my life. He made me open my eyes to the world and encouraged me to experience different things whether it was new food or job-related.
2. Stanley Kubrick
3. Star Wars (original trilogy)
4. Chris Cunningham
5. Photography of London buses
6. Director Alan Parker
7. Editor Gerry Hambling
8. SoHo
9. Ridley Scott
10.Chaos theory

Chris Van Dyke
Senior Editor
School, Toronto

1. Music is such a big part of me. When I hear music I think picture. It opens my mind. My music library is one my most important tools. I love messing around with the rhythm of a spot. It dares me to push the edit in a new direction.
2. My father Archie, the editor
3. Documentaries
4. New York City
5. Technology
6. Requiem for a Dream
7. Hank Corwin
8. Bjork's "All is Full of Love" video
9. Opening title sequences
10. Hilarious House of Frightenstein

Tiffany Burchard
Editor
Filmcore, Santa Monica

1. The Royal Tenenbaums. Beautiful cinematography, with every shot composed like a photograph. It's funny, but has a real sadness to it. I could watch it over and over again and see something new every time.
2. Arrested Developmentbr>3. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
4. People watching
5. Spike Jonze
6. Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" video
7. Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills photo series
8. This American Life on NPR
9. Nike commercials, especially "Frozen Moments"
10. Music from Patsy Cline to Beck

Geordie Anderson
Editor
Blue Rock, New York

2. Al Peck. The friend and funny person. Ideas flow better when you're laughing.
3. & 4. Karl and Bernard at
Karl Marks. The first and best teachers.
5. William Goldman. The storyteller extraordinaire.
6. Walter Murch. The editor and sound designer - the two are inseparable.
7. Hans Zimmer. The composer.
8. Krzysztof Kieslowski. The director.
9. Apocalypse Now The first movie I actually watched.
10. The beach. The place to be.
And my number one influence is... The film material itself, which is why I spend more time selecting than editing. A short explanation I know, but hey, I'm an editor.

Maury Loeb
Editor
P.S. 260, New York

1. Sleep-away camp slide shows. The first time I truly understood the manipulative power of images and music married together were these end-of-summer slideshow retrospectives made by our counselors. Who knew that a little Cat Stevens and a photo of the sun setting over a dirty lake could make 12-year-old boys cry like sissies?
2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
3. Cinema Verité
4. Two decades of Nike commercials
5. All that Hal Ashby shit
6. Saturday morning cartoons
7. Boogie Nights
8. Growing up with a cable remote
9. That Charlie Kaufmann guy
10. New York City

Cynthia Nielsen
Editor
Chinagraph Editoral, New York

1. Photography and fine art. They're my instinctual means of expression. Film editing was the natural, organic career choice. With photography and painting the world is visualized as single frames. Film's beauty is motion, giving stills "life." Editing deepens the tactile and visceral nature of moving images: rhythm, pacing, sound design, voice...then, emotion.
2. Playing musical instruments, childhood through early adulthood
3. Collaboration with other creative and artistic people
4. The frenetic energy of New York City
5. Diane Arbus, fine art photographer
6. Documentary filmmaking (fav: Albert Maysles's Christo's Valley Curtain)
7. Traveling abroad
8. Sterling's The Twilight Zone
9. Family and friends
10.'80s Music. The cheesier the better

Ed Kisberg
Senior Editor
Rooftop Editorial, New York

The success of a spot hangs on how effectively it tells its story. So, as an editor, I've always taken my cues from great storytellers. Eric Clapton is a master of the art of storytelling. Whether it's fast paced rock or a slow, soulful ballad, the power of the simplicity of his music has always inspired me. Jump cuts, flash frames, complex title treatment and heavy graphics are all valuable tools, as long as they're used to support good storytelling, not to distract from the lack of it.

Some of my other influences come from the way I feel after building a great piece of furniture in my woodshop or watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or reruns of The Three Stooges (with the original Curly) or thumbing through European design magazines. All these things influence me because, as an editor, I appreciate the fact that they each leave me with a moment when I understand the power of their simplicity. When I cut a spot, it's all about that moment.

Andrea MacArthur
Managing director/editor
Peepshow, London

It's hard to spot good editing because you only become conscious of editing when it's bad. That's probably why my favorite promo is Bailey Walsh's Massive Attack video for "Unfinished Sympathy" - it's just one shot; and that's how film should feel. The films that have stuck with me are Midnight Cowboy, Wizard of Oz (for its camp, color, costume and sheer nostalgia), The Big Sleep, Hero and Irreversible - a French film told in reverse, making it an inevitable choice for an editor, I suppose. I love Ringan [Ledwidge's] Lynx "Getting Dressed" spot - a perfect example of what can be achieved when combining a great script with great directing and editing. And Tom Carty's Pepsi Max "Can Fu" makes it into my top 10 for pure ingenuity. From a personal point of view, one of my most memorable editing experiences was Tarsem's Levi's "Wash Room" - I was given plenty of time and creative freedom and fantastic footage to select from.

Tina Mintus
Partner/Editor
Version2, New York

1. Vito DeSario. From the beginning, Vito allowed me to watch him cut, teaching me how structure worked, what you can do with a spot and how to take it further. He is supportive, openly communicative and gives me honest opinions. It is very inspirational for me to work with someone like that.
2. Speed Chess (in Washington Square Park)
3. Video camera (at age 13)
4. House (the first film I worked on)
5. New York City
6a) Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky
6b) Heat, Michael Mann
6c) Natural Born Killers,, Oliver Stone
6d) Sin City, Robert Rodriguez
7. Jonathan Glazer's music videos
8. Music: The Smiths
9. VH1
10. Video games (in particular,Vice City)

Sherri Marguiles
Partner/Editor
Crew Cuts, New York

1. Godfather 1 & 2 /Godfather Trilogy. I know, everyone loves the Godfather. But the reason it's number one on my list is actually a love/hate thing. While I love Godfather 1 & 2, I hate the Godfather Trilogy. Watching this amazing saga chronologically takes the heart out of it for me. It was in this hate that I developed a love & appreciation for the effectiveness of editing in storytelling.
2. A-Ha "Take on Me" video
3. Beatles "Free as a Bird" experience
4. Blind Melon's "No Rain" video
5. Diet Pepsi "Apartment 3G"
6. Alfred Hitchcock
7. Robert Altman's The Player
8. Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" video
9. Woody Allen
10. Nike "If I could Play sports"

Paul Martinez
Editor
Lost Planet, Los Angeles

1. Snow Falling on Cedars. Working for a year with the Hank Corwin Carnival on the film. I observed Hank piece together four different non-sequential time periods using three overlapping music tracks, eight layered repeating dialogue tracks, period stills, stock footage, home movies and live-action to form a truly heartbreaking battle scene.
2. My father pulling a live fish from the sea with his bare hands
3. The Clash meets Alan Ginsberg. "Starved in Megalopolis, addict of Metropolis, slam dance cosmopolis, enlighten the populace..."
4. DeNiro as a freeze-frame gangster, bloodied in slo-mo in the ring
5. Dalí meets Buñuel for Un Chien Andalou
6. Gaudi's Park Guell at sunrise
7. Chuck McBride's Economy of Shots lecture
8. The Coen Brothers (Best editors with an alias)
9. Frank Zappa on the Steve Allen Show playing bicycle spokes
10 .My 5-year-old daughter telling me I watch television for a living

Richard Orrick
Editor
The Whitehouse

1. Junior Pertwee. I'd have to say that among the very greats of our day he has remained there, somewhere near the top for ages. His work covers more ground than many of his leading contemporaries yet he continues to produce to a good standard. He is without question an inspiration and I can only hope that he carries on.
2. Radio 4
3. TV (good bits - not soaps)
4. Cinema
5. Pop videos and adverts that I like
6. Marmite on toast
7. Pets/books/football
8. Some music
9. Starlight Express or Cats
10. The news

Chuck Willis
Co-founder/editor
Cut + Run, New York

1. Making my first Super 8 movie as a senior in high school. Even though I grew up loving movies and music as a kid from the Midwest, I never imagined that a person could actually do that and make a living. When I made my first silly movie as a senior in high school the proverbial light went off and I never looked back.
2. Studying acting with George Morrison and learning the importance of process
3. Reading Conversations with Walter Murch in which he describes dreams as our only justification for editing
4. Emerson College film program
5. Working at the Exeter Street Theater in Boston
6. New York City
7. Working with Stacy Wall on some very obscure Nike commercials
8. AFI's Top 100 Movies
9. Travel (particularly Europe)
10. Rock and roll music

Alejandro Santangelo
Editor
Circolo, Miami

1. Flehner Films. It was the first place where I got in contact professionally with advertising. That was the place where the people have most influenced me. There I learned the craft, the business, the pace, how to fish, when to attack, seduce, hide, appear, disappear, show off.
2. Buenos Aires
3. Apple
4. Avid
5. Three or four creatives
6. Alfred Hitchcock
7. Federico Fellini
8. Francis Ford Coppola
9. Woody Allen
10. Gabriel Garcia Marques

Jim Ulbrich
Editor
Mad River Post, New York

1. Life/people/surrounding perceptions. I'm not your next great orator. But it's been said that I'm a "great judge of character." I enjoy going out and meeting people. I've learned that if you keep your mouth shut, you learn a lot more and sound that much smarter. Now I can listen and hear what someone is truly trying to say. So, "the spot sucks" becomes "change the opening". I pay attention to what's happening around me... a messenger rode by on a single gear bike, four cars parked across the street, three are SUV's, someone just flushed the toilet on the third floor. Since I rarely watch TV or go to the movies, I would have to say, life/people/surrounding perceptions are my greatest influences.
2. Being told I couldn't do it by a veteran editor
3. Fiction
4. Games
5. Puzzles
6. A story well told
7. Beautiful view
8. High intensity sport
9. Risk
10. Huge bag of weed

Mark Hajek
Partner/editor
Stealing Time Editing, Toronto

1. Brian Eno. True Renaissance man. From music to approaches. He's the most open-minded thinker. Never lets a door close: Embellishes found sources; Modal and non-linear. Genius.
2. Family
3. Miles Davis
4. Growing up in Montreal
5. All music
6. Monty Python
7. Wile E. Coyote
8. Pete Henderson
9. Thelma Schoonmacher
10. George Carlin

Nick Lofting
Editor
Union Editorial, Los Angeles

1. Music. I love my iPod. Before my iPod I carried around a thousand CDs. I madly listen to music; my body craves it like air. It speaks to me in a way words and pictures alone can't. I organize my music into moods. I use music to channel anger, sadness, romance or happiness. I sit and listen every day for hours, while I'm working, walking, sitting at the beach, anywhere. It's an integral part of what I call my mental visualization. Music, like nothing else, stirs emotion, inspiration, motivation, and it helps me realize everything that I am and everything that I hope to be.
2. Every film I have ever watched that I loved or hated from Top Gun to Cinema Paradiso to The Untouchables - has directed and inspired me in some way
3. Partying with Mick and Keith
4. Fawlty Towers
5. Doing wardrobe for Duran Duran's "Wild Boys"
6. The Scott Brothers
7. Ferrari at the Spearmint Rhino, Las Vegas (don't ask)
8. Working on Guinness. The best spot ever done with Jonathan Glazer
9. Old man Sam Snead
10. I was 18. I was desperate to work in the industry. I walked into Saatchi,London and there was this huge marble staircase with an inscription that read, "Nothing is impossible. Dare to be different." For a young, impressionable kid... it sent chills down my spine.