If Karen Kourtessis of Crew Cuts, NY, knew that editing "Flight" for director Alison Maclean would involve massaging almost 100 hours of HD footage into a four-minute Sony Dreams short - something akin to stuffing an elephant into an armoire - she might have graciously declined the pleasure.

We're thankful that she didn't know, because the result is one of the more compelling shorts in memory. While the concept had to jibe with this year's Sony Dreams theme of flight, Maclean's story involved auditions with over 100 real actors for a film that didn't exist. She hired an actor friend (David Rakoff whose improvising is brilliant) to play the director whose only "direction" to the performers was to improvise flight by leaving through the door they came in. The results range from amateur to awkwardly intense, but are always entertaining. We caught up with the duo at Crew Cuts in New York where they were about to start work on a longer version of the film.

How important is editing?

Alison Maclean: You can take the same exact footage and cut something that has no life. And you can cut something that sings and really is dynamic and wonderful. It just comes down to all those choices and the rhythm and the storytelling.
Karen Kourtessis: Alison can edit. Not all directors can. They can shoot their stories but they put it all together and it falls flat a little bit.

How did you two get together?

KK: I got a list of everybody that was going to do [Sony Dreams] and looked at their work. I really like dark comedy. In commercials you don't do that often. Everything that Alison's done to me is dark comedy. Very intelligent and psychologically thought out. So I wrote her a letter and we met...

Is the relationship between director and editor different on commercials than on a short film?

KK: There's a huge difference.
AM: In commercials you rarely get a chance to work with an editor. We do the work and then we don't get a chance to complete the process.
KK: [Commercial] editors would love nothing better than to have that relationship with the director. It happens more in London. It should start happening here. It's better for the process.

Is it good to have the director there from the first assembly?

KK: I think an editor should get the film and put a first cut together. Not in the Sony case, which is different than in the commercial world. But then the director should come in and maybe change a couple of things that were the vision of that director.

Karen, did you go to the set of "Flight"?

KK: I was there the first day. It was amazing.

Alison, do you like having the editor on set?

AM: That doesn't usually happen. Not because I don't want it to, but it's just rare.
KK: You don't want to go to a lot of shoots. You hear [all the] comments. Then when you get the film, all you hear is what they said. You can't just look at it without knowing the history. And that's what you have to do. So it was interesting to go to the first day because I understood what was happening. I didn't go to the second day because I wanted to see it fresh.

Karen, did you know going in that you'd have this beast to cut?

KK: [laughs] I didn't know a thing going in. I think Alison's brilliant, but I didn't know how brilliant until I got the film. The amount of psychology that's going into this piece... You've got a director directing an actor to be a director, with actors in a hallway that don't know what's going on. As many levels as there are of the process, there were that many in editing it.
AM: This is something I've never done before. Normally you start with something that's too long and you refine it. But this is four minutes out of hours. So, it's like, 'Okay, this moment has to be in', and we try and work from that.

So you put up moments that you knew you wouldn't want to lose?

AM: Yes. And [they] became the key. We wanted to have [the actor] Victor end it because he's so confrontational, and you really can't tell if he's acting or not. We all felt sick watching him on camera.
KK: He left, and we all thought he was really pissed off. He came back an hour later and talked to the lady out front and said, 'I don't know if they got what I was doing. I think I need to go back in.' She said, no you have to leave. And you can't come back. Ever.
AM: [laughing] That's right. We had another guy who improvised an incredible singing routine. David was telling him to start snapping his fingers and change the tune, change the words. He was really beating on him and he left in a huff. As he walked down the hall he staged a mass walkout. He said, 'You guys should leave. I'm leaving.'
KK: They were all friends out in the hall.
AM: And they all left with him. But then he told them to come back.

What's great about the way it's put together is that you're waiting for the next thing to happen.

KK: Everything had a reason.

Like the armoire that people climbed in?

AM: Lots of people used that.

After it was over, did David say, 'Thank you, Alison. That was cathartic'?

AM: I think he thought it was a pretty amazing process. Towards the beginning I remember him saying, 'Oh, my God. I'm such an asshole.'
KK: Alison, tell me to be quiet...but at the end of this whole thing, two days of shooting, 100 actors, David hears Alison [through the earwig]: 'David. I want to ask you one last thing. Would you mind doing one [audition]?' 'Here? Now?' He kept saying, 'We're really doing this now? You mean I have to leave and not come back?' And Alison did one.

An audition?

AM: I forced myself and it was the hardest thing to do. It didn't make the short cut, but maybe it will in the longer one. We'll see.

David was directing you in that one?

AM: Yes. But I didn't use the armoire. [laughs]
KK: She wrote 'fuck you' on the chalkboard and ran out.