What or who encouraged you to get into film editing? Was it a path you took in your education or something you learned on the job?

Do you have something to say about grizzly bears?

I grew up in a family that always encouraged curiosity, so my degree in journalism seemed the perfect path for permission to bug people with questions and earn a living doing it.

But I had to think a bit about what prompted me to start editing video, because it was much later in my television career. When I moved from TV news to become the writer and producer of a wildlife show, my job was to find the stories, set up the logistics, help my photographer carry gear, interview the scientists and then write the scripts for the show.

My colleague’s job was to shoot the video, carry gear, and then edit the show after I was finished with the script. The gear was big and heavy and video editing was cumbersome and linear…in other words, you could not go back and undo something in analog editing…you had to start over.

But around the mid 1990’s something wonderful happened…the digital world. Linear video tapes could be turned into data points and suddenly images and sound could be moved around. The gear shrunk considerably and became lighter (perfect as I aged). And it became so much easier to tell a story through video editing. All you needed was a computer and software. I began experimenting with editing my own stories and discovered that I loved it.

And another wonderful thing happened that had to do with grizzly bears and the scientist who was conducting a study on the species. We had captured a big male bear, drugged it, and then placed a tracking radio collar around the bear’s neck. The biologist’s name was Steve Knick and he seemed to enjoy my endless interview questions so much that he asked me out on a date.

On September 29th we will have been married 31 years, and we both are still asking questions, because as Eleanor Roosevelt said,