American Cinema Editors


Founded in 1950, American Cinema Editors is an honorary society of film editors that are voted in based on the qualities of professional achievements, their education of others, and their dedication to editing. Members use the post-nominal letters "ACE". The organization's "Eddie Awards" are routinely covered in trade magazines such as The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. The society is not an industry union, such as the I.A.T.S.E. to which an editor might also belong. The current President of ACE is Stephen E. Rivkin.

Membership

Eligibility for active membership may be obtained by the following prerequisites:
Members use the postnominal "ACE" as part of their signatures, as well as on motion picture credits. Thus the president of the society in October 2012 was Randy Roberts, ACE. The society publishes its current membership on its website.

Board of Directors

, the Board of Directors are as follows:
Board of Directors:
Associate Directors:
Beginning in 1950, the ACE held an annual dinner to honor the film editing Academy Award nominees. When the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences created a film editing category, the ACE invited them to the dinner as well.
In 1962, the ACE began giving its own awards. The awards and nominations are typically covered in entertainment industry newspapers and journals such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.
The following awards are either currently given or have been given in the past. The American Cinema Editors does not publish an archive of these awards; it refers readers to the Internet Movie Database for archival information.
† = Winner of the Academy Award for Best Film Editing

Best Edited Feature Film

In 2000, the Best Edited Feature Film award was broken into two genres, dramatic and comedy.

Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic">American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic">Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic

Since 1951, the ACE has published the quarterly magazine Cinemaeditor. It began as an in-house publication, but grew to 5,000 subscribers in 1963. In the early 1990s the magazine collapsed into a four-page newsletter. In 1994, Jack Tucker was appointed as the Editor the publication into today's magazine. Walter Fernandez Jr. leads the magazine's team, with publications committee chair Edgar Burcksen.

ACE Student Editing Competition

The American Cinema Editors also holds an annual student competition, awarding one student editor for editing a set of video dailies for a dramatic scene. Three finalists are guests at the annual ACE Eddie Awards in February. Applications are accepted through October and cost US$125. The competition is limited to the first 100 students only.

''Gunsmoke'' editing exercise

The ACE Store is the source of the dailies used at most film schools today, primarily for editing exercises. One scene that many film students must edit is from "Buffalo Man," a 1958 episode of the TV series Gunsmoke. The educational film with this footage is called Film Editing: Interpretation and Value, and is available only to instructors of film editing classes. The film includes three different edits of the Gunsmoke scene, as well as the scene's original dailies.