Power, Pam (Editor)

Pam Power was born in Nottingham in 1942 and worked as an Assistant Editor and Editor on feature films, television commercials and films for television. Her professional career started in 1959 when she worked as a Girl Friday at Keith Ewart’s photography and commercials studio in Chelsea, London. It was here that she trained in editing. In the 1960s she worked at Tyne Tees television, the commercials company Natural Breaks and at Shepperton Studios. In the 1970s she edited commercials and features for Ridley Scott, including The Duellists (1977), and television programmes directed by Tony Scott. In 1976 she formed her own editing and post-production company ‘The Film Editors’ providing services for the Scott brothers and many other clients until her retirement in 2006. In this interview Pam talks about her early training in editing and the vibrancy of Ewart’s studio in the 1960s where she met photographers such as Norman Parkinson and Irving Penn. She describes the creative potential of commercials and the sense of advertising as a new and exciting industry in the 1960s. She describes working at Tyne Tees television and learning to use a foot splicer, learning by watching others cut to music and working with variety of different directorial styles. She also reflects on her own practice as an editor and the importance of music in her life to helping her develop an ‘inner rhythm’. Pam talks about working in a male-dominated environment, having a male assistant and the processes by which she nurtured talent in her own company.

©Melanie Bell