On May 17, the African American Steering Committee (AASC) hosted their online meeting. In addition to Committee business, the meeting featured the discussion, Craft and Collaboration in the Cutting Room, a one-on-one conversation between Director Gina Prince-Bythewood and Editor Terilyn A. Shropshire, whose creative collaborations span more than 20 years on multiple film and television projects including Prince-Bythewood’s features Love & Basketball and The Old Guard.
During the conversation, Prince-Bythewood and Shropshire spoke about the skills and dynamics necessary to create a successful partnership and encouraged the attendees to make the editing room a safe space to experiment, explore and build trust. Prince-Bythewood emphasized that the editor director relationship is critical to bringing a director’s vision to fruition and Shropshire suggested, in seeking that relationship, directors look beyond the resume of potential editors. They closed with the hope that all the attendees would find creative partners and have long term successes like their own.
About the Panelists:
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 Director Gina Prince-Bythewood (moderator)
Prince-Bythewood’s credits include writing and directing the award-winning features, Love & Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees, the award-nominated feature, Beyond the Lights; and the recent critically acclaimed feature, The Old Guard. She is currently at work on the TriStar Pictures historical epic, The Woman King, as well as planning to direct the first episode and serve as an Executive Producer of ABC’s limited series, Women of the Movement. An advocate for equal representation in film and television on-screen and behind-the-scenes, Prince-Bythewood also funds a scholarship for African American students in the film program at her alma mater, UCLA. She has been a DGA member since 1999 and serves as a co-chair of the AASC and as an alternate on the Western Directors Council.
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 Editor Terilyn A. Shropshire
Shropshire has collaborated with some of the industry’s most talented filmmakers and television creators. Her editing work on the feature film, The Old Guard, marks her sixth project over a twenty-year collaboration with director Gina Prince-Bythewood where she also did the editing on the features Beyond the Lights, The Secret Life of Bees, and Love & Basketball. In 2019, Shropshire received an American Cinema Editors Eddie nomination for her work on Part One of Ava DuVernay’s four-part mini-series When They See Us. Other distinctive projects includes feature films such as Catherine Hardwicke’s Miss Bala, and Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou, The Caveman’s Valentine, Talk to Me and Black Nativity. Shropshire earned an Emmy nomination for the Lifetime Achievement Award tribute to Sidney Poitier for the 74th Annual Academy Awards and an ACE Eddie Award for Vondie Curtis-Hall’s movie for television, Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story. |
About the Committee:
The African American Steering Committee (AASC) was born of a desire to address the specific needs of the African-American members of the Directors Guild. One of the primary goals of the Committee is to establish a productive line of communication between African-American members and the creative community. The Committee meets monthly to plan events throughout the year celebrating the achievements of African-Americans, as well as forums with industry executives to proactively address what can be done to hire more African-Americans.