Terry Rawlings was a British film editor and sound editor with several BAFTA nominations and one Academy Award nomination. His credits include Chariots of Fire, The Duellists, and Blade Runner. He served as the editor for Alien and Alien3.
Alien franchise credit[]
Other credits[]
- The Sentinel (1977)
- Watership Down (1978)
- The Awakening (1980)
- Chariots of Fire (1981)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- Yentl (1983)
- Legend (1985)
- F/X (1986)
- The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987)
- Slipstream (1989)
- Bullseye! (1990)
- Not Without My Daughter (1991)
- No Escape (1994)
- Trapped in Paradise (1994)
- GoldenEye (1995)
- The Saint (1997)
- U.S. Marshals (1998)
- Entrapment (1999)
- The Musketeer (2001)
- The Core (2003)
- The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Biographical information[]
Career[]
Rawlings started his career working as an assistant editor in the 1957 film Town on Trial. His credits as a sound editor date from 1962 – 1977, after which he is credited primarily as a film editor.
During the post-production of Alien, Rawlings was hired to serve as the film's editor, having previously worked with Ridley Scott in his earlier film, The Duellists. Scott and Rawlings edited much of the film to have a slow pace to build suspense for the more tense and frightening moments. According to Rawlings: "I think the way we did get it right was by keeping it slow, funny enough, which is completely different from what they do today. And I think the slowness of it made the moments that you wanted people to be sort of scared...then we could go as fast as we liked because you've sucked people into a corner and then attacked them, so to speak. And I think that's how it worked." The first cut of the film was over three hours long; further editing trimmed the final version to just under two hours. Editing and post-production work on Alien took roughly twenty weeks to complete.
Rawlings reunited with Scott in the 1982 film Blade Runner. Despite being the film's editor, Rawlings was only credited as "supervising editor", as he was not allowed a full editor credit because he didn't belong to an American film labor union due to his British citizenship.
Death[]
Rawlings passed away on April 23, 2019, at his home in Hertfordshire at the age of 85.