Directory Profile

John Rosenberg, ACE, MFA, teaches the aesthetics of motion picture editing. His in-depth guide to modern film editing, THE HEALTHY EDIT: Creative Editing Techniques for Perfecting Your Movie, 2nd edition, is published by Routledge/Focal Press. It has also been translated into Mandarin. Recently, Routledge/Focal Press published his newest book, THE FINAL REWRITE: How to View Your Screenplay with a Film Editor's Eye. Professor Rosenberg attended UC Berkeley and then UCLA where he graduated with honors from the film school. For over thirty years, he has worked in the motion picture industry as a film editor, as well as a producer and production executive for several independent studios including LIVE Entertainment (Artisan) where he was in charge of post production for Wes Craven’s Wishmaster, the Christopher Walken thriller Suicide Kings, and others. He has collaborated with such talents as Jack Nicholson, Colin Firth, Ice-T, Ellen Barkin, Sam Elliott, Kelly McGillis and others.

As a film editor, he has worked on nearly three dozen feature films for such companies as 20^th Century Fox, Lorimar, Orion, New Line and Artisan. His feature projects include the Jack Nicholson film Man Trouble, Made in Heaven, the cult favorite Mac and Me, Below Utopia, Mannequin 2, Brush with Danger, Poison Ivy 3, the classic Christmas film Prancer, starring Sam Elliott and Cloris Leachman, as well as multiple Sundance Film Festival Official Selections.

Along with his narrative feature work, Professor Rosenberg has written and edited a variety of reality-based and documentary projects. He edited the award-winning documentary feature More Than the Rainbow and was one of the main editors for National Geographic’s acclaimed documentary series, Expeditions to the Edge, as well as The Gift of Fear, based on the #1 bestselling book. 

Recently, he edited the feature Pursued, starring Molly Ringwald and Sam Trammell, for release next year. Rosenberg's award-winning novel Tincture of Time (Mischievous Muse Press) debuted at the L.A. Times Festival of Books at USC. He is currently writing a new filmmaking textbook for Routledge/Taylor & Francis' PERFORM series entitled PERFORM: Editing for the Screen.