Franklin Cofod

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Cure DragonEagle 255
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Franklin Cofod

Post: # 450Post Cure DragonEagle 255 »

Last of these "Every Single Person who worked on Battle Of The Planets" threads. HONEST!

What did he do on Battle Of The Planets. He's mentioned on the credits and on the site but no one says just what is it that he did.
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The Other Jason
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Re: Franklin Cofod

Post: # 451Post The Other Jason »

Hi Cure DragonEagle,
Cure DragonEagle 255 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 5:32 am Last of these "Every Single Person who worked on Battle Of The Planets" threads. HONEST!

What did he do on Battle Of The Planets. He's mentioned on the credits and on the site but no one says just what is it that he did.
Ha ha, it's fine with me, I'm happy to answer any questions I can.

Mr. Cofod was credited as the Supervising Editor, which carried a whole variety of responsibilities. But first, a little history...

Franklin Cofod was born in New York City in 1944. He seemed destined to get into film work, because his father, uncle and cousin worked at their family business dealing with post-production film. He grew up in New York, went through high school there, then briefly attended Rutgers University. He left there to work at a film laboratory before being drafted into the US Army in 1965. He served in Germany, and while there, his father moved the family film business to Los Angeles. Upon his return to the US, Mr. Cofod joined his father's company in California for a short time.

He then moved on to editing for another small company, where he cut together national automotive and toy commercials. After several years of doing that, he left and was out of work when he heard about the opportunity to work on Battle of the Planets through a friend. In early 1978, he met with Gallerie International Films' president, David Hanson, and was invited to sit in on a meeting that Mr. Hanson had with Sandy Frank. Mr. Hanson liked what Mr. Cofod had to say during the meeting, and hired him on as the main editor for Battle.

Mr. Cofod was the one who determined how to work with the episodes. He took on the job of streamlining the complicated process of constructing them from their various elements. Those included the original Gatchaman episode visuals, music and sound effects, plus new Battle elements of 7-Zark-7, Ready Room, outer space or other animation, new voice recordings, and new music and sound effects.

He helped hire the additional editors for his staff, and instructed them on the methods of putting the episodes together. As the weeks progressed, Mr. Cofod did less and less of the heavy episode editing and he focused on other aspects of the series' production. He had a hand in some aspect of editing on every episode but the pilot (which was completed before he joined Gallerie Films). Mr. Cofod also cut together various promotional clips, plus the series' opening and closing credit sequences. They used to work on a three-week schedule from the start to finish per episode, and they had up to 15 episodes in various stages of production each day at the height of their workload.

In addition to looking over the films before, and after, they went for their final audio mixes, he was responsible for seeing that the prints were duplicated and delivered on time to be distributed. He pretty much did whatever was asked of him to keep the series rolling along smoothly. If that meant something like picking up scripts from Jameson Brewer's home to take in to work the next morning, that's what he did. He also dealt directly with Winifred Treimer on standards. Her notes went to Mr. Hanson, Mr. Brewer and him. But his emphasis was always with the editing and with the editing staff.

Hope this helps a little. Please let me know if you have any more questions.
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