Watch out, Blu-ray: Apple is now offering high definition movies for sale—including the big-buzz “Twilight”—to iTunes subscribers for $19.99.

Tense times in Hollywood’s dream factory

LOS ANGELES (Fortune) — Even in the land of make-believe, where the meltdown on Wall Street feels a million miles away, these are tense days. While no one can say for sure how the financial crisis will affect Hollywood, a prevailing view is that the film business is relatively protected for at least a year or two, but that the TV industry which was already impacted by last winter’s writers’ strike could be in for a rocky ride….

Here is Part III of our interview with Dan Lebental.

In this segment Dan gives us some great insights into the feature film editorial process. We discuss topics such as what it’s like screening the “first cut” with the director and starting out on the directors cut, bringing the length of IRON MAN down from 3.5 to it’s final running time of 2 hours, exploring variations of the film and reinventing scenes, and something he fondly refers to as “index card death row”. We also get to talk a bit more about his long term working relationship with director Jon Favreau, getting the studio involved and the editorial muse. Finally we discuss an issue that confronts directors and editors on many visual effects films, the time quandary. Specifically, the amount of time it takes from the director’s contractual (DGA) 10 week cut to lock VFX sequences and get them in the “pipeline”.

Today we present Part II of my interview with Dan Lebental, film editor of Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment’s, IRON MAN.

In this segment Dan talks about his experience cutting on the Avid Media Composer, working with the visual effects team (upwards of 800 people) at ILM and the economics and intricacies of cutting a film with nearly 1000 visual effects shots. We go on to discuss the state of, and need for, industry accepted digital post production workflows. Finally, we talk about cutting IRON MAN utilizing the Avid DNX36 codec, and his first experience cutting a studio feature in HD. Enjoy.

Last Friday, I had the good fortune to visit the offices of Dan Lebental’s editing company, Splice-Inc. in midtown Los Angeles. Many of you know that Dan was the “film” editor of this summer’s first box office breakout hit, “Iron Man”. Not only is the film doing incredibly well in theaters, but it has also become one of the most critically acclaimed pictures in the genre.

Posted here is the first of our 3-part interview with Dan. In it, Dan tells us how he initially became interested in film editing, his “big break” which made him one of the most sought after music video editors of the early nineties, and how he developed a working relationship with director Jon Favereau.

On crutches and awaiting knee surgery, Dan was kind enough to give us an insider’s perspective of what it is like to participate in such a massive creative endeavor.

You will need Apple’s QuickTime 7 to view this properly.