Editing (video editing) is amazing. It means assembling together lots and lots of little pieces different pieces of a bigger story: It’s archival with care / Taking a drawer full of *stuff* and turning it into substance, then storing it again in people’s brains.
It’s not always glamorous it’s often fiddly and annoying it means juggling many files and managing not much space on your hard drive, sending large files back and forth over the airwaves from one pot to another, spinning plates.
Grabbing clips and placing them in the right place takes time, syncing clips is partly automatic but there’s always plenty manual work to do: dragging and sliding things [just] far enough but not too far. picking where and when and why to do cuts, or not.
Maybe you had a say in what things were recorded / Maybe you had a part in the clips that are sitting in front of you right now, or maybe you didn’t: Either way, you inherit them in this moment. You can decide.. Do you make do? and edit edit edit with what you have? or do you go out and get more? or wait for more clips to show up? do you send that email again, asking that guy again, for that precious recording that exists on his camera and no one else’s, again you email that guy from Linz who filmed the whole thing, again, I really wish I had that recording
Did you start with a story? or did one emerge? Were you editing with one tale in mind, but then through the act of editing, you discovered another?
What did you learn about the camera holder? What drew their attention? How does it feel to see through their eyes?
You get to know an event / a moment in so much more detail than anyone else. Watch and watch and re-watch until you get someone’s movement / something’s pace: What keeps the beat of your film beating? Feel the rhythm of the shot.
Editing (video editing) is amazing. It’s about control: You’re in charge: It’s your decision: There is no right and wrong, only you, applying your handwriting / fingerprint to a collection of clips.
Yes it’s amazing! You can’t automate this, or if you did, you’d lose everything that makes it’s special: Show me your edit! I want to see it: Yours, not anyone else’s. Let me know you! Let me in!
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