Editing

I love editing. It’s probably the most unique form of art ever created.

What’s so powerful about editing is that you can take an ordinary movie clip and make it look amazing. You can string together a bunch of ordinary movie clips, color correct, add music, and bam, you have a fantastic movie. It’s a powerful thing.

The thing is, movies are never made perfect. There are a ton of things that happen during filming that can only be fixed with editing. If the microphone picks up some irritating background noise, you can edit it out. If there’s a scene that is too dark, you can brighten it. If you really want to edit someone out because you don’t like them, then you can do it (but doing that takes way too long).

Editing takes a movie and gives it life. There are so many possibilities with editing. The artistic spectrum is ridiculously broad. There are a ton of different styles, defined simply by clip placement, timing, and use of music. It makes movies art.

I used to want to be an editor because I loved seeing movies unravel before me. Every time I make a video, I look forward to editing. Sure, the raw footage sometimes looks good. But editing gives it life—it turns that footage into a living, breathing entity that tells a story. Without editing, movies would not look like they way they do. Special effects could not be achieved. Bad scenes would be preserved. Simply put, editing makes movies what they are.

Some of my videos, like UNDERFIRE War, started off looking like pure crap—we looked like such idiots, running around with Nerf guns and pretending to shoot each other. That video is intense because of editing. The music, the sound effects, the pace of the action, the intensity, are all achieved through editing. It’s unlike anything else.

Some may not enjoy editing as much as I do. But everyone should appreciate how much video editing does for movies. It’s not easy, and it’s not a fast process, but damn, it sure does deliver.