Chapter 5. Editing

This is a short chapter. It used to be longer, but I edited it. Boom! Thank you, I’m here all week.

OK, seriously, what am I going to say about the craft of editing that hasn’t already been perfectly expressed by Walter Murch in his must-have micro-tome In the Blink of an Eye?

Why, this:

Cut Like a Pro

Editing is everything. It just is. Editing is filmmaking. Filmmaking calls upon many disciplines, from photography to theater to music to knitting, but only editing is actually film making. Follow me?

You can have the biggest engine in your car, but if you have bad tires you go nowhere. Editing is where the filmmaking rubber meets the road. I’ve seen excellent footage cut poorly, and conversely, jumbled messes of awful coverage ...

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