The Film Editing Room Handbook: How to Tame the Chaos of the Editing Room, Fourth Edition

1. Editing Within the Filmmaking Process

Making a movie is often compared to running a war. It is a huge, complicated process, involving hundreds of people who must all be in the right place at the right time. All the players are involved in their own chains of command, with one or two leaders at the top who determine, for right or wrong, the course of everyone’s work. It is an exhausting process that is often not very fulfilling until the film is complete and viewable.

Editing is just one part of the movie-making battlefield, but I believe it is one of the most important parts because it is where all the disparate elements come together. Whoever controls the editing process—whether the director, the producer, the showrunner, the distributor, ...