Short Cutting
Not too long ago I was asked if I would edit an acquaintance’s short movie. Knowing the filmmaker to be a run and gun type of guy who’s shorts always followed a punchline driven format I thought it might be fun. After all, I’ve been editing for years but never someone else’s work. I’d never acted as just the editor, with no other input into the film than that. Not the kind of position I would normally think about putting myself in which is why I immediately said “yes.”
I’ll do anything once for free if I haven’t done it before just for the experience.
Going in I was asking myself the most obvious questions: What will the director, Radu, be like to work with? and Will I be getting the footage I need to make this work? But what I started to question as I got into the edit was what am I really contributing here? Or more specifically will this movie, when it’s finished, be something I can at all lay claim to and include in my portfolio of work? Will it bear my signature?
Final cut completed I came to the conclusion that no, of course it won’t, and that’s the point. Editing is only good if it doesn’t bear any signature, if it isn’t noticed at all.
That said, I did enjoy being the editor for hire on this project. There is something satisfying about contributing to something in an almost anonymous way… With the exception, that is, of prefacing it with a big self-indulgent editorial on one’s own blog…
I’ve embedded the video below. Good luck watching it without being tainted by all the foregoing!
Decompression a short by Radu Juster:
(There seems to be a sound hiccup near the end… Not my department. Ooh, deferred responsibility, a fringe benefit.)
