Hot take: I always thought editing was cheating until a filmmaker friend set me straight last weekend

I was at a coffee shop in Brooklyn and this documentary editor told me editing is just 'finding the truth in the footage' - that hit different because she showed me a scene where rearranging two clips made the whole story make sense. Now I see it as shaping, not faking. Anyone else have a creative assumption that got flipped by someone in the trenches?

3 comments

3 Comments

morgan.rose1mo ago

My friend Jenna works at a TV station and she said the same thing happened to her with sound editing. She thought it was all about making things up but then her boss showed her how cutting dead air actually lets the real emotion come through.

taylor.reese1mo ago

That's so cool that her boss showed her the real side of it!

the_taylor1mo ago

Did the sound editor actually show her the raw footage versus the final cut side by side? That's the kind of thing that would really drive home how much silence can change the feel of a scene. Having someone explain timing like that is rare, most bosses just yell at you to get it done faster. Was Jenna allowed to try cutting the same clip both ways so she could hear the difference?