The Dread of Starting

Even after two decades of making films, the worst part of the process for me is starting an edit. I confess to dread and procrastination when gigs of media stare at me from sterile folders, mocking my indecision. The idea of transforming hours of random words and meandering visuals into a cohesive narrative seems insurmountable. I’ve known editors that get excited about starting a new project. That is not me. More often than not, it sends me straight to email, searching for distractions that I can pursue with a clear conscience rather than diving into a new project.

To alleviate some of the stress, I give myself permission to start by doing loose mark-ups of transcripts. This eases my fear of throwing away a precious gem because it didn’t translate to paper. I find ‘paper edits’ challenging, despite the fact that I started my career as a writer and working with words is probably my strongest skill. I am haunted by the vast discrepancy between spoken and written word. In theory, a paper edit should save time, but I work so intuitively that I need to hear—and more importantly, watch—the delivery in order to sense the music of the narrative. Editing is all about the intersection of content and performance: what is said versus how it is said. I often watch documentaries with seemingly banal scenes thrown in that actually do heavy lifting by revealing characters and immersing viewers. The humanity in people’s words comes across in the nuance of their tone, gesture, pacing and intention. Too often, that doesn’t come across in a Word document. Once I have finished my transcript mark-ups, I watch each of these highlights in Premiere, and more often than not discover even better moments surrounding the highlights that I had preselected.

Editing, for me, is a process of chiseling away unwanted material rather than constructing a narrative. From the excess of yellow highlights in my transcripts, I am able to see themes emerge and identify what’s important to the people speaking. If storytellers are truly committed to ‘giving voice’ to their subjects, sometimes that means getting out of our own heads and allowing people to frame their own priorities. This emerges the more closely you watch people speak and are able to listen at a deeper level.

From the painfully slow start, and what seems like yeoman’s work sifting through an excess of long-winded soundbites, the themes that emerge dictate the direction of the whole edit. While the start might be agonizing, the pace accelerates and I am oddly surprised every time that the deluge seems to organize itself. Ultimately, I feel like my narrators help me get there.