Four to five years ago, give or take, I helped edit a music video that my friend M directed. About two years ago, roughly, over lunch with this same friend, I confessed to him that I didn’t really enjoy editing the video. He said he thought as much.
“I've seen the edit. It shows.”
At the time, I believed that I just wasn’t interested in editing footage that I didn’t shoot myself, which, even if that was true, it should’ve been a sign. But I just carried on.
Last year, my friend Ofla and I shot this dating interview series we called Dualogue, and I was tasked with editing the 10-episode first season. We released the first two episodes around valentines day earlier this year, and then... nothing. The other 8-episodes are still sitting on my hard disk, two of them half-edited.
In that same month, February, I shot a music video for a friend of mine that I still have not finished editing. Which is why when I shot OJ Law’s new music video last weekend, I decided to hand the footage over to an editor. It was really difficult to do, but after all these years, I’ve finally admitted to myself that I’m not actually an editor. What I am is a director who can edit, and the two are not the same.
It’s a very uncomfortable process, opening myself up -- in terms of storytelling -- to another person. It’s uncomfortable because I’m handing over the whole thing -- warts and all, as they say -- so another person. The seven takes trying to get the actors to do the right thing. My voice, in the background, saying things that were never meant to be heard outside of the set. But most importantly, I guess what I’m afraid of is that the editor will see the mess, every bit of it, and they’ll finally out me as the fraud I am.
“I’ve seen the raw. It shows.”
But of course that’s what an editor’s job is: to go through the mess in order to bring out the message. To find the treasure in the trash. And editors -- at least good ones -- aren’t really in service of themselves (or even the director), but their allegiance is to the video they’re ultimately creating.
It took a minute, but I’m finally able to knowledge to myself the truth, and the next time I set out to shoot a short film or music video, I’ll already line up an editor from the get go.
Self-knowledge, indeed, is the highest form of knowledge.
