look mom i'm becoming an editor...

i've been working a lot. i'm ok with that, i'm learning a lot. monday i started editing another short for sidewalk. i'll have two shorts that i've edited in the festival this year. the one that i've been working on, "waiting," has really been fun. the screenplay originally written by a student at alabama, i think, as an exercise in character development, but then was entered in the festivals "sidewrite" competition. it won and as part of the deal sidewalk recruited people to make the short. sidewalk recruited a very talented dp (director of photography) to work with the young writer and get the film shot. but that never really panned out so now it's been rewritten by another very talented writer/director. (these two guys met when the writer hired the shooter to film a short that will hopefully be premiering at sundance or cannes...these guys ain't playin around) anyway long story short, my boss agreed to edit it about a year ago, but because he's been so busy i took it on. i was a little nervous at first, like i said, these guys actually know what they're doing, i'm just faking it, but i think i've done ok. today we finished the rough cut. this morning the director was out working on some other things and the dp was preoccupied with some other stuff so i was just cutting away all by myself and i turned out two scenes cut just the way i wanted to, no extra frames for this or that reason, no different angle because of this or that and lo and behold... everyone loved them. two people watching one of the scenes at different times both said it was the scene that made the film... they said it gave them goosebumps. i felt like an editor then. most of the time i just feel like i'm pushing buttons and filling in the blank spaces. it felt good to have my thoughts and emotions about this one scene translate to the viewers. especially considering the viewers. i think i might make a career out of this stuff. all this movie stuff is gonna catch on one of these days, people are really gonna dig it.