Thoughts on Picture Editing
The writer John Gardner once described a good novel as a “long and continuous dream.”Picture editing at its best, works similarly. It’s an immersive experience. When I think about picture editing, I think of the exact moment one image changes to the next. It’s here that meaning is created, in the viewer’s attempt to make a connection between two different pictures [1]. That “blink” is likewise the foundation of cinema. Picture editing for me is an intuitive process—I’ve been called slow but I think deliberate may be more accurate. I’m obsessive, trying and retrying dozens of variations until one feels right. It’s not always easy to articulate exactly how or why something works because like a dream, the best edits often provoke the viewer precognitively. Nevertheless, here are some questions I ask myself as I work: Does the image advance the story? Does it create forward movement in the narrative by offering…
