Editing film with a deadline

As of now, I have been awake for almost twenty-four straight hours, about ten of which have been spent editing my group's short film, "Cracked". After having been up editing until about 3 or 4AM for the past four days, I've decided tonight was the night when sleep was simply not an option. Tonight's cutoff time was about 5AM. This wasn't due to being kicked out of the library or to my roommate yelling at me to turn off the light. It was due to the fact that most of us working on the film's picture-locked draft tonight reached the point where no good could come out of continuing our work. The last 4 days have been some of the most taxing and fulfilling days of my life, and since I'm running on little to no sleep due to the deadline I've been given to have this film finished by, I figured now is the best time to give you my honest opinion of editing with a deadline.

It's difficult.
Editing is difficult. There's no question about it. It takes a lot of time, patience, and skill. Sometimes, none of these are available. Having approximately four days to edit a seemingly twenty-minute, picture-locked copy so that our sound designer can have ample time to make our project sound as professional as possible, time is simply not of the essence. It's unfortunate, but it's the hand I've been dealt, nonetheless.

Patience is not one of my virtues. That's a fact. If something isn't working the way I want it to, I've been known to begin cursing out my laptop at a reasonable volume right in the middle of the library. The problem with this is the fact that, in order to edit something just right, an editor needs patience so that he doesn't accidentally scare everyone sitting within a fifty-foot radius of him. Very few things ever fit together perfectly with ease in the editing process. It's important to remember that.

Clearly, one needs to have some level of skill in order to be good at his job. Now, I'm not saying that I'm a bad editor. I like to think that I have some level of talent. The fact is, though, I'm still learning new things everyday. Just tonight, actually, I must have learned at least three new editing techniques from my fellow group members that I had no idea were available to me. These three or so new techniques I learned are certainly going to come in handy sometime soon down the road, but I really wish I knew them a few months ago. It just goes to show that an editor is never done learning.

It's stressful.
Four days. Really? Four days to edit an entire twenty-minute short film. That's all I was given. The deadline I was given was set for a very good reason. We need to have the film's audio mastered by someone who truly knows what they're doing, but seriously? In order for a person to provide you with his best work, you better give him the necessary time to do so. The more rushed an editor is, and the less sleep he has, the more difficulty he's going to have in turning in a quality project.

The most stressful part about the whole thing is that, despite the little time film editors are often given, the entire project still comes down to you. It's basically like the last five seconds of a basketball game. Your team as retrieved the ball. They've gotten it down the court. They've set you up with a perfect shot. It's now up to you. You can either score the game-winning point, or you can miss the shot and your team's effort was all for nothing. An editor can either be the hero or the complete screw-up on a film crew.

It's bullshit.
No matter how well the preproduction and production of a film go, the editors always seem to get screwed over. You'd think the editor would be given as much time as they needed to make the final product their best possible work, but no. Editors always seem to have the shortest deadline out of anyone on the entire production crew.

Sure, being the editor has its perks. The most evident one is the fact that I had to do little to no work up to this point in the project process. What could I do? There was nothing for me to edit. Another major advantage would have been--if we hadn't needed someone to work audio for our first two shoots--that I wouldn't have been required to go to the actual shoots. That could have easily been more time to relax or to edit what we had already shot (which I was luckily given for our group's final shoot on Sunday).

Despite how fair it really is that I have to run off little to no sleep for a mere four days, instead of having work the entire semester, I still attempt to put the idea in my head that the whole thing is bullshit. Don't ask me why. I'm just tired.

It's totally worth it.
At the end of the day, and at the end of the whole process, editing is truly one of the most rewarding positions in the entire crew, especially with such a short deadline. To be able to look back and say, "Wow. I did all that in four days?", is all the reward I need. To have the privilege to be able to see the entire progress from a script, to a shoot, to a cluster of files, to a beautiful film is an absolutely indescribable feeling. The editor is the final puzzle piece to a film, and it's an honor to be that final piece.