My Editing Romance

I must have mentioned before my eternal passion for films. What you can see below is an elective project that I managed to swing my way into being all about video editing.

The story behind this short film is simple. Some of my fellow ITPD colleagues were making a short educational clip on how to find a good research question. My initial thought was to join their project, but I later realized that the most interesting things were actually happening behind the camera - as is always. Seeing their daily struggles with planning, filming, technology and everything else, I decided that this would make a far more interesting movie. After all, my main focus was video editing - on what, was never specified.

If I had pictures of this process, they would all be with me in front of a computer clicking around in Final Cut Pro. I suspect the only variable thing would be the size of the bags under my eyes. I adore video editing to the point that I don't mind losing lost of sleep over it. Sadly, I have no formal training in it whatsoever. Everything I do, I do from my gut feeling and my movie going experience.

But all this is not accidental. In his book How the Paper Fish Learned to Swim : A Fable about Inspiring Creativity and Bringing New Ideas to Life , Jonathon Flaum talks about how managing creative innovation is like being a film editor. I was pleasantly surprised by this metaphor and the more I looked at it, the more sense it made. He says

The editor’s concern is how to make all of the footage converge into one tightly realized idea. The editor’s task is to trim the excess and find the essential – to trace the connecting symbols, themes, dialogue and movement of the work and allow it to speak for itself as a unified whole.

Indeed, this makes sense - after an editor has done her job, there is now a finished product, where before there was just a collection of ideas. 

That being said, here's the movie.

*some of the dialogue is pretty low, so do turn on the subtitles (captions) using the button in the lower right corner.

**Disclaimer: I have credited all the short music excerpts used in this video. Their use is not affiliated in any way with the University of Southern Denmark and/or any of its subsidiary institutions. That being said, this is an amateur project and this video has not been publicly broadcasted or used for any commercial or official purposes in any way. If you find the use of any of these fragments in any way problematic, please contact me and I will take it offline.