On Editing

My stream of thought while editing my short film:

This looks incredible...

This looks awful...

Is this all we got...?

We don't have it...

This doesn't work at all...

Oh my god, now this totally works...

I am a complete failure...

I am a GENIUS...

I should have told him to do THIS...

I should have asked her to do THAT...

How the hell am I going to put this together...?

Hold on... it's starting to come together...

Is this starting to come together or am I just going crazy...?

This is going to take a little longer than I expected...

It's all just fragments of a jigsaw puzzle.

That metaphor isn't quite right, though. There are no wasted pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Editing is all about wasting pieces. Deciding what to waste. Deciding what to keep and how to use it. There is something incredible in there if you have the skill to assemble it correctly. Just as there is something awful in there if you assemble it poorly.

It's just a three minute movie but I am making progress in very small increments.