Finishing a film is no small task, and world premieres for one's projects don't happen every day, so I was thrilled and honored when I heard Charged would be the opening night film at the 2017 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The whole team came together to celebrate the moment that the film entered the world.
Not only did the festival roll out the red carpet, but the community around the festival are real cinema lovers who come out to watch films, support the festival, and engage with filmmakers. It was all a blast, and one of the many memorable things for me was our two Q&As.
I was surprised how present editing questions were in our discussions, and thanks to the inquisitive folks in the audience, we were able to discuss things like the process of getting to a rough cut, the process of refining that picture lock, the group effort involved throughout, the director-editor relationship, the subject-editor relationship, handling sensitive footage, the difficult decisions to kill darling scenes, and one of my favorite questions to ponder: how much is the story known before editing, and how much does the footage itself influence what story will be told?
Editing has its stressful times, so it's wonderful to take moments to reflect back on the months of editing and remind oneself that (as my favorite Oblique Strategies card says) "once the search is in progress, something will be found."
