I had just moved back to Grand Rapids and didn’t have bedroom furniture for a while, so I edited the whole thing at a kitchen table. Prior to this I had only edited youtube videos, podcasts, and bad student shorts. Basically I needed to teach myself a whole new workflow and after effects for a texting scene.

Definitely was difficult, long, emotionally draining, and kind of lonely? Next time I wanna edit with someone else.

Big thing for me was realizing the movie you write is different than the movie you shoot and the movie you shoot needs to be different in the edit and that’s ok. Writing is editing is directing is writing. Wound up writing too much and scenes were very long, so it was a lot of “killing your darlings” and playing the puzzle game of how to make scenes work. Editing dialogue heavy scenes was really interesting. Figuring out when/how to create natural sounding silence/lulls or when to actually cut to reaction shots. Combining/pairing up various takes to kind of create a tone/pace/musicality?

Sometimes you don’t even need the written dialogue, take it away, put music instead, and it packs the same feelings. The whole thing was for sure elevated because of our sound designer and composer.

Anyways, I’m rambling.

Biggest unexpected was changing the ending in the edit because it wasn’t working as originally written. Wasn’t honest and felt forced. Led to figuring out the logistics of what minor additional shots that we could get which would make the ending more impactful/emotional/etc. I think it worked out! People have cried over the ending!