Thursday 15th September 2005

I’ve been making good progress editing the documentary I made about the Modern Drunkard Convention I visited in Denver last May. Thankfully this means I feel less guilty about having delayed the project and far more enthusiastic about it in general. It might even be quite good.

Editing can be frustrating and infuriating at times but can also be a very, very rewarding process when it’s going well. You start with hundreds of clips that don’t seem to have much relation to one another but simply sticking them together creates the illusion of things being in the same room that weren’t when you filmed them, or things being done at the same time when they happened days apart, or even – if you’re being cheeky – people talking to one another who’ve never met.

Editors are the unsung heroes of radio, TV and film. You never hear of who won Best Editor at the Oscars but Best Director and Best Actor get showered with compliments. Without the Editor, they’d both be made to look like amateurs.

From my limited experience, I’ve learnt the trick to a decent edit is as much boring preparation as you can stand. If you’re finished film is going to be roughly half an hour long, that will probably contain at least ten sections, or ten elements to the story, so I tend to treat each of them as separate little films and then figure out how they all combine to get a tale across. Sometimes the different elements also need to be recapped to keep a particular story going so you’ll have Story One, Story Two, Story Three, back to Story One, Story Four, Back To Story Two, etc.

It’s like putting a puzzle together. Like a massively expensive and infinitely more time consuming version of Soduku, that Japanese number game that everyone’s helplessly addicted to at the moment.

Everyone aside from me that is because I’m too special and above fads to care for such nonsense. It’s nothing to do with me being an impatient and incompetent idiot at logic or mathematical puzzles, nothing at all.

This editing might be taking it’s toll however because I went to The Lion this evening to meet T-A and John the landlord called me over, looking slightly concerned. ‘You’re looking very tired, Stan. Are you okay?’ The fact I felt fine made me feel firstly quite disconcerted, and secondly – annoyingly – really tired. I told him I’d been sat in front of a computer for a couple of days.

‘You need some fresh air,’ he advised.

I looked at myself in the gent’s mirror and to my mind didn’t look abnormally tired, in fact I was in quite a good mood having had a successful day with the film. From now on I shall ignore all John says, unless he says I’m looking exceptionally well which – judging by his wrongness – might indicate that I look like a zombie.

T-A and I went for enjoyable dinner in The Olive Press on Castle Street and then back to The Lion for a pint (where John graciously didn’t tell me I look like Patrick Moore on a running machine) and then back to mine.

A good, solid day. Bit of work, bit of play, lady on the arm. If only they were all like that.

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