The Editing Process

I once saw a documentary on IFC about film editors. Some famous director (I think it may have been Spielberg) said that editors are the most powerful people in the film process. They have control over how the "final product", so to speak, looks. Think about all the cuts and edits in any given film. Then think about how different your favorite scene would look if it had been edited differently. I'm certainly no master editor, but my few paltry experiences have taught that it can be an immensely difficult and immensely important process.

I once saw a film called "Russian Ark". It's a 90 minute film that has NO EDITS. It's just one shot for the entirety of the film; that's impressive to say the least, but it also gets tedious after about 25-30 minutes. Watching that film really helps me appreciate the power that the editor holds in his hands. The editor is really the one who shapes and molds the raw footage into a powerful storyline.

I think that we teachers are much like editors. We're given the raw footage (books, curriuculum, etc), but it's up to us to piece together an educational narrative that the audience (the students) can enjoy and learn from. And just as editors have different styles, teachers likewise each have a different approach to the craft. Some tell the story in a normal linear fashion, while others use innovative flashbacks, dream sequences, etc. In the mind of most high school students, a book is just a book. It's just a raw mass of pages. The teacher is the one who has to piece together the story so that its plot and characters come alive.