Wise Words from an Editor
Another press release from idfa (see below) refers to the now finished Summer School, where projects at different levels are being tutored. Some are still on paper, some are bringing rough cuts to experienced editors. One of them was ”Ollie Huddleston, editor for such documentary luminaries as Kim Longinotto and Sean McAllister, tutoring two of the editing projects, starting out with a rough cut and refining things along the six-day workshop.
“Maybe it’s comparable to what a grandfather feels”, he laughs. “Rather than getting my hands dirty and raising the child, I can give it back to them and say: ‘Fix it!’ It’s a kind of balancing act: you give them some ideas and then they run with it. Sometimes they’ve already spent two or three years working on the film, so I can’t just jump in with hobnail boots and say: ‘Do this, do that’. I say what I think, but of course it’s up to them, it’s their film.”, and he adds “If you think too much about what other people think, you can get really lost”.
Wise words and I have no problems in identifying with the grandfather comparison and the privilege it is to be invited to look at rough cuts. Sometimes you are able to help, sometimes the chemistry between you and the filmmaker is not good enough or you don’t speak the same language, communication is not easy.
Photo: Group photo of IDFA Summer School 2014 participants.
http://www.idfa.nl/industry/latest-news/summer-schools-out.aspx
