Milena Holzknecht: Why Editing?
The following text was written by a student from the Zelig School for documentary as a motivation from her to go for editing studies in the next two years after the first year of general studies:
Editing is like a balancing act on a tightrope: On the one hand your walk shouldn’t be to rigid – you have to be flexible. On the other hand you shouldn’t be carried away by emotions: both would be fatal. Editing means declarative power, but at the same time responsability – to the protagonist(s), to the director and of course to the film itself. Editing denotes motion, but in certain moments stand still. It needs conscious decisions, but also letting speak the unconscious. Editing means to search the path, not to see the wood for the trees and to find – exhausted, but happy – the way out of the forest of the cutting process. It represents a creative challenge, which demands consistently new solutions and finds fascinating answers. Editing is an activity, which gives me – because of the reasons mentioned above – a lot of gratification and pleasure. June 2008
