Reflection on the Entire Editing Process

If I had to describe the editing process in one word… it would be intense. Like, I don’t think I was fully prepared for just how much time, energy, and brainpower editing would suck out of me. I always knew editing was important, but this process made me realise just how much it controls the final product. The same clips can either tell a powerful story or feel completely meaningless depending on how you piece them together.

When I first started editing the rough cut, I’ll be honest, I was more focused on aesthetics. I wanted it to look good. I was treating it kind of like a montage, with pretty visuals, nice cuts, and some music layered on top. But once we got feedback, it was like a switch flipped. I realised we weren’t telling a story, we were just showing scenes. That’s when editing stopped being about “cool clips” and started being about meaning.

So, we started over. And that meant editing from scratch too. That was... painful, not gonna lie. But weirdly, it also gave us freedom. With the re-shot footage, we had options. We could choose shots based on what they were saying, not just how they looked. And that changed everything. Suddenly I found myself paying attention to things I’d never thought about before, how long a shot should last, when to cut, when not to cut, and how to build emotion gradually.

Sound played a huge role too. I had already chosen the main tracks beforehand, but mixing them the right way, fading traditional music into the drums, using silence at the right time, building tension through audio, that became a whole skill in itself. I realised how much sound controls feeling. You don’t even have to see something scary or sad, the sound already makes you feel it.

Same with colour grading. In the rough cut, I barely gave it any thought. But in the final cut, I spent so much time going through clip by clip, changing tones, adding contrast, reducing saturation where needed. It became part of the narrative. The warm tones at the start made the dream feel comforting, and then as things darkened emotionally, the colours started fading too. That slow transition helped the viewer feel the shift, no dialogue needed.

And throughout all of this… there were so many breakdowns. So many moments where nothing worked, or the edit felt flat, or I second guessed everything. But it was all part of the process (trust-the-process kind of stuff), and I’m glad it all worked out.

Looking back now, I honestly feel like the film opening grew so much through editing, and me too. I learned how to tell a story both visually and technically.

So yeah, this process was exhausting... physically, mentally, emotionally... but it was definitely a learning curve. And I’m actually really proud of the final result, because it shows just how much we’ve achieved.