Teaching the Edit as a Series of Choices

Students often arrive in the edit room asking whether a cut works. A more useful first question may be what the cut asks an audience to feel, assume, or overlook.

Name the intention

Productive critique begins by understanding what the filmmaker is trying to make. Once the intention is clear, every structural choice can be discussed in relation to it rather than measured against a single idea of correctness.

Make the invisible visible

Editing gives order to reality, but it also creates emphasis and omission. Teaching the craft includes making those invisible decisions visible, especially when a film represents people whose lives are not the filmmaker’s own.