While the preproduction and production phases are certainly time consuming processes, post production is easily three quarters of where my time is spent on each project. Even as we were in the middle of shooting, I began processing the footage and beginning the editing process.

          I had close to ten hours worth of footage that needed to be logged, captured, saved, and organized into hundreds of individual clips. This is a tedious, but very necessary part of the editing process, and it helps a great deal in weeding out the bad takes or shots that I know I won’t be using.

          The clips were then organized into bins for each of the sixteen scenes in the film. I would like to say that I edited the film in chronological order, but my attention span would simply lend itself to that. I edited some scenes as we did them, and others only after I had nothing else to edit, because I knew that they would be tricky and time consuming to complete.

          Editing began in the middle of July and officially lasted until December 28th, 2007, when I received the last piece of the films’s score by Stephen Akina (who will be discussed very soon) and presented the first draft of the film to my family. However, I made small alterations to the film until the end of January 2008, before I finally decided that I was happy with the end result.

          In all, the editing process took roughly seven months, and while that may seem like a long time, my work as the editor was cut in half because of the time and effort we put into the project during pre and production.

          Editing is one of my favorite parts of the film making process, because I can finally begin telling the story that has been in my head for so long. When you shoot a movie, it’s done in pieces; all out of order, so that you don’t get the true feel of how the story works until it’s edited together.

          I have always been a filmmaker that edits his own films, because even the smallest, most subtle decisions in the cutting room can change the direction of the story. A glance of one character to another, holding a shot on someone or something just long enough to make the audience member question know that the person or thing was important, but not long enough for them to figure out why. Every single shot has to serve the purpose of solving the mystery of the story, or it is unnecessary.

          I edit with Final Cut Pro, Apple’s non-linear editing software. I began using it in 2005 while attending the Art Institute and fell in love with it. Coupled with Final Cut, I use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects extensively for the film’s various visual effects shots (which will be discussed later). I switched from PCs to Macs in 2006 and I’ll never look back.

          Once the first rough draft was completed, I went on the hunt for a composer that would understand what the film was, what it was trying to do, and how to help the audience get there...