Editing is about making decisions, thousands and thousands of them. Everything from whether to use a one-frame audio dissolve that will ultimately go unnoticed to how to arrange the scenes of your story in order to create the most powerful dramatic arc\u2014the kind of choice that will ultimately determine the success of your work. Decisions lead to other options which lead to other decisions and on and on, seemingly forever.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to get lost in trying to predict how a single choice will affect the rest of your work when you arrive downstream. It can feel overwhelming. And Lord knows, I\u2019ve done my share of fretting<\/a>.<\/p>\n When I think about the work to be done on my current project, part of me wants to crawl under a bed with a bag of candy and a stack of comic books.<\/p>\n But I don\u2019t because I have two weapons in that fight. I have a workflow<\/a> and I have a strategy.<\/p>\n Each evening before I leave the office I ask myself, what is the one thing I need to do tomorrow?<\/p>\n I give myself reasonable goals\u2014a scene, for instance\u2014things I know that I can accomplish so that once I\u2019m done, any time left feels like a bonus. The pressure is off and I feel free to play and experiment and have fun.<\/p>\n It\u2019s so simple it almost seems dumb.<\/p>\n