We’re back after an extended holiday break! The fires in LA last week kept me from writing anything that makes sense. The impact on the city I’ve called my home for more than 12 years is devastating. If you are in LA, I hope you are safe and well; my family and I escaped the worst of the fires, but had a close call one night.

Thankfully, a lot of great people are working night and day to put out the fires and start rebuilding the communities we lost.

Today I’m hoping to bring an ounce of normalcy by sharing some more insights into how my first feature, Wild Boys, was finished. We’ve already talked about how to put together your first cut and how to get the most out of your first screening.

This week we'll talk about how to turn your rough, sometimes ugly, sometimes problematic cut into a living, breathing film:

• How to identify your problem points: using feedback and your own instincts to figure out where you should focus your attention.
• Why options are your friend when you are losing perspective on your own material.
• 3 tricks that can help you fix scenes that don’t work.

Let’s roll.

How to identify your problem points

After spending countless hours putting together the rough cut, it can be hard to get a fresh new perspective as you move into the next phase of editing: fine-tuning the cut.

The number one thing that has helped me see my cut with fresh eyes has been watching it with other people. Not so much for their notes and opinions, but for the state it puts me into when watching the film.

When you’re sitting with someone who’s watching your film for the first time, something strange and wonderful happens. Your nerves kick in and it puts you in a fight-or-flight-like state.

You’re hyper aware of everything that’s happening.

When you turn your focus to the film, you notice things you never saw before. You feel the response from the other audience members, and you start to form a picture of where your problem areas are.

Take notes during or directly after these screenings. They’ll be golden when you get back to your timeline to polish up the film.

It’s also worth putting together all the feedback you’ve gotten and look for overlaps and common themes. When many people point to the same thing, or have similar issues, it’s a sign you should investigate. Their suggestions for how to fix it might not always work, but the sign that there’s a problem there tends to be correct.

With feedback in hand, I like to work on chunks of the movie at a time to try different solutions to get them dialed in.

Why options are your friend when you are losing perspective on your own material

I tend to get desensitized to my films after a while. Everything starts looking the same, and I can’t tell what is good or not anymore.

By far, what has helped me the most in overcoming this is forcing myself to cut different versions of scenes.

A lot of beginner editors will scoff at this extra work and convince themselves that they already picked the best options in the first place. This is a trap! Your perspective on the film is constantly changing. Even though you thought a take was “best” on your first go-around, it doesn’t mean it’s what serves the story best as the film goes through multiple iterations. Slight changes in energy, line delivery, and reactions can make a huge difference in how we view a scene.

We humans have a hard time saying if something is good or not, but we’re really good at saying if something is better or worse than something else.

When you use the power of comparing two cuts, it becomes obvious which one is better. And if you can't tell if one is better than the other, pick one and move on.

3 unconventional tricks that can help you fix scenes that don’t work

When editing you always encounter situations where you don’t have the shot you need to make a scene work, or something is off about a scene.

Here are three tricks I use to save scenes that seem doomed:

• Trick 1: Look for reactions at the beginning and end of takes. The moments before the director calls action or after they yell cut are a goldmine for unexpected reactions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found a look or a reaction in these parts of takes that have made all the difference in how a scene plays. Reactions help the viewer interpret the scene, by telling us how the character is feeling about what’s happening.
• Try it; the feeling of finding one of these moments and seeing it work is a wonder.
• Trick 2: Practice the art of taking things away. Remove a line and see if you miss it. Experiment with when you enter and exit a scene. This is especially useful if a scene is lagging. Getting into the scene at the latest possible moment and out of it as soon as you can is great advice for moving your story along. When you try trimming out the non-essentials, you discover what belongs and what can go. And the nice thing is that if you take something out and the scene breaks, you can put it back.
• Trick 3: Play with sound. It’s easy to get locked in on the footage you have and forget about the other tools at your disposal. But sound really is half the experience. Sound can change mood, pacing, emotional reactions, even story beats. If you’re in a pinch, try solving the problem with sound effects, an added line of dialogue, or music before asking your producer to go out and do reshoots.

Keep these tools in your back pocket the next time you’re in an editing bind.

And cut!

That does it for this week. Here are the key takeaways I want you to bring with you into your directing career from today:

• Analyze your feedback and trust your gut instincts to uncover the areas of your film that need a little extra love.
• Embrace options and try different things to discover what works and what doesn’t.
• Look for reactions in unexpected places, practice the art of taking things away, and play with sound to solve your editing conundrums.

As always, thanks for reading.

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