The biggest issue I’m having right now is how long it’s taking me to edit projects. Editing all of them simply takes too long. I definitely need to obtain an editor for all of my wedding films. I find myself editing them as if they were a feature film! I have to keep telling myself that its “good enough” for what it’s for. I’m not saying I plan to slack on wedding projects, just that they don’t need composting, camera movement, and special effects like a creative film project would. It took me 6 months to edit my first wedding!

I’m finding that I want to enter into the short film festivals over at dvxuser.com. They are a great way to get used to making films, editing quickly, and having your work viewed. I’d neglected the short film route for some time because I wasn’t very interested in doing fictional films. However, they have been a great way for me to build my editing skills.

The biggest issue I was recently faced with was how slowly I’ve been working on one of my big projects “Our Side of Joy”. I decided this past weekend I’m going to present the film in the format for which it was intended instead of trying to create a shorter version for film festivals. I’d mentioned in previous posts that this film was several films but I filmed it for academic audiences (volumes for higher education courses). If it were intended for general audiences I wouldn’t have picked such a broad topic. I was just about to play myself on this one.

I’ve had this film down to an hour and fifteen minutes for months now and I just couldn’t go back to it. I’m very unhappy with this length. It feels like a long “preview” for what I intended to shoot. I felt as if I should make this film for general audiences and do the whole film festival thing. In doing a little soul searching… I’m just not a 90 minutes or less kinda filmmaker.

I have no problem taking a lot of info and making it into shorter volumes that represent an entire body of knowledge. But I can not just cut and cut and cut until my message is a mess at my feet and I’m putting out into the world some other animal.