Chess Film Post-Production: Editor's Log

 The Importance of an Editor's Log

As part of the production portfolio for our film, I have to turn in what is called an editor's log. This is a document that essentially tracks what you did during all of your editing sessions.

At first, I saw this as just extra work that I had to do on top of having to actually edit the film. I thought it was unnecessary and would ultimately take away from the film. In fact, I thought it was so unnecessary that I remembered I had to do it halfway through my first editing session. After the first session I felt as though it was wasting time just writing down what I already knew. However, after one to two more session I changed my view. 

What I wrote down after my first editing session

When I wrote out my thoughts about the session for things like why certain editing decisions were made, it helped reaffirm why I did what I did. Not only that but it allowed me to look back on my previous thought process to see if it was applicable to a different situation or if maybe that wasn't the best decision to make at the time and I should go and fix it. 

It also allowed me to say the wrong these that happened and include possible solutions. Most of which involved group discussion which most likely would have not come straight to mind if I didn't have to actually write it out and think about what I could do. 

Conversation between me and director on how to shorten film

Most importantly it kept me organized. I could easily look back on what I worked on previously and see what I planned to work on for next time. Editing was not a daily process so not having written down my next goals would make it harder for me to remember what I was supposed to working on.

After working on the editor's log, I realized it's grand importance to the editing process overall. It wasn't extra work that was assigned but a document that would allow me to make the editing process easier. It allowed me to rationalize my decisions for certain editing choices and reflect if I did something for the right reason or if there was another way to go about things. The document also gave me ideas for next editing session as I could see what I had completed so far and what I had left, as well as the things that went right when editing that I could keep in mind for next time. Lastly it proved helpful as it forced me to see what I can do different or better for next time as I needed to write the issues I encountered and ways to fix them which ended up working most of the time.