The first time I edited was well into my tv/film career as a producer.
In 2009, the TV station I worked at needed me to rough edit the stories I was producing, to help in their post-production process. But because producing was engrained in me, I never considered myself an editor, that is until 2012. It was 10 PM and I was working late at the station. I was editing some incredibly powerful interviews with Holocaust survivors and their descendants. As I played the string-out of stories, they all started to sound repetitive, which weakened them and was the opposite of what I needed to accomplish. These were incredibly personal stories that deserved to be told with honor and reverence… I truly had no clue what I was doing, or why, but I went on instinct alone and began to weave their stories together so that they were one “voice” – one person would finish another’s sentence, another would build on it. I still am not sure why, but it made it so much more powerful, because it made the problem of what the Holocaust was much bigger. I think in many ways it was the most incredible thing I have ever had the privilege to edit, and it was the moment I gave myself permission to quietly call myself an editor.