First Cut of The Last Artist

There were times when I feared that it wasn’t possible but I finally have a first cut of The Last Artist. I suspect everyone edits in their own way, like a fingerprint. I discovered that my way of editing does work smoothly with twenty-minute-long takes. But the edit of a thousand frames starts with just one cut, eh?

There’s the saying that there’s the movie you write, the movie you shoot, and the movie you edit. I think that’s true but, for me, the weighting is more toward the writing than the editing. Some filmmakers shoot a lot and find the movie in the edit. I do not. So, for me, having long takes works against how my brain works. I am an inexperienced editor and make no claims to knowing what I’m doing. I generally work my way through the script, picking the best take of each line of dialog that will connect with the previous line of dialog based on continuity. Thus, my brain thinks in discrete chunks of dialog, not minutes-long conversations. I give great respect to The Studio for being able to pull off that many oners but I don’t think I have the skills to do that.

The great news is that I now have a cut that demonstrably proves that there is a movie there. I’m an anxious person but for some reason this film had even more anxiety than normal. So, it’s fantastic for me to know that there is a film there. I still have a lot more work to do, including editing, but this is a major milestone in this film and I’m taking a moment to bask in it.