Good editing is critical to the success of a film. By “success”, I don’t mean how much money it made at the box office. I’m talking about what makes the film work. No matter how talented the actors, how beautiful the soundtrack, how well composed the shots, it all falls flat if the timing of the cuts is not right.

In my work, editing is as important as any other part of the process, in fact, sometimes it’s the most important component of all. It is the storyteller, the stitcher of seams.

When I set out to create a nature film, I usually have a general theme in mind. Because of the abstract aspect of gathering nature footage, I have a lot of freedom over what the final film will become. Will I make it a glorious announcement of the wonders of nature or will I make it more subtle with an emphasis on the delicacies found in the wild? What kind of music will suggest either scenario?

There are certain scenes I shoot that inspire a particular style of music and I usually build an edit in my head based on that musical idea. There are other times when I find a piece of music and then I look at my footage and make the images conform. But really listening to the music and choosing the right timing for a cut perhaps based on a rhythmic shift or a tonal color change is absolutely essential.

There are many examples out there of people who have shot beautiful scenery and chosen sublime music but audio and visual seem at odds with each other because they are not communicating. There is no attention paid to the introduction of that violin here or the dynamic woodwind change there. What about that transition from day to evening to night? The perfect edit for me means a flawless marriage of sight and sound where both seem inseparable, like they were meant for each other.

Now for those whose passion does not lie in this sort of intricateness, they may scoff at what I am saying and think that expending this much time on a cut is a waste. I stand by my conviction, however, that the perfect poem lies within a film where the viewer’s attention is always in line with the director’s vision and this only happens when full attention is paid to the final edit.