Finding the inner story

Editing is where your script and your footage become a film. The first pass, the rough cut, is usually built from master shots: the widest, most complete version of a scene, everything captured without a cut. From there, closer shots and different angles get layered in, and the film starts to take shape as a sequence of choices.

Preserving your theme

Even at script stage, a story has a theme, an emotional throughline that you want the audience to feel. My job is to protect that theme all the way through. I decide whose perspective a scene belongs to, what’s held back and what’s revealed, and how long a moment is allowed to breathe.

A held shot on a face can carry more than three fast cuts if the story has earned it.

Bringing the world alive with Sound Design

The right sound mix put an audience inside a scene as much as the picture does. As such, I’ll weave in foley, ambient noise, and cleanly recorded dialogue to make a space feel real and a character’s presence feel physical.

Music to move you

As the next ingredient, music tells an audience how to feel. Layering music against sound design, or choosing to withhold both at a key moment, often gives a scene its weight, just as much as silence.

Tools of the trade

I tend to cut and grade in DaVinci Resolve, which lets me move between editing and colour work inside a single environment; less round trips and compatibility problems which can often add up fast on smaller productions.