Sink or Swim: on film editing
The jump
already in the middle
mid air
mid sentence
mediocre
it puts you to sleep
how many editors slept while watching hours of footage?
If when they sell you film, they measure it with the foot,
how do editors measure footage?
how do they weigh it?
How do swimmers know the dimensions of their swimming pools?
The goggles are foggy
more so in winter
Yet the body relativizes
with the least of signs
Shades of blue for depth
some black
closer or further
Red and yellow
in the periphery vision
few laps back and forth
and the walls don’t surprise
The element of surprise
the trade of the magician,
of children…Peekaboo
Now you see
Now you don’t
We start there
all of us
But the magician has a very particular order
without which the trick would not work
and so does the editor
and so does the cook
and so does the swimmer
and so does the baker
let us start now by weighing.
In my female lineage, the wiser ones
would refrain from action
before weighing matters
To weigh the matter now
a pinch of salt
a dash of humor
what is too little?
what is too much?
To speak of distance, weight and texture
that is the trade of the editor
of the cook, of the swimmer,
of the baker,
of the bodyworker
How far will I go for an ingredient?
how far will I go to feel out an ingredient?
its soil
its roots
its minerals
its water
the wind where it grows
A sommelier already.
Can you taste film?
that bitterness
in the throat of the actress
the lushness of a bite
cold air on the surfaces
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of a mouth
Sweat
Does the editor shuffle images or sensations?
What do you feel in your body
when you glimpse
the crater of a volcano,
the paintings in the cave,
the skin of the octopus,
rolling on the sand,
the sensation
spirals ubiquitously
carving the neuropaths.
And you glide in,
sand is water,
white is blue
a calm neighborhood
is a set for a horror film
And life is in the footage
even before it reaches you,
How will you modulate it?
And sometimes,
there is no life,
no pulse.
Have you seen the edits,
where the editor is sitting
on the footage pumping
the chest, giving rescue
breaths to something
almost dead?
They manage sometimes,
you know.
How do you move,
even in a single shot
where nothing happens?
The eye scans,
a trajectory, a path.
The nerves connect to
the nervous receptors
of the audiences
to come.
Sound is touch
at distance.
Color is touch
at distance.
Here you are, embarking
on the tactile journey,
like a bodyworker.
Walking ahead,
the eyes glide the routes,
even in a single shot
where nothing happens.
And how did you glide-in,
in that cloak of invisibility?
like the magician,
like the swimmer.
You jump,
penetrating the water,
from a single hole,
with the least drag,
the least resistance.
In other words,
you surrender,
to invisibility,
you disappear.
