Phantom Editing

You know how much I love talking about Star Wars, so I’m actually excited to begin a series of videos covering the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, the first of which will show how moving one scene within the opening of the film can help to make the opening a bit stronger. I hope you enjoy.…

How to Edit for Better Pacing and Storytelling Part 2

Part 2 of my video series on merging The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions into a single film is now live (you can find Part 1 here). In it, I show how cutting unneeded information from the film, such as The Merovingian's causality talk, strengthens that specific scene and the character at the heart…

How to Edit for Better Pacing and Storytelling

So, I just posted a new video to my YouTube channel, Reel Busy Editing, and what I show in it is how I re-edited The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions into a single film by cutting all the bloat present in both films. There was so much getting in the way of the story…

I Think I Just Wanted to Do a Film That Wasn’t an Action Movie

So, in my latest video, I wanted to show how subtracting one bit of dialogue from one scene in the 2000 film Cast Away could add a bit more emotional weight to that scene, and I also wanted to show how subtracting an entire reunion can add to the emotion of the ending of the…

Your Soul… er, Edit… is Mine!

Catchy title, eh? Anyway, I have a new Quick Change video up on my YouTube channel, Reel Busy Editing. If you want to see how a few small edits can make a big difference in a scene from the 1995 film Mortal Kombat, then click the play button on the video below. Enjoy! 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFqUZsIhEQA

Would This Character Say That?

Sometimes, I read a book or watch a movie, and a character will say a certain line of dialogue that will pull me out of the experience because I'll be scratching my head over why that character would say that line. That's definitely something we, as writers, have to be careful of: not allowing a…

Removing an Unnecessary Character Element

In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, one element of Kylo Ren's character is his penchant for throwing tantrums. He actually does it twice in the movie, which actually affects the movie negatively. The first time, his tantrum just gets in the way of an emergency that occurs on the Millennium Falcon. The second time, Kylo's…

Taking the Clown Out of Finn

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post concerning what I referred to as The Tragedy of FN-2187. In that post, I talk about the poor execution of the character Finn in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. In the first of my Taking the Mary Sue Out of Rey videos, I touched on…

Rogue One and Editing Part 2 – More on Showing and Telling

May the 4th Be with You!!!! 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LzQr-uihWU

Finding the Options in Editing

What I enjoy about editing is that I get to keep going back and re-visiting a work, and figuring out what can be done better. In short, I like to look at the options in front of me and discover new options that I didn't think of before (on a side note, this is why…