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

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…

Rogue One and Editing Part 1 – Showing and Telling

I cringe every time I hear someone say, "Show, don't tell," as if it's an unbreakable rule. As with any of the rules of writing, it just depends on what's best for the flow and pacing of the story. When is it best to show? When is it best to tell? Well, I decided to…

My First Novel’s Final Revision Is Finally Complete

It’s been more than eight and a half years since I started writing my first novel, but rather than at an end, I feel that I’m only at the beginning. Way back on May 21, 2013, I began jotting down some notes for an idea I had to poke fun at sci-fi clichés, and only…

How Face the Music Misses the Point

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Bill & Ted Face the Music. Keep reading at your own risk. …unless you simply don’t care, then go ahead and keep reading and feeling good about it. Anyway, I just finished watching a movie I was looking forward to seeing from the moment I took in the first trailer: Bill…

Power Rangers (2017) and the Power of Editing

This post contains SPOILERS for the 2017 film Power Rangers. If you haven’t seen it, please go, go watch it before reading the rest of what’s written here. Thank you! Recently, I watched the 2017 attempt to turn Power Rangers into a film franchise. Unfortunately, the attempt didn’t pan out from a financial perspective as…

The Rise Of Skywalker And Why Swapping One Antagonist For Another May Not Be Such A Good Idea

This post includes story spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. If you haven’t seen the movie, please do so, then come back and read this post. I was recently in a Twitter conversation concerning Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – I know; me talking about Star Wars, big surprise – and I…