My ever inquisitive father was sitting there to get to know more about the field. This friend of mine- Hari Krishnan holds PG Diploma in film making and had one and a half years experience in the field of video editing after training under Editor Lenin. Now, he is trying his hands (Well hands, legs, body and eyes in this case) at acting.
My father asked him about his work timings when he was being an editor. Hari Krishnan told that there is nothing called as work timings, you go there, get the work done. That is how it is done. He further told that there were times he would be spending 3-4 days completely in the studio. And the sleeping time averages around 2 hours per day. Obviously I asked him what if he decides to sleep for more time. He told that the assistant directors would come and give so much pressure that they won’t be able to sleep!
I asked him how much time it takes to finish the editing of one song from a movie. Here is what he told- The editor gets a 3-5 hour footage for one song, Every dance step would have around 5-6 takes and more than one would be shot OK. So, the editor essentially has to go through the whole footage. Then the choreographer comes in, sits with the editor and the editor has to go through it all over again. This process goes on and on for days till the song is done. Then he has to go through it all over again while doing the audio sync!
This is just for a song and the process of the whole movie is just an even more tedious version of the same. Mind that we are looking only at the editing part of it. Imagine how much time and efforts it would have taken for the shoot, the set-up, the makeup, location shifts etc.
And what do we do, we watch the whole effort presented as a capsule- The movie. We come out of the theatre and say- ‘Dude, it’s a bad film, very badly taken/bad story, don’t go, it is such a waste of time’. I agree that we have our own tastes of everything. But still it would be very unfair on our side to totally ignore all those efforts that went behind a movie. Logically, a bad movie doesn’t take any less effort to produce than the supposedly good ones. So, next time you got a movie irrespective of how you liked it, take a second to appreciate the work that went behind it.
P.S: Hats off to the editors and their patience! Hari told me that essentially an editor would have seen the movie 50 times over before the whole editing work is completed. When my father asked him whether the editors would know whether the movie would be successful or not considering they watch the movie so many times, he told that they would have a fair Idea. But wouldn’t any movie taste sour the 50th time??!!
