An excerpt from an interview with Neil Shanks, Film Editor.

How is pre-production very important for a successful production in film making?

Pre production is very important. The story is the first and foremost element, without that there is no pre production and postproduction. Once the story is ready, the fleshing out of that into its visual form is the pre visualization and all its forms whether it’s the basic story board with the drawing or the whether its with photos. It is the most essential form of your planning to get a polished piece. Unless you are doing a lot of montage kind of a thing where you take images and bring them together loosely around the script the more pre planning you do the better your production will be.

As an editor what do you think are the basics of good editing?

As an editor said ‘Editors are really the tellers of the original story and the writers of the final draft’. An editor is responsible for is the pace, presentation and the timing of the material, the presentation of what, how and when it is shown. That is the responsibility and the most important part that they have to play. Visual story telling is a combination of a variety of crafts and skills, to the pre visualization and the planning , finding the actors, getting the right music, having the director and the cameraman working, an editor that brings in images together and lays them all out in a way that works well. If any one of those stages falls down your final product suffers.

How far does technical excellence help in good story telling?

Technical excellence is required at every level but that should not be something that stops us back from trying. We are all learning in our fields and I think it’s important. One of the biggest barriers I think is to say I can’t or I am not good enough. I think it’s better to try and to create something and learn from that and have the skills from so that your next piece can be better and can be improved. On one hand, you have the technical excellence, on the other you have to learn, and learning means making mistakes. So we should aim high and try hard.

Have you ever wanted to make a film and any good storyboard in mind?

Yes I do dream of making films. I short film and I have scripted some hours and what I did in the beginning of last month is gorilla type of film making.... We made a film for a film festival, and I was the scriptwriter for that more than an editor. So now I’m actually trying with the scripting more than the editing. And I think when I do this it needs to be with a group of people, for me I am personally motivated when I am working with a team. In certain areas where you are more skilled and certain other areas where you are not it’s the team that helps you carry on. I’m not a one-man band, there are people who write, shoot and edit in the sense I do that with jobs but its something that I do gladly. So short film its not because it’s a stepping stone to big film, it can be but its also a genre on its own. So a short story is more feasible in terms of energy. So that would be my next, a short story.