How To Make a Good Fanedit (AKA The Joy of Fanediting)

(Warning: More self-pimping contained within. But seriously, read this. It may help you.)

It’s pretty obvious that I love almost all things fanediting related. I love watching fanedits, I love making fanedits and I love seeing the progression of a new fanedit being created.

What I hate seeing is new editors struggling with their fanedits. I’ve been there and it’s no fun. Hopefully something here can help you along the way if you find yourself having a hard time and giving up on fanedits.

I know that everybody is different in how they do things, but here’s how I see things.

Generally speaking, there are 5 major stages to making a fanedit.

1) Conception.
2) Pre-production.
3) Production.
4) Post-production.
5) Release.

Every stage is equally important in my eyes and can’t be rushed. This isn’t to say that a fanedit needs to take X amount of time to be considered good. But, just like when making a movie or writing a book or making anything creative intended for public consumption, if you don’t take care to make sure each step along the way is done right, the final product will haunt your dreams as time goes on.

For each stage I will give specific examples. Since I’m not physically there for anybody else’s fanediting process, a lot of the examples will be about me. I will try to give as many examples of other people as I give myself though.


ADDENDUM -

A huge inspiration for writing this was Jorge's Rules of Fanediting. Thank you [MENTION=4656]Remixed by Jorge[/MENTION] you don't know how much you have helped me with that.

CONCEPTION

This step may take 1 second. It may take months or even years. Simply put it’s you coming up with an idea for a fanedit. This could happen in a number of ways.

You just watched a movie for the first time and start thinking about the plot holes or character flaws. Or maybe you watch one of your favorite movies/TV shows for the umpteenth time and think “Hey, it would be cool if you remove this plotline. Make this 3 hour epic more akin to Lethal Weapon.” Or just one day you have a vision after hitting your head on the toilet.

The key to this stage is DO YOU HAVE A GRASP ON YOUR IDEA OR NOT? You’re not going to know everything you change beat by beat, but at the very least you should have a clear direction on what you’re doing.

Freestyle writing is absolute trash 99.99% of the time. And unless you’re Jimi Hendrix (which you’re not) you can’t just get high, pick up a guitar and start playing Purple Haze perfectly for the first time.

The same applies to fanediting. If your idea for a fanedit isn’t fully thought out you may find yourself banging your head against a wall after spending a lot of time working on it.

Examples:

Neg –

I had been working on editing Scream 4 and ran into some problems because I wanted to completely rewrite the last 30 minutes. It was my first edit I tried and became frustrated, sad even, that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. So I decided to pop in one of my favorite movies, L.A. Confidential. As is usual when I watch that movie when I got to the scene between Bud White and Lynn Bracken my finger lingered to the “Next Chapter” button on my remote. I thought to myself, “Fuck you Kim Basinger. Why you gotta ruin this awesome movie?” Then it hit me. “Oh shit. Can I remove Kim from this movie? No. No I can’t. But, I can remove a lot of her screen time so that I don’t have to skip all her scenes when I watch it.” Bam, a fanedit is born.

Now, this idea came to me around the 45 minute mark of the movie. Had I jumped up and started copying my DVD right away so I could get to work as soon as possible I would have failed. I needed to keep watching the movie obviously. See if this could be pulled off.

Once I got to the end of the movie I had a simple cutlist in my head. Cut this this and this. L.A. Confidential is less of a romance story, more focus on the crime parts of this Crime Drama.

Going back to Scream 4, the idea for that came to me after seeing it in the theater for the first time. The ending pissed me off to no end and I wanted to see it play out differently. In my head I knew exactly how it should end. The only problem was that I didn’t know what to do with the rest of the movie. When I sat down to try and edit it I focused so much on trying to “fix” the movie as a whole that I lost sight of my original concept for the edit.

Non-Neg –

Taken from the edit information for (fe) la vie by blueyoda:

"Intention:
"To chronicle my life in the form of an extended music video. But more specifically, and the inspiration for this, the events that led to my hospitalization: my failed love story with the girl who broke my heart. Or maybe I broke my own heart. And maybe it wasn’t a failure after all and things are as they were meant to be.

"This is my most intimate fanedit so far. It’s my bible, the meaning of me. Every frame, every lyric, every transition, every glitch is me. It goes so far down my own rabbit hole that even I don’t understand it fully and I don’t think I ever will; because I am changing, learning new things about me and the universe every day so the meaning of the thing will change along every time I watch it. My friend, who is the only person to have seen it so far, has pointed out a few things in it that made me facepalm for not having understood them, even though I created the damn thing. But ultimately, it’s not some artsy fartsy piece of art; it’s a trashy assemblage of mostly Michael Jackson’s awesome awesomeness. It’s meant to make you tap your foot to the rhythm!"

And if you watch (fe) la vie you’ll hopefully understand blueyoda.

PRE-PRODUCTION

The most obvious (and what most feel is the most BORING) part of this stage is getting the elements onto your computer. But there is so much more to it than that.

So there you are. You have an awesome idea for a fanedit. You’re gonna make “Miracle on 34[SUP]th[/SUP] Street” a David Lynch style mind game, with a crazy twist ending that Santa Claus is an alien. You can’t WAIT to get started on this bad boy.

Guess what? You’ve already gotten started on it. You’re just eager to get to step 5 and you can’t wait to win Fanedit of the Month, maybe even FANEDIT OF THE YEAR. Slow down little buddy. We’ve got a lot to do here.

Do you know exactly what you’re going to change? Do you even know if you can pull off that sweet alien Santa twist ending? How many times have you watched “Miracle on 34[SUP]th[/SUP] Street”? Do you know what elements you’re going to add to the movie?

For every edit how much time you spend in the Pre-Production will change. (I’m giving some premature examples here, bear with it and keep reading&#8230

Going back to Scream 4, after I had learned some great lessons on L.A. Confidential and Payback I decided to go try my hand again at Scream 4. This time I had found an early version of the screenplay online. I read it and took note of the little differences between the script and the final film. Since it was early draft there were some MAJOR differences that I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about. But the small things I could change. Two death scenes that bothered me in the final film played out differently (and better in my eyes) in the script and I knew I could edit those scenes the way they were written. So now I had a much clearer idea on what exactly to change. Then when I got to the editing it was just a matter of cutting a couple scenes here, adding some deleted scenes and then cutting the major things the way that it was originally written. Had I not read the screenplay I would have continued to edit blindly.

As far as the technical side, there are probably a million different ways you can get that movie onto your computer. There is no one program that takes a DVD/Blu-ray and converts it to an editable source in one shot.

“But Neg,” you’re saying to me, even though I’m not there in front of you, “how do I know what works?”

Research. Trial and error.

There are a lot of threads in the Technical section of the forum here with a lot of suggestions about different methods and programs to use. Read up on what other people have tried and had successes/failures with. BUT DON’T STOP THERE.

Let me show you how.

You have the entirety of the internet at your fingertips. Your search options are endless.

Another part of Pre-Production is understanding certain things. What do frame rates have to do with making “Killer Claus”? What’s a codec? Ad infinitum. Learn up on that stuff. You don’t need to know everything about everything but you need to know a lot of technical things. And you can't just say "Well, I learn how to do that later. I need to get to editing." No, you need to know things BEFORE you edit.

The last thing about Pre-Production is this. Do you know how to edit? Do you know how to use that fancy program you bought? If no, you have two basic things to do.

1) Play around with it. Try things out on a sample project. See what you can do.
2) Find tutorials online. YouTube has a ton of videos on how to use a ton of editing programs. You’re in luck because people nowadays absolutely love recording themselves playing video games and putting those videos on YouTube. Along the way those gamers need to know how to do some cool shit in their videos. So a lot of them will make tutorial videos when they discover something sweet they can do with their editing program. And you can easily find those videos and learn a ton of things, before you even try to edit.

Examples:

Neg –

Staying on L.A. Confidential for a moment here. I didn’t understand dick about the technical side of fanediting when I started editing that one. I was following Boon’s (incomplete) guide to Vegas to the letter without question. In doing so, I made the 5.1 audio 2.0 and edited in 2.0. The DVD had an awesome 5.1 mix on it that I didn’t know how to copy because I didn’t take the time to find out how. I learned from my mistake and learned how to edit to in 5.1.

Now, regarding the creative aspects of Pre-Production. The way I generally work is I make a written cut list of things I want to cut, before I even copy my DVD. I write it all down. FvJ is a good example of this. I have 5 pages of notes that I wrote down while re-watching all the Friday the 13[SUP]th[/SUP] movies, just to get to the point of knowing what I was going to do with my portion of the edit. And I keep taking notes, long after starting editing. My notes are up to 17 pages currently.

Truth be told, in those 17 pages there is a lot of



WHITE



SPACE



because that helps me sort out my thoughts and ramblings.

And no, I’m not saying you need to take extensive notes for every edit to be successful. Who knows, FvJ could be the biggest bomb fanedit.org has ever seen. (More on that concept later&#8230

Non-Neg:

Do you think TMBTM created War of the Stars II on the fly? Did he just start editing and made shit up as he went? I highly doubt it. And how many times do you think L8wrtr has watched the prequels? You think BionicBob has only watched Star Trek TOS once? And did Boon just simply open Vegas, load in “Dances With Wolves” and start editing without any idea of what he would do? Did Gatos just say “Fuck it, I’m putting these scenes wherever I want” when he did 21 Grams Rebalanced? How many Super 8 digests do you think Rogue-theX has watched? And how many times—

I think you get the point.


ADDENDUM -

After re-reading this and seeing some of the comments from other editors I realized I may have put too much importance on planning. Like I said at the start, this is how I do it. This isn't THE ONE WAY to do things. Truth be told, there is no one way. So I add this:

Do what works best for you. If you're a meticulous planner, plan meticulously. If you just like having a general idea of what you want to do, go with that.

Pre-Production is much much more than planning what to cut. Pre-Production is preparation for smooth editing.

PRODUCTION

Now that you know where you’re going with your fanedit and you’ve spent enough time preparing for it, you’re ready to start cutting.

Don’t let anybody ever make you think that this is hard to do. This is the awesome part of the process. You get to go in there and control how things happen in that movie. You have the potential to turn coal into diamonds.

And if you really did spend time preparing for the edit, the actual cutting part of the process should be a breeze. When I start physically cutting I already know almost everything I’m going to cut. Depending on the complexity of the project, you may be able to have it 100% mapped out by this stage.

But you can’t just rely on a list of what to cut. You may have written down “Cut out every appearance of Fredo in Godfather Part II” and when you get to cutting it you realize “Holy shit this guy is important to this movie.” You need to have common sense when editing. How will these changes affect the story? If you cut that scene at the 20 minute mark will the scenes at the 45 minute mark make any sense? You may or may not know these things until you actually WATCH your edit.

You need to watch your edit as many times as you need to before you can consider the Production stage complete. Getting to the end credits in your editing program is far from getting to the end of the edit.

Usually when I finish a preliminary cut I’ll watch it twice before doing anymore cutting. The first time I try to take the view of an audience member. How does the movie play out? Is it enjoyable? Does it still make sense without that flashback explaining why Godzilla wore tennis shoes? Do I pause the movie a lot and get bored quickly?

At the end of the first viewing I’ll jot down some quick notes, usually things like “Still boring” or “The finale doesn’t make much sense”. I have never watched a first draft of an edit I’ve worked on and wrote down “This is pure gold. Change nothing.”

Then I’ll wait a few days and watch it a second time. Waiting a few days is key for me. If I rewatch it right away all my attention will be one or two particular scenes. I need to try and forget what I did to the movie when editing it. Then when I watch it again I can treat it like it was the original movie. I’ll take a flurry of notes on it. I’ll break down the mythology of The Smurfs. I’ll be more willing to cut my favorite scenes in order to fix plot holes.

And of course, I’ll write down all the technical errors I made. All the sloppy cuts and terrible audio transitions. Because those happen no matter who you are. You’re human, you make errors. Whether or not you can catch and correct those errors is what sets you apart.

So now I’ve watched this edit twice and I have a new cut list. I go back to the editing suite and go at it again, repeating the process until I am completely satisfied with the edit I made.

“Yay, now it’s release time!”

WAIT.

Who else has watched your edit?

Getting somebody to preview your edit is VITAL. It’s a second pair of eyes and ears to catch technical glitches. It’s a second film geek mind to analyze your masterpiece. Your previewer(s) may make a long list of changes they would make. Do you have to make every change the suggest? No. Should you greet their feedback with an open mind? YES.

Your preview audience is a tool for you to use when editing.

Examples:

Neg –

Every edit I’ve done so far has been previewed by at least 1 person. For L.A. Confidential I was lucky enough to make friends with Gatos and blueyoda. Gatos is a big movie buff, especially when it comes to Scorsese films and their ilk. He watched my cut of L.A. Confidential, then rewatched the original and gave me feedback. Blueyoda loves all things movies but had never gotten around to watching his copy of L.A. Confidential. So he watched my edit as if it were a theatrical movie. I had 2 great editors watch my edit from different points of view and I was able to properly gauge how my changes affected the movie.

Non-Neg –

Emphatic is a first time editor who’s been a member here for a while. He made an edit of the TV show Alias and instead of just blindly releasing it to the world he had people preview it. I can’t 100% verify how he’s changing the edit based on the feedback, but with all the feedback he got he kept an open mind and didn’t just say “No, that’s not how I want to do it."

POST-PRODUCTION

All right, you’ve finished your edit. You’ve had people preview it. Now should it be submitted as soon as possible?

No.

How are you going to release this edit? Who exactly do you want to watch it? Is this a popular movie that people will want to see a fanedit of?

Let’s look at some things here.

How you release your edit is up to you. Every edit I’ve done has been put onto DVD. Three out of 4 were Dual Layer DVDs because I didn’t want the picture quality to suffer with a Single Layer DVD. But every time I made a DL DVD I made a second option available. L.A. Confidential had an MP4, Payback had a SL DVD and The Departed had an avi.

But all of those edits were sourced from DVD. If you go HD, you need to be smart about it. L8wrtr and Q2 are smart cookies. For their HD Star Wars edits they released multiple versions. L8wrtr had a Blu-ray, an AVCHD, a DL DVD and a SL DVD for all 3. Q2 made a Blu-ray, an AVCHD and a SL DVD for all 3. Why? So they could reach a wider audience that hadn’t embraced HD yet.

Who exactly do you want to watch it? The obvious answer is EVERYBODY. You just made a fanedit of Lady Terminator. You think to yourself, “Only diehard H. Tjut Djalil fans will want to see this.” Well if that’s your attitude, nobody will watch that edit.

So how do you open your audience? Trailers. Preview clips. Building word of mouth through previewers. Having an entertaining In-The-Works thread. Bribing Neg. All of these things, if done with care, can increase your audience.

A common thing nowadays is bonus material for fanedits. It’s not vital to success but shows how much you care about the movie you’re editing. The bonus materials can be simple—TMBTM and BionicBob put informative “About This Edit” videos on almost all of their releases to show you what they did and why—or the bonus materials can be extensive—holy shit, have you seen Disc 2 of Jaws III: Monster?

Ok, so you have everything you need. You got your movie, you got some sweet trailers, you recorded a commentary, you made a funny 2-minute mash up of Harry Potter and Twilight. Now you want to get those all onto DVD.

TAKE YOUR TIME. Learn how to make a DVD. Trial and error. Watch the final DVD to catch your mistakes. Then fix the mistakes and watch it again.

Then when you have everything perfect, WATCH EVERYTHING AGAIN. Pop that DVD in, turn the lights low, and act like an audience member for one night. Watch your fanedit as if you know nothing. Watch it with your friends and see how they react to things.

Examples:

Neg –

I fucked up on releasing The Departed. I ran out of DL DVDs and didn’t properly test the final DVD. I had a final DL DVD that I couldn’t properly test. So I rendered a smaller version of the movie to make a SL DVD for test purposes. Everything played fine. So I uploaded that DL DVD I made. A week or 2 later L8wrtr tells me the chapter stops don’t work. Fuck.

Non-Neg –

P2 had the most brilliant trailer I’ve ever seen. Go watch it right now.

RELEASE

Now it’s time to release this edit into the wild. How do you go about it? What attitude should you have?

The technical parts are insanely easy. Take the final product and use WinRar or 7Zip to break up those files into chunks. Then do some research and find a GOOD way to upload it.

This next part is important!

After you’ve uploaded it, BEFORE YOU SUBMIT IT, download the edit you just uploaded. Test it out, make sure it downloads and extracts properly. Make sure something didn’t get messed up along the way. Have a friend download it as well as a double test to make sure it’s all good.

Then just for the hell of it, watch that edit again. Watch the edit you just now downloaded. Unless it’s Northwest Passage it shouldn’t take long to rewatch it. Pay attention to everything!

Why?

Because once you release your edit you have limited control over things. If the upload got messed up, someone will complain about it and others may not download your edit now. If you didn’t properly preview your edit technical flaws will be pointed out to you that you never even knew about. And nobody wants to waste their time with a poorly edited movie.

But if you took care along the way, you should be all good.

Once people watch it.

“Huh? What do you mean? Plenty of people said they’d like to see it in my thread.”

Let’s take a step back for a second.

How many fanedits have YOU watched? How many times have YOU said “I can’t wait to see this!” then once it’s released it just sits there on your computer or on top of your DVD player? Nobody is going to be as enthusiastic about your edit as you are. You just spent all this time in the universe of your edit. You know it by heart. You love it to death. But remember, only a handful of people have seen the edit, and maybe only you have seen the final product. This is another reason why promoting your edit is vital.

You can’t just drop “Superman vs. Godzilla” on a Monday and expect it to have 10 rave reviews by Friday. You have to have patience. If nobody ever watches it, figure out what you did wrong and try to fix that with your next edit. (-ADDED-) And hey, maybe you didn't do anything wrong. Maybe it just hasn't been discovered yet. Don't let something like this stop you from creating.

Once people start watching it and reviewing it, your job isn’t done. People love discussing movies. And to a degree, people love discussing fanedits. How much you decide to partake in the discussion of your edit is up to you. I know some editors like to stay out of discussing their edits and some editors will defend their changes to the death.

“What if my edit bombs?”

So be it. Learn what you did wrong and make the next edit even better. (-ADDED-) Do not let negative reviews get you down. Yes, if there are glaring technical errors, you should learn from your mistakes and try harder to make those transitions smoother. But if nobody appreciated the masterpiece that is "The Good, The Bad & The Judge Roy Bean" so be it. As Jorge said, "You can't please everyone."

The important part of reacting to reviews (in my eyes) is that you appreciate the fact that someone watched your edit. (-ADDED-) They took the time to watch something you poured your soul into. They didn't have to watch it, they WANTED to. They are now part of your audience and hopefully they're now a fan of you as an editor. Cherish that.

And on a similar note, it’s important that you yourself watch fanedits. Whenever I hear somebody complaining “Why hasn’t anybody watched my edit? ” I look at how many edits THEY have watched. Have they ever written a review for an edit? Have they ever rated an edit?

The love you take is equal to the love you make.


Examples:

Neg –

When I released Payback I forgot to add one rar file to the DLC. Somebody commented on it and I immediately fixed it and apologized for the mistake. This let people know that the problem reported was fixed. Then more people downloaded it, watched it and reviewed it. And when they did I thanked them. Some I thanked publicly in the thread, some I thanked while chatting with them in the chat room.

Non-Neg –

Wraith released an edit, The Things. It was an ambitious 2-disc edit. People got excited over it, but when they watched it there were some technical errors. Wraith swore he’d fix them and took down the faulty versions.

Then he only fixed Disc 1. Disc 2 is gone. Who knows if it will ever be fixed.

This example is a great lesson.

You’ve come this far. DON’T GIVE UP NOW. You’ve gotten people excited about your edit and you owe it to them to deliver something entertaining. A faneditor that doesn’t respect his audience will fail.

(-ADDED-) No disrespect is meant to Wraith with this.

CLOSING

Here’s the killer part of it all.

Everything should be FUN. You have almost complete creative control how you want this movie to play out! Nothing should be a CHORE.

If making those audio transitions are a PAIN IN THE ASS, then you need to figure out what earlier step you missed. While yes, some parts can be boring—I don’t know about you, but I only have 1 computer and if I want to render a finished edit I have to do it overnight so I don’t blow my brains out watching a progress bar for hours—I take pleasure in every step of the process.

And if you really do take your time to make sure everything is how you want it, it will be easy to fix your mistakes. Because everything is a learning process, no matter who you are.

Nice thread, Neg.

(And, as a side note, you know there are reviews to enter, right? )

Nice thread. Now lets get back to fanediting.

out:

Neglify said:

out:

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Aww...

Neglify said:

out:

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Rogue-theX said:

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...

Q2 said:

(And, as a side note, you know there are reviews to enter, right? ;-))

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Now I gotta do something productive.

Hence...

Neglify said:

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Excellent thread! If there was a Fanediting Magazine, this would be an article in it. Well written, funny, informative, no pixellation, no harsh audio cuts...wait, ummm. But awesome article Neg. Should be required reading for new and veteran faneditors IMO.

Getting to the end credits in your editing program is far from getting to the end of the edit.

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^Fellow editors, take heed of these words!^

This was also much needed for me personally as I'm about to return to work on a fanedit that I haven't touched in over 3 months.

I don't even edit and I still read it all. I thought it was really interesting. Just from being on the forum and reading threads I think it could help a few people out to have a read of it aswell.
There's a lot of parallels with music production, which is what I do, it's good advice

I just want to add something (even if it's already more or less covered by what Neglify said):

Of course finding the main idea for your fanedit is the center of all things; you need to be passionate by your goal when you start thinking about it and when you start the work. You need to have a vision of what the edit should be. But one vital thing I learned by making fanedits is: stay aware of what the movie has to offer you.

I mean, talking about The War of the Stars II: I'll not spoil anything, but one of the goals was to have a certain twist in the end. But when editing I struggled because after that twist I did not have enough footage to finish the scene properly. It ended to fast, not satisfying, whatever... Until my jaw dropped when I realize that with a "simple" special effect the end of that scene that I thought I needed to cut could in fact be turned into a second twist! I think I was as much surprised as the audience of my edit. Those moments are rare when fanediting, but you should try to stay open to them. It's very rewarding.
Heavy spoiler:
Needless to say that I stopped editing anything that evening and did go to bed with a happy heart. And that's also something that could help faneditors (at least it works with me): when you find a cool idea after several hours of work and you are already a bit tired. Stop editing. Just enjoy your idea. You'll be even more ungry to continue the work the next time and you'll sleep well, lol.

Another big twist that came relatively late in the making was my new ending for Jaws the sharksploitation edit.
Everything was okay in the edit, I was pleased and all... but I could not keep myself from thinking: damn, you changed so many things in that movie... the end needs to be changed also, it needs to end with a "BAM!" or the edit will not be complete.
So I remembered a movie, by Dario Argento, called Phenomena. Something happens in the middle of this movie. Like a short random scene. Almost made for the audience to forget about it... until it comes back at the end as a shocker moment. So that's what I did. I added an apparently random scene in the middle of my edit that in fact lead to the conclusion of the movie. And no need to change all the cuts aready done! Just adding that scene could allow me to change the ending.

So what I wanted to say is: having a goal is needed, but that should not prevent you of thinking along the way. Don't be afraid to change parts of your plan if you think it's for the best. Some footage you don't like and want to cut could serve you well for something else. But of course: think about all the storytelling problems that could cause though!

Neglify said:

Bribing Neg. All of these things, if done with care, can increase your audience.

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Oh goodie. Thank god I can cut to the chase and skip all the rest of that complicated stuff! What's your PayPal account number?

Seriously, back in the day (before my time) this would have been a feature article on the front page. You are so enthusiastic about fanediting, I hope a few lurkers catch the fever and try their hand at it.

Well put TMBTM! Thank you for sharing some of your secrets.

TMBTM said:

I just want to add something (even if it's already more or less covered by what Neglify said):
So what I wanted to say is: having a goal is needed, but that should not prevent you of thinking along the way. Don't be afraid to change parts of your plan if you think it's for the best. Some footage you don't like and want to cut could serve you well for something else. But of course: think about all the storytelling problems that could cause though!

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This has been my experience too. I always start out with a plan/goal, but generally find with each new scene that my plan goes out the window when confronted with the reality of what I have to work with - the spill of the original audio, the tone of the scene, the pacing once edited, storybeats that you can't decide whether they're essential or not etc, all conspire to give me nightmares. In the end, it feels almost like starting a new edit with each new scene - a fresh idea is needed, even though I have the overall plan in mind.

Actually, this is what I love most about fan-editing - It's very similar to the way I write songs, where you have a general idea of what you want to create, but the real rush/enjoyment arrives when that moment of improvisation (i.e., I wonder what would happen if...) clicks perfectly into place, and takes the scene/song to a whole other place that I wasn't expecting. That keeps me coming back for more. The frustrating/nerve racking part is not knowing when I sit down to edit/write whether that moment is going to occur...

So back to Neg's wonderful article*, I totally agree that taking the time to get it right and not rush these things is so critical. I got this very wrong at first, and am learning more and more with each edit. I showed up at fanedit.org last December thinking I would drop of my Indy edit and be on my way. I had never been involved in any kind of internet forums other than an occasional lurker at some movie sites, including this one, but soon enough was drawn in realising how passionate, positive and creative this little group of people was. So I posted the edit in a bit of a hurry, and was then amazed at the generous and detailed feedback people gave, letting me know all the little things that could be improved. It made me work extra hard on WTWTA to make sure that quality was just right before releasing it - and now I've gone back and reworked Indy for that very reason - I want to make my edits as good as possible, creatively and technically, not just for me, but because I truly value the endeavor that this community puts into this art form. Special mentions to L8wrtr, Neglify, Geminigod, TMBTM and Gatos for encouraging that level of quality control through the example of their amazing work. The technical side of things gives me nightmares - it is such a steep learning curve, but this community is so patient and encouraging (almost to a fault), and I'm feeling much more confident now. 5.1 surround being the latest little victory.

So there you go. Just wanted to throw my story into the mix too. It would be brilliant to see more members become editors and get into the game - long live fanediting!


*Neg, you are awesome. That was a great read, and reflects the love you have for this craft, and the care you take to make new editors feel welcome. noice work.

njvc said:

It would be brilliant to see more members become editors and get into the game - long live fanediting!

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agreed! that's what is most exciting to me, new guys coming on here, learning the craft and coming up with interesting and new ideas for fanedits