The relatively recent advent of digital editing has transformed the mechanical and laborious environment of the old cutting room - with its noisy Moviolas and Steenbecks, numerous assistants and mountains of film and magnetic sound into a speedy, efficient, and tidy digital process where editing decisions are performed at the touch of a button; the thousands of feet of film are hidden digitally and computers are used to replace some of the human labour surrounding the old environment. Few will argue that these are not huge improvements in the practicability of the post-production process, and that this has contributed to make this process more accessible and attractive to editors, directors, producers, and students alike. Yet, do these technical improvements necessarily encourage editors to approach the raw material with an attitude that will produce the best possible final product, or is it the contrary, that the speed and efficiency can, to some extent, be counterproductive to the editorial process?

The first apparent advantage of digital editing is its inherent speed; the possibility of restructuring a scene almost instantly, or working around a cut by trimming endlessly. Although speed is productive in terms of budgets, it can also work against the creative process of putting together a scene. My personal experience is that sometimes you can get your finger stuck on the trim button trying to sort out a cut, instead of (as an editing teacher once explained to me) making the necessary 'psychological leap' to find out what is not working. This means that in the old cutting room, the laborious mechanical process of rewinding, cutting, and splicing allowed for extra 'thinking time', and in many cases forced the editor to think in advance about the scene as a whole instead of trying endless different possibilities with the inevitable loss of objectivity and good judgement. I am sure that most of us who have cut in these two environments have noticed this difference. Personally, when I cut digitally these days I try not to be seduced by the computer that is asking me to make another cut, but instead sit back and think about the overall feeling I am trying to inject into the scene.

Another tendency when working with computers relates to the way you organise your raw material. In the old days there were two ways of filing your rushes. Some preferred to split the rushes into individual shots and hang them in trim bins or place them in boxes, thus giving easy access to the material. Others preferred to keep related shots - for example by scene - in rolls, and wind through them in search of the desired shot...