Quotes

My earliest cognition of editing occurred at the age of eight in, of all places, Saudi Arabia, where television shows are heavily censored to remove even the slightest reference to sexuality. One day I became aware of all these narrative interruptions: inexplicable gaps that disrupted love scenes and rendered stories virtually incoherent. I became curious about these 'missing parts' and was soon preoccupied by a secret wish to soften the brutality of these jarring cuts.

I've always felt that film editing is very close to music composition because an editor manipulates time and deals with intangible things like tone, rhythm, and pacing, all of which are felt on an unconscious level and exert an undeniably powerful influence on the viewer. When an audience laughs or cries--the power doesn't just come from the story, the image or the performance, but from the way that all these elements are combined, layered and juxtaposed.