The editing room is like the confessional. There’s just nowhere to hide your mistakes, your conceit or your assumptions.
As we get down into the nitty gritty of editing Yolanda’s Last Portrait we’ve realised we are not making the film we set out to make. This revelation causes issues – for one it has exposed the flaws in our filmmaking. We committed the cardinal sin of assumption.
We thought we knew the story before we even switched on the camera and we carried that assumption through our filming and now it has come back to bite us.
But the beauty of true stories is how no matter how we try to manipulate to suit our own agendas the truth wants out. While the camera lies with every frame, it conversely also reveals the truth. It takes an editor as finely tuned as Cushla Dillon to allow that truth to out. And we grateful to her.