A Film Editor's View on 2021
It seems that these past two years have melted into one. Basically, I feel exactly like the people in the TikTok below.
I am, however, a nostalgic person and I value yearly retrospectives.
From a personal point of view, 2021 was quite a confusing year. Unlike the stereotypical editor sequestered in their studio, I am quite an extroverted person. I love travelling, going to concerts, seeing friends and discussing all things related to personal life, science, philosophy and everything in between. The restrictions and uncertainty made everything harder for me, especially since I couldn’t visit my family as often as I wanted to, as they live in Romania.
On the bright side, I was slowly able to push myself out of my comfort zone. I made myself go to some live events. I was also able to go back home for a while in the latter part of the year. All my family members are healthy and, to be completely honest, that’s all that matters right now. As long as I can see my family and I know they are safe, I can live and wait for all the other bits and pieces of life to come back to me.
I’m looking forward to the future. I refuse to believe that things won’t get better, that we won’t be able to enjoy the pleasures of life forever. We are slowly getting there and I will leave it to the cynics to believe the worst. I choose hope even now.
As an editor, I am the third storyteller in the making of a film, after the writer and the director. At DragonLight, where I work, we mostly create documentary and promotional films. This means I watch hours of recorded interviews, write down the best sound bites and order them to create a cohesive story. In the past, I even used to listen to all the interviews and write down a transcript myself, which would be time consuming. However, with the new version of Adobe Premiere, this can now be done automatically, saving so much time! Honestly, this is the best gift that I could ever receive from Adobe in 2021.
Last year brought quite a few big projects to a satisfying conclusion. First of all, we finished the first batch of videos for the Royal Society of Chemistry, the videos for 14 to 16-year-olds (corresponding to GCSE students here in the UK), after filming them in 2020. You can check out a link with the full playlist here. The latter half of the year brought with it the filming and completion of the RSC videos for A-Level students, which you can watch here.
Secondly, 2021 also brought to a conclusion the Hinxton Hall History film trilogy, a collaboration with the Wellcome Connecting Science team. The final video of the series, Code of Life, presents the timeline of events surrounding the Human Genome Project from the 1990s until today. This is my favourite video out of all three, as it promotes free open access to scientific knowledge. Also I was so happy to discover John Sulston's interviews in the Wellcome Collection in order to bring his words, and ultimately his values, back to life in this short documentary. You can also watch the live event that showcased the video’s premiere below.
Finally, I was able to feed my interest in science through two fantastic projects that we created for the Isaac Newton Institute (INI), University of Cambridge and the AKU Society. The former was a series of four videos: the main film was a 4-minute short piece on the role, goals and values of INI, and the other three were short interviews with mathematicians who attended programs and workshops at INI. It was fascinating to discover the wonders of mathematics through these passionate people. Meeting driven individuals who love their work always motivates me in my filmmaking endeavours.
For the AKU Society, I was the sound recordist and editor of a short documentary titled Alkaptonuria (AKU): A Rare Story of Hope. It is a heartwarming story about the journey of discovering a treatment for Alkaptonuria, and how the society managed to organise the biggest clinical trial for such a rare genetic disease. This is one of the films that I am most proud of bringing to life in 2021.
And, let’s not forget, there is always room for changing the world for the better and films have the power to do that! For example, our Six Inches of Soil project is due for its crowdfunder soon. There is change waiting on our doorstep and I am happy to be part of the team that’s bringing awareness to it.
Even though the last few years melted into a pot of confusing times, there’s a lot to do and a lot to look forward to. In the words of Cambridge’s own Stephen Hawking:
“However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.”
People usually say that the more you know, the more depressed you get, but I always found that to be untrue. What brings hopelessness is actually knowing enough to understand that terrible things happen in the world, but not enough to know how to solve them. Therein lies the sorrow. That’s why I always want to learn new things and listen to new perspectives from different people. And, lucky enough, being the editor at a production company specialised in documentary making satisfies my desire for knowledge.