Best of 2018 Go Indie Now Awards..Best Editing in an Indie Film

TOMMY BATTLES THE SILVER SEA DRAGON Edited by Amos Mulder

The idea of a film edit is to make scenes move and transition, sewing seams together that look like they were all shot in one motion or as natural a transition as possible. At least that's what I believe now thanks to Writer/Director/Lead Actor Luke Shirock and Amos Mulder. This is a film that is constructed in an imagination of a character, a tough enough task for any film with a Hollywood budget but go ahead and try it on a micro-indie budget. The vision is so clear in this movie and it is in large part to the moments that go from pseudo real to surrealism to get ready for the way messed acid trip that this film does on a moment's notice. I can't imagine the amounts of cuts and color correcting it took to do that but thanks to Amos I don't have to because it's staring me right in the face.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Editing is often the thing I get most frustrated with in films. Especially in  Hollywood, big budget films that get lazy and think CGI will save them or that the acting is so good you forget they haven't moved in nearly 20 minutes and yet there were 14 angle cuts but no content cuts. Indie films never truly get that luxury but sometimes they are so determined to get a shot they will work tenfold on that one shot. That hurts a film more than it doesn't but with these films they all have moments that you go, 'WTF, how did they do that?' With Shadows in Mind there are spacial violations that characters use to portray fear and push uncomfortable moments and it was crucial for those transitions to work and they do. It also pays attention to degree of details that make all the difference in the world, that I happen to know were done in the edit. Speaking of details, it's all about that for 7 Splinters In Time, a visually stunning film that relays solely on how chaos can be created in static form and the edit provides a lot of those moments. Like Tommy Battles The Silver Sea Dragon, 7 Splinters also has an unique color palette that had to be done almost all in the edit. High & Outside makes this list because of the frenetic pacing it provides at times, a tough edit to be sure, but honestly it really makes this list because it had the most impressive I may have ever seen, and that the edit captures almost flawlessly, involving a baseball leaving a pitcher's hand and making it's way to home plate ( I won't spoil the result of the pitch). Bikini Moon had to be careful in its edit as we have to transition a lot from video camera to big screen movie as it is a film crew capturing moments and a movie capturing them getting these moments. It's done very well to say the least but the moments in which Condola Rashard holds the video camera hostage and then we cut to the crew being held hostage, amazing transition.