#pre-editing

OK, so firstly I want to say that the sad truth is that there IS a lot of tedious work involved in editing, it’s a part of the process. You need footage, backgrounds, music, masks, a storyboard (more or less), maybe other types of audio or notes depending on how big the project is and so forth. And that can take a really long time.

Just a few days ago, I spent most of my day making Wendy masks (20 masks in more or less 9 hours) and that’s part of the “pre-editing” progress so to speak. I personally at least consider actual masking work to be in the same category as collecting movies, making backgrounds and such. While the actual “editing progress” is the final manips, putting the manips together to make a consistent video, etc.

You need to collect material to make a video, you can’t make a video out of nothing, and collecting material DOES take a long time. The only real advice I can give you are these:

- Save all material you collect. Backgrounds you’ve made or found? SAVE THEM, I don’t care how obscure they are, there’s nothing more annoying than knowing you created/found something for an earlier project and then deleted it, but then discovered later that you need the exact same thing and have to redo/find it again. SAVE EVERYTHING.

- See if someone else has already made what you need, or see if you can ask a fellow editor to help. There’s masks and backgrounds giveaways on YouTube, tumblr and probably other websites as well. If you feel like you don’t have the patience for the collecting progress of editing, try and skip the skippable parts :)

- Try and have fun with the collecting progress. While it’s not always the most fun part of editing for a lot of people, try and find a way how to make it enjoyable for yourself so it doesn’t feel as long and tedious. Make a game of it if you can, time yourself: “How many backgrounds can I find in this ONE movie?”

This is not a cookbook. Not really.  

This is a book about people as much as it is about eating. About eating with friends — and cooking for friends — and why that matters so much. Allow me to paint you a picture: We are in Springfield, Virginia, and it is late spring. I am at Justin’s house, and we have just returned from walking the dogs, Oki, Erin, and Jasper. We went through the park today, on a path that cuts through the woods, and wraps around a playground. We got back to the house just as it began to storm, a real pre-summer thunderstorm, complete with whipping winds and, I kid you not, tumbleweeds that crossed our path.

The dogs have settled down and Justin and I begin to make dinner. We have broken the cardinal rule of never shopping when hungry and, as a result, we have enough groceries to feed ten people. Probably more. We have ciabatta rolls with Brie and Gouda, and there is a truffled liver mousse that I will eat all by myself since Justin is vegetarian. We have made a large pitcher of Sangria and I do not even want to think about how much sugar and alcohol it contains. Our backs are to one another but I can hear him slicing brussel sprouts that he will soon sauté in an exorbitant amount of butter. Every so often I hear the crunch of blue tortilla chips, the ones we bought as a pre-dinner snack because our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. I have just slid lemon pappardelle into a pot of boiling water, and a cloud of lemon steam immediately wafts through the kitchen.  

The last time we cooked together was at Thanksgiving, in our friend Eric’s tiny kitchen. Eric lives alone and rarely cooks so it was certainly a challenge cooking Thanksgiving dinner for six in a kitchen with but one spatula, two bowls, and no kitchen staples. That was the day I accidentally threw a handful of breadcrumbs into a saucepan of poached pears. I thought I had reached into the bag of raw sugar.  

 Justin and I do not cook together often, but I am comfortable working by his side. The kitchen is quiet, save for the sound of the television in the next room and the jingle of one of the dogs’ tags as they occasionally walk through the kitchen to check for fallen food.  

We watch some show about ghosts while we eat. Justin enjoys ghost stories as much as I do. Later, we will watch a movie and I will fall asleep in a blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream-induced coma with a dog nestled in my lap.  

Yes, I love food. I adore all aspects of food:  sharing it, reading about it, discussing it, cooking it, photographing it, hell, I even enjoy thinking about enjoying food. And, while this book is just as much about me as it is about food (I know, what a vain thing to say), it is more about what food means to me. It is about the people in my life and how my memories of them are stronger through the simplicity of sharing a meal.As Laurie Colwin, American food writer extraordinnaire, eloquently said, “One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.”