Part of the Process

London-born film and television editor Colin Goudie has just finished working on the independent British sci-fi film Monsters, and we caught up with him to discuss the differences between cutting for the big and small screens.

While studying at Bournemouth Film School, Colin Goudie had every intention of becoming a director. “I wanted to be a director, but I always found that I had these very high expectations of what I was going to achieve. As you were filming, your expectations of what you were trying to achieve got lower. I found that being a director was not a creative process, it was a compromise process, and being an editor was a creative process. You are starting off with something that is unwatchable and in the end you are making a film that is watchable. By the time I graduated I knew I wanted to be an editor.”

The day after Goudie graduated he got an interview at the BBC and was accepted out of thousands of applicants for a place as a trainee assistant editor. “The ones that were competent, the editor would spend time talking to and showing their skills. Also, sitting in the back of the cutting room, you’re learning the director-editor relationship by observation. The very first thing I worked on was a TV film called An Englishman Abroad, with Alan Bates, which was directed by John Schlesinger and won the BAFTA for the best TV film. For me it was like nirvana. I’d literally go off to screenings to watch the prints and things on my own with John Schlesinger.”