By Vivek Wadhwa

FITTING THE PIECES.  Duncan explained that in the film industry, there is a common saying: "It's never as good as your dailies, and it's never as bad as the first cut". At the end of the day, when the producers look at the latest scenes, they usually get excited and feel upbeat -- only to encounter inevitable disappointment upon viewing the first cut, which is never as good as hoped. In our case, we didn't even have a real first cut. We had simply assembled a bunch of scenes, and had months of work ahead of us.

So I learned that in the film world, the real magic happens after the klieg lights have dimmed and the set has gone quiet. During film production, you shoot the same scene over and over again from different angles and perspectives. Often you shoot dozens of hours of footage for a single scene. It's like putting together pieces of a puzzle -- except the concept of what the finished puzzle will look like is forever fuzzy, always changing.

Editing begins by peeling away all the elements of the film, including the sound and colors, and reconstructing the story frame by frame. Essentially, the film is "reprogrammed" by using individual parts. Deciding which frames to use, and the sequence in which these are strung together, is an art in itself. That's why post-production editors, working in partnership with the director, make huge bucks fixing movies.

NOW THEY CHEER.  The next step is color correction. There are always minor differences in the colors and brightness when shooting on film. It is a meticulous process to adjust and tune each frame. Then there is the background music, which sends the subtle signals that cue the viewers on when to get excited, happy, sad, or afraid. The edited film needs to have been "designed for sound". At this stage, another very talented individual, the music director takes over, and builds a soundtrack to match the film. Having a great soundtrack on its own never "makes" a film, but a bad soundtrack can lead to failure. Think of it as the moment when a potent spice is added that gives the film its distinct flavor.

In our film, even though this was a Hollywood production being created for Western audiences, the setting was in Bollywood. We couldn't have a Bollywood-based film without the song and dance sequences. So we had the extra challenge of integrating Indian music into our Western production.

It was clear that we had a lot of work cut out for us. Duncan decided to prove the point to me by reediting the 15-minute preview. He cut this down to 6 minutes, mixed in new music, and to my amazement we had a very interesting trailer that immediately got rave reviews. How I wish we could do this with computer software! But at least my friends continue to return my phone calls as I grew more and more eager to see the final cut and get it out to movie theaters all over the world.

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