We've asked each member of our production team to write up a blog post introducing themselves to you, and here's the first one! We'll be doing this as a series of Meet the Team posts over the next couple weeks, so stay tuned to hear what all the other team members have to say. First, though, we're introducing our own lovely editor. Her name is changing in two weeks to Emily Curtin (congratulations, Em, we're all so excited for you and Ryan!) but today we introduce her as Emily Maysilles.
The Editor.
Lindsay kept talking about this idea, to walk some trail in Spain and collect people's stories. And she kept talking about it until it became this constant theme.
Finally, one night as I was passing through Winton on my way from somewhere to somewhere and using her couch as a hotel, she popped the question: "If I can make this, do you want to cut it?"
"Well, yeah," I said with a smile. "I really really do."
I didn't know I wanted to be an editor. In high school I wandered through all the performing and visual arts convinced one week that I would be an actor, the next that I would either be a playwright or a timpanist, OR MAYBE BOTH!
Junior year I got stuck in a "media" class which basically served the function of sometimes producing school news and otherwise handing out easy A's. The very first class, I got assigned to edit a piece for school news because nobody else wanted to. It was a brilliant addition to the canon of world cinema: a story shot in echoey too-wide shots entitled "What Was Your Favorite Summer Movie." The bad sound and the too-wide shots were an aesthetic, you see.
Even though this was a piece full of high schoolers talking about The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, it was the piece that brought my attention to editing. Here, finally, was a logical art. An art that required some technological wizardry as well as primal storytelling ability. An art that made sense and made beauty out of the chaos.
I went to UNCSA to pursue this love of filmmaking and editing. That's where I met Lindsay, in our Philosophy of Religion course. I thought she was cool, we hung out, I also met this girl Brittni who was really passionate about cinematography and also very cool. At the end of that semester, Lindsay and I pulled an all-nighter at the local Waffle House writing philosophy papers and watching the cycles of the night. After that, our friendship was cemented.
My third year at UNCSA kicked off a period in my life when the concept of home was a bit elusive. I went to Austin and NYC to work crazy, heady weeks at rock festivals. I went to Seattle to assist and study under the renowned photographer Elaine Mayes who was putting together a documentary project about her own mentor. I went to San Francisco to do video at a music studio. I went back home to Atlanta and found a few freelance gigs, then I turned right around and went out to New Hampshire to work for Florentine Films, aka Ken Burns' studio.
When I came back to Atlanta after that, it was because I wanted to. I missed my home. I missed the sunny South and the beat of this crazy city. I also missed the man who will become my husband in just a few short weeks.
I can say with some force of certainty that Atlanta is my home, for now. That experience of finding my home and my place gives me compassion for the pilgrims on the Camino who are asking the same kinds of questions I was asking. Where do I belong? What is my place? What is my purpose?
The scope of this project is enormous. The questions are huge. It's exactly the kind of grandiose thing I like to sink my teeth into.
You can email Emily at ecurtin@travelightfilm.com, if you have any questions for her or just want to talk. Want to see more of her work? Find it at http://emilymaysilles.com/