I EDITED A FILM AT SXSW. IT WON THE AUDIENCE AWARD! HERE’S WHAT I LEARNED
When I made my first film, my dream was to get into one of the top film festivals. I called them the “Big Six”: Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, TIFF, Cannes, Tribeca. There are of course MANY more amazing festivals, but those were the ones I was really gunning for at the time. You can imagine how disappointed and crushed I was when I received crystal clear rejection letters from each one.
Every year since then, I have both made and worked on projects that have been submitted to these same festivals, and it has taken me over a decade to finally be part of one that has made it into one of the Big Six. That’s when I edited a short film titled Sweetbriar, by director Danny Rivera, which premiered at the SXSW film festival in 2025 and won the AUDIENCE AWARD in the Texas Short category.
So in this blog, I wanted to discuss what I learned from editing this film, and impart any nuggets of wisdom I may have to share with my old discouraged self from twelve years ago.
It’s all about the story, not the budget.
It’s all about the story. One of the coolest things about working on Sweetbriar is that it was one of the most bare-bones productions I’ve been a part of. The director din’t spend a dime on locations or cast - he filmed in his childhood home in Houston, Texas and the only actor in his film was his mother. It’s also important to note that his mother is not a trained actor, but he wanted to make a film about her, so it felt natural for him to cast her in the film.
On top of this, his on-set crew was only comprised of the essentials: A cinematographer, a gaffer, a boom operator and an assistant director. When looking at the other short films that premiered at SXSW, it was crazy to see how many crew members some of these films had - upwards of 40 crew members! So it was quite astonishing that Sweetbriar was able to compete alongside them with a fraction of the crew size.
This taught me a very valuable lesson - it’s not about the money you spend, but it’s about the quality of the story. In the case of Sweetbriar, it’s a story that was very personal to the director, Danny. Shot in his home, featuring his mother, it had an emotional weight to it that leaped off the screen. Danny clearly made this film as a tribute to his mother, and as a result, it felt unlike anything else in the SXSW lineup. Some of the best films are those that feel like they could not have been made by any other filmmaker - and this is absolutely how Sweetbriar feels to me. It’s only a story that Danny could have made, because it’s so unique to his own life.
So if you feel like you don’t have enough money, or know enough people to make a good film, just know that it’s not any of those external metrics that will allow your film to be recognized by one of the top festivals in the world. It’s all about telling a story that comes from the heart.
Brevity is powerful
What was really fun about editing this film is that it was almost shot like a documentary. Don’t get me wrong, there was a script, but the film is mainly about the mother getting the house ready for her son to visit. So there were a lot of scenes of her cleaning the house, cooking and getting ready, which feels very much like an observational documentary. As a result, they shot a lot of footage.
It was then my job, as the editor, to take all this footage and turn it into a powerful, engaging story. My process was to go scene-by-scene. I would read a scene from the script, and then choose the shots that would most effectively tell that story. This led to a pretty passable first cut of the film.
I shared the cut with Danny, the director, who gave me an invaluable piece of feedback. “I’d like the film to be around 5 min, even if that sounds crazy.” The current cut was 11:38. So I needed to try and remove about half of the runtime.
At first, this felt kind of crazy because that was A LOT of footage to eliminate or condense, and I wasn’t sure if you could tell the same story, as scripted, without all that runtime. However, it turned out to be quite the opposite. Not only could I tell the same story, but it became a lot more effective without that extra runtime. Because what ended up happening was that we had a movie that had no dead weight. I started getting really critical about which shots NEEDED to stay, instead of which shots COULD stay. By only preserving what I needed, the film came to life and was able to keep audiences engaged. We didn’t get to a 5 min runtime in the end, but we got it to a 7 min runtime which I can confidently say could not possibly be any shorter.
When editing a film, cut it down to the bare essentials, even if it means losing shots you might be precious about. Only keep what is necessary to tell your story - you’ll be amazed at how much more effective it is.
A good composer is worth their weight in gold
I’m very proud of my editing work in the film, but if there’s one element of post production that I feel brought the film to another level - it was the composer, Iran Garcia. He did something quite magical with the film, in a way that’s hard to describe. When I was editing the film, I used what’s called “Temp Music” - meaning I found stock music from an online library and used that to score the film. This helps me tremendously with my editing process. I knew what sort of music Danny was looking to use, so I found similar tracks and cut the movie to the rhythm of those tracks. It gave the edit a certain pace that was in line with what he envisioned.
However, once Danny brought the composer on board, the film went from being good to special. To be perfectly clear, I actually thought the stock library music was quite good. But something unique happens when a composer scores to your specific edit. Every cut blends in more seamlessly, every shot feels more emotionally resonant - it just weaves all elements of the film together beautifully, in a way that the stock music can’t.
Think of it this way - adding stock music is like wearing a suit off the rack. Finding a composer is like wearing a bespoke suit (I’m currently suit-shopping for my wedding, so trust me I know).
For any future project that I direct that I will want to submit to film festivals, I will be sure to dedicate a portion of the post production budget to finding a good composer.
It’s okay to take your time
On the surface, Sweetbriar is a short film. With a runtime of 7 min, it would be easy to assume that it was a relatively quick post production process. However, the whole post production process took about 5 months. Not to belabor the point, but that’s almost half a year.
Another easy assumption would be that, because it was a 7 min short film, you wouldn’t need to have too many notes. Sweetbriar was 8 rounds of feedback, with a total of 157 notes (yes, I logged them). And that’s just for the editing - not to mention notes for the score, sound mixing and color.
If you want your film to be the best it can be, no matter whether it’s a feature film or a short film, you need to take your time with the film so that you can continuously improve on it over time. It’s the same as writing. A common piece of advice for writers is to write a little bit every day. If you write one page a day for a hundred days, after the 100th day, the quality of what you wrote will likely be a lot better than if you tried to cram a hundred pages in a few days. Because by doing it little by little, you’re allowing yourself the time and space to focus on each element and get it right.
If there’s an element of your film that you don’t feel is working, don’t just leave it and hope people won’t notice, because they will. Take all the time required to adjust it until it feels good to you.
