Editing Day (Less that 12 hours to submit)

In frame Alvin : Posing while still being 'The Busy Bee'

The process of getting the clutter of hours of footage in interviews and another few hours of cinematics into a sensible 8 minutes of horror documentary content was another horror in itself.

Our Sound Guy was hard at work collecting sounds to tie our footage together and also creating the blog that was required for our assignment.

Rolling between what was said by our dear interviewees and connecting the pieces with the help of our Producer was for me one of the most intense parts of the entire experience. There were several moments of silent regrets and despair. Even when all hope seemed lost and time was ticking away, we still managed to pull ourselves together with the motivation of snacks and pizza. Even in the very last minute we were gathering shots to add into a tightly packed timeline.

Showing an audience the culmination of all our hard work over the course of several weeks was no easy task and along the way, The Catalyst has slowly stolen a part of me.

The whole process over all was so exhausting but exciting at the same time. So life-draining but exhilarating at the same time.

But every exhausting step was one step closer to our masterpiece. The real combination of all our collective ideas, effort and creative thinking brought us to our final draft of “The Truth We Almost Hid” and we couldn’t be happier with the result.

All this last minute chaos really got me thinking. If we were able to pull this off with the limited amount of time that we had, imagine what we could have done with more.

-Words straight from our AD and Editor: Alvin Samuel

Working on this documentary as the sound person was honestly one of the most intense but valuable learning experiences I’ve had. From the very beginning, when we were still discussing the concept, I realized how much teamwork actually goes into shaping a single idea. During the shoots, my responsibility was to capture clean and meaningful audio for every interview, every ambient moment, and every emotional shift and I learned very quickly how sound can completely change the feeling of a scene. I became more aware of microphone placement, background noise, and how different spaces affect audio quality. The real test came during editing; that day felt horrible and stressful because we were working with very limited time. I was jumping between finding the right sound effects, choosing music, and fixing small audio issues while the editor was cutting everything at high speed. Even though it was chaotic, the process taught me patience, problem-solving, and how much pressure goes into finishing a documentary on time. In the end, it made me appreciate how sound is not just a technical role it’s a huge part of storytelling.

-Words from our Sound Engineer: Huzaifa Mujahid