One is their taking--and its success is based upon your use of exposure, focusing, camera angles, continuity, filters, and the like.

The second phase is the showing of movies-- and, as there is more to the taking of movies than merely popping the film into a camera and pressing the exposure lever, so is there more to the showing of movies than threading short lengths of processed film into a projector and pressing a switch.

Let's assume that you, and several of your friends, take a trip. You all see the same sights and sites, bring back a comparable mental record of your experiences--amusing, provoking, and boring. And yet, when you are all together months later with others who are anxious to hear of your journey, one of your group will relate the most entrancing story--using the same material available to you all, but presenting it so skillfully that you, yourself, give rapt attention.

But he is a born raconteur, you protest?

Not at all! You doubtless have other friends who can spin yarns with the most devastating effect upon the risibilities. "A natural storyteller," is the popular verdict--again, it is wrong. That smooth flowing, mirth-provoking, and casually delivered account is the result of countless other deliveries, many of which have probably gone very, very sour, from which he has learned the technic that is now disarmingly unappearant. He studies each audience in advance, decides to drop a line here, stress an inflection there, pause dramatically at this point, step up the tempo at the climax. In short, he edits.

And so should every movie story be edited. The impossibility of achieving perfection with each and every scene on the counts of exposure, focusing, and scene length is manifest. Some of your film must be discarded. Even if every scene is perfectly exposed, one or two may be overlong. Almost inevitably some rearranging of scenes will be heplful. Probably a title or two will add interest and coherence.

For home movie editing is really fun. It's a challenge--not to your patience--but to your ingenuity. The films you show in your home are valuable to you in good part becuase you exposed them and are responsible for their good qulities. And if you make them better by editing, there is just that much more of which you can be justly proud.

Perhaps so, you may reply, but I haven't the time to spare to spend countless hours over a splicing block.

Truthfully--it doesn't take "countless hours". And those hours it does require will seem like minutes.