The Power of Editing

I'm working on some video content for another post but in the meantime I have an update to a prior blog.  I was listening to the Creative Screenwriting podcast with Grant Nieporte, screenwriter of "Seven Pounds".  He talks about the choice to put the ending scene at the beginning of the film, so I finally got the answer to the question I posed previously.

It seems that Grant wrote the screenplay that way, but it was debated right up to the end exactly how much of the scene would be shown at the opening of the film.  I still think they made the right choice and clearly, based on the interview, it was an editing choice.  This was in fact a case where during the editing the exact moment when a particular cut would be made was changing.  Just a few seconds earlier and instead of knowing what to expect and viewing the entire film with the knowledge of how it will end we would instead be wondering: "Who?"  

Just a few seconds can change the entire tone of a film.  This is the power of editing.