Cindy Lee (Alum, January 2005)

Editor, Manhattan, Kansas (Audience Award, SXSW 2006)

Before I came to the Edit Center, I was working a corporate job, which was my first "real" job out of school.  It took me a year and a half to realize that it was not the place for me and be brave enough to quit my job. I had taken some film production classes while I was in college and had fallen in love with editing then, but had never thought that it could be a viable career option. Once I quit my corporate job, I knew that I had to at least try to find a way to become an editor. I found the Edit Center online, enrolled, and once classes started I knew that I had come to the right place. I don't think there is any better way to learn to edit than the full immersion that The Edit Center provides, with knowledgeable instructors ready to help you at any moment and the invaluable experience of working one-on-one with a director to shape a scene. Once the class was finished, I was lucky enough to be asked to edit one of the films we worked on in class. I worked two non-editing part time jobs to pay my rent while cutting that first feature. A few months later I was able to quit both of those jobs and get paid work as a full time editor. Since then, I haven't looked back. The six week class was by far one of best learning experiences I've ever had, and I am still grateful for the network of students and teachers who are my friends and peers to this day. There is really no way I could have gotten this far in my career this quickly without The Edit Center. 

Cindy was an editor on the Oscar-nominated documentary, No End in Sight. In 2014, she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Editing for her work on Una Noche (Berlin 2012). She was also an editor on Hot Coffee (Sundance 2011), Hotel Gramercy Park (Tribeca 2008) and Manhattan, Kansas (SXSW 2006). As an assistant, she worked on Half Nelson (Sundance 2006).