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My name is Kate Mitchell and I am 43 years old. I was born in England but moved to the US in 1989 at the age of 21 to live as my dad was posted there for his work.
When I first moved to the US I lived in Kansas City for a number of years before moving to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to attend University to study film-making. I always knew I wanted to do something in the film and entertainment industry but sadly at the time I was not committed enough to the studying and dropped out! I then moved from the freezing cold of Michigan to the sunny climate of Florida where I lived till I moved back to the UK in 2007.
Whilst I lived in Florida I did numerous jobs as a customer service rep for big corporations that I hated with a passion! I also had a couple of years as a pizza delivery driver! Through all of my varied jobs I knew that I was still destined somewhere down the road of my life to do something creative. I tried my hand at script writing, novel writing, art, photography, all resulting in nothing I felt I had a talent or a real passion for.
Then in 2006 I found a lump in my left breast! I had an operation to remove the lump and happily was told that the lump was benign. Needless to say this was a great relief. But within a week of my operation I began to have major pain and swelling at the surgery site. The doctors concluded that I had a major infection within the biopsy site and would require another operation to prevent the infection spreading, lucky me!
The operation was performed and I was told to return to the surgeons office in two weeks time to have the stitches removed. Two days after the second surgery the stitches popped of their own accord and when I returned to the doctor he informed me that he could not re stitch the site and I was going to have to just leave the wound open and let it heal of it's own accord! Long story short, I went through nearly 3 months of pain and weekly trips to the wound care centre before the open wound was healed completely!
During this time I could not work so I spent my days at home watching all the movies I could rent from NetFlix! One of the movies I watched was Fingersmith. I fell in love with the movie and watched it numerous times. I decided that I wanted to find out some information on the movie and it's actresses, so went online and did a google search. Thanks to that search I found the wonderful world of YouTube, a site I had never been to before. I found videos for Fingersmith that people had made into music videos. One in particular was so beautiful I watched it over and over again, loving the passion and the way the person had edited it. I contacted the person who made the video and asked them how they did it. She informed me that she had downloaded the clips and used a simple editing software to make it.
I decided that I would give it a try, I mean what did I have to loose, I was off sick, bored out of my mind and needing something to fill my days as I recuperated. I found the necessary copy of Fingersmith online and downloaded it. I realized I had editing software on my computer in the form of the included Windows Movie Maker. I was set, I knew the song I wanted to use and began my first editing project!
I believe I worked about 9 hours in all on my first video Baby Can I Hold You. I was determined that I wanted the video to reflect the lyrics of the song by Tracy Chapman which I felt told the story of Sue and Maude so well. The editing was certainly very rough! I incorporated some of the cheesy special effects that came with the software. But for my first ever attempt at editing I was pleased with it. I launched the video on YouTube and waited to see what the response would be like.
I began getting great feedback from viewers. They loved the fact that the songs lyrics told the story and that the clips seemed to fit the lyrics so well. This is something that I have tried to achieve in all of my videos since. Something I believe sets me apart from some of the other great video makers out there.
I decided that this was something that I wanted to do again, but with better software. So I went and bought a $50 box of editing software from Best Buy.
Armed with my new and better editing software I began work on my next video for Fingersmith, Crazy Love. This time I chose a male singer, Van Morrison but realized after editing the video in order to make the viewer believe that the lyrics were specifically from one characters point of view I would need to stick to female singers. Other than 2 videos I have stuck to this rule.
I was hooked on the editing process, I had finally found my talent and passion. I continued editing, resulting in 30 videos in all so far. I also launched my own website as I kept getting banned from YouTube due to my racy Tipping The Velvet videos!
I found great pleasure in bettering my techniques as I made each video, and my time on each video increased from 9 hours to up to 60 hours on some of them! I have always tried to edit so that the viewer has an experience when they view one of my videos. Be it to visually please them with the effects, or to cause them to feel a range of emotions within themselves as they watch one of my videos. But most of all I want the viewer to want to hit play again because they love the video and it's music choice.
I decided when I was editing Bad Girls Behind These Hazel Eyes that I wanted to seriously follow my passion for editing and return back to college to study.
So I made the massive life changing choice to return to the UK and attend college at SAE Institute in Glasgow to study Digital Film Production.
I sold my house in Florida, found homes for all of my animals except for Frosty who was my soul kitty and bought us both tickets back to the UK.
I arrived from the tropical weather of Florida to the cold, wet climate of Glasgow on October the 18th 2007. I enrolled to start college in March of 2008. My new life was off and running and I was finally going to accomplish my destiny that I had blown after dropping out of University in Michigan.
As seems to be the way my life goes, health issues intervened again and caused me to take a break from college within a couple of months of starting!
From the second week I arrived in Glasgow I was plagued with recurring ear and sinus infections that left me physically drained and deaf in my right ear for months at a time. I started college in March and was able to make my first student film. By the start of my next project I was ill more times than I was healthy! I decided to defer my studies till my health issues could be resolved.
It took 2 years with the help of the NHS to finally realize that I needed to have some major sinus surgery performed to help alleviate all of my health problems. On August 10th of 2010 I went in for sinus surgery.
After nearly a months recuperation, (who knew sinus surgery could knock you on your ass!) I am to return to college September 6th 2010!
I have taken the month of recuperation to build this site from the ground up, and am now finally ready and healthy to continue on the creative journey towards my destiny to be a professional editor.
Please come with me on this journey as I continue my studies, make my own films and if time allows making some more music videos for great movies and shows.
Kate Mitchell