Ross: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

It's a Tuesday evening, long after the rest of the creative team has left the building, but the lights are still burning in the editing lab.   An amiable looking man sits at a computer, his face fluctuating between consternation, thoughtful reflection, and flashes of brilliant inspiration.  It's been like this for the last five hours, during which time his hair has progressively gotten bigger and messier as his hands search through its curly strands to find the answers he is looking for.  Ross Swanson is man who knows there are answers; there is a 'best' way to put this film together.  It's not something you can just throw together in any halfway artful way; what would work just fine for most people is just not quite there for him.  He's like the sculptor who sees a pre-existing work in the stone, there before the first chip is chiseled away, waiting to be unveiled.  There is a right way to edit this film, and Ross will get it there, chip by chip, frame by frame until the final work is revealed.

Ross is a bit of an outsider in the community, not conforming to the norms of the cinematic elite.  He has the artistic vision, the appreciation for the deeper things in film, but his approach to movies and film also has a blue-collar air to it.  Unlike so many in his line of work, Ross doesn't sneer at the less erudite, less sophisticated, either in film or in life.  He is decidedly down-to-earth, and mocks the holier-than-thou film critics and connoisseurs for their "douchey" sensibilities.  But for all that, Ross has a complex and refined artistic vision, and the work ethic to tease it out of every work he creates.  Perhaps that is why he such a force in the community, acting, as only he can, as both a shotgun blast and a scalpel incision, a delightfully contradictory mixture of reckless inclusiveness and precise exclusivity that combine in his own work to find the 'right' form.