In short: It was so much tougher than I imagined.
I have had experience editing in the past and I knew it was a long and tedious process but in reality I had never had a time constraint put on my videos, because they had always been for my own personal use. Having to stick to the time constraint was stressful because even though my interview was just 11 minutes long, I felt everything my subject said had meaning and importance.
My rough cut was 5 Minutes, which I thought was a good start but then when I had to cut it down to 3 I didn’t realize how little time 3 minutes really is. I had to take out portions of my interview which that I really enjoyed and thought were important to telling my story, but in the end, they were not important as the clips I kept.
Having to cut so much out, it really made me realize the power you have as a documentarian. The power you have to control what of what your subject said gets to be heard by the public. Its a daunting and potentially intimidating thing.