Don Max

Editing

Born: November 16, 1980

Birthplace: Kottayam, Kerala, India

Don Max is an Indian film editor, who has worked on Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu language films. He is considered one of the leading contemporary film editors in the Malayalam film industry, and has introduced several new editing techniques into the region's films. Beginning his career as an editor for ad films and television channels, Don initially focussed on animation, before realising that he would have a more fulfilling career as an editor the possibilities in editing. He joined Ketan Mehta’s Institute and then worked in the Prime Time channel in Dubai, before beginning working as an editor for the Malayalam channel, Kairali. Don subsequently did trailers for more than fifty films, before debuting as a senior editor through Shaji Kailas’s The Tiger (2005). Don experimented with doing editing at the location, becoming one of the first Malayalam editors to do so, while he also did editing for V. K. Prakash’s Moonnamathoral (2006), the first digital cinema in Malayalam. He simultaneously worked on Tamil film projects and worked on big budget films such as Aadhavan (2009), Sura (2010) and Ponnar Shankar (2011). Don also garnered positive reviews for his work in Jilla (2014), with a critic from Indiaglitz.com noting "Don Max sure is a gifted editor" and "has a very rich taste, evidently shown through the methods he used to connect the scenes". In late 2014, he began his first directorial venture with actor Anoop Menon in the lead role.