EDITING THE DOCUMENTARY
EDITING THE DOCUMENTARY
Editing is bound to be the hardest part for this project, not knowing what to cut, not knowing if I will have enough footage is something I knew I would come across. I started by creating a separate premiere file of the trailer, where the trailer would then go into the documentary, introducing each interviewee.
The plan was it would be quick and snappy, saying who they are what they do - however I made the mistake of getting to use to who they where & kept alot about where they came from etc, after reviewing this with my tutor, he made me realise that my documentary isn't about them, it's about different art forms & I think that opened me up to be able to cut in further down.
The next idea I had was to section questions, I had around 10 questions but decided to group some together and these created 7 sections, I would import a interview take that section of answers for the selected question, import the next one and follow the process untill all the sections where placed down, alongside getting rid of my voice.
This seemed like the easiest way to organise the documentary, with that I started adding music to get more of a feel to the documentary. Adding titles between each sections to idenfity the sections. -
Im currently left with 1hr and 20 minutes of interview footage to cut down & cut down to around 20 minutes if I can, what is a lot of footage.
My next steps as said will be to go through the interviews and get anything about them, about their history out of the project, cut anything that isnt useable and see where abouts that ends in time frame, I would like to cut at least another 30 minutes of today (15/05/2018)
With this I have rendered the 1hr + copy in case I need to come back to it.
After I've re-went over multiple times, I will start to add footage and shape it more together making it more visual, to then collecting more footage either asking for pervious footage from the interviewee that they may have or filming more parts to understand and create a story.
It's now 17/05/18 and I've got the interviews almost down to 30 minutes, exported last night at 40 mins where I went over each single interview and wrote down quick notes on what each person said, where if anything appeared to be the same, i cut off the interview.
The 40 minutes cut that has came from over 1hr 20 mins of interview footage
Where as today im going back through the interview to underline does it really answer the questions, does it tell us about them and their stories or just storytelling in general, does it answer the questions I asked and how can I get the same answer in editing by cutting them down.
After I had done this, I found myself cutting loads out and heading under the 30 minute mark, progressing I constantly went over the footage untill I came down to 27 minutes and this is where I needed to start laying footage and shaping the story.
In the end I also decided to the cut the trailer from the start of the documentary cutting a further minute + , And from their allowed to finalise and adjust music and the opening to the documentary.
I started matching the interviews with footage and of course along the way I would find more sections I could cut, what over time has now got the documentary to 26 minutes, I layed footage over the middle sections as I wanted to keep the intro section and outro section clear of any footage as they where both fast paced sections anyway.
From this I had more footage to work with, as time came in I still needed a lot more footage to make it interesting so I started creating a list where we then moved into the final touches, that the process of that can be viewed via the journal post ''Final touches''
Prior to this, during editing I would also adjust audios, I would add stabiliser effects to clips to make them more clean and smooth and also I used a slow zoom in effect that I used & learn't from my short film edit ''Letters Of Love'' , I would use techniques like over laying audio early before the interviewee came up, creating the viewer to start listening before they see the interviewee.
CONCLUSION
Editing this documentary was a lengthy process but I think getting constant feedback of family was key, understanding what they liked and didn't but overall with it being my biggest project, Im very happy with the outcome, it's a lot different than I thought, but I left with some amazing memories and speakers within the documentary that I feel it will inspire more people do more creative things and understand just what storytelling is.