Documentary editing : principles and practice

Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Construction of Meaning in Documentaries
	Principles of Documentary Editing
	Your Documentary Editing Panel
Part I Setting the Stage for a Successful Edit
	1 Planning Your Schedule
		Documentary Schedules: How Many Weeks?
	2 Organizing Your Footage
		Organizing the Files on the Hard Drive
		Bringing the Files into the NLE
		Run a Test
		Backing Up
		Organizing Footage
		Organizing Archival Material
		Alternate “Binning” Strategies
		Documents You Will Need
	3 Everyday Work Practices
		Work in Stages
		Focus
		The Vital Importance of Taking Breaks
		Duplicate and Archive: Leaving a Trail of Breadcrumbs Behind You
		Scraps Sequences and Alternate Shots
		The Director–Editor Relationship: Working Together and Working Alone
Part II Finding Patterns
	4 Viewing and Digesting
	5 Making Select Reels
		Creating Source-Based Select Reels
		Creating Topic-Based Select Reels
	6 Refining Select Reels
		Drawing Initial Conclusions About Your Narrative from Your Select Reels
		A Fork in the Road
Part IIIA Constructing and Refining Scenes
	7 Evidentiary Editing: Building Interview-Based Scenes
		Constructing the Framework: Anchor with Audio
		Finding “Hinge Clips”
		Stitch Together the Seams with Cutaways
		Smoothing Edits
	8 Verité Editing: Building Observational Scenes
		Build Up or Trim Down: Two Options for Finding “The Good Bits”
		Invisible or Self-Referential?
		Microbeats: Sculpting Human Behavior Onscreen
		Body Language
		Verité Cutaways
		Workarounds for Insufficient Cutaway Material
		Making Amalgam Scenes
		Integrating Audio from Unrelated Scenes
		Mixing Evidentiary and Verité Editing with the “Pop-in” Moment
	9 Building Montages
		Media Montages
Part IIIB Building the Rough Cut
	10 Choosing and Framing Footage
		A Hierarchy of Experience
		A Hierarchy of Intervention
		The Limits of Verité
	11 The Fundamentals of Narrative
		Characters
		Conflict
		Progression
		Other Ways of Constructing Progression
		Text and Subtext
		Experimentation
	12 Working with Narrative
		The First Scene
		The Beginning
		The Middle
		Endings
		Reshoots
		Creating Meaning Through Association and Juxtaposition
		Alternative Approaches to Narrative
	13 Working with Details
		Music
		Archival Material and Stock Shots
		Reenactments
		Graphics and Animations
		Lower Thirds
		Location Cards
		Subtitles
	14 Working with Time
		Marking Time
		Rhythm
		Pacing
		Dynamics
		Pauses
		Transitions
Part IV The Refining Process
	15 Feedback and Revision
		Evaluating the Work and Taking Direction
		Why Hold a Rough Cut Screening?
		Tips for a Successful Rough Cut Screening
		Interpreting Notes
		Clarity Is King
		Trimming Scenes Down
		Cutting Scenes to Remove Redundancy
		Cutting Scenes to Improve Narrative or Emotional Logic
	16 Fine Cut to Final Cut and Beyond
		Removing Unnecessary Pauses and Utterances
		Inspecting and Improving Cutaways
		Moving Backwards: Overcutting and How to Avoid It
		Picture Lock and Beyond
Part V Seeing It All Come Together: Analyses of Four Films
	17 Analyses of Two Feature Documentaries
		My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
		An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
	18 Analyses of Two Short Documentaries
		Skip (2011)
		Hotel 22 (2014)
Appendix A: List of Films Cited
Appendix B: Case Studies of Schedules for Feature Documentaries
Appendix C: Documents You Will Need
Index