CHAPTER 13 EDITING: FROM START TO VIEWING THE FIRST ASSEMBLY
Editing: Process and Procedures
Editor and Director’s Viewing Session
The Only Film Is in the Dailies
Making Transcripts and a Workaround Solution
Assembling a Visually Driven Film
Time and Structural Alternatives
Story Structures Need Development
Developing the Structure of Your Film
Finding an Action-Determined Structure
Finding a Speech-Based Narrative Structure
Screening the First Assembly and Return to Innocence
The Documentary Maker as Dramatist
After the Dust Settles, What Next?
CHAPTER 14 EDITING: THE PROCESS OF REFINEMENT
The Audience as Active Participants
Mono- and Bidirectional Attention
Diagnosis: Making a Flow Chart
Surviving Your Critics and Making Use of What They Say
CHAPTER 15 EDITING: FROM FINE CUT TO SOUND MIX
Postsynchronizing Dialogue (ADR)
Recreating Sound Effects in the Foley Studio
Equalization (EQ) and What the Sound Mix Can Do
Dialogue Tracks and the Problem of Inconsistencies
Atmospheres and Background Sound
Comparative Levels: Err on the Side of Caution
CHAPTER 16 TITLES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Editing a documentary is really the second chance to direct it. Seldom does a film follow the kind of scripting through time that determines shooting a fictional story. Often there’s a considerable plasticity to documentary material, and I have finished shooting more than one film without any clear idea of how I should assemble it. What determines a film’s structure—if you haven’t been able to predetermine it—arises out of the nature and emphases in the material. Editing becomes like making a picture from found objects. Individually and in juxtaposition, they suggest what pictures are possible, and you start experimenting. Such searching and experimenting in the cutting room usually arises because shooting has taken its own pathways and turned out differently from what you expected. Life is random, and films about life often have to be shot opportunistically and ad hoc.
This part supplies a set of operations that will give you optimal conditions in which to search for the wood among the trees. Your film’s identity and purpose will emerge as you work on it—a truly fascinating experience for most people. The process culminates in making a final sound track and adding titles. Now you have your first documentary and can show it to audiences for a reaction.