Cutting & Ordering Footage

When editing It became obvious to us that we had a lot of footage, much of it was filled with great content but we cannot use it all. Some of our favourite shots and interview moments will have to be cut down on what used. Through this process of cutting down the footage it has become apparent to me that what we see as good footage can sometimes stray from the message of the documentary or changed tone or outcome. For this reason I believe this process has been helpful to us all as we can now say we have the best of footage rather than just what was good. In this blog post I will be going through Some of the footage in which you liked but were unable to use and how we came to the decision of what was and was not to be used.

One moment that really struck out to us in the interview was when Janaan discusses a blackout which she suffered although this is a good moment that takes us into the mileage and on it also overlaps with the art footage which shows these feelings rather than using spoken word. We chose to show rather than say and this is why the story had to be cut. The story also had a comical element and although it was a moment of humour it took away from the overall tone of the documentary and to make sure that's personality is not lost we have kept in some moments of lightheartedness but stayed away from comical element.

Another clip in which we cut was another piece of interview with she talks about her favourite director. We are still deciding if this has any place in our work as though it shows Her love for film it did not make sense to have this at the beginning of documentary. This tackles another subject in which we are working with now which is order.

We have been considering the order of our work and how to tell the story. We had originally thought to begin the documentary with Janaan discussing her favourite director however this felt stiff and unrealistic and upon hearing feedback we discovered this was not the best that is why we are now working with different beginnings to see which outcome and sequence works the best. We want to make sure the documentary flows and for that to happen we need to work on outcome. We have some ideas for where the documentary shined it is making sure that the beginning and the middle mirroring the message of the outcome.

We are well on our way to having finalised edit, after hearing some feedback from the rest of the class we will begin to add the music and some possible side effects.