editing a feature doc. suggestions?

valdez

valdez

Active member
Ok, so I've been at this for some time and i'm very familiar with my 300 plus hours of footage and most of it is now logged and (good stuff) is captured, so now comes the task of piecing it together. there is just so much, I don't know where to start. I'm looking at a 90-120 min finished product so theres a lot to consider in my story. Anyone have any experience to share about where they've started on big ones like this?
So far I've considered doing the 3*5 card thing and laying out a story that way with the many scenes, then I just now printed out from FCP all the clip names to cut out and try to order in a similar way, but printed on paper. (there are hundreds so writing them on cards seemed like a nightmare). I'm just looking for suggestions on starting a first rough story edit on a feature doc film. Thanks, anyone.
 
What is your story about ? What type of footage did you shoot ? Whats the beginning, middle and end ? Maybe you could put together a one or two minute promo to get your creative juices going . . .

The 3x5 card thing is very good, in a logical way, but dont toss out the creative method. A shot that you discard out of hand at first may later work with another shot, further down in the creative process of editing your story. . .
 
valdez said:
Ok, so I've been at this for some time and i'm very familiar with my 300 plus hours of footage and most of it is now logged and (good stuff) is captured, so now comes the task of piecing it together. there is just so much, I don't know where to start. I'm looking at a 90-120 min finished product so theres a lot to consider in my story. Anyone have any experience to share about where they've started on big ones like this?
So far I've considered doing the 3*5 card thing and laying out a story that way with the many scenes, then I just now printed out from FCP all the clip names to cut out and try to order in a similar way, but printed on paper. (there are hundreds so writing them on cards seemed like a nightmare). I'm just looking for suggestions on starting a first rough story edit on a feature doc film. Thanks, anyone.
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First things first....

1) Start bringing in clips - AND THROW AWAY AT LEAST HALF FOR TECHNICAL REASONS (Bad Audio, Noisy Picture, You Don't Like The Framing, Boring Shot, Repetetive Material, etc., etc., etc., - only exceptions to that rule are "Must Have" Shots where you must overlook the quality). Be ruthless, and extremely picky.

2) THROW AWAY AT LEAST HALF FOR TECHNICAL REASONS AGAIN (Bad Audio, Noisy Picture, You Don't Like The Framing, Boring Shot, Repetetive Material, etc., etc., etc., - only exceptions to that rule are "Must Have" Shots where you must overlook the quality). Be ruthless, and extremely picky.

3) THROW AWAY AT LEAST HALF FOR TECHNICAL REASONS AGAIN (Bad Audio, Noisy Picture, You Don't Like The Framing, Boring Shot, Repetetive Material, etc., etc., etc., - only exceptions to that rule are "Must Have" Shots where you must overlook the quality). Be ruthless, and extremely picky.

4) THROW AWAY AT LEAST HALF FOR TECHNICAL REASONS AGAIN (Bad Audio, Noisy Picture, You Don't Like The Framing, Boring Shot, Repetetive Material, etc., etc., etc., - only exceptions to that rule are "Must Have" Shots where you must overlook the quality). Be ruthless, and extremely picky.

5) Now, you should have about 15-18 hours worth of higher quality footage that you are currently dealing with. This is still a reasonably high shooting ratio (12:1 or so), and should give you plenty of wiggle room to make your story. Also, once you start getting your story together, should you realize that something you threw out is more important than you thought it was, you can always get back to it.

6) Log every clip with a sentence or two of detail - don't just do a couple words, trust me. This long process WILL pay off in dividends.

7) Without watching the footage at all, go through and mark the clips that you simply cannot get out of your head. These are the clips that most certainly MUST be in your movie and will act as the anchor pieces for all the rest of the footage. Mark those clips with a grade of "A".

8) Go through and watch ALL the other clips, grading them either A, B, C, D, or F (which usually is now reserved for "irrelevant to story", since you already weeded out the crap). You can do this comfortably, with just a laptop, a spreadsheet, and timecoded footage at your TV if you'd rather not be in front of the NLE right now. Sometimes it helps to remove yourself from the edit suite. Again, be ruthless, and extremely picky in your grading - again the only clips that get ANY leeway whatsoever must be incredibly important to your story - something historical, or amazing, happening in front of your camera that caught you off guard, for example. This is YOUR movie, and this is no time to kid yourself about WHICH foot you want to put forward - and you certainly want the BEST one. Remember, there is huge difference between liking a clip, and NEEDING it to tell your story. Editing is need based first. With any luck, you'll have whole lot of clips you liked that don't wind up in your movie.

9) At this point it should be becoming clear to you exactly where your story is - where it's going and how to piece it together. Make an outline with five separate headings - one for each reel (about 16-20 minutes) of the movie. Pick a title for each reel. Under each heading, write down what kind of clips would best explemplify that heading. Now find them with your spreadsheet, and pick the ones that you've graded as the best first, especially if they are most suitable to a particular heading.

10) Complete each reel of the film as a short film unto itself, with it's own story arc within itself, still always remembering the flow between the reels (ie don't put a crossfade at a "reel change", or if you can't use a hard cut, use a fade out/fade in - I usually use fade out/cut in - it's kind of like an exclamation point). It's old school, but it does help still to think of the flow in reels, or you can also think of it in acts simulatenously, with reel one being the first act, reels two, three, and four being the second act, and reel five as the third act.

Hope that helps....


PS: Make sure you have a consistent file naming convention. Don't name things what they're about, as you'll never ever keep it straight with large amounts of footage, and wind up naming things nearly the same, which is where the spreadsheet comes in handy sorting out what the hell's what. Let's say you shot a circus for example, and you shot three hours of footage there. The names of files resulting from those tapes should be Circus 01-27, meaning circus tape number one, clip twenty-seven. This way, if you ever need to go back to anything, if you lose a file in the process, you know exactly where to find it. Also, the best way to declare something a "clip" is the point at which you hit record, to when you stopped shooting - it makes it easy to indentify. Sometimes these will be long "clips", and will require you to break them into subclips later on. Nearly every clip will require more exact editing later as you put it in your timeline, but it's best to have it ALL there to start with.
 
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thanks, thats great advice,
I am working using similar to what you've said now, but still sort of doing the notecard thing. I know I didn't give much info before, but I have been at this for over 6 months already, but now I'm in a crunch to actually work on the real thing. (I've been under pressure to do a bunch of lame trailers and shorts of it while we weed through and log all of it), much of it is not in english and I have others logging and translating for me and they're almost done. Also much of it is sports footage (long Cricket games) that I may need later to peice weird sports sequences together. I'm printing my choice fav's onto 3*5 cards to organize into something like a 3 act structure that I'm basing the story on so I can utilize some real traditional drama. Thanks these we're great tips, I'll keep ya'll informed. I especially like the emphasis on throwing out the crap clips, I tend to hold on too tight, and this really hits home for me, but should really help clean up; besides my 1 terabyte drive is almost full, too!
 
valdez said:
thanks, thats great advice,
I am working using similar to what you've said now, but still sort of doing the notecard thing. I know I didn't give much info before, but I have been at this for over 6 months already, but now I'm in a crunch to actually work on the real thing. (I've been under pressure to do a bunch of lame trailers and shorts of it while we weed through and log all of it), much of it is not in english and I have others logging and translating for me and they're almost done. Also much of it is sports footage (long Cricket games) that I may need later to peice weird sports sequences together. I'm printing my choice fav's onto 3*5 cards to organize into something like a 3 act structure that I'm basing the story on so I can utilize some real traditional drama. Thanks these we're great tips, I'll keep ya'll informed. I especially like the emphasis on throwing out the crap clips, I tend to hold on too tight, and this really hits home for me, but should really help clean up; besides my 1 terabyte drive is almost full, too!
Click to expand...

Keep in mind, with even just about 15 hours of footage or so, your spreadsheet should be about 30 pages long or so, and that's with each clip only having it's own line or so. That's a mess of index cards.

One of the reason I chose to use spreadsheets, instead of index cards, is because it is so much more depersonalizing of a clip - as I have a hard time letting go of stuff as well. This makes it EASY to get rid of the crap, as all I have to go on is the entry for that particular clip, and the grade I gave it. Perhaps instituting the card thing would be good once you have all your "A" clips, but before that, it's way to cumbersome - and it does enable you to get too attached to a clip in particular.

As for being in a crunch - do you have a screening/distribution scheduled, or something else entirely that's going to eat your time? While you are in the process of completing this, it's best NOT to think about the external factors, and just MAKE time to do this thoroughly if you have to. Wake up at 5 AM if that's the only time you can squeeze in a few hours to edit. Make a list, brainstorming, of the things that you think you HAVE to do finish the film, and then put them in logical and necessary order. Then accomplish all you possibly can in one day, and know that you did all you can do for that day. If you do that for enough days/weeks/months in a row, you'll be done. Remember, feature filmmaking is a marathon, not a sprint.

The documentary feature I just finished took me three and half years from start to finish. Sure, it was rotoscoped, and the storyline itself encompasses two years, but still, it just takes patience, starting with yourself. If you keep working on it, you WILL finish it.
 
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Actually, I dont think that advice is good at all. A compelling documentary is 100% about the STORY. Something that drives your story that has poor audio, odd framing, etc. should not be discarded. You can try to find something better but throwing something out for technical reasons arbitrarily is a huge mistake. My first doc had a mountain of tech errors but, they made it in over the money shots because they drove the story better. I got creative in the edit to cover the "issues" but the story remained solid. This is true of many if not most modern docs... "Overnight" is a technical mess but the story is great so nobody cares.

Unless you are talking Winged Migration or Baraka, your focus should 100% be shots that tell your story, cant hear the audio? add a subtitle... STORY STORY STORY!




ash =o)
 
AshG said:
Actually, I dont think that advice is good at all. A compelling documentary is 100% about the STORY. Something that drives your story that has poor audio, odd framing, etc. should not be discarded. You can try to find something better but throwing something out for technical reasons arbitrarily is a huge mistake. My first doc had a mountain of tech errors but, they made it in over the money shots because they drove the story better. I got creative in the edit to cover the "issues" but the story remained solid. This is true of many if not most modern docs... "Overnight" is a technical mess but the story is great so nobody cares.

Unless you are talking Winged Migration or Baraka, your focus should 100% be shots that tell your story, cant hear the audio? add a subtitle... STORY STORY STORY!




ash =o)
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I agree with you, to a point. But let's say you have two clips, one that's pure crap, & one that's not, and they both convey about the same message/point, equally compelling with only room in your film for one of the clips, which when you have hundreds of hours of footage on one particular subject - is bound to happen. Which do you take - obviously the one that's not pure crap, right? That said, and as I said in my previous posts, if a clip IS compelling enough to overcome technical issues, and IS, in and of itself, unique and important to the story, then by all means include it, otherwise - it simply DISTRACTS from the story, and surely you have SOMETHING better you can put there in it's place.

Here's a wildly exaggerated example that I was told back about fifteen years ago, but it kind of makes it crystal clear what the distinction is. We all know the Zapruter film, and we all know that it is perhaps the single most famous piece of amatuer film footage ever shot, but suppose for a second that Oliver Stone built a time machine, and had three camera crews shooting 35mm there on that day in Dealy Plaza in Dallas. In fact, one of the crews was standing right next to Mr. Zapruter and his handheld Super 8 camera, except it had a unobstructed view of the motorcade - and not only that - IT'S A CRANE SHOT, coming down to JFK's expression and movements right at the very moment his head goes back and to the left. The other angles even gave definitive answers to exactly what happened, and how it happened - no Warren Commission is necessary, no conspiracies ever exist as a result.

Who's footage winds up being shown frame by frame in Life magazine, and nearly every film about JFK since then? Oliver Stone's, of course - and no one ever sees the "Zapruter" film. As it stands, obviously, there is no such thing as a time machine, and Zapruter has the best/only piece of available footage of those moments, therefore it is the Zapruter film that you use - despite it's techincal flaws. That's the point though - if the footage is compelling enough, people will overlook the flaws - especially if there's nothing better to represent that moment in time. But that's the standard - compelling. Chances are, among 300 hundred hours of footage, you probably DO have better quality footage that is equally representative of the point you are trying to make - and if not - then the Zapruter rule DOES apply in that case. And in the(se) case(s), your "money" shot(s) may wind up being your least technically competent shot(s).

An example of the Zapruter rule in practice - "Capturing The Friedmans". A good chunk of that movie being home videos of the Friedman family, which did not exist otherwise, is compelling enough that you forget the techincal problems. But what if that movie had been about my family, same quality footage (circa 1980's VHS), but no compelling newsworthy story like their's (THANK GOD)? It would have been utterly boring and pure crap, and moreover, just somebody's 1980's home videos.

It's most certainly not arbitrary to discard less than ideal, or similar yet lesser, footage - that is a method that is used everyday, and rightfully so, by filmmakers and editors of all stripes. Documentaries can, and do, have a more free standard of what is usable and what ain't, but you still need to be ABLE to qualify that within your own footage honestly - especially if you're standing on top of 300 some odd hours like this guy and can't make heads or tails of where to start - otherwise you need to hire an editor that can help make that distinction for you - with passion for the story, but without passion for, or attachment to, the clip. Your movie can ONLY be better for it. I did make the caveat, over and over, that you may want to go back and retrieve some of the discarded footage - but the best place to start is going to be with your best footage that fits within the framework of your story. Never did I imply that story was not important, but story was not what he was asking about - he was asking about how to get from the 300 hrs. he had amassed, to his story - which is probably just buried in there somewhere underneath approximately 298 1/2 hours of other crap he DOESN'T need. Question is, do you dig with a shovel, or with a teaspoon?
 
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I think we agree... it sounded to me like you were saying, watch thru the clips and throw away anything that doesnt look or sound good. I did this on the first cut of my doc and while it looked really cinematic for a Pennebaker style story, it was hard to follow and void of emotion.

I say, story first, then production value. If there are poor shots that help your story, try to dig around and find something better...



ash =o)
 
AshG said:
I think we agree... it sounded to me like you were saying, watch thru the clips and throw away anything that doesnt look or sound good. I did this on the first cut of my doc and while it looked really cinematic for a Pennebaker style story, it was hard to follow and void of emotion.

I say, story first, then production value. If there are poor shots that help your story, try to dig around and find something better...



ash =o)
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You can't get too mechanical, certainly, or it will result in what you experienced with your first doc. However, you cannot go to the other extreme and pretend that technical issues don't matter - to a point. Here's the thing I do about techincal issues I notice within my stuff - and this is THE TRUE TEST. Do not ask another filmmaker, ask someone who doesn't know jack about filmmaking, as that's about 95% of any audience, at the very least. If they have a problem with it, then it's certainly a problem. If not, then it's up to you as to rate how big a deal this is. Definitely we are in agreement though, if you've got something magic in content, but crap in delivery, by all means, bring the magic.
 
I was in a similiar situation you are. It can seem overwhelming, can't it?

What I did was write down my beginning, middle, and end. I started cutting away at the beginning, and went from there. I really had no method other than laying things out on the timeline, and cutting them into a story. When I started to see where my film was going overall, I placed the clips accordingly. This may sound like terrible advice, which it may be, but it worked for me. Just start editing. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
 
Thanks folks,
All good advice. I agree with both sides (of that short misunderstanding). Both are true with my case; most important storytelling parts have an alternate nicer looking take in terms of long days at a game with the bunch of main characters I have, but the reverse is true with some other stuff that looks bad but was shot overseas under tight conditions and must be saved somehow.
One of my big problems is that theres tons of footage/interviews but no one in any of them will come out and say what India/Pakistans' partition was, which is the underlying issue of everything in this movie (it was the division of one India into India and Pakistan in 1947, basically, then much hatred insued since over who gets the state in the middle, Kashmir), but it's what they all refer to INDIRECTLY even when we've asked 50 times, so I may have to revert to what I hate and piecemeal a bunch of different interviews and show a map for a second, because I want to explain that really quickly so I don't lose all my audience to a history lesson.
To everyone in our story it's obvious info, but I have to assume my audience won't know anything about it. It's like asking an American what the declaration of independence is, they'll just talk about how important it was right away not litterally say "oh it's when there were still just 13 colonies here, who wanted to really exert thier independence from Britain and denounce Britains king, so they wrote up this paper about all thier gripes and differences in thier values then had the congress and heads of each of those new 13 states sign it, and there you go, America in a nutshell" thats all you'd need to say, but no one would really say that, they dance around it and talk about all it's influence and wars and blah, blah, so then comes in an obnoxious history lesson strung together over an image of that rediculous painting of them signing it and all standing like sideways like it's a photoshoot, and you've lost your drama loving average audience, to the history channel buffs.
I have so much great footage of these 11 guys hanging out together and thier poignant stories, but for Americans we need the background of why thats a big deal in like 1 minute or less so people don't run to the doors screaming, "history! History! Let me out of here!" History is like pulling a theater fire alarm. Anyway, thats where I'm at now, thanks guys; these debates are always fun anyway.
 
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