Strategy #1 to Accelerate Editing
Recently I helped a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism prepare a budget for the ITVS Open Call funding (due July 24th).
Since I used to teach editing at her alma mater, I reflected how back in the day, before digital cameras, editing used to be more affordable because we didn’t shoot hundreds of hours. Now the going rate for an award-winning editor to cut a feature documentary in 30 weeks is about $90K.
But imagine paying one-third that amount–for the same storytelling talent–on an accelerated editing schedule.
In this three-part series, I’ll share strategies to shorten the editor’s time in the edit room.
Strategy #1: cull your footage down to a manageable 30 hours—before handing the drive over to an editor.
But what to cut? What to keep?
For an essay-based documentary, your first category of “keeps” is big ideas. Make a list of your film’s seven essential, takeaway-concepts. Create a stringout for each.
What’s a stringout?
“Simply put, a stringout is a series of shots that a Story Producer assembles and gives to an Editor,” according to narrative feature editor Steven Friedland. These sequences serve two functions: to give the editor a “head start” and to identify a “road map” of the story, Friedland says.
(Learn more about stringouts as applied specifically to documentary editing in How to Log Footage Quickly.)
For story-driven documentaries, you’ll create a separate stringout for each plot line. Read about documentary story structure in this evergreen Article about squeezing reality into three acts.
You might also create a stringout for beauty shots, montage material, archival highlights, and each important verite scene. Include only the key verite moments so your cutter doesn’t have to watch every frame.
As one of my favorite editors said, “It’s easy enough to find the surrounding clips to build scenes.”
In Part 2, I’ll share a key strategy for speeding up the industry’s post-production process, turning a 6-12 month timetable into a 10-week edit.
