Editing a Documentary

With the help of my brother, we have decided to take on the task of editing this documentary. This will be the first feature length documentary I will have attempted to cut. Don’t get me wrong; I really love the technical part of editing. But over the last 19 months of working on this film, we have amassed over 200 hours of footage and trying to cut that down to an 80 to 90 minute film, well, I find it frankly horrifying. But there seems to be hope.
First, there are some clips where I made some major technical errors while running the camera, so that knocks it down to about 180 hours. Second there are the interviews where we shot 2 cameras, so that cuts it to say 150 hours. And then there are always audio issues that push that particular clip into the ‘video only’ bin. But then comes the first hard part, what actors are we going to use. We have been all over the United States and even to South America, so to look at footage that we traveled thousands of miles to get and then to say “ It Doesn’t fit”, is again horrifying and often sad. Cutting room floors really can be stained with blood and tears.
The key to all this for me has been our original treatment. Something that was sketched out as we started filming and then modified and polished as we moved forward now has become a way for me to focus. At night when I wake up in panic because I feel as if the mountain of clay I have to mold will overwhelm me, I remind myself I have the treatment and it makes me smile.
So now with all that behind me I am down to about 40 hours to get 90 minutes. Now I am really loosing sleep over CHOICES, and even yet I still have note cards after note cards full of ideas for more footage. Shots of me as a kid, archive footage of a doctor smoking from 1950, even archive footage of archive footage of doctors. Freewill and choices are the making of a free world, but at times I wish some of those choices weren’t around.
And once I get it even closer, the end result will be that far away as the real ART of editing begins. That’s the thing I am least sure about having no formal training in such. So maybe then I will call in the cavalry to help, or maybe by then I will be in so deep only the final cut will set me free.
This film will ultimately be cut and we will always wish for more footage and for more time to work with it. Just don’t be surprised if the end result is a 20-hour miniseries.

Ryan